Mrs. Shao
"Definition: Existence."
That cold question wasn't a sound, but a torrent of information imprinted directly on the surface of consciousness, carrying with it the antiquity and absoluteness of cosmic background radiation. It didn't seek a linguistic answer, but rather a conceptual, rule-based "definition."
Inside the bridge, Hong Shun, Ahmet, and Gu Zhixing froze, their eyes blank. Their minds seemed frozen, even their thoughts frozen by the grandiose question. Only Shao Wei, at the moment the question arose, his mental power resonated with the core of Guixu with unprecedented intensity. An icy blue light erupted from his body, like a beacon in a storm of information, barely maintaining clarity of mind.
But he also felt the terrifying pressure. This wasn't a contest of strength, but a crushing pressure on his cognition. The "Observer" was demanding that he use a "definition" to explain the very foundation of his own existence, and indeed the very foundation of all things!
Countless philosophical speculations, physical formulas, and the rise and fall of civilizations in the Guixu database flashed through his mind... But any known, systematic knowledge seemed pale and powerless in the face of this pure "definition" requirement, like trying to depict the stars with a sand castle.
The pressure suddenly increased! His consciousness wall groaned under the heavy burden, as if it would burst at any second under this unsolvable problem!
Just as my consciousness was about to collapse—
Si Qi's soul, which had been quietly resting in the life support device, reacted once more. It wasn't a burst of energy, nor was it a reawakening of consciousness. Instead, the corner of his mouth, on his dimly lit, sleeping face, twitched ever so slightly... almost imperceptibly.
It wasn't a smile, but more like a kind of... mockery of a certain absurd reality that came from the soul's instinct.
At the same time, a faint but extremely clear thought, not through language, but like telepathy, directly entered the core of Shao Wei's consciousness that was on the verge of collapse.
That thought was not an answer, but a... scene.
It was the bedroom where they had lived together for three years, but which was as cold as a cage. Late at night, he had a high fever and curled up on the bed with a blurred consciousness, feeling the coldness of life slipping away bit by bit. And Si Qi, the Alpha who was always calm and self-controlled and regarded marriage as a formality, stood by the bed, his shadow hanging over him. No touch, no words, just standing there for a long, long time. Then, he turned and left, and when he came back, he was holding a glass of water and two of the most common fever-reducing pills in his hand. He put the water and medicine on the bedside table with a somewhat stiff movement, still without looking at him, but just said stiffly: "Don't die here." Then, as if he had completed an extremely disgusting but necessary task, he quickly turned and left, closing the door.
It was this scene. This scene, filled with indifference, arrogance, yet revealing a touch of clumsy, unspeakable...care in the details.
This scene itself has nothing to do with the grand definition of "existence." It is trivial, personal, and even a little ridiculous.
However, the moment this scene flooded into Shao Wei's consciousness, an inspiration came to him!
He understood the silent "taunting" of Siqi's soul and the purpose of conveying this scene!
"Existence" cannot be fully summarized by any grand, cold, absolute definition!
It is precisely hidden in those seemingly meaningless, contradictory, and even absurd moments! Hidden in those clumsy concerns covered by arrogance, hidden in those silent guardings bound by formalities, hidden in those pains, struggles, and intertwined love and hate... in the concrete!
What the "observer" pursues is an absolutely objective and logically self-consistent "definition", which in itself is the most fundamental deviation from "existence"!
The ice-blue light in Shao Wei's eyes suddenly retreated, no longer a resistance, but turned into an extreme calmness and...insight.
He no longer tried to find answers from the knowledge base of Guixu, but instead focused all his mental energy on himself, on those ignored, contradictory, yet extremely real moments in the past between him and Siqi.
He reflected those moments—the bitterness of the coffee, the solution to the problem, the cleansing after the susceptible period, the calmness under the diagnosis, the last look back before the explosion... as well as the scene of the fever-reducing medicine late at night—all the details, all the emotional colors, all the contradictions and unities, without any refinement or definition, as if it were a disordered painting with all the paint splashed on it. Through his connection with Guixu, he suddenly "reflected" them back and cast them at the "Observer" body composed of logical optical cables!
He wasn't "answering" the question.
He is using the undefinable chaos and reality of his own "existence" to challenge the cold logic that pursues absolute definition!
Buzz——!!!
The moment the "disordered information packet" filled with emotions, contradictions, absurdity and warmth crashed into the core of the "Observer", the entire structure composed of logical optical cables suddenly stagnated!
It was as if a supercomputer, operating with precision for eons, was suddenly fed a stream-of-consciousness poem riddled with grammatical errors and contradictory meanings, yet overflowing with passion. All logical threads were instantly thrown into unprecedented chaos! The fiber optic cables' rotation and reorganization abruptly stopped, and a blinding white light erupted from the structure's surface, the manifestation of a conflict of rules reaching its peak!
"Definition... wrong..."
"Logic...paradox..."
"The information...cannot be processed..."
Intermittent fragments of information filled with "confusion" and "stuttering" emanate from the "observer".
It couldn't "understand" what Shao Wei threw back. Because that wasn't a logical proposition that could be "understood" at all. It was life itself, the most primitive and unformattable raw data of "existence" itself!
"Now!" Shao Wei shouted to Guixu in the mental connection!
Guixu seized the moment when the Observer's logic core briefly stalled due to overload, a thousandth of a second! It didn't attack, but rather, it thrust a highly concentrated probe containing every detail of the "fever-reducing drug scene" into a seemingly insignificant data node within the Observer's structure, like a scalpel, precisely recording an ancient observation log.
"Search for matching items: records of behavior similar to 'meaningless interference.'" Commissioner Shao issued the final order.
Guixu's execution efficiency was extremely high. Almost the moment the probe connected, a dusty observation record from extremely ancient times was forcibly extracted, amplified, and projected onto the main screen of the bridge, directly reflecting on Shao Wei's consciousness:
[Observation Log - Era Unknown - Coordinates X-7 Meteorite Falling Point]
[Subject: Primary carbon-based intelligent life form - Codename: 'Watcher' Generation 1]
[Event: Target individual, driven by the logic of maximizing the group's survival probability, made an irrational choice: consuming its own scarce energy to engage in continuous, inefficient "caretaking" of a severely damaged individual of the same species whose repair value was lower than its consumption value. The motivation for this behavior is unexplained and does not conform to the optimal survival strategy. Recorded as "Pointless Interference" Sample 739.]
[Note: This behavior pattern bears 0.03% resemblance to certain illogical "compassion" projections of higher-dimensional beings, the "Thread of Life." Continued observation is required.]
The record ends here.
But the amount of information exploded on Shao Wei!
"Pointless interference"... "care"... "irrational"...
Is there a similarity to "Compassion" in "Threads of Life"?!
It turns out that this wasn't the first time the "Observer" had observed this kind of "meaningless" behavior that defied logical explanation! Even in the ancient past, it had equated the Si family's ancestors' instinctive protection and compassion for their fellows with the "weave of life," even though it couldn't understand it at all!
And Siqi's action of putting down the antipyretic medicine late at night, in the logic of the "observer", is probably also classified as the same kind of "meaningless interference"!
At this moment, all the clues in Shao Wei's mind were like being split apart by a bolt of lightning and instantly connected together!
The "weave of life"...its seemingly selfless "compassion" and "giving"...
The "Observer" records and puzzles about the "meaningless interference" behavior...
The mission of the Si family's "Watchmen"...
The "Original Blood" pollution brought by the X-7 meteorite...
And that warning message - "Weaving is not good"...
A startling and chilling speculation has emerged:
The "Thread of Life" and the "Observer" may simply be two sides of the same coin! Or, in other words, they are different projections of a higher-dimensional consciousness! The "Thread" represents the illogical tendency of "compassion" and "interference," while the "Observer" represents absolute "logic" and "objectivity"!
On the scale of the entire universe, they are conducting a grand...experiment on the meaning of "existence"?!
And the Si family, the entire "Original Blood" incident, and even the paradoxical relationship between him and Si Qi, were all just... an observation sample in this huge experiment?!
This speculation made Shao Wei feel cold all over!
At this moment, the "Observer," barely recovering from its logic overload, seemed to have fallen into a kind of "logical rage" due to the forced access to its core database. The massive structure no longer attempted to question or analyze, but instead mobilized the spatial laws of the entire "Wall of Silence" area, transforming into countless invisible, galaxy-torn giant hands, clutching at "Guixu" fiercely! It wanted to completely eliminate this "abnormal sample" that could not be defined and instead polluted its logical core!
"Avoid!" Red Falcon screamed, controlling 'Guixu' to make extreme maneuvers, but the crushing of space came from all directions and there was no escape!
Seeing that Guixu was about to be completely torn apart by the rules of this abnormal space——
A hint of determination flashed in Shao Wei's eyes.
He suddenly hugged Si Qi's soul in the life-support device tightly in his arms. At the same time, he poured all his mental strength, vitality, and new understanding of "existence" into the core of "Guixu" without reservation!
"Since it cannot be defined—"
He raised his head, his icy blue eyes staring directly at the crushing torrent of destruction composed of rules. His voice was calm, yet it carried the power to shake dimensions:
"That is—existence itself!"
Driven by his will, the Guixu ancient ship abandoned all defenses and evasions, and all the ice crystal patterns on its hull burned with unprecedented brightness! It was no longer a warship, but at this moment, it became an extension of Shao Wei's will, a huge, declarative information singularity, heading towards the crushing torrent of rules, towards the cold sea of logical light, towards everything hidden behind...
Brazenly.
Bumped into it.
No explosion, no light.
Only the most extreme "existence" and the most absolute "rules" occurred unprecedentedly at the most basic level.
put one's oar in.
The collision of "existence" and "rules" did not produce the expected cosmic explosion. Instead, it was a more fundamental, more silent annihilation and reshaping. Everything outside the observation window—the cold sea of logical light, the twisted laws of space, even the vast structure of the "observer"—was like a pencil drawing erased by an eraser, rapidly fading and dispersing, returning to the purest, fundamental nothingness, a void that rendered even the concept of "nothingness" redundant.
The ancient Guixu ship itself trembled violently in the collision, disintegrating. Its dark silver hull peeled away like a sandcastle, revealing its skeleton, composed of pure icy blue information flowing within. Hong Kushan, Ahmet, and Gu Zhixing were unable to even utter a cry of surprise before their figures blurred and became transparent, seemingly merging into the void.
Shao Wei held tightly to Si Qi's increasingly solid yet still dormant soul in his arms. He could feel his own being being washed away and diluted by this primordial power. His consciousness was like a candle in the wind, ready to go out at any moment.
Is this the price of provoking the "observer" and colliding with the "rules" with "existence"? Mutual destruction?
No.
Just when his consciousness was about to sink completely, the heart of the soul of Siqi in his arms - the light core that was simulated by the faint light and was originally just beating regularly - suddenly lit up.
It wasn't the unconscious energy resonance of before, nor was it a stress response from deep sleep. This time, the light carried a clear, active, and almost resolute will!
Then, a fragment of memory belonging to Si Qi's deepest consciousness, which was encrypted, blocked, and not even fully recorded in "Guixu", broke through all obstacles like the last black box of a shipwreck, and rushed into Shao Wei's consciousness that was about to dissipate!
---
(Memory fragment - Siqi's perspective - Time: 3.17 seconds before the laboratory exploded)
Darkness. Thick darkness that smelled of blood and burning flesh.
His body no longer felt any pain, only a hollow feeling of his soul being torn from within, on the verge of annihilation. That old Shao Qing had detonated the core of the "Original Blood," and this "vessel" that had been so carefully nurtured and then so ruthlessly abandoned had finally reached its end.
Okay.
"Life is inherently meaningless." He had once glimpsed these words in Shao Wei's notebook, and at the time had thought them nothing more than a cowardly whine. Now he understood that perhaps they were the fate of their kind of "works," something the other person had long foreseen.
It’s just... a bit regrettable.
His consciousness, like a damaged film, began to flash through chaotic images. Childhood isolation training, the family mission instilled in him as a teenager, his marriage to Shao Wei, a marriage that began with conspiracy and was filled with indifference... Finally, it froze on the shattered pain in Shao Wei's icy blue eyes when she learned the truth, and then... when she pushed him away, those eyes, besides determination, seemed to hold something else, something he couldn't discern in time.
What is it?
Never mind, it doesn’t matter.
The energy of annihilation has reached the core, and the last perception is rapidly peeling away like the receding tide.
Just before his consciousness completely sank into darkness—
An extremely weak, yet ancient and cold thought with unquestionable majesty, as if it had traveled through eternity of time and space, suddenly and forcibly connected to the core of his consciousness that was about to collapse!
[Detected that a high-value 'contradiction sample' is about to be destroyed.]
[Definition: Sample period (container), carrying some of the characteristics of the "key" and the strong emotional paradox.]
[Definition: Sample Shao Wei (variant), marked by an unknown high-level energy, the 'Thread of Life', presents a high degree of uncertainty.]
Conclusion: The observation value of the sample combination "Siqi-Shaowei" exceeds the threshold. The "Paradox Anchor" protocol is permitted to be initiated.
What?! Who?!
Si Qi's remaining consciousness struggled violently, but the level of this thought was too high, like a god looking down on ants, with an absolute and irresistible will.
[Protocol Execution: Strip the core consciousness imprint of the sample and inject it into the reserved interface of the replica of the 'Key' of the 'Guixu' ancient ship.]
[Price: Sample Si will lose most of its memories and emotional connections, retaining only its 'existence' and its 'unfinished obsession' with Sample Shao Wei as a positioning anchor.]
[Goal: Ensure the survival of the sample combination, guide it to contact the 'Observer', and provide the ultimate paradox data of 'existence' and 'absolute rules'.]
No! He didn't want to be used as a specimen! He didn't want to lose his memory! He didn't want... even the last bit of emotion he had towards Shao Wei, the one he hadn't even had time to figure out, to be taken away!
He resisted frantically, using up his last bit of strength to try to destroy his core. He would rather be completely annihilated than become a designated pawn in this unknown game!
However, that ancient thought just "stared" at him coldly.
【Refusal is invalid.】
【Command confirmed.】
[Begin peeling——]
Indescribable pain instantly overwhelmed it! It was as if the softest part of the soul had been gouged out alive, leaving only the most core, cold framework of "existence" and a forcibly imprinted, empty and intense obsession with a certain figure...
In the final moment before his consciousness was completely formatted, he "heard" the final whisper of that ancient thought, as if it were talking to itself, with a hint of indescribable, almost human fatigue:
[“Another… ‘error’ that tries to defy the program…”]
[…Perhaps, ‘He’ is right…pure ‘observation’…can never touch ‘truth’…”]
Then, there was endless darkness.
---
The memory fragments ended here.
Shao Wei's consciousness felt like it had been pulled from the icy sea. He gasped violently, and once again felt his "self." He still held Si Qi, still in that collapsing void, but everything seemed different.
It turns out... Siqi's "survival" wasn't a miracle, but the product of a more ancient will hidden within the "Observer" and even the "weave of life," a cruel "sample preservation" experiment! Stripped of almost everything, Siqi was left with only his "existence" and his "obsession," becoming a living anchor that guided him toward the "Observer" and provided him with "paradoxical data"!
And that ancient thought's final, contradictory whisper... Who is "Him"? "Mere observation cannot touch the truth"? Does this mean that the will behind it itself has also begun to... waver?
At this moment, a tiny light appeared in the depths of this original nothingness.
The light did not come from outside, but was born spontaneously from the core of Shao Wei and Si Qi's tightly embraced and intertwined consciousness.
It was faint, yet possessed a peculiar quality—neither the cold order of Guixu, nor the compassionate tenderness of the "Weave of Life," nor the absolute logic of the "Observer." It was like the forced blending of countless deconstructed fragments of rules, the reverberations of indefinable emotions, and the purest will to exist, resulting in something entirely new, chaotic, and brimming with possibility.
This strand of original information was like a stone thrown into stagnant water, creating a circle of tiny ripples in this original nothingness.
Wherever the ripples pass, nothingness begins to "grow".
Instead of returning to the original starry sky, nor establishing new rules, some bizarre and fleeting fragments of scenery began to emerge in a completely disordered and unpredictable way:
A rose burning with black flames.
A castle built of silent notes.
A desert flowing with liquid starlight.
A... a complete Si Qi who turned around and smiled at him, with clear eyes and a love that he had never seen before, without any haze.
These scenes are illogical and contrary to common sense, yet they are filled with a certain absurd and astonishing...vitality.
They are the external manifestations of the paradoxical singularity that were accidentally born when Shao Wei's own "existence" collided with the "rules" and completely merged with Si Qi's soul, which was stripped of everything and only had the most essential "existence" and "obsession" left, at the level of consciousness!
This "singularity" is itself a living paradox that cannot be logically understood by the "observer"!
The new, chaotic original information seemed to feel Shao Wei's gaze, swayed gently, and then, like a chick returning to its nest, slowly and firmly merged into Si Qi's sleeping soul.
The light core at the heart of Siqi's soul body suddenly stabilized, and the light became introverted, but it seemed to have an indescribable...vitality and possibility.
At the same time, at the end of this chaotically "growing" void, a tiny "crack" composed of pure light quietly opened. From behind the crack, the familiar fluctuations of starlight belonging to the normal universe could be faintly heard, as well as... the low humming of the ancient ship "Guixu" as it stabilized its structure.
A way out was forcibly created by them between absolute destruction and rules!
Shao Wei lowered his head and looked at Si Qi, who seemed to have undergone some subtle changes but was still sleeping in his arms. An unprecedented complex wave surged in his ice-blue eyes.
Angry at the cold manipulation of the will behind it.
I feel heartbroken that Siqi has been deprived of everything.
But more importantly, it is a more resolute determination after enlightenment.
No matter whether it is the "weave" or the "observer" behind it, no matter whether they are gods or demons, no matter how big the chessboard of this game is.
He clung to his "anchor," his "paradox," his lost and recovered, now unrecognizable half of his body.
Looking up at the crack of light, his eyes were as sharp as newborn stars.
"Let's go."
He took a step forward, stepping on the absurd scenes that kept emerging and disappearing under his feet, heading towards the road that led to the unknown but bound to be full of storms in the future.
This time, they are no longer observed samples.
They themselves are the most uncertain variables thrown into this cold universe.
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