CHAPTER 445: CHAPTER 445: DRIFTING

Reality? Or Illusion?

Yu Sheng could no longer tell, and he felt that perhaps there was no need to distinguish between the two anymore.

He stood amidst a kaleidoscope of light and shadows, surrounded by boundless, endlessly shifting crystal curtains glowing with magnificent phantom light. In this ever-changing crystalline space-time, the concepts of up and down, left and right, cause and effect all seemed to be lost. Vague illusions and indistinct voices constantly appeared among those curtains, and in this space where everything was constantly changing, a white-haired sage stood quietly on the opposite side.

He was no longer in that terrifying form fused with the deformed crystal, and he was also slightly different from the Yun Qingzi Yu Sheng had seen on Guard-3... a different "aura."

Yu Sheng hesitated for a moment, slowly approaching the sage’s figure, then hesitantly broke the silence, "Yun Qingzi?"

"Indeed, it is I."

"...Which one are you?" Yu Sheng asked again.

The sage smiled, "Does it make a difference?"

Yu Sheng did not speak, only slightly furrowed his brow—he then belatedly realized that he actually had a "body" here and wasn’t just a cognitive projection.

"A thousand years, a hundred and twenty-two iterations, the original Yun Qingzi has long since died, yet the great dao has myriad facets... Yun Qingzi might never have died, I might have always been here," Yun Qingzi said slowly with a faint smile on his face, "Compared to my shallow changes of life and death, isn’t the secret on you even greater? For instance, right now—are you alive or dead?"

Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then spread his hands, "It seems a part of me may have died a bit."

Yun Qingzi paused for a moment, then laughed heartily.

"What is this place?" Yu Sheng asked curiously after waiting for the other to stop smiling, "Inside the Inference Star Body? Does this place truly exist, or is it a kind of ’Consciousness Space’?"

Yun Qingzi gradually put away his smile and shook his head, "It could be anything you think it is; for a wanderer coming from ’outside,’ our understanding of space-time and order does not hold much meaning."

"So what exactly is the current state of the Inference Star Body?" Yu Sheng asked again, "You seem to have broken free of its control—so is it really close to dying?"

"The Inference Star Body was never really ’alive’ from the very start, perhaps the same is true for other Dark Angels... when they came to our world, they had already died countless ages ago," Yun Qingzi said lightly, "But if you’re referring to the ’vitality’ of the Inference Star Body, then it truly ’died’ the moment it left Shuji."

Yu Sheng furrowed his brow.

"That leap out of the atmosphere drained its power," Yun Qingzi calmly looked at Yu Sheng, "My friend, you were successful at that moment."

Unexpected, yet seemingly not so unexpected.

Yu Sheng slowly lifted his head, gazing around at the chaotic light and shadows of this space, filled with crystalline textures, while simultaneously recalling the voice he had just heard in the darkness.

"I heard a voice earlier," he broke the silence, "The voice urging it to root and survive, that seemed to be the memory of the Inference Star Body? So is it merely a seed? Is it simply repeating this process of ’rooting’ and ’surviving’ as it parasitizes one star after another?"

"That voice you heard, I have heard for a thousand years," Yun Qingzi said, gently shaking his head, "I actually do not fully understand either, because the ’Inference Star Body’ lacks clear logic and wisdom—its chaos is beyond your imagination. However..."

He paused suddenly, then turned around and gently waved his hand.

"There are some things here, hidden deep in its memory, perhaps those are the answers you seek."

The splendid crystal curtains before them began to ripple, and within the transparent light and shadow curtains, some blurry images gradually appeared.

A planet, magnificent and dazzling, sparkling like a space gem under the sunlight.

A plant, more majestic than mountains, more vast than oceans, more ancient than civilizations.

It rooted itself on the planet—for the first hundred thousand years, it was part of the planet, and for the next hundred thousand years, the planet was part of it.

During the days when the branches of life were at their densest, it could even open its crown towards the sunlight, using gathered energy to reheat its somewhat cooled core, or capture nearby passing celestial bodies to replenish nutrients for its "garden."

Yes, it had a lush garden—although at first, even it didn’t know what was in that garden, or even remember when the garden itself appeared.

Because it was merely a plant, and for the first hundred thousand years, it didn’t even understand what "thinking" meant.

But one day, the "garden" just appeared, seemingly just a small "accident" during the growth and mutation of its excessively large body, where some debris that fell from its surface occupied a small space between the Crystal Branches, and then proliferated in that living crystal jungle.

The garden became a unique... "ecological patch" on its body.

And within this "ecological patch," a variety of strange little things gradually grew—very fragile, very small, very busy, but very clever, and capable of thought.

They carved things from crystal, knew how to gather heat sources from underground, and could make various gadgets from the metal residue left after the Mother Vine was digested—some of those gadgets could fly, some could emit light, and some made noisy sounds.

They called this process "creation," and they even created a more abstract concept called civilization.

The giant planetary plant doesn’t quite understand what "civilization" means, but it gradually realizes... it is also learning to "think".

It took nearly a thousand years to figure out what its "thinking" was about, and in the process, it referred to the biological structures of the bustling small creatures in the "garden" on its "belly". Finally, it reached a conclusion—the small creatures in the garden have an organ called "brain", and now it also has a brain, its brain is the "garden" itself.

The small creatures think in the garden, so the "Mother Vine" can think with the garden.

Very interesting.

Among the small creatures, there is a group called "scholars" who also find this interesting. They even created more abstract concepts, such as planetary will, such as collective intelligence. They argued for hundreds of years, just to discuss whether "the thinking of the species led to the consciousness of the planet" or "there was first a noble and sacred planetary consciousness, and then the creative Mother Vine bestowed its ’soul’ upon all living things".

These discussions are also very interesting.

If only this world could remain so interesting always.

But one day, the stars fell.

It was a day when the entire world was engulfed in red light.

The stars kept falling, like masses of abstract and crude graffiti lines, like grotesque celestial bodies imagined by a child’s clumsy drawing skills. Large and small colorful blotches fell to the ground, igniting multicolored flames.

On the burning earth, countless spots of light, large and small, rose from the sea of fire.

Devices storing knowledge, metal plates engraved with last words, containers carrying biological specimens, and curled up, deceased corpses.

Forests and rocks swayed and rose under the starlight, with the sky hanging askew on the horizon, the remaining shadows of fallen stars hung like extinguished lamps at the edge of the sky.

The "Mother Vine" couldn’t understand what had happened—just as it didn’t understand how a thinking organ called a "garden" suddenly appeared on itself ten thousand years ago.

At first, it thought this was just part of a growth mutation—just like strange changes sometimes happened to its body, maybe this world would suddenly look different as well.

What if after all the stars fell, another interesting garden appeared?

But soon, it heard a new word from the mouth of the "scholars": doomsday.

Doomsday had arrived.

All interesting things would disappear, and so would the garden, and the small creatures in the garden.

The Mother Vine anxiously asked the clever little creatures what should be done, but the little creatures said there was no way anymore.

At least, this planet could no longer survive.

Then, they had no choice but to find a way to preserve the seed.

At the reminder of the small creatures, the Mother Vine recalled—yes, the seed.

It can create seeds.

The small creatures helped the Mother Vine design the structure of the seed in the shortest time, designed the device to launch it into space, designed the "growth curve" after the seed... They actually wanted to design more, but there wasn’t enough time.

In the end, the Mother Vine, the garden, the small creatures, this vast, complex, and wondrous symbiosis intelligence managed to design only one instruction for the seed—

"Go... find a new home, take root, and then find a way to survive..."

If it really manages to take root, then find a way to flourish again.

Then grow a new garden— to think, to observe, to learn, to...

But there is no suitable new home for it to take root in the endless darkness outside the world.

Even if it reaches another "world", there would be no place left for an uninvited guest in that isolated ark.

Scenes from memories recede like tides, and a magnificent crystalline curtain appears in front of the eyes again.

Yu Sheng blinked and looked at the old man beside him.

"Root, grow, wither, root again, grow again, and then wither again," after a moment of contemplation, Yu Sheng slowly spoke, "I’ve discovered before, the Feather Transformation and Ascension cycle of the Inference Star Body seems meaningless, because the ’Ascension Body’ transformed by accumulating vast energy is merely for transforming into the most basic form to take root again on the next planet, essentially a meaningless regression from ’Ascension Body’ to ’Sub-entity’, all the energy is wasted, its life cycle is ’idling’.

"Now, everything has an answer."

This is a seed that lost its homeland, drifting in alien soils where it cannot take root.