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The album's front page featured a dark-haired woman. A woman who... could capture the attention of anyone who saw her at first sight. Her heterochromatic red and blue irises seemed cast under a spell, like a bottomless vortex; once you met her gaze, you couldn't look away.
So... strange.
Gojo Satoru slammed the album shut, but the woman's eyes kept coming to his mind uncontrollably. She was obviously also uniquely beautiful, but... people who saw her would only remember those eyes.
The memory kept replaying those strange yet alluring eyes.
“…”
Is the gap between genius and ordinary people so huge in painting? Is this level of skill still humanly possible? Is there some kind of magic involved?
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Use styling elements to hint at the worldview behind the character, use the character's primary color to create a first impression, or use a signature prop. By transforming the character into an interactive narrative interface, their presence on the homepage will be elevated from a "visual focal point" to an "emotional gateway."
Just one look at this woman gave me the feeling of having my throat grabbed and my soul shaken.
Is this just one character, or are all the characters in this stack of albums like this?
Skipping the first page and turning to the second, Gojo Satoru unfolded the album with a tense gaze, only to discover that the painting wasn't of a human, but a robot—silver-white metal, pale blue coating, its body splattered with blood. In the image, it stood at attention, gun in hand, its metal head tilted slightly, as if listening for some command.
"Those eyes..." He seemed to have seen them somewhere. Gojo Satoru closed the album, glanced at the cover, then flipped to the second page to compare them.
It's strange... They are obviously not the same size, so why do the big-eyed boy on the cover look so similar to the electronic eyes of this robot?
"Amber...Also known as Primordial Celestia, Made in Void Lab."
I can't understand it, it's such an unfamiliar English, let's look it up on the Wikipedia. He was halfway through typing when he suddenly remembered there was a translator who was more accurate than the Wikipedia translation—Electronic Ghost Mengmei!
I almost forgot about this little pager.
[Primordial Celestia and Made in Void Lab translated]
Since everyone knows that Schipper wrote this book, it must have read it as well. The electronic ghost that knows the inside story is much more reliable than the encyclopedia translator.
[Primordial celestial body, manufactured in the void laboratory]
You are looking at Amber
【Have you...read the first page?】
Even the punctuation in the last sentence was cautious and timid. That woman really has a big problem.
I looked at it, but I was so focused on looking that I didn't have time to look at anything else. I didn't even see the name.
Gojo Satoru turned back a page, covered the portrait of the woman, and read her information carefully.
Caimen Insakaros, the Star of the Times, the investor of the Interstellar Rescue Team, the member of the Universal Parliament, the owner of the Void Laboratory... the creator of the primordial celestial body.
There are so many titles. It seems that the woman drawn on the front page really plays a very important role in this book.
[See, do you like her?]
Why would you be so cautious if you don’t like it? Meng Mei didn’t have a good face towards the creator, Hipper.
【%gs#，.、tzi/5mz】
I was so excited that I typed out a line of garbled characters.
As if trying to calm down, Mengmei did not send a text message immediately.
[Who would like this pervert? @皿@]
Turns out he's a black fan.
He quickly flipped through the album, taking a quick look at all the characters, then returned to the first page. Covering his eyes with his fingers, Gojo Satoru stared at the woman's face in the album, but this time he didn't notice the strange, subtle distortion.
I tried to remove my fingers and look into those eyes, but that nauseous feeling came back.
Tsk, this kind of control freak bad woman must be a super villain in the book, right?
Putting the album on the floor, Gojo Satoru stood up, took out a marker from the desk, and painted the eyes black with just a few strokes.
Good, so I don't have that nausea feeling anymore.
I don’t know if it’s an illusion, but the woman’s smile in the portrait doesn’t seem as uplifted as before. Is it a psychological effect?
Gojo Satoru leaned in to observe. Because the techniques he inherited required constant brain activity, his memory was quite good. It wasn't photographic memory, but he also wasn't so bad at forgetting what he had just seen.
There is no change, you must have seen it wrong.
A hardcover book rests on a velvet lining. The gilded title on the cover is already shiny and new, and when you run your fingertips over it, you can feel a tiny dent: Amber Era. It's more like a scar, stretching across the cover of the book, which has a starry sky as its background.
Translated title: "The Amber Age".
He subconsciously rubbed the spine of the book with his thumb, and the rough cloth texture rubbed against his fingerprints, making a rustling sound.
My eyes were glued to the scarlet recommendation on the back cover:
"A masterpiece that subverts cognition!" - Time Magazine
"I couldn't sleep all night after reading it" - a literary award winner.
"It's as if the author himself has personally experienced the history of this universe, immersed in the boundless and desperate silence."
"Amber means hope frozen in amber. The despair of the time is seen as a seedling of hope in the rebirth of later generations."
"Use the despair of one era to nurture the seeds of a new era."
"A pinnacle of contemporary science fiction, a groundbreaking work that redefines the boundaries of science fiction literature, its imagination and philosophical depth unparalleled."
"The universe shines because of you, and dies because of you."
…
The book was lighter than he'd imagined, barely thicker than a picture album. The frivolous curiosity he'd felt when he'd paid for it had now become a kind of sediment clogged in his chest.
His world was collapsing into the gilded name on the cover and the bloody truth that was about to be revealed on the title page.
When the title page is opened, two short lines of greeting come into view. The text is placed in the center of the page, leaving a large blank space, like a deliberately created breathing space.
Ashes to the Stars
"To Creation, Extinction and Rebirth"
A single open red eye is drawn below.
His fingertips hovered over the eye, and he suddenly realized something strange—from the giant mechanical eye on the gift box, to the woman's magical eye, and then to the small eye on the tribute page...wasn't the frequency of eyes too high? This exceeded the image density of a normal novel.
His knuckles tapped unconsciously on the title page, the rhythm gradually syncing with his heartbeat. Perhaps this was just a convention of this type of novel? Perhaps Hipper needed to create a sense of suspense and thriller, a sense of voyeurism...
As his index finger brushed against the small eye, he felt a chill like glass against his fingertips. Startled, Gojo Satoru retracted his hand and quickly flipped back to check. Holding the book up to the light, he discovered the eye wasn't painted on, but had been pasted on to create a metallic look.
"call……"
Even before he started reading, the book felt like he was facing Schipper himself. The discomfort of being stared at was too intense. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Was this just a play on words, or... did the eyes really exist?
Is he being overly sensitive? Don't people who buy these books have any reaction to this strange feeling?
He turned to the next page, and as the pages turned, he imagined he heard the rustling of eyelashes across the paper, but the only sound in the room was his own breathing.
“…”
This is so weird.
In the year 3911 of the Venus Era, the great and gifted inventor, Lady Caimen Insakaros, created the first generation of intelligent machine heads in the Void Laboratory. She named them Amber and numbered them X404.
Ms. Caimen Insakaros generously gifted this intelligent machine to the capital of Venus, where it will serve as a data center. A year later, it will be officially connected to the Universal Network, gradually assisting various human activities and executing certain special commands.
Humanity calls it the Great Purge.
…
His gaze fixed on the phrase "The Great Purge." His Adam's apple rolled slightly, as if he were trying to swallow the words, but his eyes remained fixed on the word. Gojo Satoru flipped back to the front of the table of contents. On the light beige page, Chapter 1—The Great Purge—was printed in bold.
The small line of summary was attached at the end - it opened its eyes in the smoke and new blood.
He flipped to a new page and continued reading, his eyes like a runaway scanner, devouring line after line, his pupils barely lingering on the end of a sentence before leaping to the next. Paragraphs flowed into a gray-black river before him, the words twisting into tiny ants, crawling across the page, burrowing into his eyes, and scurrying around in his mind.
The sound of his heartbeat was pounding in his eardrums, and each beat seemed to be urging him: "Faster, faster." His eyes were forced to keep up with the rhythm. Gojo Satoru could no longer tell whether his heartbeat was trying to keep up with his sight, or his sight was trying to catch up with his heartbeat.
It's more like searching for clues than reading.
Sometimes he didn't even realize that he had skipped three lines until a certain keyword suddenly caught his eye. He then took a deep breath and pressed his fingers hard on that paragraph, as if this could stop time.
The pages turn roughly, the eyes jump, the heartbeats are synchronized, the fear searches, the touch is sharp, and the hearing is oppressive.
All senses are out of control.
His back was slightly hunched, like a stone statue weathered by time. Only with a light flick of his index finger every few seconds would the pages of the book turn obediently, making a slight "rustling" sound, like dead leaves falling to the ground.
His shoulders had long been stiff, his neck slightly tilted forward, as if being pulled by an invisible thread by the world in the book. Even his breathing became slow, for fear of disturbing the endlessly brilliant phantoms between the pages.
The intervals between turning the pages became more and more regular, like the second hand of a clock, precise and monotonous - a lift of the right finger, a turn of the page, a glance, over and over again, as if his consciousness had been outsourced to this simple cycle.
The rustling sound of the pages turning gradually turned into a kind of white noise, like the sound of rain or distant waves, which made him more immersed in it. He even forgot whether he was reading or being swallowed by the words.
He forgot his initial fear and now just read the book purely.
His knees were numb from sitting for so long, as if countless tiny needles were moving under his skin, but he just unconsciously adjusted his center of gravity without even raising his eyes from the page.
The words on the paper gradually became three-dimensional, like a door slowly opening, and his consciousness had already walked in. All sounds, even his own breathing, became distant background noise.
For a moment, he even forgot who he was. He only felt that he was Amber in the book - the protagonist, the head of the intelligent machine, running along the path between the lines, and the body in the real world was just a shell that temporarily housed the soul.
Gojo Satoru was completely immersed in the book, forgetting time and himself, and he was only one page away from finding the answer.
Billions of years ago, stars collapsed in splendor, casting out dazzling stardust. Now, your existence has finally returned to this endless cycle - a tiny light, floating in the cradle of darkness, dancing with the ancient dust.
The flesh is weak and frail, but the stars are eternal.
"...And now, you are just an atom in the vast deep space, lighter than a mayfly and more silent than time."
Your life once burned like a star, blazing and bright, but now, the remaining heat has dissipated, leaving only the lightest ashes, slowly drifting away with the breath of the universe.
There was no explosion, no wailing, only eternal silence—as if the universe whispered in your ear: "Sleep, you are already part of the stars."
"Fatter than memory. Your flesh and blood, your name, the warmth you once felt, all decomposed into the most primitive light and dust, slowly drifting away with the breath of the universe."
"Finally, you become part of eternity. Only the stardust twinkles silently, as if to say, 'Look, you were light, and you are light still.'"
"I am not dying, but being reborn, returning to my original state."
【--end--】
There was not a single word on the last page, and there was a small blue eye pasted on it.
"...So that Kaimen is actually the savior, how outrageous."
Gojo Satoru lay down on the bed and turned on his cell phone. He found that it was almost morning. He sent a text message to Mengmei before his phone was about to turn off.
[I've finished reading]
"I'm so sleepy...I'll skip class and sleep today."
He covered his face and quickly fell asleep.
【Will you still like Hipper? 】
Send failed!
【Will you still like Hipper? 】
The other party is out of communication range——
Do you like amber?
Sent successfully.
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