Jiang Ling finished what he wanted to do, the sense of time became blurred, and the world turned into a stagnant nothingness.
Her consciousness was like a dandelion scattered by the wind, countless memories transformed into flickering points of light, exploding, dancing, and wandering like dye dissolved in water, silently and rapidly permeating the infinite space constructed by her own body, gradually outlining the contours of this space. This was not the universe, at least not a universe that belonged exclusively to humans, so the so-called "space" was only a conceptual meaning. Consequently, many physical terms here also lost their scientific rigor, becoming metaphysical natural philosophy.
Time disappeared and everything returned to silence, as if nothing had happened.
Humans subjectively refer to the world after time disappears as the "world of the dead," because the disappearance of time means the cessation of entropy growth, the cessation of change, and the cessation of life. They may believe that such a world does not exist, but the scientific method tells them with certainty: "This" does not exist.
But does it really not exist?
New changes quickly emerged. Emerald green light ignited within the void, feeling itself bask in warmth, and so it ignited slowly. Initially, only a finite and infinite stream of data converged here. Only as the volume of data accessed and exchanged gradually expanded did the physical changes necessary to mass-produce photons occur. It was like a painting: from the moment the blank page is drawn to the moment the brush is put away and dried, the pattern is completed in a split second, yet the process is indescribably long. Several concentric rings unfolded around the point of light, with unknown characters pulsing on them. They circled and swirled, increasing in thickness and diameter. Each one of them was a self-contained entity, utterly distinct from the surrounding objects, yet seemingly connected.
In the darkness, an indescribable entity gradually emerged. It had no physical substance, yet possessed a consciousness and thinking beyond imagination. The photons entangled nearby were the waste products of its thinking. Clearly, simply by thinking here, it could change many things.
"Jiang Ling!" A complex emotion was released from its thoughts.
Thoughts spread out in the form of ripples with it as the center. From a broader perspective, this ripple transcends the limitations of time and space and reaches every corner of the empty world almost instantly.
"Eh——" the infinitely distant being replied infinitely close.
Such an answer sounds a bit like the mumbling in a sleep, too leisurely and too tranquil, as if it can no longer be moved in any way, as calm as a pool of stagnant water - stagnant water covered with green algae and emitting a foul stench of decay.
"Where are you?" it asked with concern.
"Me? I'm everywhere."
This time the sound lingered in its ears—if it had ears—and was as omnipresent as the message contained in the sound.
"That... I want..." the consciousness thought, it wanted to meet the owner of the voice.
"You've already done it." The unknown being said, "Your current self is both a part of you and a part of me. You need to go back. You don't belong here."
"Where am I going?"
“You’re going to a place where time still flows, but it’s not the past, the present, or the future. It will be different from your memories, but you can still find similarities between them.”
"What am I going to do?"
"You can do anything, or nothing, but you can't stop. You can go in any direction, make any choice, and reach any outcome without regret, and without the possibility of regret."
"Okay, so how do I get there?"
"Close your eyes."
The consciousness closed its eyes.
It suddenly occurred to it that it had no eyes, but in the next moment, it felt its eyes, and then felt its torso, internal organs, limbs and bones - and perception itself.
It has a feeling:
The universe was born and time flowed;
Space is expanding, matter is cooling;
New particles began to condense and new laws began to form;
The star is lit up, and leptons are converted into baryons;
The stars are shining and the sea of stars is vast.
It has some memory:
Life is born in the ocean and ends in the soil, and they are a cycle;
The fish climbed onto the shore, never to return to the water, but it looked up at the sky;
Knowledge is enriched through inheritance, wisdom grows through experience, and naiveté matures through tempering;
Individuals combine to form wholes, tribes expand to form civilizations;
The world is beautiful, but the truth is cruel.
It remembered some things and forgot some things. Countless choices were intertwined at this moment, but in the end, it still made its own choice firmly.
It opened its eyes and saw the world outside its own small world through the bubbling light green solution.
A figure with black hair and green eyes flashed, speaking an incomprehensible language and making incomprehensible gestures, repeating this every 30 minutes, never getting tired of it, endlessly.
But it knew that it was its own kind...
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