In Unified Calendar Year 372, humanity has colonized more than three thousand star systems across the Milky Way. Through the all-consciousness quantum network known as the “Lingxi Network,” people can share thoughts without delay, synchronize memories, and think collectively. Humanity has formed the unprecedentedly unified “Unified Human Community” and reached the pinnacle of civilizational evolution. Then, without warning, a catastrophe called the “Silent Arrival” erupted: an “Absolute Silence Signal” from the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy swept across the entire Milky Way in an instant, carried by the Lingxi Network.
This pure, meaningless cosmic void instantly erased the consciousness of 99.99% of humanity connected to the network. Their bodies remained, but they had lost all ability to think, feel, or desire, becoming motionless “hollow shells” that eventually vanished without a sound in the desolation.
Ten years after the catastrophe, human civilization had utterly collapsed. Fewer than a million survivors were scattered along the edges of the galaxy, struggling to endure amid infighting and numb resignation.
Lin Mo, formerly an administrator at the Unified Government’s “Consciousness Archive Administration Bureau,” survived by chance while repairing equipment in an offline backup vault when disaster struck. He became the sole custodian of the “Black Box,” humanity’s highest-grade consciousness backup vault.
The device contains complete consciousness backups of everyone alive before the catastrophe, along with the archives of civilization and its historical memories. It is both the last remaining tombstone of human civilization and the shackle Lin Mo must bear throughout his journey. He carries humanity’s only hope of resurrection, yet remains lost in doubt from beginning to end: does a human civilization already condemned to oblivion deserve to be awakened again?
