Chapter 345: May There Be No Riddlers in the World

Chapter 345: May There Be No Riddlers in the World

The darkness receded.

Lin Yu awoke once more.

He still found himself in that immaculate white chamber, the pain and ruin of his previous ordeal now feeling like a distant dream.

His body remained whole.

His movements were still unimpeded.

And when he rose, reaching out to touch the wall, the wall, just as before, dissolved into mist and faded away.

“You’re awake?”

A voice from the void sounded again.

Lin Yu snapped his head upward, as if seeking the source of the voice.

But all he saw was a boundless sky and a sun hanging high.

“Who… exactly are you?”

“What… exactly am I seeing??”

“A dream.”

The voice said calmly:

“It’s hard for me to explain in a language you can comprehend what that truly is.”

“But you may simply regard it as a dream—a dream we have woven for you.”

.What is your purpose?

Lin Yu gazed at the distant village, now restored to the scale he first beheld, his eyes flickering faintly.

He suddenly realized that the world he now stood in differed from the one he had “just” entered.

Here, no matter how far he looked, the view remained clear.

In that other world, distant scenery always seemed shrouded in a hazy veil, becoming sharp only upon approach.

“You noticed?”

“You’re perceptive.”

The voice above did not answer Lin Yu’s question, but continued:

“We can only go this far; after all, it is a nested world.”

“To make it as real as the primary world would demand an enormous amount of computational power.”

“That is neither necessary nor meaningful.”

“Thus we resorted to some clever shortcuts.”

“But you need not worry about it.”

“That world exists solely so you can experience and feel it directly.”

“Now you have had a taste; when I explain further, you’ll probably understand more easily, won’t you?”

.I cannot comprehend at all.

Lin Yu sat down on the soft grass, his mind flickering with fragmentary images and words.

Wounded beast.

Close your eyes.

Count down.

What does that

actually represent?

“You’re mistaken.”

The voice sounded again.

“It’s not injury.”

“It’s entropy.”

A character materialized before Lin Yu.

Now he was no longer surprised by such anomalies; he merely stared at the character with mild puzzlement and said:

“I have never seen this character before.”

“I never learned it.”

“You certainly won’t learn it.”

The voice replied slowly:

“In fact, in this world— I mean the reality you originally came from—no one has used this character for a long time.”

“Perhaps the merchants of the ‘Ring Consortium’ still employ it.”

“But they could never grasp its true meaning, because”

“What is its true meaning?”

Lin Yu interrupted, asking:

“Is it some monster? Or a faction?”

“No, it is… a rule.”

The voice continued:

“For someone like you, lacking any knowledge of physics, I have no standard way to explain what this signifies.”

“Yet you should recall that in the other world, everyone closed their eyes and counted in their minds.”

“I want to ask you, at that moment, did any other thoughts arise in your mind?”

.None.

Lin Yu shook his head slowly.

“I was devoured.”

“Wrong. What was devoured was not you, but information.”

“You sealed your senses, ceased receiving data, and stopped transmitting it outward.”

“Thus, does that village still exist?”

The words hung in the air, and Lin Yu’s heart gave a sudden thud.

He had not yet spoken when the voice sounded again.

“Originally, I intended for you to experience every subsequent scene.” “But now I find your comprehension exceeds what I expected.”

“It has nothing to do with the computational resources we allocated to you; it is your innate way of thinking that makes you more receptive to the new.”

“So, we have no need to waste any more computing power.”

“Next, let me tell you a story.”

Lin Yu nodded slowly.

The chaotic thoughts in his mind were swiftly cleared, and immediately a tale rang in his ears.

“Long ago, there was such a world.”

“The people of that world, like those of every other world, toiled in silence, built, and achieved commendable feats.”

“But one day, an unknown catastrophe nearly annihilated the entire world.”

“Amid the ruins, the survivors gathered and founded the village you now see.”

“They thought they had survived, that the disaster was over.”

“Decades slipped by in a heartbeat; they even glimpsed the silhouettes of their ancestors, almost ready to tread the upward path again.”

“Yet at that very moment, disaster struck once more.”

“No one knew what had happened; they only knew that everything they had painstakingly cultivated was shattered again.”

“But they were a resilient people, never fearing to begin anew.”

“Thus, after another span of arduous years, they found themselves once again before the starting line they were meant to depart from.”

“Soon, disaster descended again.”

“All was destroyed, and their hope turned to foam in an instant.”

“No one understood why.”

“All they knew was that they were caught in a relentless cycle.”

“At last, a day came when a hero and a sage caught sight of the enemy.”

“It was a beast called ‘Entropy.’”

“It fed on chaos and disorder, and this village was the most turbulent vortex in a world already sunk into silence.”

“Its waves of chaos shone like a lantern illuminating the night sky, drawing an enemy whose origin was unknown, perhaps even its existence uncertain.”

“Destruction after destruction followed, and the village’s survivors finally brushed the edge of truth.”

“They began to try to coax chaos back into order.”

“As you have seen, they attempted many childish, crude, even laughable methods.”

“In the end, those methods failed to shield them from the beast’s assault; they only deepened the chaos.”

“They could only try again and again.”

“Until finally, they uncovered the secret of chaos.”

“From ancient wisdom they found the answer.”

“The answer was called biophysics.”

“A sage posed a question: Do human actions accelerate the birth of chaos, or do they slow it?”

“No one knew the answer to that question.”

“Yet it gave those in despair a direction.”

“They debated day and night, and all their discourse converged into a single query.”

“Is free will the result of accelerated entropy, or the cause of it?”

“If you were to explain it in terms you can grasp, it would be this:”

“Is the soul the outcome of chaos, or the cause of chaos?”

“And that question eventually turned to a more fundamental, more elemental query.”

“Does the soul exist?”

“Thus, to test this, they conducted a grand experiment.”

“They used magic to draw every person’s soul away, imprisoning them in a cramped tomb.”

“There, the souls no longer affected the outside world, nor did they arise from flesh.”

“If souls truly exist, then the chaos should gradually subside.”

“If they do not, then they have no other recourse.”

“But fortune smiled.”

“It seemed they had obtained an answer.”

“Since the souls were confined, that beast had not visited the village for a long time.”

“They lived peacefully for centuries.”

“And this—”

“Wait.”

Lin Yu suddenly interrupted that voice.

Then he spoke:

“This village is the Mountain City.”

“Is that right?”

“Wrong.”

The voice lowered to a rumble.

“The Mountain City is merely a tomb that cages souls.”

“This village is the entire human world!”

(End of chapter)