(I was thinking, today is the 5th, maybe I can ask for another round of monthly votes...)
Divine Realm, Book Tower.
Inside this tower lies a very peculiar space structure. Its peculiarity is not rely that all the countless book towers in the Divine Realm share a single space; it’s more than that. In the few fixed areas of the Book Tower, there are over a dozen functional halls, including the Hall of Knowledge, and hundreds of "libraries" open to all Divine Race. These parts are the oldest areas from when the Book Tower was initially established, forming the foundation of this tower. Beyond these areas, the Ancient Spirit in charge of managing the Book Tower has created a much larger number of "virtual storage zones" as needed. These massive, constantly shifting spaces float unpredictably within the complex internal structure of the Book Tower, exhibiting elusive forms. They might appear as an ancient library, suddenly beco a vast castle on so floor of the tower, or even connect to another Book Tower at the Hall of Knowledge. The virtual storage zones occupy four-fifths of the tower’s "capacity" and they expand or shrink at will: this depends on how the Ancient Spirit managing the tower plans its recent growth direction. Only the most experienced Divine Race scholars know the transformation rules of all virtual storage zones, and only one-tenth of those scholars have the ability and permission to read the entire vast data repository. The intricate yet orderly spatial structure of this tower is hard to put into words. I’m confident that the most enormous database ever built by the Empire could not compare to it: its history is so long that it almost extends beyond the concept of "ti" as we can define it. The Book Tower records a vast amount of knowledge that cannot be described by ti, knowledge that exists even outside the world and is completely unrelated to the tiline. It is precisely for this reason that we can use it to search for the most ancient records, dating back to when the Xyrin Ancestors had yet to leave their hotown era.
Father God opened a Teleportation Gate, and through his introduction, I learned that the hall I was in was rely the "surface space" of the Book Tower. This place, known as the Hall of Knowledge, is like the public reading area of a library. If you want to obtain truly profound knowledge, you need to delve deeper into this "library."
Passing through the dark Teleportation Gate, I found myself in a twisted and bizarre space.
This is a place without any up, down, left, or right; there are neither walls belonging to a building, nor ceiling or floor. Surrounded by endless Chaos, dim color bands drift in the extre distance like nebulae in deep space, visible but unreachable. This place reminded of the Hall of Gathering I saw on the Mysterious Side Mother Star in the Fifteenth Day Zone, and the bizarre feeling of these twisted spaces always seems so similar. In front of , a faint golden Long Bridge floated in the air, stretching out to an irregular platform hundreds of ters away. The platform extended more Long Bridges or staircases, leading in all directions. Twisted roads, stairways floating in mid-air, abruptly ending suspension bridges, and two broad avenues leading to unknown destinations recklessly spread out in this strange space. At first glance, they seed like a tangled ss, but upon close inspection, they appeared to have so kind of planning: like capillaries within the human body. I focused my gaze into the distance, seeing these aerial roads mostly led to hallways and pavilions floating in mid-air: they seed like normal buildings, perhaps those were the virtual storage zones.
So this place should be sothing like a space hub within the Book Tower.
Father God and Sovare were waiting a short distance ahead. Seeing snap out of my daze, the forr waved a hand, "Co here, let tell you my thoughts."
I quickly followed, not forgetting to turn my head to check: Bingdisi’s vacant body was still following closely behind . Although it lost the ability to think, the body had seemingly rembered everyone’s instructions upon departure to stay by my side without a step away.
"I have been here before," Bingdisi’s soul said, "This is the deeper layer of the Book Tower, at the junction between the virtual and real storage zones. Typically, only scholars co here, with ordinary students not allowed. But back then, I was the president of the student council, vice-president, learning committee mber, student representative, club manager, and academy representative, as well as a top student, so the Ancient Spirit of the Book Tower let in on a whim."
"You can query so rather abstract information here," Father God interrupted my chatter with Bingdisi, as I saw nurous runes floating around him, seemingly rising from the platform beneath our feet: any facility within the Book Tower could function as a "retrieval terminal," quite convenient indeed, "I plan to approach from the continuity of the tiline, so we can trace all the universes that have had indirect contact with your hotown world and instantly eliminate more than half of the targets, right?"
The tiline was a crucial clue Father God had just thought of.
Seeing my confusion, Father God patiently explained, "Ti is a concept that only holds aning within mathematical systems, and it ceases as a universe fades away: if the world cos to an end and none of the information within this universe manages to spread beyond the World Barrier before doomsday, then this universe will beco a ’black body,’ a completely sealed and locked unknown system, where anything that ever happened inside it can never again be known by the external world. Its history will beco aningless, much like a person who dies before having a chance to speak, what he knew would be taken to his grave with him. The world’s end is a more thorough erasure than death, wiping clean all history it ever recorded. An entity that cannot be perceived in any way and does not affect the external world simply does not exist to the outside. This is a ’black body’ on the level of information."
"However, if this universe established connections with other worlds before its demise, then its tiline could continue through these connections, operating within other closed systems. Even if the world ends, even if everything within that system is erased, the fact that it once made ’contact’ with other worlds will not disappear, thus leaving its ti record in other worlds. This is the crucial clue."
I nodded with understanding. This part of the knowledge sounded complicated, but it was not beyond my comprehension. I had been bombarded by Taville with related theories countless tis when setting up the Ti-Space Administration, so even if I couldn’t understand everything, I could grasp so of it.
"So, the ancestors left their hotown world and then contacted other worlds, thereby inserting so marks into the normal tiline of those other worlds... Can we find the hotown world by following these marks?"
"No," Father God shook his head, "If it were that simple, couldn’t you just find the hotown coordinates from the ancestors themselves? Through the tiline marks, we can only confirm which worlds had information intersections with others and the approximate ti and extent of those intersections. Sovare, list all suspected targets just now, then filter out all tiline traces left by the Divine Race..."
Sovare nodded, and a crystal pillar over a ter high appeared beside him. He gently touched the top of the pillar, and imdiately, the massive information and star-like world snapshot marks seen in the Hall of Knowledge appeared once again, enveloping us like a rotating nebula. Sovare seed to input sothing into the crystal pillar (I didn’t understand how these Divine Race facilities were used), and the vast data sheets quickly refreshed.
Large swathes of golden "stars" were losing color, turning into gray spots, then slowly dissipating in the air. The vast tables were swiftly covered with gray annotations. I realized: the targets marked in gray were the ones being eliminated.
"The tiline records of these worlds contain only one kind of mark, left by gods who once managed or observed these worlds," Father God pointed at the rapidly categorized files, "Apart from that, there are no indications of disturbances on the tiline, which ans they never contacted visitors from other worlds, and the civilization within these worlds did not escape sooner during the apocalypse, these can be ruled out... Hmm?"
Father God paused abruptly; his gaze fell on a docunt in the distance, his expression puzzled.
"What is it?" I couldn’t understand the manipulation system of the Divine Race and noticed nothing unusual in those docunts.
"These records seem a bit off. There are so perplexing annotations here," Father God pointed forward, and a set of data imdiately moved in front of us, "Here. ’Observer’s Additional Log, Reported to the Commander of the Twelfth Legion of the Expeditionary Army: Discovered a large amount of unidentified external information in a native universe, with scarce but highly complex information, judged to most likely co from higher intelligent beings. All information is of the sa origin, determined to co from the sa group of intelligent beings. Information source is anomalous, not belonging to any known intelligent species in existing quadrants. Follow-up investigation advised.’"
"Could those pieces of information have been left by the ancestors?" I felt like I saw hope.
"No, it can’t be," Bingdisi’s mind suddenly beca agile, she quickly refuted my speculation, "This data must have been left before the Xyrin Ancestors escaped, so it has nothing to do with the ancestors of the Angel Envoy."
I raised an eyebrow, "Why?"
"You’re stupid—when the Xyrin Ancestors escaped, the Abyss Impact had already occurred, as described, its scale was probably larger than when the Old Empire collapsed back in the day. Such a large-scale impact would have left so scars on all surrounding worlds—none of the records here ntion discovering the Abyss, they all report normality, which indicates they must be records from before the Xyrin Ancestors left their hotown world."
I suddenly understood, Bingdisi made a good point. Then I began to ponder: What does this record an?
It ans that all those worlds had been "visited" by a civilization capable of freely traversing the Void, so this civilization must be quite powerful. But... this information also seems useless, because it cannot verify that these universes had been on the Xyrin Ancestor’s later exodus route. I looked at Father God, confused, as he ca out of his thoughts: "What I find strange is sothing else, unrelated to the Xyrin Ancestor... If this record is true, then there should have been a very enlightened mortal civilization in the areas the Twelfth Legion of the Expeditionary Army passed through at that ti, at least a group of civilizations capable of freely traversing the Void. Do you know how rare that is?"
"...You didn’t later find this amazing Race?"
"I can be sure, no," Father God said firmly, "Mortal civilizations at that level are very rare. Every one of them is recorded, but I don’t rember any being discovered by the Expeditionary Army on the way. The person who left this record was an Observer, a scout-type soldier in the Expeditionary Army who acted independently; he must have reported this information to his superior, but the Twelfth Legion of that year couldn’t find this unknown civilization, and there doesn’t seem to be more reports left by the Observer. These are the things I find strange."
As Father God spoke, he suddenly shrugged: "Ah, of course, this probably doesn’t have much to do with the intelligence you’re looking for, I just suddenly beca interested in this record. It really is a record from so long ago, maybe the people who handled this matter back then have all forgotten about it. Perhaps I should pay attention to the Twelfth Legion in the future; after so many years, they’ve probably been reorganized countless tis..."
"To make you lant the passage of ti is not easy," I said sincerely, seeing that this being who could consider a five hundred million year plan a short-term planning finally realized the difficulty of change over ti, "Anyway, it’s good that you have a selection path here, more or less..."
No sooner had I said half of that sentence when I heard a low hissing sound suddenly arise all around, and then the images enveloping us flickered violently like a short-circuiting monitor and disappeared.
: "..."
Don’t tell even the operating system that’s used here can crash! I’ve hung all my remaining hopes on the Divine Race on this!
"Exceeded the filter threshold, it seems the processing capability of a single Ancient Spirit is still limited. What’s left will have to wait until Sovare finishes debugging the upper-level system," Father God regretfully shook his head, while explaining what he had ntioned several tis before about the "Ancient Spirit." "Ancient Spirits are managers evolved by the Book Tower itself, intangible and incorporeal, not counted as Life; they are the embodint of information and knowledge, and are integrated with the Book Tower, sowhat similar to what you might call an ’operating system.’ Normally, a single Ancient Spirit can handle general retrieval tasks, but this ti the workload is too big, so we’ll have to wait until both personnel and Ancient Spirits are in place before continuing."
It seems today’s work can only end here. Although I had sent words days ago to the Star Domain to have the massive data repository prepared, it seems now that these records from countless years ago have still exceeded Father God’s expectations; the "Ancient Spirits" used to process the data simply can’t keep up. In this sowhat disappointing situation, no one is to bla; I could see that Sovare had done his best, so I waved to Father God: "No rush, no rush, taking ti leads to better work. By the way, thanks a lot for this, I didn’t expect checking this data would be so much of a big deal."
"It’s alright, it’s not like we have much else to do," Father God said with a gentle smile, "Ah, and you are still going to Bingdisi’s place today, right?"
I suddenly recalled Ice Dad and Ice Mother’s decisive escapes before, and sohow felt a chill run from the top of my head to the soles of my feet, shivering it off, and gave Father God a helpless expression: "It can’t be helped, their daughter is still bound to , coming to the Divine Realm ans I have to let Bingdisi go ho."
"Then see you tomorrow," Father God’s gaze fell on Bingdisi’s (body) following , with the sort of expression a senior would give seeing a naughty kid, "I initially wanted to invite you for a al—I figured out how to make egg-filled pancakes after a few days of research."
I quickly took my leave—chive box dumplings and egg-filled pancakes! Imagine traversing the Void to the Divine Realm, only to have these three als a day, that would be such a great tragedy!
Once out of the Book Tower, I noticed it was already night outside; it seems I dawdled too long in that magical space, and Ice Dad and Ice Mother might think I abducted their daughter never to return.
The nights in the Divine Realm aren’t dark; the surrounding halls and those floating castles in the air, palaces, and grand cathedrals emit a gentle glow under the night sky, shining brightly against those mysterious floating light belts in the Sky. Under Bingdisi’s guidance, I teleported to the outskirts of the "Garden" city, standing on a small hill overlooking this massive circular city; the glow-filled "Garden" resembled a bright full moon imprinted on the earth, and those solitary floating temples in the air seed like light particles drifting from the moon disk: no matter how many tis I see this, I can’t help but gasp in admiration...
"Truly beautiful—"
The Obsidian Palace appeared silently behind us, with dark red light streaming through the long stained glass windows behind us, which made realize Bingdisi’s ho had appeared: her house is a temple floating in Other Space, only docking in reality when people co in or out. I turned around and saw a young woman with short silver hair standing in front of the Obsidian Palace, impeccably dressed as a butler, looking serious, none other than Mo, Bingdisi’s housekeeper.
"Welco, Emperor. Welco ho, Miss. Dinner is ready."
The female butler spoke with impeccable manners, then focused a scrutinizing eye on the deadpan Bingdisi standing next to , until Bingdisi’s soul couldn’t help but shout in the Spiritual Connection: "Stop looking! I’m right here!"
"Miss, is this?" Mo curiously asked, seemingly not yet inford by Ice Dad and Ice Mother what had happened to Bingdisi.
"Just stuck, it’s divine technique out-of-control, haven’t you seen?"
"Oh, so Miss, you were researching those weird things again." Mo nodded knowingly.
It seems everyone familiar with Bingdisi knows about her black history of past ’scientific research,’ to the point where the housekeeper wasn’t surprised at all seeing her Miss stuck in soone else’s body.
Led by Mo, we headed towards the palace, and the door with a face on it at the entrance seed to wake from a nap, greeting us with a soft mumble: "Oh, welco, welco, Duke Blanche and Lady Iles..."
This dumb door never gets nas right! (To be continued. If you like this work, feel free to vote with recomndations and monthly tickets on qidian; your support is the greatest motivation for . Mobile users, please visit m.qidian to read.)
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