When Shi Xiaoming had gone, Lao Zhang stood on the balcony looking out at the sky, which hung a little hazily over the halo of the city, and said to himself, My children, will your grandpa really send you someplace where night lasts forever?

* * *

When King Wen of Zhou next set foot onto the desolation of Three Body world, a small sun was rising. Although it did not give much heat, it lit the wasteland quite clearly. The wasteland was completely empty.

“Is there anyone here? Anyone?”

Then his eyes lit up as he saw someone riding a galloping horse from the horizon. Recognizing him at a distance as Newton, he ran toward him, waving wildly. Newton soon reached his side, reined in his horse, and, after dismounting, hurriedly adjusted his wig.

“What are you shouting for? Who restarted this damned place?”

King Wen didn’t answer his question, but took his hand and said urgently, “Comrade, my comrade, listen to me. The Lord has not abandoned us. Or, rather, Its abandonment was for a reason, and It will need us in the future. It…”

“I know that,” Newton said, impatiently brushing aside King Wen’s hand. “The sophons sent me a message too.”

“So that means that the Lord sent a message to lots of us at the same time. Excellent. The organization’s contact with the Lord won’t ever be monopolized again.”

“Does the organization still exist?” Newton wiped away sweat with a handkerchief.

“Of course it exists. The Redemptionists totally collapsed after the global strike, and the Survivors split off and developed into an independent force. Only the Adventists are left in the org now.”

“The strike purified the org. This is a good thing.”

“Since you’re here, you must be an Adventist. But you seem to be out of the loop. Are you on your own?”

“My only contact is with one other comrade, and he didn’t tell me anything but this Web address. I barely escaped the awful global strike with my life.”

“Your escape instincts were ably demonstrated during the Qin Shi Huang era.”

Newton looked around. “Is it safe?”

“Of course. We’re at the bottom of a multilevel maze, and it’s practically impossible to discover. Anyone who managed to storm their way in here wouldn’t be able to trace user locations. For security reasons, after the strike, the org put every branch into isolation with mutual contact kept to a minimum. We need a place to meet, and a buffer area for new members. This is more secure than the real world.”

“Have you noticed that attacks on the organization in the real world have slackened considerably?”

“They’re clever. They know the org is the only means of obtaining intelligence on the Lord, as well as the only opportunity of getting their hands on the technology that the Lord passes to us, even though there’s only a minute chance of that happening. That’s the reason they’ll let the org continue to exist to a certain extent, but I think they’ll come to regret it.”