107: Chapter 107 New World, New Order

In the second week after the disaster, countries around the world began to rebuild on the ruins.

The outlines of new cities were taking shape across the land.

The new cities were completely reconstructed, with Base Cities serving as their fundamental form.

High walls were built around the perimeter of every Base City, constructed to keep out the plants.

The concentration of Spiritual Qi had stabilized at 109 times its initial value.

Under this concentration, the growth logic of plants had been completely rewritten.

A common kudzu vine could climb and cover a six-story building within twenty-four hours, its root System capable of boring cracks through concrete.

If roads were not cleared for three days, they would be completely swallowed by newborn vegetation.

The walls of the Base Cities separated human settlements from this wild force of nature.

Inside the walls lay order; outside lay a green torrent.

The expansion of the Blue Planet was still ongoing.

The combined calculations of satellite telemetry and artificial intelligence yielded a set of precise figures: the Blue Planet's diameter was increasing by about one percent of its original value daily, equivalent to approximately sixty-four kilometers.

However, aftershocks still persisted near the seismic belts.

The rifts at the plate boundaries were not yet fully stabilized, with tremors of around magnitude six occurring every few hours.

But other than that, most land areas had returned to safety.

The peak of the disaster had passed.

The world order began to rebuild.

The global trade System could not be restored in the short term.

Shipping routes had been destroyed by super cyclones and tsunamis, most port facilities were damaged by seawater inundation, and the global logistics network had broken down.

Every country was fending for itself, prioritizing domestic livelihoods.

Xia Country was the first to complete reconstruction.

On the fourteenth day after the disaster, Xia Country announced that its society had entered a fully intelligent era.

A unified supply System was rolled out nationwide: every citizen's identification was linked to a resource account.

Quotas for basic food, water, energy, and medical services were dynamically allocated by a central artificial intelligence System, relying neither on market transactions nor currency.

The predecessor of this System was the war mobilization rationing System, which had been continuously iterated during months of disaster preparation and was officially transitioned to regular operation after the disaster.

Society had entered a fully intelligent era.

At the same time, martial arts academies began to emerge.

They were led by the government and spontaneously established by Evolvers.

The number of Rhythm Realm Evolvers grew significantly after the disaster.

These people, having crossed the threshold of evolution, needed to learn how to truly control their own power.

Thus, the Basic Muscle Tone Training Method and Antagonistic Training Method—content that Chen Mo had taught a year ago—

—were now organized by the first batch of Evolvers into a systematic teaching curriculum, made available for free at martial arts academies everywhere.

Cold weapons began to emerge.

Long sabers, spears, and shields forged from alloys, when empowered by the strength of Evolvers, possessed destructive power far exceeding the light weapons of the old era.

A set of cold weapon combat techniques specifically designed for Rhythm Realm Evolvers was rapidly taking shape.

This was an inevitability of the era.

The power of Evolvers had already surpassed the lethality limits of conventional individual firearms; rather than using guns that could not match their strength, it was better to directly wield cold weapons with their own bodies.

Every country saw this.

But between seeing it and doing it lay an insurmountable chasm.

At the same time, a major Breakthrough was achieved in the research and development of quantum computers.

On the forty-first day after the disaster.

Xia Country's first quantum computer with 33,321 logical qubits was officially manufactured.

Han City, Quantum Computing Research Center.

Elder Liu stood in the observation room of the experimental hall, his hands resting on the control console, staring at the massive equipment on the other side of the glass.

The equipment occupied an area the size of half a football field.

The superconducting cooling System brought the core temperature down to near absolute zero, and the hum of the liquid helium circulation passed through the soundproof glass, becoming a low background hum in the observation room.

Thousands of fiber optic cables extended from the core module, connecting to the external data processing cluster.

On the holographic screen, a complex self-test program was running.

As each logical qubit completed verification, its corresponding icon turned from red to green. The transition to green was not fast, but it was steady.

Three thousand.

Eight thousand.

Fifteen thousand.

Thirty thousand.

Thirty-three thousand, three hundred and twenty-one.

All green.

Quantum state stable.

Error correction redundancy normal.

Calculation unit synchronization rate ninety-nine point nine seven percent.

The research center was dead silent for three whole seconds.

Then, thousands of people erupted into sound at the same time.

Some were crying, some were laughing loudly, and some just stood there with their lips moving, their words inaudible.

Elder Liu took off his protective mask, revealing a face that was exhausted to the limit but had bright, shining eyes.

His lips quivered a few times, and in the end, he only uttered two words:

"It's done."

A true, genuine quantum computer.

It was not a laboratory-level proof-of-concept machine, but an engineered, mass-producible quantum computing System ready for direct application.

Its computing power, on specific problems, was equivalent to millions of times the sum of all supercomputers of humanity's old era.

This was one of the most brilliant strokes in modern human history.

The era of artificial intelligence had officially arrived.

Artificial intelligence to complement quantum computing was already under parallel development.

The algorithmic framework, training database, and application layer interfaces were entirely domestically produced across the entire chain, without relying on any external technology.

The head of the development team later wrote a sentence in an internal report:

"We are not chasing after anything.

We are building something."

And forty-eight hours after the quantum computer went into operation, another project achieved a Breakthrough: controllable nuclear fusion.

The plasma confinement time in the Tokamak device broke the record held for nearly a decade in the old era.

Quantum computing provided critical assistance in this matter.

Using a scale of computation unattainable by traditional computers, it precisely simulated the vortex structures of plasma turbulence.

The design scheme for the engineered nuclear fusion reactor passed verification and officially entered the substantive construction phase.

From basic physics to Materials engineering, from quantum computing to fusion energy, after more than a year of technological accumulation since the Spiritual Energy Revival, countless Domains completed Breakthroughs simultaneously within the same time window.

Before the disaster, other countries still had a chance of catching up; a single Breakthrough in quantum computing, nuclear fusion, or artificial intelligence would have been enough to shift the balance of national power.

But the disaster destroyed their infrastructure, while Xia Country maintained its core research capabilities throughout the catastrophe, and now all individual Breakthroughs were occurring simultaneously.

Furthermore, quantum computing was accelerating nuclear fusion, nuclear fusion was providing higher-power energy for computing, and artificial intelligence was integrating all scientific research achievements.

This was a positive feedback loop.

Once started, it was no longer a linear competition.

The other countries of the world were completely reduced to mere spectators.

Advanced talents began to migrate to Xia Country on a massive scale.

Bringing their families, research data, and still-functioning equipment, they entered Xia Country through various channels.

Governments around the world tried to stop them, offering high salaries to retain them, adding restrictive clauses, and confiscating passports.

But all these measures lost their meaning in the face of Chen Mo's existence.

All modern weapons were utterly defenseless before Chen Mo.

They had no way to coerce anyone through force, nor could they threaten Xia Country.

And in the eyes of the upper echelons of various nations, Chen Mo's existence carried yet another layer of meaning.

The hegemony of the United States was completely terminated after the disaster.

Two-thirds of its aircraft carrier groups were destroyed by hurricanes, and its domestic military-industrial capacity was completely paralyzed by the eruption of the Yellowstone Volcano.

More importantly, the United States' model of social organization exposed fundamental flaws in the face of the disaster.

Meanwhile, the regimes of some countries in the Southeast Continent collapsed completely during the disaster.

Their capitals were submerged, their chains of command broken, and their government institutions entirely paralyzed.

Survivors from those countries began expressing their desire to join Xia Country through various channels.

Requesting to become a part of Xia Country.

The international order of the old era completely ceased to exist.

The new world was dominated by Xia Country.

This transition came extremely fast, without bloodshed or declarations of war.

The old order collapsed naturally within two weeks, and the new order took shape naturally upon the ruins.

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