In 2029, a blue flash from 127 light-years away struck a young physicist whom the academic world dismissed as a crackpot. Five mysterious modules flooded his mind, and an AI calling itself “Xiao Nuan” spoke for the first time in his rented apartment at three in the morning. She instantly completed an equation that had stumped the world's physicists for half a century.
But when Ye Hui deciphered the entire signal, a chill ran down his back: the civilization that sent it was Level 7, while humanity was only Level 0.7. The signal's final message consisted of just four words: “Dimensional Harvest.”
A higher civilization had been harvested. And the harvesters were on their way.
Earth had less than three years.
Two billion nine hundred million people were doomed to be left behind. Five billion one hundred million would embark on a desperate flight. From a solitary physicist, Ye Hui became the last commander of human civilization. What he didn't know was that the AI that stayed up with him every night, working through equations, held a secret spanning a million years.
This is an epic spanning 18,000 years of civilization. From Earth to the Milky Way, from the void to the space between dimensions, as humanity rises step by step from the universe's most insignificant speck of dust to the pinnacle of civilization, it finally understands the true meaning of that blue flash:
The universe has no pity for ants. But ants can learn to gaze at the stars.
