Chapter 16
As expected, the moment Xia Anran finished speaking, the interstellar viewers voiced their overwhelming support.
[Ahhhh, Anran is a good person! I love you!]
[Did you hear that?! I want to eat fruit!]
[He’s talking to you two! Say something!]
[Actually, research is pretty important too. If they succeed, everyone could have fruit in the future.]
[I think so too…]
[Are the people above me spies from the Imperial Academy and the Science Academy? Kick them out!]
[Didn’t they say it was voluntary? Then let it be truly voluntary. Those who want to eat it themselves can eat it, and those who want to exchange it for rewards can do so.]
[I support this!]
Hukeni remained silent, his lips pursed in thought. His vice-director observed him for a moment and then asked cautiously, “Director, should we respond to Host Anran?”
A recorder on the side had already compiled the cultivation tips Xia Anran had just mentioned, packaged the file, and sent it to the accounts of Hukeni and the other professors. The other professors, completely unconcerned with this matter, had already buried their heads in the new cultivation guide.
“This isn’t a decision we can make,” Hukeni said, throwing up his hands. “Where’s His Majesty?”
He had said he was going to watch the stream with them yesterday, but today he was nowhere to be found.
The vice-director shook his head. How was he supposed to know where Phileas was?
Hukeni ran a hand through his hair and paced back and forth. Before he could think of a good response, he saw a new comment flash across the screen.
[United Star System Consulate]: Understood, Miss Anran. The United Star System will strictly respect the opinions of its citizens during future fruit confiscations and will not enforce it.
“Damn it! How did the United Star System beat us to it again?” Director Hukeni took a deep breath and immediately dialed Phileas’s communication line.
Unexpectedly, the response he got was: The party you are trying to reach is currently in a call. Please do not disturb.
Hukeni: …Useless at the most critical moment.
Xia Anran’s eyes lit up when she saw the comment. If she wasn’t mistaken, this should be the official account of the United Star System, speaking on behalf of their government. Wasn’t this the perfect candidate for a private message?
She wasn’t too concerned that the Interstellar Empire hadn’t replied. Just as she was about to change the subject, she saw Director Li Sheng pop up in the comments again, asking what was meant by “sunlight” being necessary for cultivation.
Xia Anran scratched her head, also a bit perplexed. Sunlight was just… sunlight. How was she supposed to explain that?
So, she had no choice but to have the cameraman turn the lens towards the sun. She was a little worried the shot would be completely overexposed and show nothing, but to her surprise, the image was remarkably clear. Although the sun’s light was brilliant, it wasn’t blindingly so.
“This is the sun. The star system we’re in now is called the Solar System. Earth is a planet that revolves around the sun, and with its own rotation, we have four seasons and the cycle of day and night,” she explained. “The light that shines from the sun to the Earth is called sunlight.”
The moment the sun appeared in the stream, the comments exploded.
[So bright! What planet is that?]
[So pretty! It’s so big and round and it glows!]
[Earth revolves around the sun, so do people live on the sun too?!]
[I want to live on the sun! The Ninth Planet is too dark.]
[Hahaha, the residents of the Ninth Planet really have it rough, living without light all year round.]
[The other planets aren’t much better. At most, we get one or two hours of ‘haze light’ a day.]
[The Empire is slightly better, I guess, but not by much.]
[How magical! I’ve never seen such a bright planet! So it wasn’t the lights that were so bright during Anran’s streams?]
[The sky is so bright! It’s blue! And there are white things floating around!]
[What a beautiful courtyard! What a beautiful sky! What a beautiful Earth!]
[It’s so strange not seeing dense rows of light pillars, hahaha.]
[So Earth has a natural light source… I’m so envious.]
Xia Anran never imagined they wouldn’t know about the sun. Had the historical records from humanity’s time on Earth been lost that severely?
[United Star System Science Academy Director Li Sheng]: Miss Anran, please, you must tell us more about the Earth and the sun!
[United Star System Science Academy, Ye Yuxing]: Does sunlight play an important role in the growth process of plants?
[Imperial Academy Director Hukeni]: Yes, please, you must tell us more about the sun!
The appearance of the sun sent the researchers from both the United Star System and the Interstellar Empire into a frenzy.
In their star system, there was no natural light source like the sun. Most of the day was spent in darkness. For only a few short hours each day, some light would filter through the nebula, known as “haze light.” This light was very faint, merely enough to make the sky not completely dark. Before the people of Earth migrated to this system, the evolutionary path of most interstellar inhabitants was already optimizing away the organ of the eye.
When the people of Earth arrived, they naturally couldn’t accept a perpetually dim environment. Thus, the United Star System constructed numerous artificial light pillars, essentially creating an artificial day and night. Perhaps due to humanity’s innate phototaxis, the Interstellar Empire slowly adopted the United Star System’s approach, which was how the eyes of the interstellar people were saved from being completely evolved away.
This massive consumption of light energy cost both nations a great deal of resources. Researchers had been searching for a natural light source like the sun for a long time, but to this day, they had found nothing. So, for most researchers, seeing the sun could only be described as breathtaking.
“It’s too beautiful. This is a miracle!” an old professor from the Imperial Academy said, staring at the sun on the screen with near obsession. “This is the perfect natural light source I’ve been searching for!”
“The sun… We must have the sun too!”
Hukeni also couldn’t contain his excitement. “Perhaps this is the ancient gathering place of our people that we’ve been searching for.”
From an evolutionary perspective, since the native inhabitants of the star system also had eyes like the people of Earth, the researchers of the Interstellar Empire deduced that in ancient times, their system must have also had a natural light source like the sun. From this, they inferred that they, too, had likely drifted away from their original star system and arrived here, just like the people of Earth. After all, a star capable of providing light to an entire system was unlikely to just disappear on its own. It was highly probable that they had also left their homeland. And the fact that the people of Earth were able to reach this star system after their planet was hit by a planetary explosion was enough to suggest that the Solar System was likely the closest star system to their own!
Could it be that they also drifted here from the Solar System? The thought suddenly popped into Hukeni’s mind, but he quickly suppressed it. That was too ridiculous. Could it be that they and the United Star System were actually from the same hometown?
…
The United Star System side was also incredibly excited. Professor Yu, who was in charge of ancient Earth research, was so moved he nearly burst into tears.
“My theory was correct! Earth must have a natural light source!”
“Our mother planet is such a beautiful and habitable world.”
Director Li Sheng stared intently at the sun and murmured, “I wonder if the sun is still there.”
After Professor Yu had deduced the existence of a power-supplying star like the sun from incomplete data, he had submitted a report proposing a project to send a spaceship to the ruins of ancient Earth to find this star and figure out a way to use it to power the United Star System. However, after discussion, the state felt the deduction lacked sufficient evidence and did not approve it. But Professor Yu had always firmly believed in his judgment and had spent his entire life searching for evidence of this star’s existence.
“Uh… there probably isn’t any life on the sun,” Xia Anran said. She wasn’t particularly interested in astronomy and didn’t know much about the current depth of research on the sun. She could only state some simple facts. “The sun’s temperature is very high. The surface temperature should be around five to six thousand degrees Celsius. It’s not suitable for human survival.”
“The sun is also very far from Earth, so by the time its light reaches us, the temperature is more moderate.”
[Five to six thousand degrees Celsius isn’t that high, is it?]
[Sounds about the same as the temperature in the Beastman race’s Molten Zone.]
[About the same as the temperature of energy ore, too.]
[It’s also about the same as the temperature that would cook you! Our daily temperature is only around fifty degrees, okay?!]
[For a moment, I can’t tell if the brothers above are acting or just being surreal.]
[Hahaha, how could anyone live in five or six thousand degrees? We’re not Beastmen.]
[Tone it down a bit, look how scared you’re making Anran.]
It wasn’t the five to six thousand degrees Celsius that was shocking her; it was the daily temperature of fifty-plus degrees that didn’t seem right!
Xia Anran asked, “Is the daily temperature in the interstellar era over fifty degrees?”
The comments immediately answered her.
[Yes! We have a constant temperature all year round, around fifty or sixty degrees.]
[The sun looks so bright, the temperature on Earth must be very high, right?]
[Seeing Anran always wearing dresses, Earth must be really hot! Could it be seventy or eighty degrees?]
[I’ll bet a hundred degrees!]
[Ancient humans are very delicate, it probably wouldn’t be that high. I’m guessing fifty or sixty degrees at most, same as us!]
Xia Anran watched as the guesses for Earth’s temperature in the comments got more and more enthusiastic, threatening to reach three or four hundred degrees. She quickly called a halt. “The temperature on Earth isn’t that high! We have four seasons in a year, and the temperature varies in different regions. Summer is the hottest and winter is the coldest. In inhabited areas, it’s around thirty to forty degrees in the summer and minus twenty to thirty degrees in the winter.”
“The weather in spring and autumn is very mild. A fifty-degree day would be a terrifyingly high temperature for us.”
As expected, the comments were immediately flooded with a dense wall of question marks. The interstellar humans had already evolved to adapt to their environment’s temperature. Earth’s temperatures were, for them, even a bit too low.
Ye Yuxing listened intently to Xia Anran’s introduction to Earth. After meticulously recording all the information with a very rigorous attitude, he was still itching to know more about what she had said earlier about sunlight being necessary for plant growth, so he asked again in the comments.
Seeing someone ask why plants needed sunlight, Xia Anran quickly steered the topic back to cultivation. She really didn’t know much about astronomy!
After briefly describing photosynthesis, Ye Yuxing recorded every word she said and then asked in the comments which books might contain records about it. He wanted to search the United Star System’s ancient book repository to see if he could get lucky.
Xia Anran thought for a moment. “…Uh, junior high school biology, People’s Education Press edition?”
“Junior high school biology.” Ye Yuxing repeated the title and quickly searched the database, only to find, disappointingly, that the book did not exist. As expected, such precious books had mostly been lost.
Director Li and the others were still immersed in the appearance of the sun. They were discussing going to see the Consul General later to figure out how to get more information about the sun from Host Anran and to restart the project to find a light-source star.