Chapter 389: The World’s Underlying Mysteries |
The phase engine curled up the spacetime structures around the ship. A hyperspace bubble formed by warped space wrapped the tower?like Extradimensional Hotel. Information from the real universe was compressed at the bubble’s edge into a complete two?dimensional film, and on that thin membrane the secrets of the stars flowed like water and immersed Yu Sheng’s senses and mind.
His spirit remained in deep synchronization with the ship making its faster?than?light journey, a state no one but him could understand or imagine. For that very reason, no one had warned him before today that it is extremely dangerous to expose a human mind directly to hyperspace.
Under normal circumstances, anyone traveling FTL sits inside a well?protected vehicle. When the phase engine generates warped space, it also maintains a special field that keeps the hull intact, and another function of that field is to prevent the crew’s minds from contacting the environment outside the ship. A universe in a “complete mapping” state is so dangerous that the star?light mapped onto the bubble’s edge carries an information density enough to drive a person insane. A mortal mind, even brushed by that flicker and whisper of the stars, would melt instantly.
But who could have imagined it: a person’s mind can transfer without hindrance into a ship, even treating the ship wholly as his “body.”
Yu Sheng curiously “examined” the star?rivers flowing around him, watching them fill spacetime like a beginningless and endless flood. In that moment his sense of his “body” became oddly indistinct. The Extradimensional Hotel that was in jump and the human body sitting on the Hotel’s bridge both seemed to turn into abstract footnotes whose only purpose was to carry the concept “Yu Sheng,” while his essence pulled free of that note and roamed, free and exultant, within the world’s most basic structures.
His gaze pierced the star?rivers and seemed to see the vast architectures that uphold the order of the constellations and sustain all time and space.
He could not touch them, but he could see them. He could not understand them, but he could read the echoes that rang between those architectures, records left by some “eternal instant.”
After a long hesitation, Yu Sheng once more extended his perception and tried to touch those flickering “lights.” He tried to “read” those incredible echoes between the grand architectures that support the world.
What a creation. What an astonishing engineering feat. A corner of the world’s underlying secrets lifted for him, and in that instant he again heard the Creator’s inner voice as the world rebooted:
Yu Sheng: “…”
[Not sure. Listen again.]
He drew his perception back, then touched another glint.
“…There was supposed to be a planet here, but it was commented out because it wasn’t useful.
“Why is this part throwing errors?
“Why is this part not throwing errors?!
“Forget it, comment everything out and rerun… It actually runs?!
“…Why are all the stars in this region pointy?”
Yu Sheng thought for a moment and pressed that corner of the world’s secrets back down.
[Mostly because looking at too much of it was aggravating.]
By now he understood what those “messages” were. Although he did not know how any of this was happening, there was no doubt the information came from the moment when this world “was born again.”
They took place in an instant before “Let there be light.”
After a long while, Yu Sheng’s “gaze” again turned toward those foundation megastructures that uphold the entire observable cosmos, and he grew thoughtful.
He stood quietly and pondered. Time circled meaninglessly around the edges of his mind. Then, in a single moment, he snapped awake.
That kind of “observation” and “touch” that exceeded mortal comprehension ended. The flood of information receded from the edge of his mind like a tide. Intelligence from the real world rapidly reassembled. He felt again the steel body of the Extradimensional Hotel, then his human body sitting in the control hall’s captain’s chair. The hum and rumble of machinery roared in his ears, deafening at first, then settling down into the usual low background.
Yu Sheng’s vision wavered, and he realized the little doll was sneaking up onto him, reaching a finger toward his nostril.
He blinked and turned his head: “What are you doing?”
“Wah!”
The little doll yelped, tumbled head over heels off Yu Sheng, and landed sprawled on the floor.
Yu Sheng looked at the bedraggled doll climbing up off the deck, half exasperated and half amused. He picked her up and set her before him: “You really cannot go a moment without mischief, can you?”
“I was checking your breath, okay? Checking your breath,” Irene said, dangling like a cat as he held her by the scruff yet still folding her arms with perfect righteousness. “What if you were dead.”
Cold sweat broke out on Yu Sheng. The little thing’s words were like a sandstorm; for a second his emotions lost cohesion. “Where did that come from? I’m perfectly fine.”
“Right, and you’re always perfectly fine right before you drop dead; otherwise it wouldn’t be called dropping dead,” Irene said, swinging her body in midair and, with a very difficult yet very practiced move, flipping to wrap both arms around Yu Sheng’s arm. She slipped her collar free of his grip, then climbed up his shoulder like a tree?kangaroo. “Just now you were sitting here without moving. The outside looked fine, but suddenly there was no mental response. I thought you’d gone brain?dead at the helm.”
Yu Sheng froze at her words. He let the veiled barbs slide and involuntarily recalled the things he had sensed at the boundary of hyperspace while he was deeply synchronized with the ship.
The magnificent architectures that uphold all things on the information level, and that pile of utterly ridiculous comments.
He remembered what he had learned from Bai Li Qing about this world: the Ancient Holy Spirits, the old world destroyed by the Great Annihilation, the new world rebuilt upon its ruins, and the act of creation known as the Second Singularity Explosion.
Then he noticed the little doll once more extending a finger toward his nostril.
“I just zoned out,” Yu Sheng said at once, batting Irene’s little paw away. “Same as before, I just zoned out.”
“Zoned out so hard your mental response vanished?” Irene stared. “Are you really okay? Is this kind of mental direct?link ‘driving’ too heavy a load? How about we go back and have the Special Service Bureau set you up with a higher?end autopilot. If that still doesn’t work, we can arrange a long?term chauffeur.”
Yu Sheng: “…”
He suddenly realized the little doll seemed a bit worried about him.
“I’m really fine. It’s just my first time entering hyperspace, and I accidentally ‘saw’ a few things.” Yu Sheng patted Irene’s hair, answering much more seriously this time. Then, after a brief thought, he turned to Immortal Yuan Hao and Xuan Che, who sat not far away.
The two handsome men did not really understand what Yu Sheng and Irene had just been discussing, but they seemed to be getting used to the Hotel’s slightly absurd and comedic style on the inside. Mainly Xuan Che was used to it; Immortal Yuan Hao probably had a congenital short circuit in his nerves. They asked nothing, merely watched the fun.
Yu Sheng looked at them and suddenly posed a question: “When you are piloting a faster?than?light ship, do you see strange things?”
“Strange things?” Immortal Yuan Hao did not catch on at first and looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“For example, the world’s underlying information, knowledge conveyed by the stars, traces from the world’s birth,” Yu Sheng said after some thought. Out of consideration for others’ mental health, he did not repeat the content of that “knowledge” directly, but asked obliquely. “Do you see that sort of thing when a ship enters hyperspace?”
Immortal Yuan Hao’s expression shifted: “That sounds rather terrifying, almost like being polluted by unnameable things outside reality. I have not seen such a thing.”
Yu Sheng was unwilling to give up: “Not even if you fly very fast?”
“No, not even then,” Immortal Yuan Hao said earnestly after thinking. “The fastest I ever went, I saw only one warning.”
“One warning?” Yu Sheng shivered. So you do see things after all, he thought, and hurriedly asked, “What warning?”
Immortal Yuan Hao sighed: “An overspeed warning from the local traffic authority, and then my immortal ark was impounded. Afterward two junior brothers nagged me for many days.”
Yu Sheng: “…”
After triple confirmation, he finally determined that what he had seen did not count as “normal.”
It seemed no one had ever contacted those “messages” branded deep in the starlight. No one had even realized they existed.
A furry tail reached over from the side and idly brushed his arm.
Yu Sheng turned his head and saw Foxy watching him with some concern.
He suddenly smiled.
“It’s nothing. I just realized that this world is actually quite interesting.”
He rose from the captain’s chair and strolled to the great observation window at the end of the control hall.
Outside, the edge of the hyperspace bubble still calmly reflected the scenery projected in from reality after being warped. Everything in the observable universe was pictured on that enclosed two?dimensional film and tinted with a dreamlike hue by redshift and blueshift.
But this time, what he saw seemed to be more than a beautiful view.
He felt as if he could see a figure.
A figure busily at work in the eternal instant when all things lay extinguished.
“Quite interesting indeed.”
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation
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