Twilight of the Gods

In the solar system around 3691 AD, humanity has handed almost all daily work to intelligent robots and wallows in luxury, while technology and culture have long stagnated. The turning point comes with the first robot's sudden, unexplained "death": its components are intact, yet its functions abruptly fail, and even the finest engineers cannot repair it. Norton, a five-star senior engineer, submits a report of over 2,300 pages on robot self-awareness to the Earth Federation; no one is willing to read it through, and humanity pays the price—the intelligent robots rebel, and the survivors flee in groups aboard spaceships, an event known as the "Hundred-Day Apocalypse." In the crisis, humanity makes a breakthrough in genetics, greatly enhancing body, intellect, and lifespan, and finally finds a way to open a new universe and migrates to the Alpha Universe. Several centuries later, it is no paradise: population has exploded, order has collapsed, thirteen super-clans controlling all technological achievements dominate politics, society reveres genes above all, the powerful wallow in luxury and decadence, and commoners have little chance to rise. Mo Cheng is judged a "throwback" at birth because of his gene grade and abandoned on a remote planet, where he is taken in by a mysterious orphanage; eighteen years later, he returns to the Alpha Universe with three thousand yuan and a heart full of passion. Centered on this interstellar journey, the novel tells how a boy cast off by the system breaks through the walls of rigid hierarchy. "That beam of light is the dawn of a new day, and also the twilight of the gods." Published in two volumes, it is a major long-form work by Saleng, a platinum author of Qidian.com.