“Hello. Did you hibernate due to illness?” the hibernator in the bed beside Luo Ji asked. He was young, and looked to be in his early twenties.

Luo Ji opened his mouth but no sound came out. The young man smiled at him encouragingly. “You can speak. Try harder!”

“Hello,” Luo Ji managed hoarsely.

The young man nodded. “The one who just left did. I didn’t. I came here to escape from reality. Oh, and my name’s Xiong Wen.”

“Here … how is it?” Luo Ji asked, much more easily this time.

“I don’t really know. I’ve only been here five days. Still, it’s definitely a good era. But for us, it’s bound to be difficult to integrate into society. Mostly because we woke up too soon. A few years later would have been better.”

“A few years later? Wouldn’t that be even harder?”

“No. It’s still a state of war now, so society can’t take care of us. In a few decades, after the peace talks, there’ll be peace and prosperity.”

“Peace talks? With whom?!”

“Trisolaris, of course.”

Shaken by Xiong Wen’s final statement, Luo Ji strove to sit up. A nurse entered and helped him up to a half-sitting position in bed.

“They said they want peace talks?” he asked anxiously.

“Not yet. But they’ll have no other choice,” Xiong Wen said, nimbly getting out of his bed and coming over to sit down on Luo Ji’s. He had clearly been anticipating the pleasure of introducing someone newly awakened to this era. “Don’t you know? Humanity is amazing now. Simply amazing!”

“How?”

“Our spacecraft are incredibly powerful. Far more powerful than Trisolaran ships!”

“How is that possible?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? Put the superweapons aside and look purely at speed. They can reach fifteen percent of the speed of light! Tons faster than the Trisolarans!”

When Luo Ji turned a skeptical eye toward the nurse, he noticed that she was exceptionally pretty. Everyone in this age seemed to be attractive. She nodded with a smile. “It’s true.”

Xiong Wen went on, “And do you know how many ships there are in the space fleet? I’ll tell you: two thousand! Twice as many as the Trisolarans! And the number’s still growing!”

Luo Ji glanced again at the nurse, who nodded.