The End of the Universe Is Live-Streaming E-commerce – CH31

Chapter 31: The 31st Day of Livestream Selling

Spiritual energy revival? Global evolution? Urban abilities?

A string of common web novel settings flashed across Lin Zhao’s cerebral cortex, but right now was obviously not a good time to discuss this with his younger brother. The key point was…

How were they supposed to get Qin Xiaoman’s Third Aunt down?

He could not exactly take a photo and send it to Qin Xiaoman, saying: good news, we found your Third Aunt; bad news, your Third Aunt is flying, right?

1114 comforted him thoughtfully. “Don’t be afraid, Zhaozhao.” I can fly too. This is not a problem.

The members of the Special Management Bureau’s action team all nodded one after another, none of them thinking this was a problem. Third Aunt was only floating about eight meters above the ground. Any one of them present could use their ability to solve it.

But the problem now was that although there were relatively few people wandering around outside on the street on New Year’s Eve, that did not mean there were none.

There were even already people taking out their phones.

According to Chapter Seven, Article Three of the Special Ability Management Manual (Trial Version), abnormal incidents of this kind that were publicly exposed required the nearest action team to immediately take action, control the situation, and minimize the impact on witnesses.

Although the countries had already discussed gradually making the matter of natural energy public, it had not yet been announced after all. Before the announcement, reducing public panic as much as possible was currently one of the Special Management Bureau’s main tasks.

Beside them, a long-haired team member had already skillfully taken out a black device. It was palm-sized, looking both like a walkie-talkie and like an anti-wolf electric stun gun. “The jammer has been activated. Electronic devices within a fifty-meter radius will be slightly affected, but it won’t last too long.”

“The energy reading is stable and still slowly rising. The abnormal subject is currently not dangerous, either to itself or to the public,” Lin Xiang’s bespectacled male assistant, Xiao Zhang, followed up. “Energy concentration is increasing by 0.3 units per hour. At this rate, it may reach low-rank Level Three in two hours.”

Lin Zhao remembered the “low-rank natural energy” he had seen on the phone page earlier.

Lin Xiang took the time to explain to his brother, “For now, we’ve simply divided natural energy into three ranks: low, middle, and high. Each rank has three levels. Low-rank Level Three means it has reached the highest critical value of the low rank. Observable physical effects may occur, such as Third Aunt floating higher, or producing more obvious light. Don’t worry. The action team will solve this before that happens.”

Then he turned his head and said to the members of the action team, “Recover the abnormal subject first, then handle the follow-up. Prepare to activate Plan B.”

“Again?” Before the only outsider, Lin Zhao, could ask what Plan B was, a bald burly man beside them had already covered his face in despair, looking truly collapsed. “Last time, to cover up the naked old man incident on Guanghe Road, I was almost misunderstood by the old man’s son as a pervert who had attacked an elderly person. I’m not doing it this time.”

Lin Zhao and 1114 both turned their heads sharply to gossip: tell us more about the naked old man incident.

Director Lin, who was slightly taller than his older cousin, twitched at the corner of his mouth, but he did not force the other party. He only looked toward his brother again.

The two brothers stood shoulder to shoulder and basically did not communicate much. They only exchanged a look filled with tacit understanding, and then Lin Zhao said to 1114, “Fly up first. Don’t scare Third Aunt, and don’t move.”

“Okay.” 1114 rose into the air.

At the same time, Xiao Zhang had already notified the team members who had come with them but were searching nearby for Third Aunt. In less than a minute, one of the bulletproof vehicles that had protected the Lin brothers all the way stopped at the roadside, now spray-painted with the words “Municipal Emergency,” as if it had just arrived.

Several team members got out of the car with trained precision, already changed into fluorescent vests printed with the words “Animal Rescue.” One was moving a folding cushion pad and extendable rescue net out of the vehicle, while the rest took out IDs and went forward to disperse the scattered onlookers, offering an explanation based on the art of bluffing.

Meanwhile, Lin Xiang and the others took advantage of the ordinary people being distracted and began changing into matching vests delivered by one of the team members. Even Lin Zhao was made to look the part as a vest was put on him.

Lin Zhao: ?

No, where did all these things come from? That car is so small. How exactly did it fit all this?

Lin Zhao lowered his head and looked at his cousin, who was arranging his scarf for him. From this angle, his large hands, wrist bones, and falling black hair all formed a silent annotation of “growth.” His cousin had been his little tail ever since childhood, but without him realizing it, he seemed to have suddenly grown up.

In short, before the crowd had even been fully dispersed, they had already set up roadblocks and warning tape. Someone was even guiding the onlookers. “Please step back! Municipal animal rescue!”

The question of “why is the cat flying in the sky?” instantly became “the kitty is trapped on New Year’s Eve, hurry and save it, ahhhh.”

Lin Zhao went along with everyone and looked up at Third Aunt. This beautiful big cat, five years old and in the prime of life, was neither frightened nor panicked. It did not even struggle much. It only occasionally blinked those large amber eyes, as if slightly confused by the height it was at. But this confusion was not as great as its curiosity toward 1114, which was flying beside it. It looked eager to try extending a paw.

“What is that? A drone? It lifted the cat up?” someone exclaimed.

“Most likely a children’s flying toy. That’s our current speculation.” The young man in charge of pulling the warning tape immediately followed the public’s guess.

“The load-bearing capacity of toys these days is too good. But it’s also way too dangerous.”

“Exactly, exactly. Who says it isn’t?” He echoed in an extremely familiar manner, defining the whole matter in just a few words.

“Prepare the air cushion. Raise the net,” action team captain Yan Zhen ordered.

The buffer air cushion quickly inflated and unfolded. One team member controlled two real drones—at least they looked like drones from the outside—carrying a capture net with soft edges as they slowly rose into the air. But just as the net was about to touch Third Aunt, this clever big cat suddenly shifted one meter to the side. It was a smooth, effortless dodge.

But the action team’s goal had not been to capture it directly. Instead, it was to open the net pocket and trap Third Aunt within a fixed range.

“Xiao Zhang, analyze the energy field structure. Find the weak point,” Lin Xiang said calmly.

The male assistant made an OK gesture. After entering a string of complex numbers, the special app on his phone screen began operating at high speed. A few minutes later, he pushed up his glasses and pointed to a corresponding data peak. “Here. About two meters below Third Aunt, there’s an energy node. It may be the Aa anchor point of the energy field.”

“Neutralize it.”

Xiao Zhang took a pen-shaped device from his pocket. After making several adjustments, he fired a low-frequency pulse invisible to the naked eye into the air. Suddenly, ripples appeared in the air, like stones dropped into a lake. The rings of waves spread outward, like heatwaves twisting the air in summer. Third Aunt’s body gave a violent tremble, then began slowly descending under 1114’s accompaniment.

From a distance, it looked like the out-of-control flying toy had been brought under control.

Two team members controlled the specially made energy cushion below, aiming it precisely toward the direction where the tabby cat was falling. The instant Third Aunt touched the energy cushion, the strange pressure in the surrounding air abruptly vanished. The colorful tabby rolled once on the soft cushion, stood up, shook out its fur, and let out a loud “meow.”

Everything was safe!

Everyone’s suspended hearts finally relaxed. It was also at this moment that Lin Zhao remembered he could breathe.

How to put it? His brother’s action team was both scientific and fantastical.

He hurried forward and scooped up Qin Xiaoman’s Third Aunt. Before Third Aunt could begin a death-wriggle, he took out what Qin Xiaoman had told him on the phone earlier. “Most cats hate citrus scents, but my Third Aunt doesn’t. She’s a different kind of firework. Let her smell some orange peel, and she’ll definitely calm down.”

Who knew whether this big cat was born an oddball who liked orange peel, or whether the orange peel reminded it of the scent on Grandma’s hands, who had loved eating oranges for years? But it really did quiet down in Lin Zhao’s arms.

By the time Third Aunt was temporarily brought back to Aunt Lin’s house, Qin Xiaoman had already cried to Lin Zhao on the phone three times. “You really saved my grandma’s life, Linzi. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

In the background was Qin Xiaoman’s father saying no matter what, he had to thank Lin Zhao and invite Lin Zhao over for a meal. The last time, he had already wanted Lin Zhao to come over.

In the house, where people were busy coming and going, almost all of them Special Management Bureau staff, female assistant Xiao Li was reporting to Lin Xiang. “I’ve already contacted several well-known pet bloggers on social media, as well as Jiangzuo’s local news and publicity outlet. They will release the news as soon as possible: ‘Municipal department successfully rescued trapped tabby cat on New Year’s Eve, reminding citizens to carefully handle children’s flying toys,’ paired with the video we provide. All original video uploads will be tagged by the algorithm and guided toward this official version.”

Lin Zhao had just put down the phone with Qin Xiaoman when he heard this sentence and thought: Oh, oh. The next step after solving an ability incident really is to start walking into science. I’m familiar with this. Novels all write it like this.

Third Aunt was beside the dog bowl in the living room, eating a cat food can that they had barely managed to buy at the last minute with great relish. Its tail swayed comfortably, and it showed no sign of fear at all. It truly was worthy of being the village tyrant that had fought invincibly at the village entrance.

“The scan results are out too,” female assistant Xiao Li continued. “Physiological indicators are completely normal. No abnormal parasites, no traces of genetic modification. We can confirm the energy comes from Third Aunt herself. Its EEG shows a high degree of synchrony, three times that of an ordinary cat, approaching dolphin level. It responds to simple commands and can press specific patterns with its paw to express needs.”

Theoretically speaking, an animal with natural energy like this, once captured, should be brought back to the Special Management Bureau for temporary containment. Before the special committee’s ability-level assessment came out, it should be managed uniformly by the bureau.

But there were exceptions. For example, they had previously handled a case involving a guide dog. The blind owner could not be separated for even a moment from the guide dog that had accompanied them day and night, and the guide dog also refused to leave the owner no matter what. So they had not forcefully separated them. They had only signed a confidentiality agreement with the owner, and arranged regular WeChat group check-ins and management.

Third Aunt was the old lady’s emotional support. They definitely could not casually let someone take it away. Qin Xiaoman would be back tomorrow, so in the end, they decided to wait until the Qin family arrived in Jiangzuo before saying more.

Aunt Lin did not say anything from beginning to end. She only greeted everyone to drink water and eat pastries. Every year during New Year, she bought many high-end pastries that could never be finished and placed them on the coffee table in the living room. This year, there was finally hope of finishing them all. Who knew how happy she was?

But if one said that Ms. Lin Mingzhu had not yet realized there was something wrong at this point, that would be strange.

After all, no matter how warmhearted and willing to help search for a cat in the middle of the night a colleague was, there was no reason for them to appear at your door to accompany your mother the moment something happened on your side.

Not to mention these strange terms they were now rattling off.

She simply had not asked anything.

Because…

“Aiya, what haven’t I seen in novels? Don’t underestimate us middle-aged and elderly people, okay?”

At this moment, the New Year countdown had not yet begun, but it felt as if a whole century had already passed. When only their few family members were finally left in the house again and they sat back down on the sofa, Aunt Lin said this somewhat excitedly to her son and nephew, who had tried several times to speak but stopped, not knowing how to explain.

“Is it that all us ordinary people might awaken abilities, and the country detected the changes in advance and established an ability management department? Xiangxiang researches abilities, right? Oh my, what’s so difficult to understand about that?”

Although Lin Zhao currently did not know much either, he felt that his aunt’s summary was really accurate.

Lin Xiang immediately breathed a sigh of relief. As expected, letting his mother read novels in advance had been right. “More or less. What my mentor and I originally studied was indeed celestial objects. To be precise, dark matter. You know that about 68% of the universe is dark matter, right? In astronomical observations, many strange phenomena that seem to violate universal gravitation can be very well explained under the assumption that dark matter exists.”

Lin Zhao and Aunt Lin shook their heads in unison. How would they know that?

“This unknown energy field derived from dark matter has existed before. It’s just that in the past two years, from the outer layer of Earth inward, it has begun to progress layer by layer and become unusually active, like a magnetic field or gravitational field. We temporarily named it the natural energy field.”

“From the perspective of quantum physics, it means that this background energy was previously too ‘weak,’ and its interaction with ordinary matter was extremely weak. Until recently—possibly due to an energy tide on a cosmic scale somewhere in the Milky Way, or the solar system passing through some high-energy interstellar medium—the ‘activity level,’ or ‘concentration,’ of this field rose sharply across the globe and reached a ‘critical threshold’ that can be significantly perceived and interacted with by Earth’s biosphere, especially us humans.”

“Spiritual energy,” Aunt Lin, who loved cultivation novels, found a word that was easier to accept. Jiangzuo was one of the places with the densest spiritual power, which was why Lin Xiang and the others had led a team here to research. She even found a reasonable explanation herself. “Our place used to be the rising land of the Great Qi Dynasty’s dragon. Of course there’s a lot of spiritual energy.”

Now spiritual energy had revived.

Lin Xiang very much wanted to correct his mother and say no, but he could not find any words to refute it, because that was basically what it meant.

“Yes. From a biological perspective, it’s like the air has suddenly filled with ‘spiritual energy’ we never detected before. But this ‘spiritual energy’ doesn’t react with our lungs. Instead, it directly resonates with another level of our bodies—possibly the ‘non-coding regions’ that make up more than 98% of our DNA and have unknown functions.”

“You know, only a small portion of human DNA is used to encode proteins. A large amount of non-coding DNA was once called ‘junk DNA.’”

As before, neither Lin Zhao nor his aunt knew this.

“In short, ‘spiritual energy’ is like a key, or a catalyst. It activates gene fragments in the human body that have been sleeping all along. Those are not junk DNA. On the contrary, they are key to allowing us to release ancient or potential biological instincts. It’s just that the result of activation varies from person to person. It strongly depends on the individual’s genetic background, the uniqueness of their neural network, and even their deep consciousness, cultural cognition, and belief system.”

Lin Zhao: “Say it in human language.”

“It means we’re all going to have superpowers.” Aunt Lin said that the novel she had read the day before yesterday explained it this way. “Chakra in Naruto, magic in Western fantasy, our cultivation spiritual power—in essence, they’re all the same thing. Powerful strength humans can use after evolution.”

“Right.” Lin Xiang nodded. What kind of ability one would evolve depended on how the individual understood this matter.

Very idealistic. Not objective at all.

Only then did Lin Zhao understand why his cousin had asked his mother to read novels: it made things easier to understand.

And he had gone and introduced his aunt to two men. Help. Lin Zhao put on a painful mask. “Then why did it have to be Jinjiang? Couldn’t Qidian work? What about Tomato?”

“Isn’t Qidian male-oriented fiction?” Lin Xiang froze. The reason his mother and father had divorced back then was that his father had cheated. If she accidentally saw a harem novel, wouldn’t she explode? “And Tomato is too unreal.”

If she failed to understand superpowers and first understood “last life, I gave my heart and lungs to a scumbag; this life, I’ll also ‘take out his heart and lungs,’” he did not want to see his mother and biological father on a legal program.

Lin Zhao gave an awkward smile. “That’s true. You considered it very thoroughly.”

“Otherwise?” Lin Xiang smiled at his older cousin. “What did you think I asked my mom to read Jinjiang for?”

“…”

The deeply entangled love between two men.

“In short, most of the scientific community now agrees that we are standing at an unprecedented threshold of great evolution. Not just humans. Animals and plants may also be affected.”

“My shimu, who studies biology, believes that this natural energy can enhance quantum coherence between neurons in the brain, allowing humans to influence the microscopic world more directly through mental power, and in turn manifest macroscopic special abilities.”

“The box I brought back this time contains the latest and safest harmless version of a catalyst developed by the laboratory. Do you want to try it?” Lin Xiang once again took out that plain, ordinary black case.

Lin Zhao, who was also preparing to dose his entire family with medicine: …

What a coincidence.

Author’s Note:

Nonsense Mini Theater:

Carlos: My wife finally has a holiday, but he chose to go out with friends instead of coming to the mothership to see me QAQ.

Reinhardt: He is himself, an independent individual, not your accessory.

Carlos: My wife got too carried away and hasn’t called me for a whole day QAQ.

Reinhardt: He’s with his friends. If every other sentence is about his husband, that would really kill the mood. He has his own social circle too.

…

Reinhardt: Linlin had so many New Year lucky draws this time, and not a single one was mine! I’m going to die right here!

Carlos: ?

Carlos: Heh. You’re full of wise advice when comforting me, but when it’s your turn, you’re ready to hang yourself?

Regarding the explanation about dark matter: cited from Baidu Baike.

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