A3-10 Wade's Sword

You did not become the Swordholder. Wade sits in that chair.

You watch the handover ceremony on the news broadcast. Luo Ji walks out — aged, exhausted, like a walking statue. Wade walks in — his stride like an unsheathed blade.

The two men meet in the corridor. Luo Ji stops and gives Wade a single look.

No words. Luo Ji nods — a nod carrying the weight of sixty-two years. Then he walks into the sunlight without looking back.

Wade enters the underground bunker. He sits down. His hand settles beside the button.

The Trisolaran droplets do not move.

One minute passes. Five minutes. Ten minutes. An hour.

Nothing happens.

You sit on the couch in your living room, watching the broadcast, waiting for the moment everyone is waiting for — will the Trisolarans maintain deterrence out of fear, as they did with Luo Ji?

The answer quickly becomes clear: the droplets do not attack.

The Trisolarans reach the same judgment they made with Luo Ji: Wade will press it. An attack would mean mutual destruction. They are unwilling to take that risk.

Deterrence remains in effect.

During the years of Wade's tenure as Swordholder, peace continues.

But it is a peace of a different texture. The peace of the Luo Ji era carried a solemn, tragic nobility — humanity knew they were protected by a martyr. The peace of the Wade era carries an icy dread — humanity knows they are protected by a man who would destroy two worlds without a moment's hesitation.

People no longer discuss the Swordholder in the streets. Wade's name becomes taboo. Children occasionally ask: "Who is the man in the basement?" Adults quickly change the subject.

But no one denies it: they are safe.

Wade sits in the underground bunker, day after day, year after year. No one visits him — he doesn't need visitors. He is like a nuclear warhead buried underground: silent, cold, ready to detonate at any moment.

Sometimes you wonder: what is life like in that basement? Wade — perhaps the most dangerous person in human history — sitting alone at the heart of human civilization, his finger hovering over the doomsday button. What does he do? Read? Exercise? Or just sit there, like a machine that never powers down?

You don't want to know the answer.

Fifteen years pass.

A message arrives — from the depths of space.

A signal from the Staircase Project.

Yun Tianming is alive.

He was intercepted and revived by the Trisolarans, and is now transmitting information through an ingenious method. The Trisolarans allow him one monitored communication with Earth — because under Wade's deterrence, the Trisolarans must maintain a facade of cooperation with humanity.

You are summoned to the communications center — because you are the person Yun Tianming trusts most.

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