Chapter 546 The Long End

The feeling of falling suddenly hit me, fragments of light and shadow swept across my vision like a storm, and a huge torrent of information poured into my mind, then roared and whistled away.

Yu Sheng didn't know how long he had been "falling" in the chaos. He only felt as if he had experienced countless switches between life and death in an instant, but it seemed as if his consciousness was simply disturbed and he had lost the perception of life and death. Then, his consciousness finally stopped this almost eternal fall, and he felt light and floaty, as if he had been "sent" somewhere.

He opened his eyes in the darkness, and the first thing he saw was a city. In the city, there were towering spires like a forest, standing tall as if to support the sky. The spires were connected by endless chains, all dyed black, imitating the shape of a spider web.

Above the city, the sky was gloomy and the stars were sparse. The strange sky covered with fine scarlet stripes was like a thick and oppressive shell, enveloping the entire world.

Then he saw a group of people gathered in a huge building, crowding around some huge computing equipment. People were coming and going in the hall, busy and nervous. They had no faces, only hazy shadows, and their facial features were difficult to distinguish.

Finally he saw a mountain, a very high mountain - it seemed to be reaching for the stars.

The city at the foot of the mountain is boundless, with tall towers standing in the city; the temple on the top of the mountain is magnificent and awe-inspiring, and the temple is decorated with spider web marks everywhere.

A long staircase stretched from the foot of the mountain to the top. A dark-colored flag fluttered on the platform in front of the temple. Monks gathered on the platform, as if surrounding some kind of observation device. A voice was shouting, a hoarse and unclear voice repeated several times before Yu Sheng could barely understand the meaning of the words.

"They succeeded! Those nearby... they built a sun, using the remaining mass and information of the world to reshape the habitat... Ashes can survive!"

Yu Sheng's consciousness drifted, and he didn't know when it landed in front of the temple. He passed the shouting figure and heard the people around him whispering - they were discussing a certain shelter, ashes, anchor points, the observer effect and the survival of the world.

But suddenly, all the sounds disappeared and the whole world froze at this moment.

Yu Sheng subconsciously raised his head and saw that the door of the temple in front of him was open. It was dark and chaotic inside. A huge shadow was staring at him in the depths of the darkness. He could not see the shadow's appearance clearly. He could only see that it had a spider-like lower body and a female body, and its eyes were scarlet... the same color as the fine and strange stripes in the sky.

A voice suddenly sounded in Yu Sheng's mind -

"It wasn't until much later that I realized... that not every end of the world lasted that long."

Yu Sheng calmed down at this moment. He did not enter the temple, but simply sat down on the flagstones in front of the gate and looked into the scarlet eyes in the shadows: "Does the duration of the Doomsday still make a difference?"

"Some," the voice sounded gentle and patient. "Some happened quickly, with red scars instantly piercing the entire world. Before anyone could even realize the end was coming, everything was over. Some happened more slowly, giving them time to mourn and fear, to weep bitterly, or to send out a team to save the world, a futile but not lengthy struggle. Some happened even slower, allowing them to plan a proper farewell, ushering in peace after the wailing and chaos, or perhaps to make some... slim but meaningful attempts."

Yu Sheng hesitated for a moment: "Then...what about you guys?"

"Ours is slower," the gentle voice whispered. "It lasted for six thousand six hundred and sixty years—beginning exactly when we first observed space, and continuing throughout the course of our civilization."

Yu Sheng took a deep breath.

But the voice continued as if it didn't care.

"So, from the very beginning of civilization, the end of all things has been a countdown before us all—no need for vague prophecies, no need for endless conspiracy theories or arguments. It is right above our heads, slowly, truly, and steadily increasing in size...

"The observable universe is collapsing, very slowly... and we are almost at the center of it.

"Scholars say this universe was once stable, because traces of beauty still remain amidst the noise of background radiation. They say that in those days, the stars flourished, the scale of space was incredibly vast, and there were no scarlet streaks between the stars, representing the countdown, but only a quiet and peaceful deep black. The people who lived in that era were blessed. They didn't even know when the end would come, so they might have had to invent some terrifying apocalyptic stories to scare themselves...

“But we didn’t have those good days.”

The sound of a sharp, hard object rubbing against the ground came from the darkness, and Yu Sheng saw a long limb slowly emerging from the temple gate - covered with a pitch-black shell, and the surface was covered with dense, complex and elegant textures, which was frightening, but seemed to exude some kind of indescribable...holiness.

The limb stopped beside Yu Sheng.

No ill intentions.

"No wonder a group of people would believe in 'bad omens' and build their entire worldview and belief system around them," Yu Sheng said thoughtfully, his gaze fixed on the frozen figures in front of the temple. "But it seems that those who created you... don't want to accept their fate."

"Survival is the instinct of all living things. In the years leading up to the end of the world, the weak will die first, and those who remain will want to live even more."

"...Calculation?" Yu Sheng suddenly thought of something—the densely packed formulas in the wards of Jinglin Sanatorium, the constantly calculating "puppet" in the Blackstone Space Station, the ultimate truth pursued by the Black Spot Group. "...Are you trying to find a solution to the 'Creator's Equation'?"

"We've tried many things, split apart over them, fought civil wars, and even nearly faced extinction before the apocalypse. Some advanced while others retreated. Some sought truth while others embraced foolishness. Much blood has been shed before this temple, and what you call 'calculation'... is only one of the paths to victory in the end.

"But at least most people have reached a consensus on this path - to understand 'destruction', we must understand 'creation'."

Yu Sheng: “Creation?”

The slender limb was gently raised and pointed at the stagnant figures in the temple square.

A gentle voice sounded in Yu Sheng's mind.

"In the third millennium of the apocalypse, we observed that the 'walls' of our world were becoming thinner. As the observable universe continued to collapse and shrink, this phenomenon became increasingly apparent. Gradually, scholars even discovered that they could use specific methods to capture some 'information' that seemed to not belong to this world...

"So we built a large number of observation devices in the hope of observing what's happening beyond that scarlet layer.

"But the initial observations... almost broke even the strongest and most optimistic among us."

"What did you observe?" Yu Sheng asked subconsciously.

"Wreckage, the corpses of universes, the roar of the destruction of all things echoes among the corpses of millions of ended universes, turning into a maddening noise." The slender limbs scraped the ground uneasily, as if the fear and despair felt by the former believers when they first observed the "outside" were still imprinted in the god's memory. "Everything is over. Outside the world, only embers remain."

The huge shock made Yu Sheng speechless for a while, and what he thought of next was the memory of Ankaela and the derivative star body - and the scene he had seen in the illusion, with dark angels surrounding him.

After several seconds, he suddenly realized: "But you seemed to have observed something else later..."

"Yes, there are always people who refuse to give up—so after repeated fatal madness and distortion, we finally discovered a... 'survivor settlement'."

"survivor?"

"A group of embers, the debris of several destroyed worlds piled together. Someone rekindled a fire within those embers, raising a new sun." The slender limbs tapped the ground lightly. "The information we've observed is very vague, and establishing communication with it is even more impossible. After several attempts, we've only vaguely obtained very limited information and a name...

“‘The Vast Sea’.

"That's the name they gave to their sanctuary."

The gentle voice paused here before continuing, "Although the information is limited, it is greatly encouraging to us, because the existence of the 'Boundless Sea' shelter proves one thing - re-creation after the end of the world is possible."

"Creation..." Yu Sheng repeated the word subconsciously.

He already felt that he had guessed what was going on in the shelter that "they" had observed.

Baili Qing once said that before the "second singularity explosion", the previous era of this universe, the "old world", was called the deep sea era.

"So, our calculations began—for the 're-creation' after the end of all things," the ancient Outer God whispered. "We don't have as many gathered embers, nor do we have the same opportunities for trial and error as they do. The only one who could possibly carry the shelter and act as the 'Observer Effect Stabilization Anchor' is a 'god'...

"This opportunity only comes once, and the moment is fleeting, so we dare not make any mistakes. We have begun to set up a large number of observation devices in the remaining space to accurately measure the shifts in time and space and summarize the transformation laws of the birth and death of all things. The believers have carefully adjusted the procedures and doctrines of religious rituals so that I can understand their intentions and prepare for the new world...

"Scholars calculate day after day, searching for the final solution to the Creator's equations, while engineers begin constructing a massive engine deep within our home planet. When the final day arrives, the engine will use the apocalypse as a trigger to create our own sanctuary...

"This went on for more than three thousand years, and finally, everything was ready.

“Then we solved the Creator equation.

"After such a long struggle, we finally have all the data we need to rekindle the embers and come to the final conclusion—"

Yu Sheng unconsciously held his breath. He seemed to have thought of something, but he still spoke subconsciously: "The conclusion is..."

The slender limb gently rested on Yu Sheng's hand.

"The universe is running out of mass."

(End of this chapter)