The revelation of the universe's reboot and the fact that she belonged to the 00 Epoch left Ye Bai utterly stunned.
If she truly originated from the previous epoch before the cosmic reset, it also ant that her understanding of past history did not belong to this universe's Blue Star, but rather to the Blue Star of the 00 Epoch.
The era Ye Bai lived in, the ga "Myriad Realms" she created, her experiences of having her consciousness enter the divine realm after cryonic suspension—all these must have occurred in the previous epoch. The future of Blue Star after her slumber had diverged from the history she now knew.
So when exactly had she arrived in this epoch?
Fragnts of information she had learned since awakening flashed through Ye Bai's mind.
What she once dismissed as incredibly 'lucky' coincidences were, in fact, no coincidences at all.
Now, with complete clarity over her mories and her consciousness having entered the divine realm, Ye Bai knew her personal tiline of conscious activity spanned exactly 1,400 years. This duration made it impossible for her to have survived from her own era through the cosmic reboot to the present.
The term 'ti smuggling' was more than sufficient to explain the situation.
For Ye Bai, who had once been unable to perceive or interact with higher dinsions, ti was an irreversible foundation of existence, just as it was for all three-dinsional beings. A being that did not exist in the past could not have a present or future.
But once Ye Bai gained access to higher dinsions, she could roughly comprehend how this 'smuggling' had been accomplished.
To three-dinsional beings, the three-dinsional universe was all-encompassing—the past existed only in mory, forever unreachable. Yet from the perspective of the fourth dinsion, the tiline was unfurled, with each past universe preserved like slices of a whole.
The 00 Epoch, the destruction of the 00 Epoch universe, the birth of the 01 Epoch universe, the millions of years that followed—these historical events, when observed four-dinsionally, could be likened to a cuboid in three-dinsional space. Each face of the cuboid could be sliced into countless flat squares, each representing a different temporal slice of the universe from the fourth-dinsional viewpoint.
Thus, Ye Bai—whose consciousness had been active within ga data after cryonic suspension—must have been extracted from the historical 00 Epoch and brought to the current 01 Epoch by so force capable of manipulating the fourth dinsion, likely after she deleted her account to resolve a data purge.
In the 01 Epoch, the people of Blue Star had hastily evacuated their planet during a minor asteroid crisis. After tens of thousands of years, many records were lost, so when Ye Bai's cryo-pod traversed ti and landed in Blue Star's Antarctic region, she was naturally assud to be a lucky survivor from before the exodus.
Even Ye Bai herself had believed this—until now.
Pinpointing the exact mont she arrived in the 01 Epoch wasn't difficult; one only needed to look at when "Myriad Realms" first appeared on the Starnet.
This ga, created by Ye Bai, was clearly not just another 'reef' of collective consciousness from past civilizations on the Starnet.
Now that she knew the truth, however, Ye Bai couldn't help but question the nature of other Starnet gas as well.
"Myriad Realms" had been gradually discovered by civilizations, making its exact first appearance uncertain. But around the sa ti, another significant event occurred: the natural formation of a wormhole in the Milky Way.
Ye Bai had long assud the wormhole's appearance led to her discovery, but in reality, the causality was reversed—
Her arrival was what caused the wormhole to form near Blue Star.
Having once completed a wormhole-clearing mission, Ye Bai knew that wormholes were the three-dinsional universe's most direct intersection with the tiline, containing imnse energy and matter. They were, in essence, the most plausible 'exit points' for ti smuggling.
Having unraveled the cause of her awakening in this epoch, a new question arose: If Ye Bai hadn't orchestrated her own ti-smuggling, who had? And for what purpose?
The 'master terminal' born alongside the universe's reboot contained vast amounts of information, and Ye Bai eagerly delved into its detailed entries.
Soon, her gaze fixed on the coordinates of Blue Star after the cosmic reset.
In this master terminal, the 01 Epoch's coordinates were standardized, with the cosmic center marked as (00.00.00). Blue Star—now a cosmic 'nobody'—occupied the precise coordinates: 68.951.34.
Ye Bai hadn't forgotten that the master terminal also recorded a universal ultimate answer: 6895134.
Whether interpreted alongside the parallel mission to eliminate ti-smugglers or reflected in the fixed number of master terminals controlled by the Church of Myriad Stars, this number clearly held imnse significance—sothing the Myriad Stars sought to uncover.
And yet, Blue Star coincidentally occupied this exact cosmic coordinate.
But that wasn't all. As Ye Bai read further about the initial civilizations of the rebooted universe, her pupils involuntarily dilated.
The reason was simple: the primitive genetic fragnts applied across the universe were all too familiar to her.
They were the foundational genes of Blue Star's people.
No wonder there was a universal consensus that carbon-based lifeforms shared a similar 'humanoid' basic form. Ye Bai had once assud this was due to so natural law, never imagining it was because all primitive genes originated from Blue Star...
This also explained why Ye Bai's body in this epoch—whether reconstructed from wormhole energy and matter or 'smuggled' intact through history—remained vulnerable to the [Genetic Erasure Program].
These primitive genetic fragnts had been modified and tailored before being dispersed to various habitable planets, with the earliest recipients being the two cosmic-level civilizations.
[Psionic Link, guided toward hive-mind, gestalt consciousness developnt...]
[Massive Population Enhancent, guided toward independent individuality developnt...]
The initial genetic alterations clearly followed a technological trajectory, but later records revealed increasingly experintal directions—all inspired by Blue Star's mythological civilizations.
Two entries in particular stood out to Ye Bai, their origins unmistakable:
[Energy Compression Enhancent, Valkyrie...]
[Oxygen-Rich Aquatic Species, Atlantis...]
The forr undoubtedly referred to Silienna's Tianluo Clan, while the latter corresponded to the Illusory Sea civilization of Ye Bai's friend Aurora.
Ye Bai rembered her tourist-like fascination when visiting Illusory Sea, marveling at how its culture reminded her of Blue Star's legends of rfolk and sirens. Never could she have imagined that what she assud was a naturally evolved civilization had, in truth, been engineered from the genes and myths of Blue Star's people in the previous epoch...
As for the Star Church in the Chaotic Star Sea, it isn’t even considered a civilization. While other genetically modified civilizations were given an initial setup by the Stars and left to develop freely, the Chaotic Star Sea completely abandoned the concept of civilization, serving instead as a direct tool for the 'Stars' to interfere with cosmic civilizations.
Yet, unlike other planets and civilizations, Blue Star—despite appearing the most unique—was only seeded with a small amount of the most primitive genes, without any modifications or enhancents.
It seems that while other civilizations were treated as experints, the developnt of life on Blue Star was left to follow its original historical trajectory by the Stars.
The 'Stars,' orchestrating all of this, clearly place great importance on Blue Star.
Ye Bai recalled the small teorite that had caused the people of Blue Star to leave this epoch ten thousand years ago. Could its appearance also have been controlled by the Stars, repeating the history of the previous epoch on Blue Star?
Did this imply that Blue Star’s developnt in the previous epoch, after Ye Bai was put into cryostasis, was not the sa as that of the Blue Star humans in the current universe?
Thinking this far, Ye Bai felt she might have an answer to the question of who had smuggled her into this epoch.
Only the being that helped her cross epochs would have gone to such lengths to warn her to remain undetected and wary of the Stars. Only they would know that the key to restoring her mories and power lay in a player’s ID tag from the ga world of her previous mories.
This entity was clearly a higher-dinsional existence like the Stars, and moreover, an adversary to them.
According to the records in the orb, after the universe was reset, among the many civilizations seeded, the only one that did not reappear was the mysterious Floating Nether Clan—a race suspected to have failed in their attempt at chanical ascension and subsequently beca the foundation of the Star Network.
In the cosmic consciousness of countless civilizations, the Floating Nether Clan has always been both near and far.
Near, because the Star Network they constructed is an indispensable part of the universe’s current form. Even newly joined civilizations in the Star Alliance strive to obtain a Star Network account for real-ti communication across the cosmos. Far, because the Star Network’s origins are shrouded in mystery, its age so vast that no clear answer remains.
By the ti the two earliest cosmic civilizations encountered the Star Network’s access ports, the Floating Nether Clan had already vanished, leaving behind only the network that now connects the universe.
Now, ard with the truth of the universe, Ye Bai had reason to suspect that the Rui Lan and Kai Yin civilizations had only co into contact with the Star Network’s ports and legacy technology because the Floating Nether Clan had smuggled those technologies from the previous epoch, just as they had done with her.
Could the enigmatic Floating Nether Clan be the Blue Star humans of the previous epoch, who had taken a different path of developnt from this one?
Were the natural wormholes that occasionally appeared in the universe also their handiwork?
The Stars issue missions through their church in only two forms: wormhole-related tasks and civilization guidance. In regions controlled by the Star Church, the mont a wormhole appears, a mission to close it is generated.
All other lower-tier missions assigned by the church are issued by its mbers and do not reflect the Stars’ true objectives.
So… if the Stars and the Floating Nether Clan are locked in opposition in higher dinsions, what is the root cause and ultimate purpose of their conflict?
Perhaps the only way to find out is to ask the Floating Nether Clan directly.
The crucial information about the universe’s truth contained in the orb briefly surfaced during its generation before being swiftly erased. Even the earliest mbers of the Star Church were unaware of the truth, having been led to worship the Stars solely by the power of the central hub and the missions it provided. But now, all of it lay bare before Ye Bai’s eyes.
After absorbing all the information, she withdrew her hand. The process, executed at incredible speed, took only four minutes in total.
…
"Boom!"
With a deafening roar, the doors to the grand hall deep within the chanical Sanctum were thrown open.
From the mont the alarm sounded to the arrival of the Star Church’s forces, less than a minute had passed. Yet despite their swift and aggressive response, the eager A-grade psychics found no trace of the intruder—not even a ripple in space to mark their departure.
"What?! How is this possible?"
The group was caught off guard, their gazes shifting to the orb at the center of the room. It had reverted to its original state, the crimson hue now faded. The most senior bishops rushed forward, but no trace of the stowaway could be found in the central control system.
The central hub, which should have continued providing coordinates for the intruder, seed to have lost its target. The bishops checked their terminals—the kill order for the stowaway remained, but without updated coordinates from the hub, the intruder’s location was still marked as "beside the central hub," unchanged.
Frustrated, the bishops attempted to communicate with the orb, but nothing happened. If not for the archived record, it would have seed like… a complete false alarm.
"Where is the enemy?!" More mbers of the Star Church poured into the hall, eager to fulfill the special mission that had existed since the church’s founding.
The bishops, who had been ecstatic and frenzied monts ago upon discovering the stowaway, now lashed out in fury. Their psychic energy erupted violently, clearing a space around them as they roared, cold and commanding: "Search! Find the stowaway at all costs!"
"Y-yes!" The others snapped back to attention.
Deprived of the convenience their terminals usually provided, the Star Church—a force that had long terrorized the Chaotic Star Sea—was reduced to flailing blindly in search of clues.
But no matter how they distorted the space around them, they could never catch up to Ye Bai.
Long before she had even touched the orb, her initial spatial jump had taken her five minutes into the past—aning she had already reviewed all the information before the alarm had even sounded.
No matter how quickly the Star Church’s forces arrived, it was futile. Only the universe-level authority of the [Genetic Erasure Protocol] could reach her, because during that ti, Ye Bai existed in a five-minute window that was forever out of reach for the present universe.
By the ti the Star Church mbers arrived in under a minute, Ye Bai had long since returned to the normal tiline after absorbing everything.
To an outside observer, it would have seed as though she had appeared, triggered the alarm, and then vanished.
Reviews
All reviews (0)