Chapter 986: Chapter 986: Bottom of the Abyss
The naughty kids playing Battlefield 1943 at home were all shooed upstairs for a nap by Big Sister, including the reluctant XL34 and XL28 who even muttered while singing, along with the other odd super-evolved mass-produced hosts. I’m very glad there’s enough room in our house—I mean, I’m glad that Pandora prepared enough space expansion devices at home, even though her original intention was to use them as Gnaku for invading Earth.
Bingdisi is lying on the table writing a self-criticism. The core idea of the self-criticism is to deeply understand how serious a mistake it is to incite underage girls to use dangerous toys, including anti-tank guns, at someone else’s home. It’s hard to imagine that such a dashing, domineering lady could also have honest moments like this, but considering the Father God sitting in front supervising, it makes sense. With the incitement of this female hooligan and the “Divine Blessing” as backing, the Rose Maiden group, the mass-produced host group, and the havoc-wreaking group including Qianqian and Lilina, engaged in a three-way melee. They used nearly half a ton of ammunition in just twenty-five minutes, leaving a layer of shell casings on the floor and lin Xue pouring out a handful of steel balls when she changed shoes, while Anwina sat on top of the cabinet, cleaning up Dam bullets that were smashed in her crow’s nest. The scene in the living room was quite spectacular, comparable to the ammunition residue density found in post-war Leningrad. Bingdisi only solved the damage of the ammunition with the Divine Blessing but didn’t think about tidying up the house. Even more infuriating, to “mark out the eliminated little contestants,” she removed the Cleanse Technique from the doll heads, resulting in my sister and me spending fifteen minutes washing faces, hands, and changing clothes for those kids who act up when they see water! Heaven can testify, you don’t know how difficult it is to wash Cui Xingshi’s face; she’s much more troublesome than the Mercury Lamp and acts like you’re murdering her if you hold her under the faucet. Of course, Little Baobao also gave my sister a hard time: she ate half a bar of soap when not watched.
Even more infuriating, despite having the rule of elimination upon getting hit, none of these little brats retreated from the fight according to the rules. The Mercury Lamp was entirely smudged into a black charcoal ball by an RPG but still bravely continued fighting, insisting that the color was just her outfit’s original color… Uh, am I getting infected by Bingdisi’s nonsense? Why am I even bothering about this chaos?
Qianqian was also a direct participant in this naughty kids’ upheaval, even one of the group leaders—she and Lilina formed the third team, the havoc-wreaking combo, in the three-way melee, with Qianqian serving as the captain and commissar, while Lilina was the vice-captain taking care of everything else. However, Qianqian need not write a self-criticism, not because I am favoring my wife, but mainly because even if she wrote one, no one would dare read it: fear of affecting their intelligence.
When the living room was roughly tidied up under the joint efforts of the super maids Anwina and the super maid apprentice Du Dao Kazuko, Sandora, I, and the few competent people left at home finally sat down to study Taville’s research report.
This research report concerns a piece of wreckage, the same wreckage we retrieved from the Father God’s basement last time. She discovered a data recording device inside the wreck, similar to a black box, containing some fascinating content.
“At first, no one realized this thing still preserved data until we found some annotations in the core database of the Abyss Deep Diving Ship—the one that Ah Jun vomited out last time. These annotations indicate that every independent device deployed from the deep-diving ship has an emergency recording device, which functions to preserve the final research data should the deep-diving ship encounter disaster and cannot return. This is to ensure it can return to the Main Material Plane. The Empire’s frontline scientists indeed made such preparations, having over half of their projects hiding no-return dangers. Hence, they were used to backing up all research data as if writing a will,” Sandora explained the reason for discovering the black box to me. “I just didn’t expect they would go to this extent, even leaving a recorder on the coordinate indicator thrown out.”
“According to the information left by the recorder, after leaving, the deep-diving ship chose to proceed deeper into the Abyss according to the last remote command. This beacon possesses an extremely powerful defense. It once had an entirely Star Gold Stone outer shell with three shields. For once the deep-diving ship encounters misfortune, these ejected beacons would bear the duty to return the final intelligence. Therefore, their defenses are, in fact, stronger than the mother ship’s overall. This isn’t surprising as ‘black boxes’ made by Earthlings should generally be the sturdiest part of any vehicle. Astonishingly, this coordinate marking device has had such good luck, it hasn’t encountered Abyss assaults that exceeded its design threshold. Its disguise system ran for tens of thousands of years until it shut down due to energy exhaustion. This disguise system provided an information marker similar to a Deep Reaction, making disguised units less prone to Abyss attacks. This is one of the abnornmal technologies produced during the Empire’s final X-plan, partially applied to the deep-diving ship components. Check its logs, the disguise system remained active long after the Empire had been dormant for tens of thousands of years.”
I was astounded: “This implies it continued to function after the Empire fell dormant. Since the Abyss blocked external communications, it didn’t collapse from network contamination internally. The Abyss environment instead protected this sole surviving Empire artifact?!”
“Black humor,” Father God used a very Earth-style term to comment on this matter.
Sandora continued pointing out the key parts in the logs to us: “According to the records here, until all devices within the wreckage were forced to shut down, the beacon had already ventured into an astonishing place. According to the small host’s calculations, it had strayed far from any Abyss Gate, with radar feedback across all frequencies only returning Abyssal Aura, obliterating all signs of the Material Universe. That’s the core hinterland, and this tiny lighthouse astonishingly floated into the innermost part of the Abyss Domain without incident. Taville calculated the likelihood of this occurring as less than one in a hundred thousand, yet it managed to achieve just that. After the disguise system shut down, the beacon began suffering severe erosion, with three shields extinguishing one after another, and then the Star Gold Stone shell corroded away, leaving the structure we see now. Then—yes, Ah Jun, this is what you just saw in the most crucial part of the index: after all its defense systems were completely eroded, which should have been the wreck’s end-of-life moment, the exact opposite happened!”
Sandora took a deep breath at this point: “The Abyss calmed down!”
“Yet calmness does not mean disappearance,” Father God, generally able to understand this report, showed a string of numbers on the holographic projection, “in your text, indicating that at the current time/space point, Abyss concentration is infinitely positive.”
“Inconceivable,” Sandora nodded, “the Abyssal core and what we imagined having an infinitely high pollution concentration, yet unlike our imagination, all the Abyss there is in dormancy, without chaotic destructive storms, without hostility, no erosion, the Abyss flows peacefully, not attacking any targets, including this beacon that barged into its home.”
“That’s a distance even the gods never successfully reached,” Father God exclaimed, “Not even our deepest expedition got there. The Abyssal core being devoid of hostility is truly astonishing.”
“More astonishing is here,” said Sandora, glancing at me as if preparing me, then opened another report, “This is its communication log. Ah Jun, you should remember that before the deep-diving ship left the Abyss, it sent out a wide-area message, which sounded like a request for contact. At the time, we speculated that this message might have been sent to verify the theory that all Abyss Gates are interconnected at the back, hoping that listening stations at the outputs of other Abyss Gates would catch the message. However, the logs on the deep-diving ship mentioned that due to insufficient penetration distance, this message was likely submerged within the Abyss environment.”
“In fact, it wasn’t like that, their message survived tenaciously. Though extremely weak, it probably traveled further than this floating beacon. The beacon’s black box recorded a continuous couple of seconds of communication, indicating it tracked down this call that kept replaying …
Big Sister exclaimed in surprise: “Tracked down? That message was sent tens of thousands of years ago, and at that distance, it ought to have decayed to a completely unidentifiable degree.”
“The issue is, this message is no longer the original version,” Sandora took a breath, “that’s Taville’s conjecture, the message was not the original version sent out back then; It might have been heard by something, amplified, and then broadcasted within the Abyss for tens of thousands of years.”
Instantly, silence enveloped the living room, all processing this information-rich intelligence, including Father God.
Seemingly feeling we aren’t surprised enough, Sandora only paused for a few seconds before continuing: “The beacon was already severely damaged at the time, but it could still operate. It did one last thing before parking the radar system: randomly select a ‘direction’ in the Main Material Plane, rebroadcast this message with maximal strength.
“According to the entry in the log and the beacon’s Abyss Expansion count, this retransmission occurred between fifteen to seventeen years ago. The selected Main Material Plane vaguely points to the current New Empire’s territory. Then, as we all know, it emerged at Father God’s place for some inexplicable reason.”
“In summary, Ah Jun, what does this remind you of?” Sandora said at the end, looking this way.
I slowly put my hand on my forehead, as if this could suppress the turbulent thoughts: “At the ‘Travel Wall’ of the Supreme Life Goddess Temple, I returned to the past, fifteen or sixteen years ago. Qianqian, Big Sister, and I once encountered a sky blackout mistakenly thought to be an eclipse back then. I heard a voice… Oh my, once things start to get dramatic, it really lacks morals.”
“Back then, what Ah Jun heard wasn’t information sent by the deep-diving ship but was something received and amplified, translated back from the bottom of the Abyss,” Sandora closed the holographic projection, “Father God, you’ve been in contact with the Abyss the longest, what exactly do you conceive its structure to be?”
“The Abyss cannot be viewed as energy nor as material,” Father God slowly said, “I have always believed it should be seen as a phenomenon and concept, yet at the same time, the Abyss is measurable. According to the process of Abyss creation, when a world is born, an Abyss is generated, corresponding one to one. But perhaps I was only focusing on the ‘phenomenon’ level of it, while a mysterious world that we have never discovered lies behind it… Now, it’s unclear if what feeds back this information is a conscious entity or merely a natural phenomenon produced by some structure at the Abyss ‘bottom’ — like an Echo Wall.”
“First, we confirm a new fact: the Abyss has a bottom, or rather, it has an end. On the other side of this end, there may be one or more conscious beings, or a ‘structure’ that can be described with order information, because if such a structure didn’t exist, it wouldn’t be possible for a piece of information to be processed so complexly and then broadcasted for tens of thousands of years.”
I looked at Sandora and Father God, whose expressions were serious, and suddenly made a decision:
“Taville, how much of the deep-diving ship’s database has been restored?”
“Eighty percent read, my Majesty,” Taville always has at least one quality projection working, so she immediately responded, “Logs have been completely deciphered, technical parameters of the deep-diving ship have been deciphered ninety percent, the progress on research results and other technical documents is slower, the quantity is too massive.”
“That can wait for now—do you have a way to recreate the deep-diving ship now?”
Taville fell silent for a moment; the assertive and confident personality this time used a hesitant tone: “Majesty, theoretically feasible, but some sensitive dangerous projects…”
I didn’t urge her, waiting for Taville to explain.
“If your requirement is to fully clone a deep-diving ship, it may need to use the black technology inside the Red Moon Cube,” Taville straightforwardly admitted, “Abyss disguise technology, Void overlay Shield, self-consistent mathematical rule protection network, and additionally, reconstruct a dimensional difference database—the current kernel of this dimensional difference database is bound by a frequency, unable to write new data, and the Angel Envoy who could unlock this frequency lock died thousands of years ago. We can only create a new one. Given the contradiction within the mathematical system of the dimensional difference database, this means we must destroy the one at hand to make room for a new database to form; this is also black technology from the Red Moon Cube. Furthermore, our deep-diving ship blueprint still has ten percent unfilled even after patching, which requires reverse engineering to supplement, needing time. We have enough manpower, but lack a mainframe capable of handling such large data to assist in the work.”
I glanced at Sandora, who had been listening in on the channel between me and Taville, and after the communication temporarily hung up, she massaged her brow and said softly: “Sure enough, it’s come to this step, Red Moon Cube huh, really don’t want to touch that sort of thing… Ah Jun, do we really have to walk the same old path they took back then?”
“Their path might not have been wrong, just too rushed,” Father God suddenly interjected, “You are a Race filled with creativity; you always discover clues more acutely than us, but you are too prone to rash actions. Each plan is completed by any means necessary. I once reminded you all… Mm, it’s meaningless to say this now. I just think perhaps back then, your compatriots indeed discovered the secret deep within the Void, maybe it was… Wait, maybe it was the Void Catastrophe, hence they initiated those reckless research plans about the Void, and that deep-diving ship might not have merely been for researching the Abyss. Unfortunately, they rushed too quickly and stubbornly refused to heed our advice. Now, we might as well try what they did back then again; I believe you won’t make the same mistakes this time. After all, you have a Void Creature as leader now—Chen’s inertia will excellently balance the rash spirit of your entire Race.”
I: “…You might as well say directly that I am an ABS.”
Father God nodded slightly: “What is ABS?”
Sandora’s eyes suddenly lit up after Father God’s words fell, thinking of something else: “You mean, perhaps someone realized the Void Catastrophe during the Old Empire’s end?”
“Just a guess, gradually connecting many things, perhaps only this reason can explain why you suddenly started so many rash dangerous plans, and all these plans were to research and create the Void. This warship you call a deep-diving ship is the same, although it’s used to explore the Abyss, yet the Abyss is also the most important phenomenon in the Void. You could almost say that the essence of the Abyss directly leads to the truth of the Void. If a secret lies at the bottom of the Abyss World, then this secret is likely also concealed by the Void.”
“It’s a pity I know nothing,” Sandora shrugged self-deprecatingly, “Only I was out on expedition during the end of the Old Empire; it ran too far that time, reaching the edge of the information network. Three thousand years of expedition, everything turned upside down.”
I placed my hand on Sandora’s shoulder, pressing down slightly. Though I want to say this is a fortunate thing, at least she escaped the catastrophic Abyss Storm, falling into mere weakness. But such words seem impossible to say, truly, really want to say it without a brain, she’d probably eat me raw with hot pepper sauce, and I’d have it coming…
“You say, if there really were such a major discovery, why wouldn’t they tell the Divine Race? Good friends for life… Ahem, right?” Bingdisi somehow already resurrected at full health, tossed the three thousand characters of examination onto my hand, then sat with crossed legs on the sofa, “Chen, check them, give a good rating, passed right.”
“Sense of honor? Racial self-esteem? Or just overconfidence,” Sandora smiled wryly and shook her head, “End of the Old Empire, these things inflated everywhere, too many unnecessary negative tendencies spread among all Leaders. Though limited in knowledge about X plan, I can surely assert what’s going on; we confidently believed we could solve every problem, at least not shedding tears until faced with reality, and for a standard Xyrin Apostle, protecting one’s Race is one’s own matter. Just think, simply afraid of death and then begging for aid pitifully from allies, even to the extent of exempting the Void Catastrophe, would have Father God (the only accessible Void Creature back then in the Old Empire) reauthorize all our territories entirely? Even if relations with the Divine Race were great, emotionally speaking, it couldn’t be accepted, right.”
Bingdisi grimaced: “Pride before a fall.”
“Racial Glory is not just about face,” Father God smiled gently, “Both true Xyrin Apostles and true Divine Race would do the same thing. Alright, let’s not talk about these. Those are still our speculations; who knows what happened during the Old Empire, why they discovered the Void Catastrophe yet told no one, or even if they truly discovered the Void Catastrophe, it’s uncertain. The most urgent problem now is not speculating history, but to think—what exactly is inside the Abyss.” (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, please come to Qidian () to vote for recommendations and monthly tickets, your support is my greatest motivation.)