Xyrin Empire
Chapter 739: The Secret of the Void

Chapter 739: Chapter 739: The Secret of the Void

The girl I jokingly referred to as a "Mixed Element Life" truly was a rarity. Now, she still has some of the physical structure of a human, but the energy system within her is designed according to that of a Xyrin Apostle. At the same time, she possesses some of the Divine Race’s power, making her nearly impossible to classify into any known Race—perhaps the Supreme Life Goddess could consider creating a new classification specifically for primate-derived beings and just name it Xyrin.

According to the typical logic of a Xyrin Apostle, bearing the Empire’s mark meant one’s ownership by the Empire. That girl named Xyrin, having integrated Ghost Energy within her, would naturally be bound to obey the commands of the Empire. Yet, this obviously did not take into consideration her rights as a free individual. If it were Sandora, perhaps she would naturally assign Xyrin an Imperial Army ID and order her to enlist. However, after some thought, I decided it would be better to let the girl choose how she wanted to live.

Xyrin seemed quite surprised by my decision. Even when we said our goodbyes, she still eyed me and Big Sister with a hint of doubt. Unfortunately, until the last moment, I was unable to change the unfortunate child’s "Uncle" nickname for me.

Meeting that girl was a minor episode, but it triggered a wealth of contemplation: Could such incidents be an anomaly?

Back in the drawing room, I pressed the Pandora Sisters into their seats and brought up the matter of the little girl named Xyrin with Sandora. The latter was noticeably unconcerned with a stranger who possessed Ghost Energy but was very attentive to any Imperial Heritage. Moreover, she expressed the very concern I had been pondering:

"After the collapse of the Old Empire, it undoubtedly left behind countless inheritances: starships, outposts, colonial planets, and all sorts of remote detectors. The remnants an inter-Void civilization could leave behind are astonishing. The Empire’s collapse couldn’t possibly have wiped out all those relics; they are now roaming in the corners of the Void and remote worlds, some of which may still be operational—these legacies could propel a civilization into the high-end ranks overnight or cause colossal disasters."

This new line of thought was instigated by Xyrin’s case. A rash member of the Divine Race used an Imperial Base to create an unofficial Xyrin Apostle. At least that outpost was controllable, but what about the rest? Thousands of outposts are scattered across worlds, and if even one percent of them are still operational, they’re like ticking bombs.

"Similar incidents have probably happened before," said the Dark Goddess, who had been silent all along, speaking softly and drawing everyone’s attention. "My sentries once reported worlds where sudden and unprecedented wars broke out, civilizations being extinguished in an instant. The combat squads that arrived later discovered remnants resembling Xyrin Technology. However, there have only been two or three such reports, devoid of reference significance."

"It might be that some civilization unearthed Imperial Relics and used the weapons incorrectly for civil war," sighed Sandora. "Such things aren’t surprising; events like the Olympus Organization have occurred on Earth."

Well, it’s like giving each lord during the Warring States Era more than twenty Big Ivans. Naive civilizations handling Doomsday Weapons have always been the greatest mass murder. Civilizations still embroiled in civil war and regarded as low-level can hardly resist the power and allure of the Empire’s weaponry. And amongst them, there will always be madmen eager to let the blaze of the Ghost Energy Cannons shine upon them—I learned a harsh lesson when Qianqian, at the age of five, figured out how to wield a fruit knife.

After a brief discussion, Sandora and I unanimously decided to add a new item to the daily responsibilities of the Time-Space Administration: always be vigilant in our worlds for an abnormal technological explosion. Should any nation suddenly gain technological power that surpasses a certain threshold, we must determine as quickly as possible whether Imperial Relics have been excavated. The Administration Bureau’s special units will be responsible for reclaiming those heirlooms.

This caution sparked by Xyrin’s case was a small revelation gained from visiting the Divine Realm. The primary reason Father God sought communication with us was the recent anomalous behavior of the Fallen. On this front, we reached a common understanding. After agreeing on some joint actions for the future, particularly detailing the opening of a Divine Realm Teleportation Gate in Shadow City, Sandora and I decided to take our leave, also intending to fetch Lilina and the other little ones who were already having a blast. But before leaving, a remark from Father God caused me to stay:

"My friend, come with me. There are some things I should tell you in person."

It seemed the actions of the Fallen Apostles were only one reason Father God invited us to the Divine Realm. His other purpose was to reveal something to me.

Once Sandora led her large and small family out of the Father God Temple, Father God himself led me deeper into the temple.

Here was a very profound corridor, the entrance guarded by twice as many guards, perhaps signaling its extraordinary significance. Only the footsteps of me and Father God echoed in the corridor, as Bingdisi and Dingdang did not follow us.

We had been walking down this slowly descending corridor for ten minutes, with Father God still leading silently ahead, leaving me unsure whether to break the silence or to keep following him in silence. Behind, the entrance to the corridor had vanished, not even a speck of light visible, suggesting the passage might be slightly curved. Ahead, the long passageway didn’t seem to have an end. Initially, the walls of the corridor featured the beautiful murals and reliefs common throughout the Father God Temple, but as we ventured deeper, there were fewer of these, and now the walls were bare white stone with torches burning with white flames. I felt that I had left the core area of the Father God Temple and was now entering a special place, as the architectural features of the temple faded away—as if stepping into an ancient tomb.

"Do you know what the Abyss is?"

A peaceful voice suddenly rang in my ear, and I realized that Father God had finally spoken.

"Destruction consciousness?" I recalled the knowledge obtained from Sandora, "Something that belongs neither to matter nor to energy, its very essence is destruction, leading all things orderly towards the end, similar to a will, yet more pure than will itself. The most dangerous thing in the multi-universe, formless and immaterial, spreading rapidly, its origin unknown, but it seems to be related to the Void."

"Yes, that answer is sufficient for you."

Father God spoke softly, and at that moment, we finally reached the end of the corridor: still that indescribable sense of distance, as if we had suddenly arrived at our destination, we came to a pitch-black vast space, and the corridor behind us was no longer visible.

I strained my eyes to adapt to the surrounding dim light, but still, I could see nothing clearly, even the spiritual power that I had mastered yielded no results. This space that might be the "hall" prevented outsiders from observing its true face by any means, blocking both sight and spiritual power.

"Let there be light."

Father God said, and then I finally saw the situation here.

This was not a hall at all, not even an indoor space. We were standing at the edge of a circular terrace with a radius of several hundred meters. The huge circular area in the center was slightly concave, and outside were terraced platforms each several meters wide. The difference in height between each platform level was about a meter, making it look like an ancient arena. At the edge of the circular area, there was a ring of neatly arranged megalithic columns, all spaced equally apart, and their heights were around a hundred meters. Above the stone columns were broken and randomly floating arch-shaped rocks. These giant rocks occasionally drifted together, forming a huge circle with a radius similar to the "arena" below but only for an instant. In the few minutes I observed, they spent most of their time aimlessly wandering high in the air, looking like weightless space debris.

The entire area floated in a desolate space, with nothing else around apart from the circular "arena" beneath our feet, only the cold and silent darkness, like outer space, enveloped this platform.

I curiously looked at this strange place, not understanding what Father God’s intentions were for bringing me here. It seemed like an independent space, the boundless darkness around disturbed my perception, preventing me from accurately discerning my current spatial coordinates. However, the link with the spiritual connection was still clear, and the feedback informed me that I was still within a space of the Divine Realm.

"Look at those,"

Father God said with a smile, pointing to the giant stone columns, "They form a barrier, preventing the Void outside from disturbing the order here. Inside this platform, it’s absolutely safe, but leaving this barrier, you’d directly enter the Void."

I became surprised, the pitch-black space outside was not the universe but the Void. Yet it seemed different from the Void I had seen before, far too calm; perhaps Father God had suppressed it with some method.

"How does this place feel?"

Father God suddenly asked. I scratched my head in confusion, "How does what feel? This place looks desolate, too empty, and the thought of being suspended in the Void always makes me feel uneasy—don’t forget to take me with you when you go back!"

Father God’s expression stiffened subtly, but he still smiled nonchalantly, "Indeed, it’s desolate, but creating order in the Void without generating an Abyss is a very difficult thing. I can’t sculpt it into a world and make it more magnificent. It took me a long time to construct this Void Throne, but it was successful. In this place that will never be eroded, we can safely do many things."

For a moment, I was somewhat stunned, only to realize seconds later: he was about to reveal the true secrets of the Abyss!

"Follow me—this here is my testing ground."

But before I could ask, Father God had already walked ahead on his own, explaining this place, and I could only follow closely, "Many world templates and orders that never existed were born here. I am considered to be all-knowing and all-powerful, but that does not mean that as Father God, I do not need to think and experiment. Now, I am going to show you the truth in the Void."

As the words fell, a faintly distorted shape suddenly appeared in the center of the huge circular space, looking like a bizarre soap bubble, hovering several meters above the platform—a not-so-clear sphere, next to which stood Father God, clearly in control.

"What is this?"

As I was about to touch upon a tremendous mystery, a surge of excitement filled me, but I managed to calm my emotions, focusing intently on the sphere above that was about a dozen meters in diameter. I sensed that it contained immense energy, but it was unlike any type I had ever seen, and even this vague impression was intermittent, impossible to grasp. The massive sphere looked like a faintly colored soap bubble; inside, murky colors twisted slowly, and faint glimmers emerged, uncertain if they truly existed, resembling a still holographic image of some great explosion.

"This is just a simulation, but it already encapsulates all the details. What you see is the ultimate moment of the world’s birth," Father God explained softly as the spherical shape in the air vanished and reappeared, "This is an information bubble, existing in a temporal middle state, in an instant beyond your comprehension, before which it was Chaos, cluttered with information, when nothing existed, just an inconspicuous point in the Void without size or weight, as if disappearing just now. After that moment, Order was born, information was suddenly released, clarity emerged, distinguishable, and matter would be born in another instant, forming the most fundamental entities and crossing the boundaries of nothingness to bring forth mass, as time also began to tick at that instant, the first cry of the new universe—"

The dim sphere suddenly burst into a plethora of colors and underwent explosive expansion in a moment that defies description. Blinding flames swept towards me like a massive wave, engulfing me in the Big Bang that birthed the world. My vision was filled with nothing but the endless colorful torrent, the first light of the world, the first material, the first Order and description. These tangible and intangible things surrounded me... lost in bewilderment, I abruptly realized I had become a lone boat tossing precariously in this tempestuous sea, with everything around me evolving furiously, embarking on the magnificent journey from zero to one. The primordial flashes dazzled me, as I, slow and sluggish, felt out of place in this monumental feat.

Suddenly, a hand landed on my shoulder. Father God reappeared at my side, and the evolving panorama whirling around us came to an abrupt halt, as if someone had pressed the pause button in the middle of a holographic movie.

Dazzling clouds and mist formed the initial clusters around us, with bright flashes like countless diamonds set upon these clusters, the earliest nebulae and massive constant stars shining with the first light in this newly opened Universe. Although merely a model for demonstration, they dutifully released their momentary flashes as if they were their duty.

And so passed the Universe’s first second.

"The world has been born."

Father God spoke softly, as if afraid of waking a sleeping child.

"It’s magnificent."

I exclaimed sincerely, trying to grasp something from the spectacle. Father God did not show me this scene simply to entertain guests with a holographic movie—he was revealing a secret to me, something only unveiled at the moment of world’s birth. Unfortunately, in the end, I couldn’t fathom it.

"Indeed, it is magnificent," Father God nodded, "Every form of Genesis goes through such a process. It may manifest in various forms, but in the end, they all boil down to a qualitative change in an information bubble. The Xyrin Apostles have also mastered Genesis technology, creating Artificial Singularities and causing newly born universes to evolve roughly according to their design. But that technology still converges to this common path—well, that’s not what we’re discussing. What I want to ask you is, did you notice anything disappear at that instant of Genesis? Or should I say, as the world was born, what was... displaced?"

I pondered deeply, ran my fingers through my hair while reflecting, and ultimately could only surrender with a shrug: "Please tell me outright; I can’t figure it out."

Father God seemed to smile as if he’d anticipated this (!?): "Honest. You didn’t resort to a half-baked answer to save face. This relates to the nature of the Void. As we know, the Void encompasses everything; it is the starting and ending point of all things. Various explorations into the Void have shown that it is a realm of absolute ’nothingness’, without length, size, weight, hot or cold, without any describable quantity, forever existing before the birth of concepts... but if the Void was truly such, from where was the world born?"

"The creation from zero to one itself reveals something: to create one, we at least need a ’zero’."

"The Void is this so-called ’zero’, its nothingness is the raw material for the world’s birth."

After sharing these profound ideas, he gave me a few minutes to understand before continuing: "The world is born from zero, essentially breaking a state of ’balance’. In the real world, this balance is seen everywhere: if matter appears, antimatter follows; if energy emerges, dark energy accompanies; as time rolls forward, ’now’ constantly turns into history. Everything follows the singular balance present at creation, which is that all things tend toward zero. This inclination initially spurred the world’s evolution to complexity and ultimately leads the Universe naturally towards its end. One could say this zeroing tendency eased the ’birth pangs’ of the world from the Void, but there is one balance that was doomed to be unrecoverable from the very start of the world’s existence, and this fatal flaw in balance is the Abyss."

Father God bent down and reached his hand into a still nebula, which immediately resumed its evolution, sparking a chain reaction. A torrent of brilliance began to surge around us once more, as countless galaxies robustly grew before my eyes.

"I know Human philosophers have pondered this when thinking about the world," they posited a notion that all things are divided into two parts, one that is known to man and one that is not. In Humanity’s infancy, the circle of the unknown occupied the entire world, but gradually, the part known to man grows... Then, what does a truly All-Knowing, All-Powerful being not know?"

Father God suddenly threw a question at me that caught me off guard, as the surrounding spectacle glittered with galaxies, but I was increasingly lost.

The question he does not know is, "What exactly does he still not know?" Father God said with a very serious expression.

I was momentarily at a loss and chuckled wryly, "Isn’t that question a bit..."

I stopped mid-sentence, as I seemed to grasp the implication of Father God’s words.

"That’s just it, when everything becomes known, whether there is still an unknown becomes the ultimate question, which will forever reside in a paradox, insoluble. The world is the same, when all things in the universe have evolved and settled into balance, something must emerge to break that equilibrium. This disruptor, in fact, are the remnants born after the world’s creation.

The Void is balanced, where all things correspond, thus all things are Void. When the concept of length is born, there comes shortness, when heat arises, there comes the definition of cold; these mutual negations are the highest law the Void adheres to: all things will eventually Zero. The paradox just mentioned is the same, ’finding an unsolvable problem’ is what negates the concept of ’All-Knowing, All-Powerful’ to zero."

Perhaps I could call this a Law-Level Theory of Relativity?

The dazzling cosmic starry sky around us had completed a cycle of evolution, the stars were now noticeably fewer, the nebulas dimmed, new constant stars ceased to appear, and vast voids emerged in this ephemeral universe, signaling the twilight had arrived.

"In the Divine Realm, there’s a toy called the Balance Tower, a very simple trinket, really. It’s just a series of scales, stacked to form a complex structure. On the smallest scale, two equally heavy weights are placed, on a slightly larger scale, one side holds a smaller scale and the other a larger weight, scaling up to even larger scales... The world is like a small scale, with all the matter and energy of the world on its two ends, keeping its pointer steadily at zero, while the Void is a larger scale with the world on one end... and the Abyss on the other.

Of course, in terms of information volume, the Abyss can’t compare to an entire world, but in terms of power, just a bit of the Abyss is enough to destroy the entire ordered universe. When they are placed on the Void’s scale as such concepts, the pointer rests at zero.

The remnants of the world, that is the Abyss."

The cosmic stars nearby gradually extinguished one by one, their lights dimming like underpowered fairy lights, then cooling down.

"Each world birthed produces an Abyss sufficient to destroy a world. Usually, this destructive force is hidden deep in the Void, and when its corresponding world perishes (for instance, the universe reaching the heat death due to extreme entropy), the Abyss too, will vanish due to the Void’s Zeroing law, thus maintaining a state of balance between the ordered world and the Abyss."

The last of the stars before my eyes also declared its demise, and the universe that had been glorious for a moment turned into an icy, silent broth.

"But occasionally, they leak out, tainting a normal world, just like that ultimate question which broke ’All-Knowing, All-Powerful.’ Although the Abyss’s information content is pathetically small compared to the whole world, it is enough to destroy the entire world, plunging everything into Chaos."

The cosmic evolution around me finally came to a complete halt, and the scene beside me reverted to a vast, desolate, circular terrace.

"One question is enough to destroy ’All-Knowing, All-Powerful,’ and a mere remnant is enough to upset the balance of the entire world." (To be continued. If you like this work, you’re welcome to vote for it at Qidian (qidian.com) via recommendation tickets and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation.)