Deep Sea Embers.

Chapter 783 Residue and Inertia

The sand in the hourglass continued to flow downwards, as if it could continue for a long time. Duncan held the hourglass carefully in his hand and talked with the ancient "god".

The gods are rotting - this is not the first time he has heard this. The popes of the four gods have said this to him before, and they also said that the rotten breath of the gods has gradually seeped into the mortal world and is devouring the world together with the end of the world.

But this was the first time he heard these words from one of the "Gods", and he realized that the current situation was the result of their efforts to delay the process as much as possible.

"This hastily built shelter has too many flaws... Everything is temporary, the curtain, the 'sun', the foundation of the archipelago, and ourselves - before the first long night began, we had already ushered in our own end."

In the "spiritual world" composed of monotonous black, white and gray tones, the ancient Leviathan Queen spoke softly. This terrifying beast had a gentle voice, which was like a dream floating in the deep water, slowly telling Duncan everything about the past -

"It took us a long time to realize our own 'death', and it took Bartók a long time to figure out what was happening in our 'dying but not dying' state.

"We are the 'inertia' of the old world."

"The inertia of the old world?" Duncan frowned immediately, with some guesses emerging in his mind.

"You should already know what destroyed our world, and those many worlds - then you should also know that the Great Annihilation did not completely destroy everything in those worlds. There are always some 'residues' preserved from the process of the world impact, and those of us who are called 'Gods' are also part of those residues.

"But the reason why the residue is residue is that they are no longer complete. When the sand and dust fall off the boulder, it is just sand, not the boulder. The same is true for us - the impact of the Great Oblivion has permanently changed our essence. Strictly speaking, from that day on, we have also become part of those hot 'ashes'... But unlike the ashes, we retain our 'self'.

"We know what we once were - this 'knowledge' allows us to rise again from the ashes, and even reshape some of the remaining ashes into the form of our 'memory'.

"In the beginning, we thought we had a chance to reshape all the worlds, to restore all the ashes, but it didn't take long for us to realize the limits of this 'reshaping', and we also noticed our own continuous weakening...

"We are not truly alive. We are just the obsessions left in the corpses. Our 'cognition' of ourselves and our 'memory' of the old world are the only reasons why we can continue to move. And this 'cognition' and 'memory'... are constantly being worn away as time goes by.

"Bartok, the one among us who knows the most about 'death', calls this phenomenon 'the inertia of the old world'. He believes that we survive not because of our own will or individual strength, but because 'the world does not want to die'. The old world was destroyed in the Great Oblivion, but the fact that they once existed turned into 'inertia' after the apocalypse, and turned into the various residues that still exist after the Great Oblivion - and turned into us."

"'Awareness' of the self and 'memory' of the old world..." Duncan held the hourglass in one hand and stroked his chin with the other, thinking, "So, this is the basis for the birth of 'Shelter'?"

"Yes," the gentle voice said to him, "We used our own memories and cognition to reshape the original 'foundation' from the ashes. This is why there are many seemingly plausible 'records' pointing to the Great annihilation in the mortal world, but we can never find any 'evidence' that can truly prove the Great annihilation, because there was no 'evidence' from the beginning. Even the entire Infinite Ocean was made up of the residue we picked up from the ashes...

"But even those remnants will continue to decay due to the wear and tear of our 'cognition' and 'memory'... hence the 'lifespan limit' in the original design of the shelter."

Duncan listened to Gemona's story attentively, sometimes lost in thought, and then spoke to himself in the midst of thought: "'Inertia' will eventually fade away...so the End of the World Survey Team will inevitably encounter that 'limit'. No matter how perfectly they fulfill their mission, the 'end of the world' was already destined on the day the world was born..."

He suddenly recalled what "Crete" had told him:
"It is pointless to continue the asylum..."

"Yes, it is meaningless to continue the sanctuary," Queen Leviathan repeated softly, "but this sentence has a higher meaning - it is meaningless to continue to 'delay' the apocalypse."

Duncan's eyes changed slightly. He raised his head and looked at the pale limb crawling on the edge of the pool. He saw the limb gradually rise up, and eyes slowly opened on its surface.

"Remember? The doomsday brought by the Great Annihilation has not ended. It has been slowly progressing in the bottom logic of all things. The conflict of rules and the erosion of chaos are just its appearance. In essence, it is the confrontation between 'inertia' and 'doomsday' - as long as our 'inertia' still exists, as long as the shelter still exists, the Great Annihilation will never stop. It will continue until all things in the world are crushed into powder. Only then... the doomsday will be over."

The pale limbs drooped slightly, and the eyes that were not human but seemed to be full of humanity and intellectual brilliance also drooped.

"Yes, Fire Usurper. It is precisely because the 'world' refuses to die that the end of the world refuses to stop. It is precisely because we still exist that the Great Annihilation has continued to this day, and even until this moment... it is still hanging over the heads of all living beings."

"Hanging high above my head..." Duncan reacted instantly, "You mean the Creation of the World?!"

"...That rift is what it appears to the observer. It is essentially a 'result', a 'focus' that leads all possibilities of all worlds to the same 'collapse fact' - it is the 'end' of the Infinite Sea."

Gemona stopped talking, but Duncan remained silent for a long time. After a long while, he spoke softly as if talking to himself: "So, on the day this 'world' was born, its 'end' was hanging high above our heads."

After a while, he looked into Gemona's "eyes" again and broke the silence: "So, no matter what plan is finally adopted, we must first solve the 'never-ending doomsday' and find a way to end the Great Annihilation - but the only way to end the Great Annihilation is..."

He paused for a moment, but Gemona's soft voice spoke the answer for him: "Let the end of the world be 'completed'."

The temple became quiet, as dead silent as the extinction of the universe.

After a long while, Duncan let out a sigh of relief: "This shouldn't be the 'conclusion' you're going to tell me in the end - there are other things you haven't told me yet."

"Yes, there are other things - there are many ways to make the end of the world 'completed', but within the scope of our cognition and ability, 'the annihilation of all things' is the final result of all paths, but as I said, this is only the conclusion within 'the scope of our cognition and ability'..."

The pale limb drooped again, and then a hazy shadow suddenly appeared in front of it - it was a girl in a long skirt and a veil. She stood in front of the pool and bent deeply to Duncan.

Many, many years ago, she learned to use this form to talk to her "land friends", and she would only appear in this form on very solemn occasions.

"Fire Usurper, you are beyond our knowledge and capabilities. Strictly speaking, you are not even within the scope of the Great Oblivion. Although you are the first one among us to arrive, and although you have been sleeping in the initial ashes, you are not a 'residue'.

"We can't understand what you are, but the calculations of the Pilot No. 2 show that you are the only 'healthy' individual among us - perhaps you have a way to protect the shadows of the old world when that 'end' occurs."

Duncan didn't say anything, he just frowned tightly, his expression was more tense than ever.

Then, he suddenly thought of something - those "collections" that appeared in his room!
He heard the voice of the "Jinghai Girl" continue to ring in his ears:

"...Observation and cognition, memory and information, these seem to be the cornerstones of the world's existence. Navigator-2 once told me that it came from a brilliant and advanced civilization. Its creators had almost touched upon the basic laws governing the operation of the universe before the end of the world. In the most advanced and profound research of that civilization, a scholar once proposed a conjecture.

"This conjecture is the most impressive part of the memory bank of Pilot No. 2 -

“Information is everything, and everything is a representation of information.”

"Information is everything... Everything is the expression of information..." Duncan repeated this sentence subconsciously. In a trance, he seemed to hear a "roar" from deep within himself, as if he suddenly understood many things. The scene in front of him was shaking, and there was scattered starlight filling the edge of his vision, and then these illusions gradually dissipated - he heard the voice of the "Quiet Sea Girl" in his ears, the voice was hazy, as if suddenly separated by a thick curtain:

"...Navigator No. 2 is still thinking about this sentence today. Its creators seem to have touched the threshold of truth, but they only have time to throw out this conjecture. With the resources we 'residues' have and the existing conditions in the shelter, Navigator No. 2 believes that it may never be able to transform this conjecture into a usable theory and 'means'. However, your existence... made it realize one thing.

"Perhaps there was a civilization, a civilization more advanced than the creators of the Pilot 2, that had already crossed that threshold."

(End of this chapter)