Epoch of Twilight

Since there was no reason to stay in the forest, Luo Yuan did not want to wait any longer. He switched into his flight mode and instantly broke through the dense layers of leaves above him. He realized that the additional points that were added into his Will (currently 19) had significantly improved his flight ability. It only took him three seconds to enter the space-time bubble as he broke his previous flight record and kept on accelerating. It was only 10 seconds later that he stopped accelerating and started to stabilize himself. He soared through the sky like a rocket and looked like a barely visible dot. He had broken through the clouds in only a short period of time and the rays from the Sun sparkled down onto his body making it shine like gold.

He was traveling at a speed of two to three kilometers per second and because of his high speed, the strong wind and cyclones that were forming around him made him look even more mysterious and stunning. Luo Yuan immediately stopped and quietly suspended himself in midair. He realized that the unnatural phenomenon that was unfolding before him was in fact due to the power of his Will. He had become even more powerful than before through the accumulation of the experience he had gained from his training.

However, he was still disappointed as his flight speed had only improved by about three times or so which was less than he had expected. Newton’s First Law states that an object will remain at rest or move in a constant motion unless it is acted upon by an external force. In his case, he knew that the faster he flew, the greater the amount of air resistance that was going against him.

Luo Yuan realized that he was not able to offset all the air resistance even when he was wearing his synthesized clothes which had been made from the Demonic Horseman.

Luo Yuan realized that he did not feel much of the air resistance when he was flying at high speeds as most of it was dissipated by the vortex cyclone that formed around him. However, he knew that the air resistance still affected him to some extent. For example, if someone was sitting in a car and driving at a fast speed, the car would still be affected by the air resistance even if the person sitting in it could not feel it. The same goes for Luo Yuan who was protected by the vortex cyclone.

Luo Yuan knew that although he had perfected his aerodynamic techniques, he was still unable to completely neutralize all the air resistance. Anyway, he was keen to find out exactly how much his space-time bubble flight had improved. Luo Yuan was certain of the fact that a resistive force did exist in space. However, he was unsure of how much resistance he would experience in space as compared to the air resistance he felt moments ago. He understood that the faster he flew, the greater the resistive force that he would experience. Otherwise, he would have been able to fly at a limitless speed when he had reached 17 points which was obviously not the case.

After pondering for some time, he removed the headband he was wearing to utilize his four-dimensional vision and started to shift into his space-time bubble flight mode. The space around him started to shake rapidly and the spatial fluctuation this time around was more violent. Luo Yuan counted in his mind that it took less than three seconds to form the bubble. Five seconds after entering the flight mode, he could feel himself moving faster and that everything around him looked almost static.

Within the first minute of flying, he was traveling at a speed that had surpassed the speed of sound. Five minutes later, he had reached a speed which was eight times faster than the speed of sound. Ten minutes later, he had reached his usual speed limit which was 12 kilometers per second. He continued to accelerate and after twenty minutes, he had broken past his usual speed limit. He traveled so fast that he was not able to determine his own speed.

He was like a stream of light that passed through the mountains, river, and plains while the scenery around him was constantly changing. He did not have an issue controlling his flight even though he was flying at an insane speed above the ground. He was rather amused with himself for being able to travel at such a speed while watching the scenery continue to change rapidly. He only needed half a minute to cross the vast ocean below him.

"This must be the Indian Ocean." Luo Yuan secretly thought.

After another minute or so had passed, he stumbled upon a vast land fully covered in forest which was probably Australia. Next, he arrived at what he thought must have been the South Pole. The reason why he thought so was that it was the coldest region on Earth. Though the border of the region was growing densely with plants and trees, he realized as he was flying around that most parts of the region were covered in ice. However, Luo Yuan also realized that the frozen region would not exist much longer as the icebergs had started to melt; forming strands of rivers and lakes. Unfortunately, Luo Yuan did not see any living organisms in the area.

Disaster struck too soon and under the influence of the cosmic storm, the viral mutation spread like a wild fire speeding up the rate of the entire evolution process. When humans awoke, the marine route had been blocked due to the presence of mutated sea beasts which forced humanity to rely on air transport for goods. Unfortunately, the availability of air transports was limited and they were not able to obtain sufficient goods to sustain a country even though they were transporting in goods day and night. Not to mention that it was not safe to fly at times due to flying mutated beasts.

Luo Yuan did not spend much time in the area and was soon on his way. He soon stumbled upon South America and realized that it was still night. Luo Yuan felt that it was a unique experience to be able to travel from day to night in just a few minutes. The boundaries of time seemed to have completely disappeared for him.

Even though it was night time here, his vision had not been affected at all. When he looked down from above, he could see that the entire area was filled with green and that there was no sign of anyone living in the area. Though South America was not weak, its main country was Brazil which was located near the Amazon and was commonly known as the heart of the tropical forest. Hence, it was the first country to be affected. Other smaller countries were not able to defend themselves against the impact of the apocalypse and soon fell one by one.

Luo Yuan decided to fly over to North America to determine its condition; only to realize that it had also been badly affected by the apocalypse and all he saw was greenery surrounding the country. The scenery was the same everywhere and it was only when he arrived in Canada that he saw a change! He could see that the Canadian region was filled with craters. Some of the craters were small while others were very large - ranging up to several kilometers in diameter. Most of them were caused by nuclear bomb explosions and Luo Yuan verified this with his sharp vision which allowed him to view the area perfectly from the sky. There were so many bomb pits in the area that from his viewpoint, it almost looked as if he had just arrived on the moon.

Luo Yuan could not determine exactly how many bombs had been dropped in the area but some areas had been badly burnt that collapsed trees were lying around everywhere. It looked like the bombs had been detonated not too long ago. Luo Yuan predicted that the shelter where the humans in the area stayed was not far away. He was looking forward to meeting them.

There is less than 10 percent of the total world population still alive since the start of the apocalypse. Now that mankind was on the brink of extinction, all the countries had decided to put away their differences and had formed an alliance. Though each country still maintained control over their own region, they willingly shared any information and technology they could get their hands on with one another.

As Luo Yuan had predicted, after continuing to fly for a few seconds, he discovered a large scale of urban agglomeration where a few cities with high walls were built next to each other. He could see that every city had several cannons placed along its walls as though it was a military fortress.

He guessed that this was most likely the gathering zone of the survivors.

There were only three regions that remained in communications with one another as of today. One region was in the North Pole where Russia was the main force leading the area. Another one was in the United States and finally, the last one was the Reconstruction Area.

Luo Yuan knew, however, that the first two regions no longer ran as an independent nation because the North Pole regions consisted of many European refugees while the South Pole area was a joint region between the United States and Canada.

Luo Yuan did not feel like loitering in the area any longer and flew quickly around just to have a glance. He managed to scout the entire area in just four seconds and took off across the sky headed in the direction of the North Pole. When he entered daylight, the Sun shined on his body again. He was not able to see the gathering area of the Russians as he had taken a different route. After continuing his flight for about another thirty seconds, he was finally back at the Reconstruction Area. He was very excited to be back on familiar ground. Subconsciously, he had circled around the Earth and had taken only five minutes for the entire trip. He had never felt that the Earth was so small up until today.

Luo Yuan looked at his watch and concluded that he only took exactly four minutes and thirty seconds to circle round the Earth when he was at his maximum speed. However, the entire flight duration took about 25 minutes. The diameter of the earth was estimated to be about 40,000 kilometers. It was not difficult for Luo Yuan to calculate that the speed he was traveling at was about 1,481 kilometers per second. This was quite an astonishing speed!

The moon was about 38 million kilometers away which meant that Luo Yuan only required 428 minutes to reach it. He could fly to the moon right away if he wanted to do so. However, he knew that it was a one-way ticket as his Physique would be badly consumed by the four-dimensional vision and on top of that there was a vacuum environment in space which was another factor that would affect him. He would probably never make it back to Earth. He looked up into space and thought that it was not as far off as he had once thought.

He then abruptly landed on the ground to recover. The physical strength that he had consumed had been immediately replenished by his earth state ability.

...

"Which one is 51?" he heard Wang Shishi question as he was entering the house.

"Wrong! You are so stupid. You don’t get the reward this time." Wang Shishi shouted.

Luo Yuan heard a few dissatisfied hissing sounds coming from the mutated woman.

They seem to be playing a game. Luo Yuan tiptoed slowly into the living room and saw that Wang Shishi was sitting at the table holding a bunch of homemade cards while the mutated woman squatted on a chair. He saw that they were enjoying themselves and that Chen Jiayi was watching the game from the side. However, he noticed that her eyes had a distant look as if she had gone into a daydream state.

Wang Shishi drew out a few cards on the table and sweetly said, "This should be very easy. Which one is eight? You had guessed it just now."

The mutated woman shifted her head from side to side to look at the cards and hesitated for a long time before stretching out her long finger as she gently pointed at one of the cards.

"You finally got it right! This is your reward." Wang Shishi took out a piece of meat from her pocket and handed it to her.

The mutated woman quickly grabbed the meat and stuffed it into her mouth. She swallowed the meat without even chewing it.

She then pointed her finger again at Wang Shishi to continue the game. Her ears suddenly twitched as she sensed something in the room. She quickly turned her head and when she saw Luo Yuan, her eyes lit up and she immediately stood up. She ran to Luo Yuan and hissed a few times while pointing at Wang Shishi as though she wanted to complain about her.

"Brother Luo, you’re back!" Wang Shishi said as she walked over to Luo Yuan and hugged him intimately.

"Brother Luo." Chen Jiayi said softly with a red face as she recovered from her daydream state.

Luo Yuan put down Wang Shishi’s hand and smiled at Chen Jiayi. He then asked Wang Shishi, "What happened? It looks like the mutated woman was rather unhappy with you."

"This mutated woman was very naughty. She took off a few light bulbs around the house and hid them inside her blanket. If she had not left any footprints behind on the wall, we would not have known what had happened. When we checked her blanket, we even found a few soy sauce and oil bottles that were hidden there. It was a total mess!" Wang Shishi said angrily and continued, "After I took them away from her, she even wanted to steal the light bulbs hanging in the passageway. Luckily, I discovered what she was doing. Otherwise, the policeman would have arrested her."

Luo Yuan felt like laughing despite how serious Wang Shishi seemed. He knew that the mutated woman had a hobby of collecting shiny stuff but he never expected that she would have taken the light bulbs too. He looked at the mutated woman and realized that she probably did not know that Wang Shishi had told him all about her bad actions. She kept pointing at Wang Shishi and continued hissing as her way of complaining.

"Anyway, she is a newcomer and is still trying to adapt to our ways of living. Let us teach her slowly." Luo Yuan said.

"I was just trying to teach her how to look at numbers but I find her to be quite stupid. She has learned numbers less than 10 but still could not understand numbers which were more than 10." Wang Shishi explained.

Luo Yuan thought in his heart that if she had only just taught the mutated woman for a short period of time while using a language that was completely foreign to the mutated woman, then it was no surprise that she struggled to learn. To a certain extent, it was like communication between humans and aliens with no form of reference. Luo Yuan thought to himself that if she could learn numbers up until a hundred, she would be a genius. As a matter of fact, she was already much more intelligent than a normal human.

"Oh yea..., where is Sister Huang and the rest?" Luo Yuan asked when he did not see Huang Jiahui and the rest around.

"They went grocery shopping." Wang Shishi replied and pointed at the mutated woman. She continued saying, "The food at home had been finished by her."

The mutated woman could sense the dissatisfaction that was coming from Wang Shishi and hissed at her a couple of times. Wang Shishi gave her an angry stare and she quickly hid behind Luo Yuan, revealing only part of her face. Luo Yuan had a feeling that Wang Shishi had given the mutated woman a piece of her mind judging from how frightened she was by Wang Shishi.

"You are such a bad girl. It was such a waste of my effort to teach you and give you good food", Wang Shishi said. However, Luo Yuan could also sense joy and pride from Wang Shishi’s tone based on the laughter she had given even though she sounded dissatisfied.

When he thought about it, she was only 16 years old and was not an introvert. This was the age where most people would be very sociable, however, the age gap between Chen Jiayi, Huang Jiahui, and Zhao Yali was too wide apart so there was no common topic between them. Furthermore, Chen Jiayi was a quiet and introverted person so she did not like playing with the others. As for Luo Yuan, he often went out so he had limited time to accompany her but at least his existence gave some meaning to her boring life.