Chapter 546: The Long Ending

The sensation of falling hit abruptly, fragments of light and shadow sweeping past like a storm, a vast torrent of information flooding into his mind, then roaring and howling away into the distance.

Yu Sheng didn't know how long he had been "falling" through the chaos. He only felt as if he had instantly experienced an unknown number of switches between life and death—or perhaps it was simply that his consciousness had been churned into confusion, losing all sense of life and death. Then, at last, his consciousness ceased this nearly eternal fall, drifting lightly as if it had been "sent" to some place.

He opened his eyes in the darkness, and first saw a city. Within the city, towering spires rose like a forest, standing tall as if trying to prop up the sky. Between the spires, endless chains were connected, all dyed black, mimicking the form of a spiderweb.

Above the city, the sky was gloomy, with sparse stars. A bizarre canopy covered with dense crimson stripes lay like a thick, oppressive shell, enveloping the entire world.

Then he saw a crowd of people, gathered inside a colossal building, clustered around some enormous computing device. The crowd moved back and forth in the hall, tense and busy. They were all faceless—mere hazy silhouettes, their features indistinguishable.

Finally, he saw a mountain, an extremely tall mountain—soaring as if to reach the starry sky.

The city at the foot of the mountain stretched endlessly, towers standing densely within it. The temple at the summit was magnificent and awe-inspiring, decorated everywhere with the marks of spiderwebs.

A long staircase extended from the foot of the mountain all the way to the summit. On the platform before the temple, dark-colored banners fluttered. Figures of monks gathered on the platform, as if surrounding some kind of observation device. A voice was shouting, hoarse and blurred, repeating itself several times before Yu Sheng could barely make out the meaning—

"They succeeded! The ones nearby… They built a sun, reshaping a habitable zone with the world's remaining mass and information… Ashes can endure!"

Yu Sheng's consciousness drifted aimlessly, and at some point, he came to rest in front of the temple. He passed through the shouting figure, hearing the muttering of the crowd around him—they were discussing some sanctuary, discussing ashes, anchor points, the observer effect, and the continuation of the world.

Then, suddenly, all sounds disappeared, and the entire world froze at that moment.

Yu Sheng instinctively looked up and saw the temple gates wide open, revealing only darkness and chaos within. A vast silhouette in the depths of that darkness was watching him. He couldn't make out its form; all he could see was that it had the lower body of a spider and a female torso, with eyes as crimson as the dense, strange stripes in the sky.

A voice abruptly sounded in Yu Sheng's mind—

"It was not until much, much later that I learned… that not every world's end lasted that long."

Yu Sheng, now calm, did not step into the temple. Instead, he sat down on the stone floor in front of the gate, gazing at those crimson eyes in the shadows: "Are there differences in the length of an apocalypse?"

"Yes," the voice said, gentle and patient. "Some are very fast. The crimson scar pierces through the entire world in an instant, so everyone is caught unaware—it's over before they even realize the end has come. Some are slower; the people still have time to mourn and fear, to cry out loud, or to send a team to save the world in a futile but not prolonged struggle. Some are even slower; they can plan a proper farewell, ushering in peace after weeping and chaos, or they can make some… desperate but meaningful attempts."

Yu Sheng hesitated: "And… what about you?"

"Ours was even slower," the gentle voice said softly. "It lasted six thousand six hundred and sixty years—starting precisely when we first observed space, and afterward accompanying our entire civilization."

Yu Sheng drew a sharp breath.

But the voice continued, as if unconcerned.

"So, from the day our civilization first awakened, the end of all things was a countdown hanging over everyone. It didn't require some vague prophecy, or endless conspiracy theories and arguments. It was right above our heads—slow, real, advancing day by day without rest…

"The observable universe was collapsing, a very slow collapse… and we were approximately at its very center.

"Scholars said that this universe had once been stable, because the noise of the cosmic microwave background still bore traces of those beautiful times. They said that in those days, stars were abundant, the scale of space was unimaginably vast, and between the stars there were no crimson streaks serving as countdowns—only a serene, deep black. The races that lived in that age were blessed; they didn't even know when the end would come, so much so that they might need to invent world-ending horror stories to scare themselves…

"But we did not live in such good times."

The sound of something hard and sharp scraping against the ground came from the darkness. Yu Sheng saw a long, jointed limb slowly extend from the temple gate—covered in black carapace, its surface etched with dense, intricate, and elegant patterns. It inspired fear, yet seemed to radiate an indescribable sense of… sanctity.

The limb stopped beside Yu Sheng.

There was no malice.

"No wonder a race would take 'ill omen' as their faith, and construct their entire worldview and belief system around it," Yu Sheng said thoughtfully, but his gaze was fixed on the frozen figures before the temple. "But it seems the ones who created you… didn't want to just accept fate."

"Survival is an instinct of living beings. In the years of a slow apocalypse, the weak die first; those who remain want to live all the more."

"…Calculation?" Something occurred to Yu Sheng—the dense formulas in the Jinglin Sanatorium ward, the constantly calculating 'doll' in the Black Rock space station, the ultimate truth pursued by the Black Dot Corporation. "…Were you trying to find the solution to the 'Creator's Equation'?"

"We tried many things, and we split and fought civil wars over them. We even nearly faced extinction before the apocalypse. Some advanced, some retreated. Some sought truth, others embraced folly. A great deal of blood was spilled on this temple square. What you call 'calculation'… was merely one of the paths that ultimately prevailed.

"But at least most of us reached a consensus on that path: to understand 'destruction,' one must first understand 'creation.'"

Yu Sheng: "Creation?"

The slender, jointed limb gently lifted, pointing to the frozen figures on the temple square.

The gentle voice sounded in Yu Sheng's mind.

"In the third millennium of the apocalypse, we observed that the 'walls' of the world were thinning. And as the observable universe continued to collapse and shrink, this phenomenon became more pronounced. Gradually, scholars discovered that specific methods could be used to capture certain 'information' that seemed not to belong to this world…

"So we built a great number of observation devices, hoping to see what lay beyond the crimson shell.

"But the initial observations… nearly broke the strongest and most optimistic among us."

"What did you observe?" Yu Sheng asked involuntarily.

"Remains. Corpses of the universe. The howling of the annihilation of all things echoed through the corpses of millions of terminated universes, turning into maddening noise," the long limb scratched the ground uneasily, as if the terror and despair felt by the ancient believers when they first observed the 'outside' were still imprinted in this deity's memory. "Everything was over. Beyond the world, only embers remained."

The immense shock left Yu Sheng speechless for a moment, but the next thing that came to mind was the memories of Ankayra and the Starspawn—and a scene he had once seen in a vision: a line of dark angels arrayed in a row.

It took several seconds before he suddenly snapped to attention: "But later, you seemed to have observed something else…"

"Yes. There were always those who wouldn't give up. So, after countless episodes of fatal madness and deformity, we finally discovered a… 'survivor settlement.'"

"Survivors?"

"A pile of embers, the wreckage of several destroyed worlds gathered together. Someone rekindled a fire among those embers and raised a new sun," the slender limb tapped lightly against the ground. "The information we obtained from observation was very blurry. Establishing communication was impossible. After several attempts, we only got a vague amount of limited information, and a name…

"'Boundless Sea.'

"That was what they called their sanctuary."

The gentle voice paused there, then continued: "Despite the limited information, it greatly encouraged us. Because the existence of the Boundless Sea sanctuary proved one thing—

"Re-creation after a world's end was possible."

"Creation…" Yu Sheng unconsciously repeated the word again.

He felt he had already guessed what sanctuary they had observed.

Bai Liqing had once said that before the 'second singularity,' the previous age, the 'Old World,' had been called the Deep Sea Era.

"And so our calculations began—for the 're-creation' after all things ended," the ancient outer god said softly. "We didn't have so many embers gathered together, nor did we have the multiple chances for trial and error that they had. The only thing that could possibly serve as a sanctuary, as an 'observer-effect stabilization anchor,' was a single 'god'…

"There was only one chance, and the timing was fleeting. We couldn't afford any mistakes. So we began setting up a large number of observation devices in what remained of the universe, to precisely measure the shift of space-time, to summarize the patterns of transformation in the flourishing and extinction of all things. The believers carefully adjusted the rituals and doctrines of the faith, so that I could understand their intentions and prepare for the new world…

"The scholars calculated day after day, searching for the final solution to the Creator's Equation. The engineers began building a colossal engine deep within the mother planet—so that when the final day came, the engine would use the apocalypse as a trigger, creating our own sanctuary…

"This continued for another three thousand years. Finally, everything was ready.

"Then we solved the Creator's Equation.

"After such a long struggle, we finally obtained all the data needed to rekindle the embers, we derived the final conclusion—"

Yu Sheng unconsciously held his breath. He seemed to sense what was coming, but still asked involuntarily: "The conclusion was…"

The long, slender limb gently rested on Yu Sheng's hand.

"There wasn't enough mass left in the universe."