Meteor Fall Master in the 'Starry Abyss'
Chapter 771 - 379. Pulp Fiction

Chapter 771: 379. Pulp Fiction

After bidding farewell to N4, Polina felt increasingly uneasy.

Although that lady seemed mysterious and her relationship with the blacksmith was ambiguous, she didn’t appear to have any ill will toward her.

Of course, she wasn’t exactly kind either, her attitude was akin to curiosity toward a wild animal. She fed her a bit of food, hoping to see Polina’s comical eating habits and take joy in them.

She extinguished the campfire and followed behind the blacksmith, her talkative nature met with his silence, failing to start any conversation.

Their dialogues often went like this:

"Blacksmith, why do you always look so troubled?"

"Because I truly am troubled."

"What did you eat today? Which book did you read?"

"Potatoes, didn’t read."

"Blacksmith, listening to your conversation with the N4 lady, could it be that you are not from this planet?"

"Yes."

The blacksmith would always respond when asked, but he never said more than necessary.

Even after asking a bunch of questions, Polina’s understanding of him was limited to the fact that his name was Leoz.

Aside from that, nothing clear, no known hobbies, no explanation for his significant martial strength, and with such power at his disposal, he chose not to show off but to stay in Valley Peak Village as a blacksmith.

What was he after?

He was poor, with limited resources, no social interaction, no wife and kids, just living in solitude in this world.

He seemed to have almost no desire for anything in the world and was very cold and realistic in his views of everything.

Of course, the blacksmith did have some good points, like valuing promises and having a genuinely kind heart.

Polina was different from the blacksmith.

Perhaps it was her family background or just her nature, but Polina was intensely curious about everything; she was eager to see, to witness, to take action.

They traversed the forest, returned along the river, where the water level had risen, flooding over the flats, with the air filled with the scent of radioactive substances.

The purple night sky hung high among the clouds, undulating like flesh, a sign of the Void’s invasion. The bushes by the stream were laden with droplets of substance rain, and they needed to walk carefully, checking each step, keeping their clothes tight to avoid exposing their skin to the droplets.

The raging river had inundated the basin.

The blacksmith lacked the feudal chivalry of protecting the girl; he simply activated his Gravity Talent and leapt over.

Luckily, Polina was a typical independent female lead; without the blacksmith’s abilities, she knocked down a few large trees, tossed the logs into the river to serve as a makeshift bridge, and with several jumps, made it across without mishap.

"Heave-ho! How about that? I’m clever, aren’t I?"

Polina said with her hands on her hips, showing off.

The blacksmith didn’t even spare her a glance and dropped a line:

"Building a temporary bridge without permission is considered provocation; you could be fined for that."

"Hey! Why’s that?"

"No reason, don’t ask questions, or you’ll be the next."

Defeated in spirit, Polina puffed up her cheeks, quickened her pace to catch up with the blacksmith, and walked beside him:

"I’m telling you, blacksmith, how despairing must you be toward this world to become like this?"

"Taking out loans for work, earning a salary of three thousand, buying a house where only a quarter is the sellable area and it ends up unfinished, unable to withdraw money from the bank, being taught from a young age to be honest, then watching honest people get beaten to death, being educated that studying changes your fate, only to graduate unemployed, thinking marriage and kids would change the next generation’s fate, only to find out the partner claiming to be an independent woman scams you for a dowry then divorces and takes half of your assets, while complaining about not having kids, getting cursed online for saying a joke about men and women, getting splashed with hot paint for saying a cat’s poop stinks, being forced into mediation when your child is made to eat excrement..."

The blacksmith said flatly:

"Although I haven’t experienced this suffering, my empathy allows me to feel it; their experiences are as if I’ve experienced them. Even if I put all this aside, I would still be criticized, ’When you truly understand the salinity of this human civilization, you’d see his thoughts are worthy of his suffering’—even though I’ve done nothing, my thoughts are worthy of my suffering."

Polina fell silent for a moment, then said:

"But there must be good places in the world, right?"

"Sunlight can’t shine into a rat’s gutter. You grew up skiing and riding, nurturing hobbies, sleeping ten hours a day, while I can only compensate for my humble origins with a sweet smile, yet still, get called a leek by the catfish gentry."

The blacksmith walked on calmly:

"But in the end, you’ll realize, all the insults and noise don’t matter, whether you’re poor or wealthy, because only Death and Tranquility are absolutely fair. Everything, in the end, is but a destiny of Void."

"But that’s... so sad, isn’t it? If everyone were like you, lying down, giving up resistance, wouldn’t the Void just completely Destroy everything we have?"

"It’s fair."

The blacksmith said:

"I haven’t led the Void here; that’s already the most passionate way I show my love for the Kingdom."

Polina fell silent, feeling something was off, but she couldn’t quite articulate it.

"Well, uncle, I have a question."

Polina said:

"If everything is destined to be void, what happens if the Void one day perishes?"

"It doesn’t matter, by then I will have already disappeared. If everything has disappeared, then nothing has any meaning, not even nothingness. If nothingness perishes, then let it perish."

The blacksmith’s words were hollow, and to Polina, it sounded as if he didn’t even desire to possess a soul of his own, as though merely existing in this world was a profound suffering and torture for him.

He looked at prosperity indifferently, with no need for physical or spiritual possessions. Advanced knowledge and a broad vision, along with a wealth of experiences, gave him a perspective that transcended this era, allowing him to see through anything at a glance.

Deconstruct, continuously deconstruct.

So-called friendships are just mutual aid for benefits, emotional value complementing.

Marriage is merely a contract for the merging of assets, and love is just for reproduction.

A group exists only for division of labor and cooperation; where there are leaders, there will be those who carry manure. As long as a group exists, there will be hierarchies.

The blacksmith’s cold worldview made Polina feel a chill. Those thoughts and spirits endowed with humanistic value and profound significance were subject to the most ice-cold scrutiny and criticism by the blacksmith.

History is meaningless because whoever comes to power will distort it, and chroniclers will always employ selective recording, mixing in subjectivity. It is even more meaningless for robots to rule over humans, as robots couldn’t care less about managing such waste as humanity.

Constant denial, rejection, and nihilism turned the castles on the ground into cold piles of stones. The splendor of civilization is but a grotesque flower rooted in suffering and bloodshed. Any grand narrative is a hypocritical and meaningless fluke, and caring for specific individuals is even less meaningful, as it’s all for emotional value...

Polina, who had intended to console the blacksmith, was instead bombarded with his nihilistic preaching and nearly didn’t know what to do.

The blacksmith was numb to everything; Li Aozi’s memories and knowledge could not move him. He had already had his self taken away by the Void, without a hint of passion or belief left in him.

Having adopted Li Aozi’s realism, he, who already embraced the Void, now possessed clear logic and belief. The more Polina communicated with him, the more she understood the blacksmith’s emptiness.

The village was getting closer.

Until at last, Polina didn’t know what to do. Kicking stones on the roadside, her emotions finally erupted, and she couldn’t help but complain:

"Fine, fine! Everything is meaningless—so if that’s the case, Mr. Blacksmith, why don’t you just die now?"

Thwack.

The blacksmith stopped walking, and Polina almost bumped into his broad back. She exclaimed "Ouch" and looked up at him quizzically:

The blacksmith reached out his hand toward the sky.

The purple firmament writhed like flesh, the Void was breathing, and the Inherent Time Domain had gradually finished expanding.

If what Li Aozi remembered was correct, once the Inherent Time Domain formed, the entire Dragon Satellite would be incorporated into the territory of the Void.

Here, they enjoyed the same sun rising with Zhou Yuan among the ranks of Void overlords and Sovereigns, but they would also be forever unable to leave, forever part of the Path of the Void.

As with the President’s ballots, they lived forever for the grand narrative of nihilism.

Narrative Civilization never exploits individuals; it simply restricts your actions and beliefs. Your existence is its most precious value, and the Void, as the sixth narrative, is no different.

If you are mediocre, you are but living firewood.

If you have extraordinary talent, then when you die, you will be integrated into the grand narrative, becoming the foundational Strength of the expansion of the Inherent Time Domain.

"[Use an individual’s lifetime as ink to continue the glory of the grand narrative.]"

—This is the secret of Narrative Civilization that the Life Commune has researched and revealed.

In this regard, Narrative Civilization has no difference from Society.

Li Aozi would deliberately forget those things because his ambition made him yearn to establish his own grand narrative.

The blacksmith was tired of it all; he despised the struggle, loathed the endless rat race, and only the Void could bring an end to all that.

Everything is meaningless, even the Void itself is meaningless.

But when Polina asked why he continued to live if everything was meaningless, the blacksmith was taken aback.

He just reached out his hand, touching the sky. Fragments of memory surfaced in his mind.

"...The moon."

The blacksmith murmured:

"I promised someone I would take her to see the moon."

"The moon?"

Polina blinked:

"The moon... What is that?"

"I’ve never seen it, although I know what it looks like, I don’t know... how to see it. As you can see, this planet has no moon."

The blacksmith lowered his head, his gaze dim.

Polina caught the ’her’ in his words and immediately said insinuatingly:

"Uncle Blacksmith, you are truly a man of your word."

"No, I am not—I just... want to leave with nothing, that’s all."

"In that case, the person you made the promise with must be very important to you, right?"

"Dead," the blacksmith said blandly.