Story overview

The Tribulation of Heaven

In the year 2472 of the Common Era, the Sun—once named the Golden Crow—had withered to a sullen ember, its corona bleeding like a dying dragon's last breath. The oceans of Earth had turned to jade‑green sludge; the Kunlun Mountains had crumbled into dust; and upon the Nine Provinces, only one bastion of the "Pure Ones" remained—a walled city where men still breathed poison with their mortal lungs, clinging to the ancient dictum: “The body is the dwelling of the soul; it must not be exchanged.” Far above, upon the floating lotus‑cities of Venus, the Gene‑Aristocrats had remade their flesh into crystal and amber, living a thousand years. On the red canyons of Mars, the Machine‑Ascended had replaced neurons with silicon threads, calling themselves “The Celestial Men.” Three factions, three paths—and they hated one another more than they feared the void. Yet one thing united them: a signal, piercing from beyond the galactic rim. It came in three tongues—oracle‑bone script, binary code, and gravitational waves—and it spoke a single prophecy: “When the nine stars align in the Cauldron of Heaven, the gate of the Abyss shall open. Those who passed through before shall return as harvesters. And the sons of Yan and Huang must choose: become immortals, or become fuel.” Dr. Lian Xue, a disgraced archaeologist of the Pure City, stood before the Council of the Three Realms—holographic projections flickering like paper ghosts. She had translated the signal’s deeper layer: a genetic sequence, a key to eternal life. “This is no blessing,” she said, her voice trembling like a lute string. “It is a trap. The ancestors—the ones we call the Pangu‑Makers—they seeded our world with life four billion years ago. Not out of love. Out of need. They were farmers, and we are their crop. Now the harvesters come, and the only weapon against them lies beyond the Gate of Returning Void.” The Celestial Man representative sneered: “You speak of myths. Pangu? The Abyss? We have transcended flesh—we fear nothing.” Lian Xue lifted her palm, and a hologram unfurled: a map of the cosmos, but twisted—galaxies spiraling like yin‑yang symbols, dark matter flowing like the Five Elements. At the center, a ring of pure geometry, its radius measured not in light‑years but in karma. “That ring is the Infinity Gate,” she said. “Built by the Pangu‑Makers to seal the Abyss. But the seal is breaking. And the only way to reforge it is to pass through—to abandon our physical forms and become Qi, the primordial breath. We will cease to be human. We will become a storm.” The Council erupted. The Pures called it heresy; the Celestial Men called it suicide; the Aristocrats called it a business opportunity. But Lian Xue had already seen the fleet—seventy‑two ships, each the size of a moon, decelerating at the edge of the Oort Cloud. Their hulls were carved with faces—the faces of every civilization the Harvesters had consumed. “We have forty days,” she whispered. “Forty days until the Tianjie—the Heavenly Tribulation—descends.”