Capital City.
Sunlight, carrying a hint of warmth, spilled across the campus.
A few students sat on benches on the Yan University campus, their faces tilted up and eyes squinted as they enjoyed the rare sunny day.
But Li Dong had no time to enjoy the sun.
His computer screen displayed the early-warning communications paper he had just finished.
He had revised the abstract page over and over again—seven times in total—before finally settling on the most concise version.
Li Dong let out a long sigh.
[Peak Arrival Window: T?+ 14.0 months]
[Peak Magnitude: Carrington Level]
[Posterior Confidence: Phase-crossing event, no confidence interval set.]
Fourteen months.
Li Dong couldn’t help but smile wryly.
He thought his previous paper, which had pegged the event at seventeen months plus or minus a week, was already unorthodox enough.
He never expected that after running through the whole process with his new method, the output would land on fourteen months.
A three-month difference.
Those three months made him feel a little unnerved.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust himself.
It was that three months could change a great many things.
The milestones for communications satellite safety-mode drills, the scheduling for power grid islanding, the isolation shifts for the trans-Pacific submarine fiber optic cables...
A three-month difference meant three fewer rounds of engineering drills.
This time, he had to be one hundred percent certain.
Otherwise, it would be just as Richter had said.
His academic reputation, the public’s trust in the entire field of space weather forecasting—if he made a single mistake this time, everything would go down with him.
He really didn’t dare to gamble this time.
So, he opened the Cyan Dragon Study Group and used his last transmission.
Send to "Galileo Galilei."
A small circle started spinning in the center of the screen.
Sending...
One second.
Two seconds.
Ten seconds passed.
A notification popped up.
[Transmission Successful]
Li Dong let out a long breath of relief.
Just then, a string of question marks exploded in the group chat.
[Galileo Galilei]: ???
[Galileo]: ??????
[Galileo]: Your Excellency!
Li Dong glanced at it but didn’t reply.
He didn’t have time to explain to Galileo right now. He had to finish sending the file to everyone else first.
He closed the Cyan Dragon group and sent the same attachment to Chang Jin and Clara, respectively.
Less than a minute later, the phone on his desk began to vibrate.
Director Chang.
Li Dong answered.
The person on the other end skipped the pleasantries and got straight to the point.
"Li Dong."
"Are you sure?"
Li Dong didn’t bother explaining much.
His methods, his data, his inversion chain—it was all in the paper.
"Trust me."
The other end of the line was silent for a few seconds.
Then, Chang Jin replied with a single word.
"Okay."
The call ended.
Li Dong put his phone back on the desk, and not even a minute later, it rang again.
This time, it was an unfamiliar international number.
He answered the call.
A pleasant female voice came through the receiver.
"Dr. Li Dong."
"It’s Clara."
"Fourteen months."
"Are you confident?"
Although Clara was also in Li Dong’s group,
this time Li Dong had intentionally kept the final phase-crossing determination and the cross-baseline confidence synthesis to himself.
Clara hadn’t actually seen the conclusion section.
"Didn’t I write it all in the paper?"
"What do you think?"
Li Dong said.
Clara paused on the other end.
"I don’t think there’s any problem with it at all."
"But for some reason, my heart is racing."
"I don’t know if it’s from excitement or nervousness."
Li Dong chuckled.
"Maybe it’s because you spent this week’s salary on a handbag."
He paused, then added,
"That small Coach bucket bag."
The other end of the line went silent instantly.
About two seconds passed.
"Dr. Li Dong."
"Your jokes are terrible."
After expressing her disdain, Clara continued.
"Publish it."
"I’ll face it with you."
Hearing this, Li Dong was amused.
"Dr. Clara."
"Why are you making it sound like publishing this paper is the same as going to the guillotine?"
This time, Clara didn’t laugh.
Her tone was very serious.
"You’ll know once you publish it."
"It might be even more serious than the guillotine."
Li Dong heard this but didn’t take it to heart at all.
Because only he knew that this paper was one hundred percent correct.
He was still in the mood to joke.
"Well, since I’m headed for the guillotine,"
"I might as well go have a last meal."
The other end was taken aback for a moment.
Then, she suddenly asked,
"Dr. Li Dong, I’ve heard the food in Huaxia is delicious. Is that true?"
Li Dong answered without a second thought.
"Yes."
"I can write a paper on what I eat later and send it to you. Then you’ll know just how delicious it is."
The other end of the line was silent for a few seconds.
Then...
"Get lost."
The call disconnected.
Li Dong thought for a moment, then sent the attachment separately to Richter.
He felt Richter had a right to know.
He didn’t write much in the body of the email, just attached the file and added a single line.
Take a good look, old man.
Finally, Arxiv.
He uploaded the preprint directly.
Only after all this was done did he finally have a free moment to pick up his phone and look at the Cyan Dragon Study Group.
Below the string of question marks from before, Galileo had surprisingly sent several more lines, one after another.
[Galileo Galilei]: Your Excellency, I have just carefully read the manuscript you sent from beginning to end three times.
[Galileo Galilei]: The algorithmic framework within is immense, but I believe I understand its core logic—to use the "phase crossing" of the sun’s equatorial activity to pinpoint the eruption time of that great storm.
[Galileo Galilei]: Tonight, following your line of thought, I took out my data on sunspot latitudes and longitudes recorded over the past few years and combined it with the period of the transverse band surges I previously observed.
[Galileo Galilei]: Using the "phase crossing" method you described, I extrapolated step by step into the future.
[Galileo Galilei]: I have arrived at a precise date.
[Galileo Galilei]: Extrapolating 249 years from that day,
[Galileo Galilei]: the sun will experience an extremely violent tremor. Endless flares will pour down like fire, the needles of all compasses will fail, and auroras will be clearly visible even in places south of the equator!
[Galileo Galilei]: My God, that will be an apocalyptic storm the likes of which humanity has never seen.
Li Dong stared at these lines of text.
His eyes widened.
’Wait, Master.’
’How did you calculate that?’
’You have no modern equipment, no data... you just used that seven-day-and-night observation record of transverse band surges and that stack of sunspot notes you’ve accumulated since you started grinding your own lenses...’
’And you managed to deduce a major event more than two hundred years in the future?’
’Aren’t you cheating a little too hard?’
"I used so much data just to come up with fourteen months..."
Li Dong suddenly felt that his early-warning paper was pathetic, and that he himself was pathetic, too.
As for how the so-called "dimension translator" in the group chat converted the string of modern numbers and methods from his paper—things Galileo couldn’t possibly understand—Li Dong naturally had no idea either.
He only saw another line pop up from Galileo.
[Galileo Galilei]: Your Excellency, the consequences of this matter are unimaginable.
[Galileo Galilei]: I must immediately put pen to paper and write all of this down. I must publish this paper for the public and ensure the world is prepared in advance!
When Li Dong saw this, his heart clenched.
’Master!’
’Master, take it easy!’
’You’re already a suspected heretic whom the Church Court has singled out to "invite for tea"!’
’If you publish another paper like this...’
’It won’t be as simple as being put under house arrest in your own villa!’
Li Dong frantically pinged him in the group chat.
[University Researcher]: @Galileo Galilei
[University Researcher]: Your Excellency, wait!
[University Researcher]: This matter requires further consideration.
No reply.
[University Researcher]: @Galileo Galilei
[University Researcher]: Your Excellency?
Still no reply.
Li Dong pinged him two more times, but there was no activity from the other side.
’Holy shit.’
’Did I really just get Master Galileo killed?’
He gripped his phone, sitting stunned on his chair and staring at the screen.
Just then—
[System Announcement: At your prompting, group member "Galileo Galilei" has predicted what later generations would call the "Carrington Event" 249 years in advance.]
[The people of that era came to see him as a prophet whose eyes were made of starlight. His portrait was printed in astrological chart houses, sailors on long voyages would devotedly read his "Interstellar Messenger" before setting sail, and the Church Court no longer considered him a heretic.]
[The technology tree of Parallel Universe No. 1610 has been altered...]
[Special Reward: For altering the course of history, you have received a feedback reward: Concentration +0.1]
Li Dong stared at the announcements, dumbfounded once again.
’Seen as a prophet whose eyes were made of starlight.’
’His portrait printed in astrological chart houses.’
’The Church Court no longer considered him a heretic.’
’That’s not right.’
’The Galileo in my Memory was a "heretic" who was placed under house arrest in his own villa by the religious tribunal until his death.’
’Not long after his book "Dialogue" was published, the old man was summoned to the defendant’s stand and forced to publicly renounce the heliocentric theory.’
"Could it be that in Galileo’s parallel world, geocentrism is the heresy?"

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