Chapter 262: The Origin of Aurora Jun

"What did you say??"

Han Meng snapped back to reality and immediately shook his head. "How is that possible...? I know Lord Aurora doesn't belong to any divine path; he exists outside all power systems in the world. But he absolutely cannot be a Fuser."

"That depends on how you define a Fuser." Dr. Yi glanced at Han Meng and Chen Ling behind him, then waved a drunken hand. "Never mind... this isn't much of a secret in the base anyway. Since our Vice Captain Han Meng is curious, I'll give you surface-dwellers a good lesson... follow me."

He stumbled toward the other end of the corridor, clutching his liquor bottle.

Han Meng frowned, unsure what this drunkard was up to, but he followed. Chen Ling trailed close behind.

"Good day, Dr. Yi.""Good evening, Dr. Yi.""Dr. Yi, they need you to take a look over there when you have a moment. Thanks."Dr. Yi's status in the Aurora Base seemed extremely high. As they walked down the corridor, anyone in a white lab coat would bow and greet him. A tall female researcher even winked at him as she passed.

"Dr. Yi, where are you off to?""Just finished an experiment, going to let loose and relax a bit..." Dr. Yi naturally reached out, gave the female doctor's ample backside a firm squeeze, and grinned. "Wear something exciting tonight, and don't lock your door.""You rascal." The female doctor was surprised by his boldness, daring to touch her in front of others. She gave him an exasperated look and turned to leave.Han Meng, behind them, took it all in, his brow furrowing deeper.

Once the female doctor was out of earshot, Han Meng spoke flatly, "Drinking and flirting during work hours... you certainly have a 'great atmosphere' here at Aurora Base."

"Heh heh, thank you for the compliment.""You said Lord Aurora is a Fuser, so what calamity did he fuse with?" Han Meng asked again. "Lord Aurora is a Ninth-Rank being. If he's a Fuser, wouldn't the target he fused with have to be at least 'World-Ending' level?"

"Calamity? No, no, no... Lord Aurora didn't fuse with something like a 'calamity'." Dr. Yi pushed open a door at the very edge of the third floor. A long corridor, resembling an art exhibition, appeared before Chen Ling and Han Meng. Under bright incandescent lights, photographs, manuscripts, and notes were displayed on both sides, like a history museum.

Chen Ling's gaze swept over the photos on the walls. Below each photo was its date of capture. As they went deeper, the photos became progressively older... but strangely, the older the photos, the clearer and more sophisticated they appeared. In contrast, photos from the last two years were even in black and white. In this corridor, time and technology seemed to flow backward in a way never before conceived.

"This is the Aurora Base archives, but I prefer to call it the 'Museum of Human Extinction'." Dr. Yi spoke unhurriedly. "From the perspective of Aurora Base, it records everything from before the Great Cataclysm until now... If the history since humanity's birth is a number line growing in a positive direction, then ever since this thing appeared, that number line has started receding in a negative direction... and its final point is the origin, which is 'Extinction'."

Dr. Yi tapped a photo at the very end of the corridor, then continued walking unhurriedly. Chen Ling glanced at it. The photo showed a long, reddish streak, like a meteor streaking across the sky... It was a color photograph taken by an astronomical telescope, and also the most technologically advanced photo from the last three hundred years.

"And Lord Aurora's origin is also this." Dr. Yi slowly stopped. He took a photo from the wall and handed it to Han Meng.

Han Meng looked down. The photo showed nine figures in protective suits. They held various exploration instruments, standing in front of a military off-road vehicle, seemingly comparing something on a map, their expressions extremely solemn.

"What is this?""Before the Great Cataclysm, on August 8, 2024 AD, a reddish meteor streaked across Earth's sky," Dr. Yi's voice calmly stated. "Calculations showed that the meteor's orbit posed a collision risk with Earth, so after a resolution, human leaders decided to use nuclear weapons to intervene with its trajectory... On that day, humanity launched high-yield nuclear weapons at the meteor. The shockwaves from the explosion caused a slight deviation in the meteor's orbit, causing it to miss Earth. However, at the same time, a fragment of the meteor veered off course and plunged into the atmosphere. This fragment eventually fell into the territory of a certain nation. Immediately, the authorities gathered nine young scientists, all leading experts in various fields, to explore and recover the fallen red star fragment..."

Dr. Yi paused briefly. "However, ten minutes after they began their exploration mission, they all collectively lost contact."

"When the rescue team found them, all nine were encircling an empty meteor crater in nine distinctly bizarre poses, like statues. They had completely lost consciousness. At that time, all modern equipment within a ten-kilometer radius had malfunctioned. It's said that someone from the rescue team present tried to capture the scene with a film camera. Only when they developed the photos back at base did they discover that while all members of the rescue team appeared in the images, the nine scientists could not be photographed... only nine mysterious white shadows remained."

Hearing this, Han Meng couldn't help but ask, "Are you saying Lord Aurora is one of these nine scientists?"

"That's right." Dr. Yi picked up the photo taken before their departure and pointed to a tall, thin man in the corner. "He is Lord Aurora."

"And then what?"

"At the time, this incident didn't receive much attention; it was simply assumed that the red star fragment's special magnetic field caused the equipment failure. The nine young scientists returned to their respective units and continued their work, not noticing any physical abnormalities... But from the day the red star passed, human technology began to regress little by little. Within just one year, a world war broke out. In that chaotic war that swept across the world, Lord Aurora was caught in a nuclear explosion, and an entire city around him was reduced to ashes, tens of millions of lives instantly evaporated. During that explosion, intense auroras enveloped the ruins, not dissipating for three days and three nights... After the nuclear blast's aftermath subsided, a white-haired figure emerged from the swirling aurora. It was from that moment that Lord Aurora truly became Lord Aurora..."

"So, the technological regression was likely caused by that fallen red star fragment?"

"Hard to say, but most scholars now believe that the main body of the red star was the true culprit behind all of this, and the fragment was just an anomaly... After all, the fragment's volume wasn't even one ten-thousandth of the real red star's."

"But after all that, you still haven't clearly explained why Lord Aurora is a Fuser... What exactly did he fuse with back then?"

Dr. Yi's drunken face became uncharacteristically serious. He looked into Han Meng's eyes and spoke, enunciating each word carefully: "What he fused with was the scientific theory he had dedicated his entire life to researching and exploring... in other words, 'Magnetism Theory'."