“Boss, all the equipment is ready. What do we need to do next?” Song Peng truly felt that he had followed the right person; his boss was incredibly generous. As long as he and his brother liked a piece of weapon equipment, the boss would buy it. In just a few hours, the two of them transformed from unarmed civilians into fully armed soldiers.
“Why even ask? Since the boss gave us such good equipment, he must be planning something big. Am I right, boss!” Song Zhan was constantly gesturing with his electromagnetic blade in his hand. “Boss, don’t worry, just give the word and I’ll chop them down.”
Every piece of material in the Doomsday was extremely precious. Song Peng and Song Zhan had never fought such a well-supplied battle in the Doomsday. Usually, the slave owner would hand them a gun and order them to charge forward, making them no different from cannon fodder sent to their deaths.
“I want to open a shop in Iron Nail Town to sell some food and earn a profit. You two can temporarily look after the shop for me.”
Feng Jun currently had no intention of becoming a warlord in the Doomsday; even if he did, it certainly wasn't possible right now. He still needed to cultivate a loyal force step by step.
Moreover, after a few days of wandering, Feng Jun felt that the Doomsday was full of treasures. Just the powered exoskeleton he was wearing was absolute black technology in his own timeline, not to mention the mechanical arms on people and the holographic computer that Song Peng was always fiddling with. If he could recruit a group of talented people in the Doomsday and bring this technology back to the modern world, wouldn't he instantly become a leader of the era, able to win a Nobel Prize with just a casual display?
Opening a shop in Iron Nail Town was also very simple. Since it was already the Doomsday, the Iron Nail Town government wasn't as complicated as the modern world. You only needed to buy a few houses or rent a stall in the town to do business, and there was no such thing as getting permits. The only thing to worry about was what to sell. Because the town itself didn't produce food, even weapons and other necessary materials were scavenged from external ruins or obtained from merchant caravans passing through the town.
So, owning a shop was also very simple; you just needed to pay. However, you couldn't stay in the house in Iron Nail Town indefinitely, or be away for too long, because if a house was uninhabited for 30 days, the mayor would forcibly reclaim it, unless you paid a daily custody fee of 4 helium crystal points.
Song Peng quickly selected two houses. The original owner had lost ownership of the house because he had not returned to the town for more than thirty days. Property transfer in the Doomsday was also very simple; after paying 40 helium crystal points to the mayor's people, the transfer procedures were completed, without even a single paper document.
The original owner must have been a scavenger, as the house was filled with various robot parts. There was even a modified giant computer, patched together with various broken parts, giving it a distinct wasteland punk aesthetic. Feng Jun fiddled with it for a long time and managed to turn on this seemingly broken computer, but it even had a boot password. Thinking that this computer might still be useful, he told Song Peng to keep it, and all the other robot parts were thrown away as trash.
“Dragon Gate Inn” Feng Jun named his shop this, and even had Song Peng specifically find someone to make a sign to hang at the entrance. As for what to sell when it opened, he wasn't in a hurry. If he directly sold canned beef, it would be too shocking; it would be better to go back and find some lower-grade food to sell.
After settling everything, Feng Jun prepared to return to the modern world first. Before leaving, he gave Song Peng five hundred helium crystals, telling him to recruit more reliable people to prepare for establishing his own forces. He also instructed him that he needed gold, preferably as much as possible, and if he had the ability, to go look at the ruined temple the stall owner mentioned; a Buddha sitting on gold couldn't possibly be made of mud, could it?
After giving his instructions, Feng Jun left Iron Nail Town alone. After confirming that no one was following him, he found an empty house and activated the Crossing to return to the modern world.
In just a moment of weightlessness, Feng Jun returned to his rented apartment in the modern world. He glanced at the time on the wall. October 25, 2023. He had been in the Doomsday for 5 days. The time flow in both worlds was the same, but the temperature in the modern world after returning was significantly warmer than in the Doomsday. Although it was also October, people in the modern world were still wearing shirts, but in the Doomsday, winter had already begun. Song Peng said this was because the radiation clouds caused by the nuclear war had blocked most of the sunlight, and the entire Earth in the Doomsday had fallen into a nuclear winter.
He took off his thick clothes; he had just returned and was already sweating from the heat. He took a bottle of cola from the refrigerator, drank it, and then collapsed directly onto the sofa.
Feng Jun rented a house in Shangqing City, and he was the only one living there. Because he felt a bit lonely at home, Feng Jun developed the habit of turning on the TV for sound. After turning on the TV, Feng Jun began to check the current gold price on his phone. He had a golden lotus throne in his storage space, and once he sold this gold, he would be rich.
“Today, the conflict between the Great Goose Empire in the north and the Bear No. 2 Republic continues…” The news on the TV pulled Feng Jun back from his beautiful fantasy of getting rich. The information about the war reminded him of the nuclear war that destroyed the world in the Doomsday, and the war also began in Europe.
When Feng Jun first crossed into the Doomsday, he didn't know what had happened in that world, so he instinctively walked a certain distance towards the city ruins, but he was quickly scared away by the zombies on the roadside.
When approaching the city outskirts, Feng Jun saw many remnants of war weapons: abandoned tanks parked on the roadside, powered armor more than two meters tall, and many huge hexagonal iron boxes standing on the ground.
Later, when chatting with Song Peng, he learned that these huge iron boxes were the orbital paratrooper drop pods of America. The country that invaded this land in that world was precisely the United States of America, which prided itself as the world's police.
The nuclear war that destroyed the world was caused by three countries in the Doomsday: the enemy from across the Pacific Ocean, traveling thousands of miles to invade, was still the United States of America, USA. As for the country that ruled the territory underfoot in that world, it was the Ming Empire. In the Doomsday timeline, the Ming Dynasty established by Zhu Yuanzhang continued its national fortune for over eight hundred years.
In the Doomsday timeline, the Manchu Qing also successfully entered the pass. However, Emperor Chongzhen of this world was exceptionally resilient and did not choose to hang himself from a tree. He fled south of the Yangtze River and led the Ming Army in the south to gradually reclaim lost territories, successively quelling the Jiangnan rebellion and step by step recovering the lost territories in the north, eliminating various rebel armies and driving the Manchu Qing out of the pass.
Afterwards, through the expansion of territory by several Ming Dynasty emperors, by around 1894, they had almost occupied the entire East Asia. In this world, Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia, which belonged to Russia, and most of India's territory were annexed by the Ming Dynasty, and the Japanese archipelago was also under its rule.
It can be said that in the world of the Doomsday, the Manchu Qing never established a true dynasty. The subsequent history was one of the Ming Dynasty constantly dominating and annexing its smaller neighbors. Most of East Asia and half of South Asia were under the rule of the Ming Empire.
Furthermore, several emperors after Chongzhen were exceptionally wise. They opened the country to foreign exchange, participated in the Age of Discovery, caught up with the First Industrial Revolution, and established a system of elected cabinets, somewhat similar to the constitutional monarchy in England. This continued until the Doomsday broke out in 2190. The Ming Dynasty imperial family remained the primary rulers of the empire.
As for the United States in this world, it was also an existence that Feng Jun found perplexing. The American Civil War ended with the victory of the Southern plantation owners. Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States, became the President of the United States, and Lincoln became a loser. This means that until the Doomsday in 2190, black people in America were still slaves. The slave collars on Song Peng and Song Zhan's necks originated from America.
As for the third country, it was the Soviet Union, which had long since disintegrated in history. The Soviet Union in this world remained powerful. Although the Ming Empire occupied the entire Northeast Asia, the territory west of the Lena River and Central Asia were still Soviet territory.
The original world of one superpower and multiple strong powers became a three-tiered one, and the remaining historical trajectory was World War II. However, the German Nazis in this world were exceptionally resilient, and the war continued until 1950. After that, the Ming, America, and Soviet Union began rapid development. After the war, a large number of scientists from various countries went to America, which also enabled America in this world to still lead the Soviet Union and the Ming Empire in technology and military.
Time continued until 2176. Before this, the three countries of Ming, America, and Soviet Union had developed at an astonishing pace. They had already established colonies on the Moon and Mars. However, the wheels of history began to tilt towards war from this year. Before 2170, the Earth's population had reached a terrifying 17.9 billion.
Originally, the Earth's resources would have struggled to support such a large population, but in 2079, the Fifth Industrial Revolution began on Earth. Superconductor artificial intelligence and aerospace technology experienced explosive development, especially agricultural and energy technologies.
The utilization of superconductor materials and nuclear fusion allowed humanity to gain virtually infinite energy, and advancements in aerospace technology enabled humanity to establish various space stations and Space Farms in low Earth orbit. The mining of Martian ores also provided humanity with various minerals.
Between 2175 and 2176, a continuous solar storm erupted, making communication between Earth, the Moon, and Mars exceptionally difficult. At this time, Earth's energy was highly dependent on helium-3 mined on the Moon and iron ore transported from Mars.
2176. In the same year, the three countries of America, Ming, and Soviet Union confronted each other to protect their respective Space Farms in low Earth orbit and to seize orbital areas that could avoid the solar storm. The three factions each dispatched their most elite space fleets to participate in the confrontation, which was the first friction before the outbreak of war.
In 2178, an unknown rebellion occurred in the Mars colony. The three countries, taking advantage of a brief lull in the solar storm, each dispatched their fleets to suppress the rebellion. This war progressed smoothly, and the rebellion was quickly quelled, but all Mars colonies were destroyed. After the news reached Earth, commodity prices in various countries soared daily.
In 2181, governments worldwide faced rising prices due to resource scarcity, leading to mass unemployment.
On November 27, 2182, the Soviet Union and America collided starships in space while vying for control of low Earth orbit, resulting in over two hundred casualties on both sides. This incident is known as the 1127 Ship Collision Incident.
In 2183, the Ming Empire and America had small-scale skirmishes on the Moon over the ownership of a meteor crater, but the incident was quickly quelled.
In 2185, conflicts and frictions in space finally spread to the surface. The incident of Britain secretly dumping nuclear waste in Europe was exposed, and tens of thousands of Germans and French took to the streets demanding that the British pay the price. (West Germany in this world subsequently withdrew from NATO and merged with the German Democratic Republic.)
In 2187, due to the illegal operations of an American mining company, a magnitude 9 earthquake occurred in the Mariana Trench. The resulting tsunami affected the Ming Empire's Japanese archipelago and the southeastern coast. In the same year, the Ming Dynasty detonated nuclear weapons on the eastern Pacific coast, causing a tsunami that destroyed several cities in the western United States.
In February 2190, America dispatched its naval fleet to prevent the Soviet-led European Socialist Fleet from blockading Britain. A war erupted between the two sides in the English Channel. In May of the same year, America attacked the Ming Army base stationed on the Malay Peninsula, and World War began.
