Chapter 1041: Observer

Chapter 1041: The Observer

The air fell silent for a moment.

The office was utterly quiet.

Xiao Qi looked at Chu Guang with concern, asking with her eyes if he needed her to summon Heya and bring a few psychologists along.

But Chu Guang shook his head, signaling that she need not notify the Guard Corps—he could handle this himself.

It wasn’t entirely out of confidence in his own strength; mainly, he didn’t sense any obvious threat or malicious intent from the other party.

Though his feelings weren’t always accurate, they still held some reference value.

After all, perception was essentially the manifestation of “psychic power,” and the connection now established between them might well be some form of resonant field.

Chu Guang had no idea how this was achieved, and the other party seemed equally surprised by the link between them. But regardless, being able to communicate was a good start.

He was better at using a manager’s methods than resorting to force.

Besides, if it truly was a problem he couldn’t solve, no number of extra people would make a difference…

About five minutes passed, and that ethereal voice drifted into his ears once more.

“The pen… uh, I didn’t take that thing, but I know how it disappeared and where it went.”

Chu Guang said nothing, waiting for it to continue.

The voice paused for a moment, then indeed went on.

“This concerns the nature of the world you inhabit and its ultimate fate. Though it may be too distant for you, it will come one day… The story might be a bit long. Are you interested in hearing it?”

Chu Guang replied smoothly,

“I’m all ears.”

“Then I’ll start from the very beginning…”

The ethereal voice continued.

“A long, long time ago, before the first universe was born, all things existed in a state of absolute stillness—neither entropy increasing nor decreasing… and there was no concept of time.”

“Until one moment, a particle as tiny as a speck of dust trembled, triggering a chain reaction like an avalanche, shattering that eternal silence. Light blazed in the boundless chaos, sounds emerged, and many new things that had never existed in worlds beyond time came into being. We call this first-born universe the ‘Primordial Universe’—the beginning of everything.”

Chu Guang frowned slightly, wondering how this being had jumped from his pen to the origin of the universe, but he followed along.

“Are you talking about… the Big Bang? I think I’ve heard of it, but I don’t really understand.”

The ethereal voice neither confirmed nor denied, only continuing in a calm tone.

“All things shifted from eternal, unchanging stillness to ceaseless motion. Time gained meaning from that moment, and the Primordial Universe expanded in eternal entropy increase… like a soap bubble being blown bigger and bigger.”

Chu Guang asked blankly,

“Soap… bubble?”

The voice patiently explained,

“Yes, it’s the easiest way to understand. If I didn’t use concepts you can grasp, you could never imagine what the Primordial Universe was like… just as an ant can never comprehend what the sea is, or how it differs from the creek at its doorstep, or what a manned spacecraft is.”

“In any case, it was a bubble of immense size, too vast to measure in light-years. If you compared your Milky Way to a single leaf, that bubble would be the sum of all leaves in the entire galaxy… and even larger than that.”

That… was truly staggering.

Chu Guang marveled at the vastness of the world, but had no further thoughts.

If what this mysterious being said was true, even the vast Milky Way was but a leaf before that colossal scale. The bacteria living on that leaf had no need to worry about such distant matters.

That kind of existence was far too remote for human civilization.

Like a story from another world.

Even if a wildfire broke out in that forest, before the flames turned everything to ash, the time would be enough for the bacteria on the leaf to reproduce for several generations.

So then—

As bacteria, they should first focus on devouring the leaf before them.

As if reading his thoughts, the ethereal voice continued in a narrative tone.

“Your thinking is correct. Maintaining the order of the forest is not the duty of snails or ants. However… what I want to talk about is the origin of the Void. If I don’t explain the whole story, you won’t understand what the Void is, how it came to be, or where your pen went.”

“I agree with your point. Please go on,” Chu Guang said, looking at it.

The ethereal voice seemed intent on doing so anyway, and continued at a measured pace.

“The Primordial Universe existed for a very, very long time. Whether any civilization arose in that universe, there is no reliable evidence to prove. Even I, who have existed for a long time and explored many universes, have found no traces of civilization left behind in that universe. Perhaps they never existed; perhaps they existed and turned into something else.”

“But our exploration was not entirely fruitless. Through traceable clues, we learned that while the Primordial Universe gave birth to matter, it also gave birth to three ‘consciousnesses.’ They are the rulers of the Void—the Primordial Light, the Unnameable Mist, and the Chaos of Darkness.”

The being’s narrative was growing strange, the concepts far beyond human civilization’s understanding of the material world.

Chu Guang couldn’t help asking,

“What are those things?”

The ethereal voice did not keep him in suspense and gladly answered.

“Light is the origin of all things; Mist is the ever-changing causality; Darkness is the end of the cosmic cycle… They are both consciousness and rules, together forming the foundation of the Void.”

“Various clues indicate that the birth of these consciousnesses accelerated the collapse of the Primordial Universe. When that enormous soap bubble went ‘pop’ and burst, shattering into countless smaller soap bubbles, that gave rise to the infinite ‘newborn universes thereafter.’”

“And your Milky Way, along with all the galaxies beyond it within your observable horizon, belongs to one of those countless bubbles.”

“As for the Void, it is the gap between bubbles—the ‘wall’ you have come to understand through your excavations.”

“There reside the three consciousnesses born from the Primordial Universe, new consciousnesses they have nurtured over eons, and the corpses of countless dead universes.”

Chu Guang stared at it, taking a long time to digest this vast amount of information.

The universe was an infinite number of bubbles…

And the Void was the corpses of dead universes—including the parts of the Primordial Universe that failed to give birth to new universes?

In the face of these mind-boggling facts, the matter of the pen no longer seemed important.

Unable to contain his curiosity, Chu Guang eagerly said,

“This is different from what we learned from the Pioneer Civilization… They described the universe as a nested structure.”

Of course,

He didn’t agree with that nested model.

He was more inclined to the idea of parallel universes—different universes existing independently of each other, like two parallel lines.

The ethereal voice chuckled.

“That’s normal. The same apple can be understood differently by different people. The child you call ‘Pioneer’ merely described the ‘sea’ they themselves saw. Just as you use dimensional theory to explain the membrane of the universe—a vibrating plane in eleven dimensions—they used creator theory to explain the relationship between the consciousnesses in the Void and this universe.”

It paused, then continued.

“They were clever, but not clever enough. They confused the concepts of dimension and membrane, thinking the universe was a set of nested matryoshka dolls—that one consciousness must be created and enveloped by an earlier consciousness, and that the three consciousnesses born from the Primordial Universe were the creators and omnipotent rulers of their universe… That is not accurate.”

Chu Guang stared at the increasingly clear eyes, shocked by this astonishing reality, and suddenly realized another issue.

“So you mean… the place the Pioneer Civilization went to was not actually the creator’s universe?”

The ethereal gaze carried a hint of approval.

"You are very clever, with keen insight, truly worthy of being that person's continuation... though there is almost no trace of him in you."

Chu Guang was taken aback. "Whose trace?"

"An old acquaintance I once knew—to you, that is likely a matter of ages long past... Do not dwell on it; it is of no importance to you."

The voice from the void did not answer directly, but lightly brushed the topic aside, continuing the earlier thread.

"To answer your previous question, regarding whether those 'precursors' you spoke of truly went to the Creator's universe, I believe there are two ways to understand it. As I said before, their understanding was merely imprecise, but that does not mean it was wrong."

Chu Guang: "...What do you mean?"

The voice from the void continued.

"It depends on your understanding of the Creator, or rather, the ultimate pursuit. The Creator they understood was the origin of all things, while the Creator you understand... I suspect refers to an entity that created something specific. If you think about it a little, you will realize that these two kinds of Creators are fundamentally different beings."

Hearing this, Chu Guang finally grasped the crux of the issue.

From the perspective of the "Precursor Civilization," the "Creator" understood by those spiritualists was the origin of consciousness, which from the very beginning corresponded to the three great consciousnesses born from the primordial universe.

They had established contact with one or all of these three great consciousnesses, struck some kind of deal, even signed a contract, and ultimately journeyed to their world—

Which was the void beyond the cosmic membrane!

Yet the Creator as understood by human civilization was not so.

Due to their own developmental path leaning more toward material exploration, human civilization's understanding of the Creator was more concentrated on the "material" level, rather than the subjective "creation."

And these "materials" happened not to be created by the so-called three great consciousnesses, but were born from the primordial universe—the infinite possibilities arising from countless particles colliding and intertwining!

No wonder...

The information left by the Precursor Civilization had repeatedly indicated to them that different paths could not lead to the same goal.

And indeed it was so—human civilization and the Precursor Civilization had been on entirely different tracks from the most basic cognition!

Realizing this, Chu Guang was utterly astonished.

Good heavens...

It turned out the Precursor Civilization had not gone to another higher universe, but had plunged headlong into the void!

The place Dr. Qiu Shiye had gone was probably there too—that gap between universes!

The Precursor Civilization had warned these later generations to beware of things on the wall, but these fellows clearly had not realized that the place they themselves had gone was precisely the wall—

Including the Creator they understood, all were things on the wall!

All the clues connected, and Chu Guang gradually understood everything.

It turned out that the Perforator was not borrowing light from the Creator's universe by chiseling a hole in the wall, but was digging into the void's corner!

And that Death Monitor Lizard was presumably an existence from the void...

"...It seems you are gradually understanding the essence of the Perforator. Now, what I am about to tell you is the membrane of the universe—the very thing you truly pierced."

The voice from the void carried a hint of a smile, speaking in a gentle tone.

"Do you still remember the analogy I made earlier? I compared the universe to a soap bubble."

"I remember," Chu Guang said cautiously. "So you mean... the membrane of the universe is the universe's protective layer?"

The voice from the void continued.

"You could understand it that way. This conceptual membrane is indeed related to the stability of the universe. But a more accurate explanation is... the membrane of the universe is the universe itself. And the three-dimensional world you can see is actually the projection of the eleven-dimensional 'membrane' onto the three-dimensional 'interface.'"

"Once you understand the concept of projection, you can grasp why this universe is filled with so many things you cannot see or touch. The eleven-dimensional membrane can project onto a three-dimensional interface, and naturally onto zero-, one-, two-dimensional, or four-, five-dimensional interfaces as well..."

"Based on this principle, you can consider the universe as composed of countless projections of different dimensions, or you can consider the membrane at the apex of dimensions as the true body of the universe."

"As for the existences in the void—those things outside the bubbles—under normal circumstances, they cannot directly touch the bubbles, let alone enter inside them."

"However, they have their own methods, such as using mental abilities—what you call resonance fields—to establish contact with 'conscious beings' living inside the bubbles, seducing them, or making deals with them, and using the latter's power to project themselves onto some interface within the bubble... just as you did before."

Chu Guang swallowed and asked cautiously.

"So you mean... our actions have actually shaken the foundation of the universe?"

A cheerful laugh came from the void, followed by a soft murmur.

"Don't overestimate yourselves. At most, you have carefully picked up a grain of sand from the desert; you are far from changing the entire desert's ecosystem. And those projections that have invaded your world, as you have seen, can actually be eliminated. Some clever natives even deliberately lure existences from the void to descend, then hunt them, thereby acquiring a certain power you do not yet understand."

Chu Guang immediately asked.

"What is that power?"

"Haven't you noticed the changes in your own body? But it doesn't matter; you will soon notice. There is no need for me to explain this to you—you have your own medical examiner."

The voice from the void chuckled and continued.

"In any case, the bubble enveloping your world is far more resilient than you imagine; otherwise, you would not exist in this universe. To take a nearby example, the galaxy beneath your feet has been ravaged by countless civilizations, yet it remains intact until those civilizations each met their destined end."

"Not to mention a hole invisible to the naked eye—even a galaxy-sized gap would gradually heal over time... And your pen was likely moved to patch that hole."

"So I sincerely advise you to be more cautious near your own doorstep, or perhaps choose a more distant massive celestial body for research. Gravity is a wonderful thing; no projection on any dimension can escape its pull."

"Of course, if you create a stellar-level hole, the trouble you unleash will be no joke—it might even cause a few planets to disappear along the curved surface of gravity."

Having said this, the laughter suddenly carried a trace of melancholy, as if regretting.

"But then again, even if the cosmic membrane is more robust than you think, I must admit that the birth of civilization accelerates the heat death of the universe. Just as the birth of the three great consciousnesses accelerated the decay of the primordial universe, your birth will likewise accelerate the heat death of the universe beneath your feet... even if within your lifetimes you can hardly perceive this change."

"Ultimately, all newborn universes, like the primordial universe, will either split into smaller and smaller bubbles through repeated explosions, or reach the end of their lives in eternal entropy increase, eventually merging into the void."

This cruel fate seemed to echo the rise and fall of the Human Federation.

Chu Guang listened, somewhat lost in thought.

But more than the fate of the universe, what concerned him more was who this entity was.

How did it know so much?!

And—

It seemed to know the first manager of Shelter 404!

Unbelievable—a high-level existence with a perspective lofty enough to overlook the entire forest would take note of the fate of a certain bacterium on a certain leaf...

Thanks to it, he had learned many things he might never have known in a lifetime.

Yet his confusion had not diminished; on the contrary, it had grown.

After a moment of contemplation, Chu Guang asked the question he had wanted to ask from the very beginning.

"Who are you, really?"

As if expecting this question, the voice from the void replied in a gentle tone.

"I am, of course, an existence from the void... and I have been by your side for a very, very long time."

"You may call me the Observer."