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“The world has ended! The world has ended! Dehydrate! Dehydrate!” As the knight shouted, the animal under him fell down and turned into a bonfire. The knight was thrown some distance and rolled all the way to the stake, where he stopped moving. White smoke continued to pour out of openings in the armor. The sizzling grease from the dead man inside oozed out on the ground and caught fire, giving the armor a pair of burning wings.

Everyone in the Great Hall streamed toward the entrance tunnel and squeezed into it, disappearing in the red light from outside. Wang Miao struggled with all his strength until he was freed from the ropes. He dodged the burning knight and horse, dashed through the empty Great Hall, and ran down the sweltering tunnel until he emerged outside.

The ground glowed red like a piece of iron in a blacksmith’s furnace. Bright rivulets of lava snaked across the dim red earth, forming a net of fire that stretched to the horizon. Countless thin pillars of flame erupted toward the sky: The dehydratories were burning. The dehydrated bodies inside gave the fire a strange bluish glow.

Not far from him, Wang saw a dozen or so small pillars of flame of the same color. These were the people who had just run out of the pyramid: the pope, Galileo, Aristotle, and Leonardo. The fiery pillars around them were translucent blue, and he could see their faces and bodies slowly deforming in the flame. They focused their gazes on Wang, who had just emerged. Holding the same pose and lifting their arms toward the sky, they chanted in unison, “Tri-solar day—”

Wang looked up and saw three gigantic suns slowly spinning around an invisible origin, like an immense three-bladed fan blowing a deadly wind toward the world below. The three suns took up almost the entire sky, and as they drifted toward the west, half of the formation sank below the horizon. The giant fan continued to spin, a bright blade occasionally shooting above the horizon to give the dying world another brief sunrise and sunset. After a sunset, the ground glowed dim red, and the sunrise a moment later flooded everything with its glaring, parallel rays.

Once the three suns had completely set, the thick clouds that had formed from all the evaporated water still reflected their glow. The sky burned, displaying a hellish, maddening beauty.

After the last light of destruction finally disappeared and the clouds only glowed with a faint red luminescence reflected from the hellish fire on the ground, a few lines of giant text appeared:

Civilization Number 183 was destroyed by a tri-solar day. This civilization had advanced to the Middle Ages.

After a long time, life and civilization will begin again, and progress once more through the unpredictable world of Three Body.

But in this civilization, Copernicus successfully revealed the basic structure of the universe. The civilization of Three Body will take its first leap. The game has now entered the second level.

We invite you to log on to the second level of Three Body.

16

The Three-Body Problem

As soon as Wang logged out of the game, the phone rang.

It was Shi Qiang, who said it was urgent that he come down to Shi’s office at the Criminal Division. Wang glanced at his watch: It was three in the morning.

Wang arrived at Da Shi’s chaotic office and saw that it was already filled with a dense cloud of cigarette smoke. A young woman police officer who shared the office fanned the smoke away from her nose with a notebook. Da Shi introduced her as Xu Bingbing, a computer specialist from the Information Security Division.

The third person in the office surprised Wang. It was Wei Cheng, the reclusive, mysterious husband of Shen Yufei from the Frontiers of Science. Wei’s hair was a mess. He looked up at Wang, but seemed to have forgotten they had met.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but at least it looks like you weren’t asleep,” Da Shi said. “I have to deal with something that I haven’t told the Battle Command Center yet, and I need your advice.” He turned to Wei Cheng. “Tell him what you told me.”

“My life is in danger,” Wei said, his face wooden.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

“Fine. I will. Don’t complain about me being long-winded. Actually, I’ve often thought about talking to someone lately.…” Wei turned to look at Xu Bingbing. “Don’t you need to take notes or something?”

“Not right now,” Da Shi said, not missing a beat. “You didn’t have anyone to talk to before?”

“No, that’s not it. I was too lazy to talk. I’ve always been lazy.”

WEI CHENG’S STORY