Reality? Or Illusion?
Yu Sheng could no longer tell, and he felt that perhaps there was no need to distinguish between the two anymore.
He stood amidst a kaleidoscope of light and shadows, surrounded by boundless, endlessly shifting crystal curtains glowing with magnificent phantom light. In this ever-changing crystalline space-ti, the concepts of up and down, left and right, cause and effect all seed to be lost. Vague illusions and indistinct voices constantly appeared among those curtains, and in this space where everything was constantly changing, a white-haired sage stood quietly on the opposite side.
He was no longer in that terrifying form fused with the deford crystal, and he was also slightly different from the Yun Qingzi Yu Sheng had seen on Guard-3... a different "aura."
Yu Sheng hesitated for a mont, slowly approaching the sage’s figure, then hesitantly broke the silence, "Yun Qingzi?"
"Indeed, it is I."
"...Which one are you?" Yu Sheng asked again.
The sage smiled, "Does it make a difference?"
Yu Sheng did not speak, only slightly furrowed his brow—he then belatedly realized that he actually had a "body" here and wasn’t just a cognitive projection.
"A thousand years, a hundred and twenty-two iterations, the original Yun Qingzi has long since died, yet the great dao has myriad facets... Yun Qingzi might never have died, I might have always been here," Yun Qingzi said slowly with a faint smile on his face, "Compared to my shallow changes of life and death, isn’t the secret on you even greater? For instance, right now—are you alive or dead?"
Yu Sheng thought for a mont, then spread his hands, "It seems a part of may have died a bit."
Yun Qingzi paused for a mont, then laughed heartily.
"What is this place?" Yu Sheng asked curiously after waiting for the other to stop smiling, "Inside the Inference Star Body? Does this place truly exist, or is it a kind of ’Consciousness Space’?"
Yun Qingzi gradually put away his smile and shook his head, "It could be anything you think it is; for a wanderer coming from ’outside,’ our understanding of space-ti and order does not hold much aning."
"So what exactly is the current state of the Inference Star Body?" Yu Sheng asked again, "You seem to have broken free of its control—so is it really close to dying?"
"The Inference Star Body was never really ’alive’ from the very start, perhaps the sa is true for other Dark Angels... when they ca to our world, they had already died countless ages ago," Yun Qingzi said lightly, "But if you’re referring to the ’vitality’ of the Inference Star Body, then it truly ’died’ the mont it left Shuji."
Yu Sheng furrowed his brow.
"That leap out of the atmosphere drained its power," Yun Qingzi calmly looked at Yu Sheng, "My friend, you were successful at that mont."
Unexpected, yet seemingly not so unexpected.
Yu Sheng slowly lifted his head, gazing around at the chaotic light and shadows of this space, filled with crystalline textures, while simultaneously recalling the voice he had just heard in the darkness.
"I heard a voice earlier," he broke the silence, "The voice urging it to root and survive, that seed to be the mory of the Inference Star Body? So is it rely a seed? Is it simply repeating this process of ’rooting’ and ’surviving’ as it parasitizes one star after another?"
"That voice you heard, I have heard for a thousand years," Yun Qingzi said, gently shaking his head, "I actually do not fully understand either, because the ’Inference Star Body’ lacks clear logic and wisdom—its chaos is beyond your imagination. However..."
He paused suddenly, then turned around and gently waved his hand.
"There are so things here, hidden deep in its mory, perhaps those are the answers you seek."
The splendid crystal curtains before them began to ripple, and within the transparent light and shadow curtains, so blurry images gradually appeared.
A planet, magnificent and dazzling, sparkling like a space gem under the sunlight.
A plant, more majestic than mountains, more vast than oceans, more ancient than civilizations.
It rooted itself on the planet—for the first hundred thousand years, it was part of the planet, and for the next hundred thousand years, the planet was part of it.
During the days when the branches of life were at their densest, it could even open its crown towards the sunlight, using gathered energy to reheat its sowhat cooled core, or capture nearby passing celestial bodies to replenish nutrients for its "garden."
Yes, it had a lush garden—although at first, even it didn’t know what was in that garden, or even rember when the garden itself appeared.
Because it was rely a plant, and for the first hundred thousand years, it didn’t even understand what "thinking" ant.
But one day, the "garden" just appeared, seemingly just a small "accident" during the growth and mutation of its excessively large body, where so debris that fell from its surface occupied a small space between the Crystal Branches, and then proliferated in that living crystal jungle.
The garden beca a unique... "ecological patch" on its body.
And within this "ecological patch," a variety of strange little things gradually grew—very fragile, very small, very busy, but very clever, and capable of thought.
They carved things from crystal, knew how to gather heat sources from underground, and could make various gadgets from the tal residue left after the Mother Vine was digested—so of those gadgets could fly, so could emit light, and so made noisy sounds.
They called this process "creation," and they even created a more abstract concept called civilization.
The giant planetary plant doesn’t quite understand what "civilization" ans, but it gradually realizes... it is also learning to "think".
It took nearly a thousand years to figure out what its "thinking" was about, and in the process, it referred to the biological structures of the bustling small creatures in the "garden" on its "belly". Finally, it reached a conclusion—the small creatures in the garden have an organ called "brain", and now it also has a brain, its brain is the "garden" itself.
The small creatures think in the garden, so the "Mother Vine" can think with the garden.
Very interesting.
Among the small creatures, there is a group called "scholars" who also find this interesting. They even created more abstract concepts, such as planetary will, such as collective intelligence. They argued for hundreds of years, just to discuss whether "the thinking of the species led to the consciousness of the planet" or "there was first a noble and sacred planetary consciousness, and then the creative Mother Vine bestowed its ’soul’ upon all living things".
These discussions are also very interesting.
If only this world could remain so interesting always.
But one day, the stars fell.
It was a day when the entire world was engulfed in red light.
The stars kept falling, like masses of abstract and crude graffiti lines, like grotesque celestial bodies imagined by a child’s clumsy drawing skills. Large and small colorful blotches fell to the ground, igniting multicolored flas.
On the burning earth, countless spots of light, large and small, rose from the sea of fire.
Devices storing knowledge, tal plates engraved with last words, containers carrying biological specins, and curled up, deceased corpses.
Forests and rocks swayed and rose under the starlight, with the sky hanging askew on the horizon, the remaining shadows of fallen stars hung like extinguished lamps at the edge of the sky.
The "Mother Vine" couldn’t understand what had happened—just as it didn’t understand how a thinking organ called a "garden" suddenly appeared on itself ten thousand years ago.
At first, it thought this was just part of a growth mutation—just like strange changes sotis happened to its body, maybe this world would suddenly look different as well.
What if after all the stars fell, another interesting garden appeared?
But soon, it heard a new word from the mouth of the "scholars": doomsday.
Doomsday had arrived.
All interesting things would disappear, and so would the garden, and the small creatures in the garden.
The Mother Vine anxiously asked the clever little creatures what should be done, but the little creatures said there was no way anymore.
At least, this planet could no longer survive.
Then, they had no choice but to find a way to preserve the seed.
At the reminder of the small creatures, the Mother Vine recalled—yes, the seed.
It can create seeds.
The small creatures helped the Mother Vine design the structure of the seed in the shortest ti, designed the device to launch it into space, designed the "growth curve" after the seed... They actually wanted to design more, but there wasn’t enough ti.
In the end, the Mother Vine, the garden, the small creatures, this vast, complex, and wondrous symbiosis intelligence managed to design only one instruction for the seed—
"Go... find a new ho, take root, and then find a way to survive..."
If it really manages to take root, then find a way to flourish again.
Then grow a new garden— to think, to observe, to learn, to...
But there is no suitable new ho for it to take root in the endless darkness outside the world.
Even if it reaches another "world", there would be no place left for an uninvited guest in that isolated ark.
Scenes from mories recede like tides, and a magnificent crystalline curtain appears in front of the eyes again.
Yu Sheng blinked and looked at the old man beside him.
"Root, grow, wither, root again, grow again, and then wither again," after a mont of contemplation, Yu Sheng slowly spoke, "I’ve discovered before, the Feather Transformation and Ascension cycle of the Inference Star Body seems aningless, because the ’Ascension Body’ transford by accumulating vast energy is rely for transforming into the most basic form to take root again on the next planet, essentially a aningless regression from ’Ascension Body’ to ’Sub-entity’, all the energy is wasted, its life cycle is ’idling’.
"Now, everything has an answer."
This is a seed that lost its holand, drifting in alien soils where it cannot take root.
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