Chapter 982: Chapter 982: Qianqian’s Speculation
Seven trillion powerful performances enable it to walk in any environment imaginable, even without activating the shield and spatial cloaking system, it’s sufficient to face any extreme conditions on Earth. I don’t know what Father God wants to see; every time I wish to stop, he would say a phrase: "Choose a direction and keep going."
Well, it seems that at least during times like these, Father God, who is like the brother next door, still possesses a hint of divine mystique. But how exactly does one "keep going"? In the past thirty minutes, we’ve visited the South Pole, the Mariana Trench, the central Sahara, the top of the Himalayas, the Mississippi River, and the Maldives—I thought Father God would perhaps be interested in some of Earth’s most magnificent landscapes, but the conclusion is that to this mightiest being, any scenery is indistinguishable; he has no interest—or perhaps the exact opposite, he is interested in all of them but feels we should continue moving.
Okay, after this period of complete relaxation and contact, perhaps I’ve understood a little bit about the co-driver, this brother’s characteristics: calm, cordial, a trustworthy nature—that’s what I already knew, and what I just sensed was indifference and extreme "inertia." Yes, inertia, a trait that can only be described as a character when it comes to Void Creatures. Inertia not only refers to Void Creatures being not very proactive but also indicates an inclination to "handle things slowly" when facing everything in the world. I find that both Father God and I enjoy slowly contemplating an issue and unhurriedly addressing the forthcoming troubles. No matter how much we have to deal with, our expressions remain the same: a very relaxed smile with a touch of complaint, working or pretending to work, unhurried and unruffled.
The area where I’m weaker than him is that I still experience the emotion of "freaking out" now. I don’t know if it’s because there are exceptionally many naughty kids around me or simply because my Tao isn’t strong enough.
In the course of wandering around, Father God occasionally reveals a thoughtful expression. He studies the auroras at the South Pole, the sandstorms of the Sahara, and the bright lava lake beneath the Mariana Trench, yet does not clearly state what he’s researching, merely leaving the feeling that he’s perpetually occupied. Only after forty-five minutes did I finally hold back no longer. It seems we’ve already circled all places of great value on Earth. Using the super-space engine, we pause at each spot for three to five minutes, finding a world wonder in each altitude zone. Yet Father God’s focus seems entirely unrelated to the local scenery—it can be entirely confirmed that he isn’t interested in the scenery. If he were interested, he wouldn’t be scrutinizing ants below Victoria Falls. "Speaking of, Xingchen, what exactly do you intend to look at?" I recall his request to call him directly by his name. However, there’s only one way to call Xingchen, which was why I called directly.
"Nearby things have little of interest," Father God stares at the sky, the cloudless expanse above the Colorado Grand Canyon, "I am verifying an idea now, just gaining some insights. Yet... can we move further?"
"How far?" We stationed ourselves above another Grand Canyon on Earth’s other side, researching if there are any farther tourist spots, and then Qianqian abruptly broke out of the fixed mindset, "Ah, should we head to outer space?"
Father God raises his head to look: "Deep space region... perhaps it’s truly necessary to go there to confirm things. Chen, depart for the depths of this world."
I was dumbfounded, inwardly remarking that wasn’t it just to take a stroll initially, is there really such a grand necessity? But considering it again, for those capable of treating cross-world travels as outings, venturing into deep space may indeed not be a trip. So I rattled my head, activated the seven trillion internal world teleportation function, as for the target... well then, going by Father God’s intention, I closed my eyes and picked coordinates of potential interest. The slight misalignment and hum during space transmission flashed past in an instant; we are now in deep outer space. On the seven trillion’s post-modern styled vehicle shell, a faint blue energy shield floats, and we have entered the mode beyond the atmosphere. The internal space of the vehicle begins reconfiguring; soon, the seats and compact controller vanish, and the vehicle body exterior starts to become transparent. With all four of us appearing to be drifting directly in space, the surrounding environment becomes unmistakably apparent.
Luck is favorable; there is indeed a celestial body within the view: 99.9% of the universe’s space is barren, the seemingly star-filled space actually contains merely the impurities of a pool with a hundred grains of sand mixed in. Yet earlier, when seven trillion provided the coordinate reference, it automatically listed gravitational point areas as corrected alternatives. With a single space jump, we are directly guided near a dim, reddish-brown constant star.
In the front left heading upwards is a lonely suspended reddish-brown constant star. At this distance, it appears gigantic, almost ten times the size of the Sun as seen from Earth, its patterns faintly discernible. Yet the vehicle’s celestial body analyzer (listen, vehicle-based! What a bragging right) reveals its true size is smaller than the Sun. The nuclear reaction of this reddish-brown constant star is slow, possessing a massive core. The surrounding space is shrouded in cooled gaseous masses, which elevate the nearby red spectrum by several orders of magnitude, with the analyzer detecting relatively heavy metallic elements, as well as residual planetary substances within.
This is a consumed constant star; perhaps it has once transformed into a Red Giant Star in the past period, devouring its star system, and collapsing into such a form. The remaining solitary dwarf star has become its own gravestone. In the empty, dead silence of darkness, only the remains and planets transformed into cloud mist accompany it. Alas, I’ve become literary again, but the dying celestial bodies in outer space seem to embody a desolate grandeur of beauty. Although I’m no astronomer and don’t fully understand why I feel this way, upon witnessing this already dying constant star, there is still an essence of poignant scenographic emotion.
Father God glanced at me: "You feel saddened, even though the opponent is merely a celestial body. When you inexplicably resonate with lifeless entities in the world, you start becoming a qualified Void Creature. You merge subconsciously with your intrinsic essence: you’re the Source of All Things, hence you care for all. Being the terminus of all things, the demise of entities deeply affects you."
I took a deep breath, whether comprehending or not, I decided to memorize this seemingly profound statement: "Um, thanks for enlightening me, though are Void Creatures so great?"
"Void greatness itself," Father God laughed, "Truth is, it won’t take long for you to enter the next stage: you begin feeling calm about the cycle of all things, no longer saddened by specific extinction. However, this doesn’t imply your emotions will be diminished but will enter higher wisdom stages. You’ll start realizing that the concept of birth and death, existence and non-existence, all originate in Void. Those extinct still exist in your view, so much that you’ll commence mastering the power to create from nothing and the ability to save all things under any circumstances, yet that still requires time."
"Um, I feel it’s quite early to discuss this, I just got a hang of keeping my transformation over 24 hours."
"When you forget what time is, your Void Form will have no constraints, although it is indeed a bit early to talk about that now," Father God laughed, "I merely wanted to confirm salvation after Void Catastrophe, why only our known world survived. Now, I’ve got a little conjecture."
"The world, upon contact with Void Creatures, has undergone mutation."
Father God pointed outside into the desolate outer space, smilingly speaking, yet what he pointed at wasn’t the distant nebula, nor the nearby dwarf star, but in darkness.
I stared so long as if watching Qianqian shadowing before retracting my gaze: "I didn’t see anything."
"No, you saw it; it’s just that you can’t yet realize what you’ve seen. This is an awakening process of its kind," Father God laughed, "I researched this world’s creatures and discovered an intriguing phenomenon: Mortal beings in this world possess eyes structured to see their own nose tips, yet barely anyone continually acknowledges this."
"You mean the thing right before my eyes but subconsciously ignored?" I puzzledly rubbed my eyes, trying to peer harder into space. Alright, I conclude, Father God mostly doesn’t refer to directly visible objects using the eyes—I’m just probing to check if I truly can see something."
"More or less. These changes are exceedingly subtle, given your current precise command over your intrinsic powers, it’s impossible to discern where you’ve left your trace. Just like when mortals walk a certain path, yet can’t awaken to their scent like a dog does."
Inwardly, I thought Father’s comparison skills aren’t exactly great—listen to this metaphor.
"Mutation, mutation, that is, the world connected with Void Creatures undergoes mutation, then," I gradually realized something Father God is concerned with, "you believe it’s related to Void Catastrophe?"
"At least this mutation could be the reason in Void Catastrophe that all worlds favored by our kind were spared. I was earlier observing the world’s bottom level of information flow, finding that all intelligence had acquired some extremely tiny marks. Additionally, I extra noted the ’mark’ condition of two spatial regions: Earth is your most frequent domicile zone, and now the space in front might be your initial visit; nonetheless, in both places, the minuscule marks in the bottom information flow have identical intensity, which indicates that some mutation is occurring ’uniformly’ across the entire world. It very well may even have become this world’s information characteristic: You know how to determine a world in Void, it’s by its information state. If, at any spot within the world, a similar data is observable, then this data has a high likelihood of becoming the current world’s information state at the Void level, meaning, due to our presence, the world has been tagged with a label, and this label is for the Void to ’see.’ I thought about this issue all night yesterday, and it was just this morning that I wanted to come out with you to confirm it."
I don’t know what Qianqian was thinking, but her first thought at this moment was: "Wow! You didn’t sleep yesterday? Aren’t you tired from staying up?"
Father God looked at me in horror: "Why is her angle of looking at things so sharp?"
I looked embarrassed: "...That’s just her quirk."
Father God didn’t mind, waved to Qianqian with a smile, and answered earnestly: "It’s not as exaggerated as it sounds. I fell asleep while thinking — around ten o’clock perhaps."
I slapped my forehead: from returning to his room at 9:45, sleeping shortly after ten, you thought for all of twenty minutes and dared to claim you spent the whole night pondering this issue. Apparently, Father God is hard-core in the art of laziness, Void Creatures are inherently lazy...
Perhaps realizing he was caught out a bit, Father God coughed awkwardly a few times and continued to explain to us: "Of course, there’s another issue now, whether those extra information waves occur after contact with Void Creatures, meaning we need to rule out the possibility they were self-generated by the world."
"That’s not hard, just find a world that’s not been ’marked’, yeah? Compare a normal world and a marked world..." I was halfway through speaking when I slapped my head, "Oh no, I’m an idiot..."
"That’s where the problem lies," Father God nodded mischievously, a double entendre indeed, "We are Void Creatures, so any world we observe, or even have the slightest link with, will be marked. Theoretically, you will never find a world that isn’t marked: they all collapse to the only answer the moment they’re observed."
"That reminds me of Schrödinger’s half-dead cat."
Father God was surprised: "Who is Schrödinger?"
"Schrödinger the cruel cat abuser, he devised an experiment which later demonstrated that an observer causes an uncertain state to collapse into a certain state. That’s roughly the idea. Now, Void Creatures clearly are the only ones qualified to be observers on the Void level, so any link we have with the world is seen as observation, and the universe presented to us is the already changed one. Unless there’s a higher existence mode than Void Creatures, we’re impossible to escape our own perspective."
"Well, that’s truly impossible," Father God sighed, "Now I can only calculate and reverse engineer the world’s birth process using its underlying information, ultimately confirming those tiny marks weren’t self-generated by the world. It’s built on theory but can’t be established in reality, which is truly a frustrating situation."
"Is it the same with other worlds?" I asked, even though Father God said he only recalled this last night, but I remembered Xiao Xue’s words. At this time, Father God should have already pondered the causes, effects, and outcomes of the Void Catastrophe. Presumably, he has observed other worlds, just not as clearly directed as today.
"There’s a similar situation," indeed, Father God nodded, "Actually, the Divine Realm noticed this phenomenon long ago. Each world has some ’extra products’. The extra products aren’t naturally produced by world evolution, but they seem like excess data that can’t be deleted. Initially, we thought it was a normal phenomenon, belonging to Genesis’ natural laws. If it wasn’t for your daughter’s news, I think I wouldn’t have linked this situation to the Void Creatures’ interference until the Void Catastrophe happened."
"I still want to confirm, to what extent can this ’contact with Void Creatures’ be generalized? Look, some worlds I haven’t even touched, merely Empire soldiers measured a coordinate there, at most left an observation post. There are thousands in the Macro World Network like that, I haven’t intervened personally, how can such worlds be considered as contacted by Void Creatures?"
"Do you think, if not for your existence, would those soldiers have had the opportunity to discover those worlds?" Father God retorted.
"...If I hadn’t ’awakened’, it seems the New Empire wouldn’t even exist," I pondered while stroking my chin, "The New Empire would have no connection with me, so even if it revived for other reasons, the worlds discovered by Xyrin Apostles wouldn’t be exempt."
"That’s the reason, the informational suction power of Void Creatures is stronger than you imagine. If you’re the cause, then the resulting effect, and all subsequent events in a chain, are all attributed to you. Everything you experience now, since the Xyrin Empire’s revival, the original source was you activating a Mother Star."
I nodded to signify understanding, then gathered everything together. Bingdisi was already drowsy at this point; she came out wanting to play but didn’t expect her superior and current landlord to come 20 billion light years away with a mindset for meetings. The female hooligan dared not speak up, just rolled her eyes and yawned. Qianqian took a drawing paper and was eagerly sketching that dwarf star. When she noticed my gaze, Qianqian suddenly looked up and laughed, "Ah Jun, do you think the Fallen Apostle copied you to survive the Void Catastrophe?"
Father God and I were both stunned: "It’s possible!"
"The Fallen Apostle is my enemy, so can they also be considered contacted by Void Creatures?" I urgently asked, Father God thought for a moment, his expression complex, "The Fallen Apostle definitely has a connection with you, but over 90% of their worlds have nothing to do with you — because the Fallen Apostles existed before you awoke, and they discovered those worlds were unaffected by you. It means your connection to the Fallen Apostle camp is limited to themselves and doesn’t extend to their worlds."
Afraid I won’t understand, Father God continued explaining: "Contact with Void Creatures comes with conditions. First is direct connection; direct exposure, direct cognition or hearing counts as direct connection, without intermediaries between you and the target. Second is causal inheritance, requiring the contact to be due to you, which allowed interaction with other direct connections..."
"Just like one directly double-clicks a program, while another double-clicks a shortcut?" Qianqian asked curiously, "Regardless if it’s Xyrin Apostle or Fallen Apostle, they count as programs, then the Macro World is a shortcut established by Ah Jun. But all shortcuts on the Fallen Apostle’s side are built by themselves, and Ah Jun isn’t the creator so doesn’t have access — therefore all their territories are excluded from the whitelist, and once antivirus software starts, all invalid and fake shortcuts get deleted!"
For the first time, I was delighted by Qianqian’s logical reasoning ability: this girl’s association is too sharp!
Though she might have thought of this because she was once called a computer killer, constantly tormented by viruses and became an expert through experience... (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, you’re welcome to go to Qidian () to vote for recommendation tickets and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation.)