49: Chapter 49: Always Support Teacher Sima Bei

Sima Bei "swished" his fan into his waistband and pulled out an old-fashioned incandescent light bulb from under the table, attached to a pull-switch.

"Everyone, there is an ironclad rule in military affairs: if you truly possess absolute power, you wouldn't give advance notice."

"In 1941, did Sakura Country give advance notice before attacking Pearl Harbor? No! Why? Because if you're really going to fight, you're going for the kill—why would you notify them?"

He yanked the switch, and the bulb lit up. He pulled it again, and it went out. He pulled it once more, and it lit up again.

"What is Chen Mu doing now? He's notifying you fifteen hours in advance: 'Tomorrow at nine in the morning, I'm turning off the lights.' Friends, is this war? This is a property management notice for a power outage for maintenance!"

He pointed at the camera, his finger almost poking the screen: "What does 'the art of war' say? 'When able, feign inability; when using, feign not using.'"

"If he really wanted to shield the sun, would he tell you? He would want you to be completely unprepared, causing the whole society to paralyze instantly—traffic jams, hospital power outages, financial markets crashing—that's what you call a strike! He's telling you to prepare lighting equipment now; prepare for what? Once you're prepared, the panic lessens!"

Sima Bei sneered: "So this isn't a military operation; it's performance art. It's an information war! It's psychological warfare! The goal is to make us kneel and beg him, so he can then post on Twitter about how benevolent and kind he is, having saved a civilization."

Sima Bei turned around; a few lines of chalk writing had appeared on the blackboard. He picked up the eraser and tapped next to "Sun."

"Let's take a step back—even if he really wanted to shield the sun, is it possible? Impossible!"

He pulled a laser pointer from his pocket, the red dot hitting the sun diagram on the blackboard: "First, what is the sun? It's nuclear fusion! It's a giant reactor burning four million tons of hydrogen every second! It doesn't emit light; it emits electromagnetic radiation! Photons! A stream of particles carrying energy!"

Sima Bei turned off the laser pointer, and the red dot vanished: "You want to shield visible light? Fine, build a giant shading plate. But what about infrared? Ultraviolet? X-rays? Gamma rays?"

Sima Bei pulled out his steel fan and tapped the blackboard: "So, what is the most likely scenario at nine o'clock tomorrow morning? Perhaps the clouds get thick, smog rolls in, or it's simply a partial solar eclipse."

"Chen Mu is timing it perfectly, packaging natural phenomena as alien technology! This is a typical cultist tactic! How did ancient shamans deceive people? They would observe the stars, calculate solar eclipses, and then jump out and shout, 'The Heavenly Punishment has arrived!'"

[Solar eclipse?]

[I checked, there's no solar eclipse tomorrow!]

[Whether there is or not, I'll believe it first.]

Sima Bei stood up, pointing his steel fan at the camera, his expression unprecedentedly serious: "So everyone, please do not panic, and definitely do not go to the United Nations building to beg for mercy, otherwise you will fall right into his trap."

"Finally, I'd like to leave Mr. Chen Mu with a closing poem:"

"Two million ships hang on the horizon, the seven-day deadline approaches. Whose property has the sun been since ancient times? Why does it need an alien to turn it off!"

"Snap!" He closed the fan.

"Tomorrow at nine in the morning, Sima Bei's livestream will start on time."

"I'll prepare a desk lamp, a pot of hot tea, and a copy of 'the art of war.' Let's see together if this sun will listen to a vagrant!"

"Dismissed!"

[Comment Section: Teacher Sima is right! If he really had that ability, he would have attacked already—why would he notify you in advance? This is the reverse operation of 'When able, feign inability.' Him showing ability actually proves he can't! I'm going to work as usual at nine tomorrow; whoever buys candles is a sucker.]

[I've already forwarded Sima Bei's video to the family group. My dad, a military enthusiast of thirty years, watched it and said three words: "Makes sense."]

[At nine tomorrow, my whole family is doing whatever we were going to do. Chen Mu, if you really have the skills, don't turn off the sun—just turn off the power switch in my house, and I'll respect you as a real man.]

[Selling courses in the morning, challenging others in the afternoon. Teacher Sima, your business loop is quite smooth, isn't it? If the sun doesn't go out tomorrow, you'll be deified and your courses will sell out; if the sun does go out, what do you plan to do? Refund the money?!]

[As a physicist, I must point out that Sima Bei's calculations contain serious errors. But more importantly, we cannot verify Chen Mu's level of technology.]

[He said the fleet was in the Kuiper Belt, and we saw it; he said he would shield the sun, and we haven't seen it yet. But 'not seeing it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.' Sima Bei is being too absolute; this isn't a scientific attitude, it's a gambler's mentality.]

[Fight! Fight! I've already set my alarm for nine tomorrow. I'll be watching the sky while refreshing Sima Bei's livestream. No matter who wins, I'll have a show to watch. I suggest opening a betting pool: bet on whether the sun can be extinguished tomorrow.]

[Sima Bei Discusses Strategy: I've read the comment section. Some say I'm money-grabbing, some say I'm a gambler, and some say I'm being too absolute. Fine, today I'll be absolute—completely, buried-in-the-coffin absolute.]

[Tomorrow at nine in the morning, Eastern Standard Time. If Chen Mu really can turn off the sun, I, Sima Bei, will call every netizen who has commented in this section 'Daddy.']

[Let this comment be proof. If the sun goes out at nine tomorrow, I'll start a livestream and call each and every one of you. I'll call until my throat is hoarse, until the name Sima Bei is completely ruined on the internet. I'll quit the internet, I'll close my shop, I'll refund all the money from my courses, and I'll run three laps around Times Square in my underwear!]

[But if nothing happens at nine tomorrow morning, then you all need to realize one thing: Chen Mu is a liar! A charlatan who uses PPT and countdowns to scare people! His two-million-ship fleet is a bubble, his shielding of the sun is a joke, and his so-called 'full acceptance of rule' is child's play!]

Seeing that Sima Bei had gone this far, the voices of doubt in the comment section all disappeared, leaving only a full screen of: [Forever support Teacher Sima Bei!]

Meanwhile, the official accounts of various countries were strangely silent, obviously all waiting to see how the situation would develop and whether Guga Planet could actually shield the sun.

——————

In the White House, the President sat alone on the sofa in the Oval Office, looking at the real-time market charts on the Bloomberg terminal displayed on the 85-inch LCD screen embedded in the wall.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was jumping before his eyes.

Just four minutes after the opening, the S&P 500 triggered a Level 1 circuit breaker, pausing trading for fifteen minutes. It continued to fall after trading resumed. NASDAQ led the decline, and tech stocks were a bloodbath. The solar energy sector was cut in half.

The logic was simple: if the sun could be blocked, photovoltaic power plants would be a pile of scrap metal. Agricultural stocks also plummeted, commodity futures soared across the board, and the price curves for wheat, corn, and soybeans looked like a row of bowstrings being drawn simultaneously.

Only the stocks of candle manufacturers were rising; the share price of the largest candle manufacturer in the US, Yankee Candle, had risen by 340% in the past hour.

He stared expressionlessly at that almost vertically rising curve, clutching his phone tightly in his hand.

He wanted to post a tweet refuting Chen Mu for creating fake news.

He had been playing the game of 'Twitter governance' for four years, and he was certain that as soon as he posted, the panic at the stock market opening could be suppressed instantly.

But he didn't type a single word.

If the sun really went out tomorrow, even for just three minutes, that tweet of his would become a joke in history books.

People would screenshot it, cite it, and enlarge that tweet to print on the wall in his presidential library, with the caption: 'This president was still saying it was fake news the day before the human sun was turned off.'

Just as he was hesitating, the door was pushed open.