CHAPTER 1300: CHAPTER 207: ECHO: WHEN IT COMES TO MADNESS, I’M COMPLETELY DEFEATED

"Demon of the Abyss..."

Finally hearing these crucial words, Ian shook his head to calm himself: "Life existing in the event horizon? Simply inconceivable..."

The Star of the End is the Black Hole.

At the end of its life, a massive star’s nuclear fusion can no longer counteract its own gravity, causing most of its material to collapse inward, forming a supernova explosion while creating a black hole at its core.

The black hole holds the majority of the star’s mass, and at the Schwarzschild radius centered at this black hole, a ’layer’ formed, isolating it from the external universe, known as the event horizon.

Even light, once it enters the event horizon, can never escape.

To beings like the Star Gods, embodiments of light, aside from choosing death themselves, only a black hole can give them a conventional sense of the end.

In short, from a conventional standpoint, nothing within the horizon can influence anything outside it; the internal and external areas of the black hole’s event horizon are basically two different universes.

Even the Prophet cannot predict what lies inside the event horizon; they cannot be observed, let alone predicted.

But, True Ether does not follow convention.

As a civilization of cosmic level, the Star Gods who have surpassed the speed of light and time, their creation True Ether surpasses the gravitational pull and event horizon of black holes, infiltrating into their depths.

Then... the disaster struck.

"What exactly is the Demon of the Abyss?"

Ian asked, unable to suppress his curiosity, he spoke: "An event horizon of a massive star spans only a few kilometers—of course, tens of kilometers isn’t out of the question, while the Schwarzschild radius of the supermassive black holes in the Milky Way Galaxy might even exceed some planetary orbits."

"But generally, this space is extremely, extremely small... how could life possibly exist there?"

[No Idea]

Echo’s response was straightforward: [Your question is good, but, indeed, there is no answer in my memory]

"What?"

Ian was astonished: "You know about the birth and origin of the Star Gods—yet you are unclear about the greatest enemy of the Star Gods?!"

[The birth and origin of the Star Gods are inherent in the Soul of Origin, contained within the Rites of the Star Gods]

Echo replied calmly: [As for the Demon of the Abyss, up to now, neither the Star Gods nor any other civilization can fundamentally understand what they really are... Are they life forms or natural phenomena? Are they natural disasters or malicious destruction? No idea, I only know that the Demon of the Abyss never moves toward an absence of light and gravity, beyond that, nothing is known]

—Echo has hidden something.

Ian sensed the other’s concealment, but it wasn’t related to the Demon of the Abyss, rather concerning the Rites of the Star Gods... Even if the Rites as a reward for the Pioneers included descriptions of the Star Gods’ own origins, it wouldn’t be unusual, but it would never be so detailed!

Yet this issue must give way to the Demon of the Abyss: "But surely there’s some phenomenon—it has caused some phenomena, leading all life to call it a ’demon’?"

[They shattered physics]

Echo said: [It’s as if physical laws simply don’t exist for them; whether it’s weapons or observation devices, they will be destroyed upon approaching, laser beams will bend randomly and irregularly like snake crawling, finally completely dissipating; cannonballs will deform, then suddenly vanish; deploying space-time strikes will burn the weapons themselves, and data suggests we are exerting force on the entire universe, akin to attempting to blow away a sea’s water with a straw, or scoop it with a cup in an attempt to halt a river’s flow]

[But this is just the least harmful aspect of them—when these Magical Beasts crawl out of the black hole, they begin to spread at the speed of light, extinguishing nearby stars]

[Initially, just years later, surrounding stars suddenly collapsed, turning into black holes... Then in larger areas, more stars... until eventually, at superluminal speed]

[As if in the blink of an eye, the spiral arm of the first affected Milky Way Galaxy was devoured, all the stars transformed into black holes, and it had only been twenty-eight years since they were released]

The illusion before him started to shift, one of the previously radiant spiral arms of the Milky Way abruptly darkened, composed of countless irregular circular black gaps, all light swallowed, completely vanished.

Another year passed, half the Milky Way was devoured.

Then... the entire Milky Way disappeared without a trace, as if it never existed.

This is the cosmic calamity The Abyss of Demise

A black void spanning over the universe.

Ian remained silent.

At this moment, he felt chills.

A galaxy, with hundreds of billions of stars; under the influence of the Star Gods, among them perhaps over a hundred million stars have the potential to nurture basic life; and civilizations on ten thousand stars can develop to a stage of civilization... They all could gaze at the stars.

Yet, in thirty years, the entire galaxy disappeared.

Hundreds of billions of stars extinguished just like that.

As if they never existed.

"The greatest fear... is the unknown..." the young man muttered: "Nothing is understood, creeping out from the event horizon of the universe’s abyss."

"Originally existing only within that unimaginable hell, eternally silent being, but True Ether’s power that spans infinite space-time guided them out..."