Chapter 421: The Cat Gazing at the Stars
When Chen Nuo found the Gray Cat, it seed as if it had long realized it couldn’t escape and was calmly awaiting Chen Nuo’s arrival.
But this creature... lying on the rooftop, head tilted up at the moon, made Chen Nuo burst into laughter.
"You’re a cat, not a dog. Are you going to howl at the moon or sothing?"
The Gray Cat turned its head to glance at Chen Nuo, then licked its paw, but twisted its head back to the moon.
Chen Nuo walked over with his hands behind his back. "What’s so interesting about the moon?"
Surprisingly, the Gray Cat’s eyes revealed a hint of peculiarity. "Of course, it’s interesting—you wouldn’t understand."
Chen Nuo walked over, squatted down, and gently patted the Gray Cat on the forehead.
He also found himself instinctively turning his head to glance at the moon and frowned. "What’s there to see?"
"It wasn’t there before, but later it appeared," the Gray Cat answered seriously, then arched its back, stretching lazily.
"It’s already winter. Isn’t it cold lying on the rooftop at night?"
Chen Nuo simply sat down next to the Gray Cat.
The Gray Cat sighed sowhat helplessly. "I’ve been eating too much lately. Occasionally, it’s better to stay away from your wife."
Chen Nuo narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing the creature. Indeed, it had beco unacceptably fat. The entire cat looked like a fuzzy, round ball.
Chen Nuo didn’t beat around the bush. "What was that force that trapped Lu Xixi’s consciousness in her own Consciousness Space?" he asked directly.
The Gray Cat thought for a mont. "A sort of... rule."
"Rule?"
"Yes," the Gray Cat nodded. "Like before a butterfly’s larva matures, there’s a cocoon to protect it from entering the world prematurely and being hard."
"What else?"
"And..." The Gray Cat trailed off, seeming sowhat uneasy.
Chen Nuo narrowed his eyes. "And it’s nourishnt, right? It seems you’ve gained quite a lot of benefits."
"Mutual benefit," the Gray Cat replied, shrinking its head.
Chen Nuo contemplated in silence for a while, then suddenly said, "Lu Xixi’s awakened ability is different from mine."
The Gray Cat didn’t speak. It turned its head to look at Chen Nuo, then quickly averted its gaze.
Chen Nuo didn’t look at it either, talking to himself. "I’ve confird it. My awakened ability relates to the mastery of space... This... after much thought, is probably because I’m Seed’s Chosen One. Seed excels in spatial abilities, so as its Chosen One, my awakened ability is also spatial. But Lu Xixi is different. Her awakened direction is Life Force."
As he spoke, Chen Nuo suddenly scrutinized the Gray Cat. "What is Life Force?"
The Gray Cat remained silent.
Chen Nuo laughed, running his hand along the Gray Cat’s back. "You know, don’t you? You’ve absorbed so many benefits. How could you possibly not know?"
Seeing that the Gray Cat still wasn’t talking, Chen Nuo frowned. "What’s the matter? Can’t you tell ?"
SIGH.
The cat actually sighed. For a mont, Chen Nuo even thought he detected a hint of pity and sympathy in its gaze.
"I’m just considering how to explain it in a way you can understand," the Gray Cat replied frankly.
"Just say it. How do you know I won’t understand?" Chen Nuo was a bit discontented.
"...Do you know about spatial dinsions?"
Chen Nuo imdiately nodded. "I do. Zero dinsion, one dinsion, two dinsions, three dinsions... We live in three-dinsional space, so we are three-dinsional beings..."
He suddenly paused, then frowned and looked at the Gray Cat. "Wait a minute... Then you... Mother, Seed... What dinsion do you Spiritual Life Forms belong to?"
Indeed, Chen Nuo was sowhat confused.
According to his understanding of physics, the zero dinsion was easy to understand; in essence, it was like a point. A one-dinsional space is a line. A two-dinsional space is a plane with length and width. Three-dinsional space adds height, making it a solid volu.
As for four-dinsional space... that existed only in human imagination.
Chen Nuo even knew that theoretical physics speculated the universe has eleven dinsions. However, those were purely theoretical speculations and assumptions, unverifiable and incomprehensible in detail. They could be disregarded.
But one fundantal understanding existed: lower-dinsional beings, such as humans, cannot truly imagine and understand higher dinsions. For instance, humans are three-dinsional beings. They can only guess at four-dinsional space through imagination but cannot truly understand it—although many hypotheses about four-dinsional space exist, none have been substantiated.
Seeing Chen Nuo stop mid-sentence, the Gray Cat chuckled. "You guessed it?"
"I still haven’t figured it out." Chen Nuo shook his head. "You... what dinsion are you?"
The Gray Cat still didn’t answer, instead asking Chen Nuo, "Whether it’s Mother, or these Seeds who spend all day thinking about becoming Mother... what do you think is the goal of all the competitors?"
"To beco the new Mother."
"To beco Mother? And then what?"
"To repair the flaws, to nd the natural defect inherent in evolving life through this thod of interaction, to fix it and avoid repeating the original Mother civilization’s extinction."
"You already know quite a bit. Indeed, as you said, everyone’s goal is to find a way to fix the flaws in the rules... But..." The Gray Cat looked at Chen Nuo with calm eyes and continued, "Suppose they find it! Then what?"
Chen Nuo was silent.
He thought for a mont and ventured, "...Continue... evolving?"
"Evolve toward what? In which direction? What is the goal of evolution?"
The Gray Cat’s three consecutive questions plunged Chen Nuo into silence.
Seeing Chen Nuo speechless, the Gray Cat smiled and changed the question. "Then, what do you think life is?"
Chen Nuo raised an eyebrow. "Isn’t that the question I just asked you?"
The Gray Cat’s tone was a bit petulant. "You asked what Life Force is; I’m asking you what life is. These are two different concepts. To understand Life Force, you first need to understand what life itself is."
Chen Nuo glanced at the Gray Cat.
After all, Chen Nuo was an Ability User with extraordinary spiritual power, ranking at the pinnacle of humanity. There couldn’t possibly be a problem with his mory. So he recited effortlessly: "An array of phenona that naturally arise in the process of cosmic evolution, characterized by distinct self-growth, reproduction, sensation, consciousness, will, evolution, interaction, and other rich possibilities. This can also include self-replicating amino acid structures produced by biochemical reactions, as well as fungi, bacteria, plants, and animals, including humans..."
Chen Nuo recited it all in one breath and said indifferently, "I don’t forget things I learned in school."
The Gray Cat listened calmly and then slowly offered its assessnt. "That is how three-dinsional beings define life. To be precise, it’s not the definition of life, but ’the definition of three-dinsional life’."
Chen Nuo’s expression suddenly shifted. "You said ’your kind’! So... you an, you, Mother, the Seeds—you are Spiritual Life Forms! You’re no longer three-dinsional beings?"
Now it was the Gray Cat’s turn to fall silent. It lay there, looked up again at the moon overhead, and replied softly, "No... we are, in fact, still three-dinsional life forms. It’s just that... we’ve reached the pinnacle of this dinsional life form. Our ultimate evolutionary goal is to develop toward higher-dinsional life forms."
Develop toward higher-dinsional life forms!
When it said this, Chen Nuo felt a trendous shock in his heart. However, on second thought, it didn’t seem that difficult to accept or understand.
Simply considering Mother herself... if one were to disregard that so-called ’defect,’ Mother as a life form had indeed reached the peak within the frawork of three-dinsional space. Her mode of existence, reproduction, perpetuation, and the length, breadth, and depth of her life all seed to have reached the ceiling of the three-dinsional world.
"You an, Four-Dinsional Life? Your evolutionary goal is Four-Dinsional Life?" Chen Nuo asked involuntarily, his voice dropping several notches.
Four-Dinsional Life—no, even four-dinsional space itself—existed only in human speculation and theoretical imagination.
And after the Gray Cat gave this answer, Chen Nuo imdiately realized a key point: "You... you’ve already figured out how to develop into the fourth dinsion? Four-dinsional space, the form of life within it—you’ve understood all this?"
However, the answer the Gray Cat gave was disappointing to Chen Nuo. "No... we don’t know."
"Huh?"
"Of course, we don’t know! We’re still in the form of three-dinsional life! Lower-dinsional beings cannot imagine or understand higher-dinsional spaces! That’s a fundantal truth. So, the path of evolution is one of groping in the dark, a difficult endeavor, perhaps even a desperate one! Though I don’t know for certain, I’m sure that throughout the long history of the three-dinsional universe, countless lives and civilizations must have attempted this after reaching their peak. And we are perhaps just another latecor among those countless attempters. That’s all. Whether we can succeed, no one knows."
As the Gray Cat spoke, its tone grew sowhat desolate.
Chen Nuo, catching that hint of fear and desolation in the Gray Cat’s tone, suddenly blurted out, "So... that’s why you forfeited this competition?! You’re not a coward afraid of death... but rather, you feel this effort is too hopeless?"
HAHAHAHAHA...
The Gray Cat actually laughed, but its laughter was filled with resignation. "Hopeless? No, not hopeless. You’d have to diminish the word ’hopeless’ by a factor of ten thousand, then a hundred thousand, then a million, then even a hundred million... to even begin to approximate the probability of this endeavor succeeding."
Under the night sky, a scene unfolded before Chen Nuo’s eyes that sent a great wave of stillness through his heart.
The cat was gazing up at the starry sky, tears streaming from its eyes.
A crying cat.
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