Chapter 432: Star-Eye Wonder


    The nothingness was impressive. There were flickers of light, multi-colored curtains washing over the void reminiscent of Earth’s auroras. They swam and wrapped around each other in the sky, yet they did not exist—nothing but visions the mind invented to protect itself from true nihility.


    “What do you think?” Mia asked, puffing up her chest. “Isn’t it impressive?”


    Jack gave a small smile. He’d seen this before. The so-called nothingness was the interdimensional void, the gap between dimensions in which the Green Dragon Realm was also situated. Perhaps even the whole universe was just an ind in this massive sea where space and time held no meaning, where distance and size were irrelevant.


    Maybe, much farther down the road of cultivation, Jack would have the power to traverse this sea. But he definitely didn’t now. If he tried to fly into it, he would just…disappear.


    “Have you never tried to explore it?” he asked. He remembered that the ck Hole People used to have A-Grades in their ranks.


    “Explore what? The nothingness?” She chuckled. “Don’t be silly.”


    Jack nodded. He’d expected that. Yet, interacting with this interdimensional sea shouldn’t be impossible. Archon Green Dragon and the ancestor of these people—Archon ck Hole—had both established their own small world inside this sea. It was a frontier meant for those at the highest peaks.


    Jack looked away, choosing not to bother with things so far beyond him. The ck Hole People were right—they called the interdimensional sea “nothingness” and had established lounging spots here, at the top of their eighty-thirdyer, so people could rx and enjoy the view. Just by looking to the sides, Jack could see many groups of wealthy individuals eating under the aurora.


    “I cannot pierce this sea,” he said. “There is no point staying here. Let’s go.”“Mm.” Mia nodded, leading him back to thedder they’de from. “Where do you want to go now?” she asked. “Back home?”


    “No. Let’s visit the Vortex as well.”


    Mia smiled. The Vortex was the core of their world, the area situated at its very center. It was also the ce most closely connected to the wider universe—if Jack was interested in it, he must have decided to look for a way out. That made her happy.


    “Are you really going to save us?” she asked through the long journey down. The two of them had entered arge elevator connecting the eighty-threeyers. It was usually reserved for the highest asions, but Jack’s existence qualified as such.


    “You don’t need saving,” Jackmented. “You’re fine here. Maybe your world isn’t infinite, but so what? It’s vast enough.”


    “It’s not about size!” Mia protested. “We want to be free! To see the stars, and the moons, and the rivers, and the endless void, and to experience <em>distance! </em>Anything longer than forty-two miles!”


    Jack smiled. He’d heard these words before, almost the exact same. This had been Nauja’s wish as well, when she was trapped with her tribe at Trial’s Barbarian Ring.


    <em>The children of the Ancients are like fairy tale princesses, </em>he mused in a rare moment of humor. <em>Always trapped somewhere, eager to see the outside world, and needing rescue.</em>


    <em>Then again, weren’t the Ancients the same? Peaceful, kind, and brave. Trapped in a gxy-sized prison before Enas gave them the secrets of cultivation. Then, they became explorers.</em>


    Jack gazed at Mia with new eyes. For a moment, he thought he saw a vision of the past; an incredibly distant ancestor casting its shadow on this innocent girl with big dreams.


    “Is it beautiful?” she suddenly asked, breaking him out of his reverie.


    “Is what beautiful?” he replied.


    “The universe!”


    “...It’s dangerous.”


    “I know that. You’ve said it, like, a thousand times. But is it also beautiful?”


    Jack hesitated. For reasons he couldn’t quite decipher, he didn’t want to answer this question. It felt too bright, too cheerful, and to indulge would be like abandoning his current state of mourning—letting down Eric one more time.


    He kept his mouth shut. Mia didn’t push him, but soon, his own stubbornness did. Since when was he afraid of a simple question? Had he be such a coward that he couldn’t even state some facts?


    Something tiny softened inside his heart.


    “It <em>is</em> beautiful,” he finally replied. “There are endless rivers of stars washing through the cosmos. I’m talking, humongous. A grain of sandpared to your ck Hole World is about as big as your entire worldpared to a single one of those stars, and they are millions. And the distances between them—you cannot even imagine. Forty-two miles is all you’ve ever known, but just one star to the next can be separated by trillions of miles. And then there’s gxies—each of them houses billions of stars, and they are almost infinitely far apart from each other. The universe is so unbelievably massive that nobody can even fathom it.”


    Mia was starstruck. The image Jack painted with his words came to reinforce the one she’d built in her mind, and thebined awe left her giggling.


    “And are there people on all those stars?” she asked.


    “People don’t live on stars—those are just giant balls of fire. They live ons, smaller boulders which orbit the stars. Of course, even the tiniest would be farrger than the ck Hole World, but you don’t necessarily lose out on living space.s are only upied on the surface.”


    This narrative has been uwfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    “Only the surface?” she eximed. “That’s so wasteful! What about all the empty space inside?”


    Jackughed. “It’s not empty. There are rocks, andva, and tectonic tes on which entire continents are seated. It would be difficult to live there, and there is no need—just the surface isrge enough.”


    “Oh! So every has more people than my world?”


    “Not exactly. Only a tiny minority ofs can sustain life—most are barren wastnds too hot, cold, or toxic for us. However, even this tiny minority adds up. There are maybe a million inhabitables in my home gxy—if each of them contains just a few million people, that’s a terrifying amount.”


    Mia was like a child eating the first ice-cream of the season. Her eyes drooled with wonder. “Tell me more!” she shouted.


    Jackughed again. “There are many species of people in the universe. Some look like you and me. Others seem half-human and half-animal—though they’re actually humanoids evolved from animals other than monkeys—while many are just in weird. Just in my short travels, I’ve seen small blue people wearing turbans,rge red ones with bushy beards, people made of stone… There was even a species whose people are rectangr and made of ss, like the windows you see in every house. To speak, they vibrate themselves at specific frequencies, the same way we vibrate our vocal cords.”


    “Wooow!” Mia eximed. “How do you know they’re people and not windows?”


    “They have a head and limbs,” Jack exined. “Though I admit, I have no idea how their bodies work. I should look into that when I have the time. Before bing a cultivator, I was a biologist—a scientist studying the mysteries of life.”


    “That sounds awesome!”


    “It was. But tiring, too. Science is fun, but doing it properly takes a good deal of patience. You wouldn’t believe how many edge cases I had to cover just to almost finish my PhD.”


    “What’s that?”


    “My scientific research.”


    “Ohh! What was it on?”


    “The evolutionary history of grasshoppers. I wanted to see in what order they developed their telling characteristics.”


    “And did you?”


    “Kind of. I came up with some reasonable hypotheses. All that was left was to write them down and get them peer-reviewed, which can be a bitch. That was when the System arrived to my world. If it had been just a few monthste, I would have been Dr. Rust by now.”


    She gave him an odd nce. “You, a doctor? Yeah… I think you should stick to being a cultivator.”


    Jack was surprised, then burst intoughter. “Not that kind of doctor! But, just so you know, I <em>am </em>a healer! I studied it as part of my training. I can heal a lot of things!”


    <em>Except my own heart.</em>


    He was surprised at how this thought popped out by itself—but also at how okay he was with it. At the very least, it didn’t stun him with grief. That was a wee change. It was only then that he realized how swept up he’d gotten in the discussion. He smiled. Not all was lost.


    “Thanks,” he said in a softer voice. “I needed that.”


    “Hmm? Needed what?”


    “It’s okay. Just, thanks.”


    Mia blinked in surprise. “You’re wee?”


    A soft ding came from above. The massive elevator doors opened, revealing a t patch of ground. Some guards looked at them with questions but swallowed them back down when Mia shed them a badge.


    “This way,” she said, leading Jack deeper into thisyer. The corridors were empty here and the illumination sparser. It looked more like an administrative space than living quarters. “This is the firstyer,” Mia exined. “Not many people are allowed here because it’s so close to the Vortex, but we get a pass!”


    “Shouldn’t the Elder Council be situated here?” Jack wondered. “Seems like a great center of authority.”


    “That’s exactly why they’re not here. The Council needs to be one with the people, not overlooking them from the distance.”


    “...That’s actually pretty nice.”


    Finally, they reached a spiraling staircase heading downward, paintedpletely ck. There were more guards here, both of them D-Grades—and, this time, they did question them. Jack remained silent—it was Mia who handled everything. They seemed to know her.


    Which made perfect sense. Mia had been the one to find him when he first arrived at this world, and he had to have been spat out by the Vortex. She could only have found him if she worked here as a guard—or something simr, given her weakness rtive to these D-Grade guards.


    “Come on,” she said five minutester. “Let’s go!”


    They descended the staircase. Mia, who was leading the way, was not in a hurry. In fact, as they advanced deeper and deeper, Jack could sense her growing scared. She did her best not to show it, but how could she fool Jack’s perception?


    “Don’t worry,” he said. “With me here, nothing bad will happen to you.”


    He cringed at his own promise. How could he say such words after the death of his son? Yet, Mia seemed pacified. “Thanks,” she replied, believing in him. Her steps quickened, and before long, they’d reached the end. The staircase ended at nothing—just anding before pitch-ck darkness. Jack sent his perception into it, and he easily discovered that whaty ahead of them was a roughly mile-wide sphere of distorted space. There was no gravity, nor was there air—it was simr to the vacuum of space.


    “I cannot follow you further,” Mia said timidly. “But, uh, I’ll be waiting at the top of the staircase, okay?”


    Jack shot her a nce. This void was harmless to him, and if he wanted to, he could easily carry her along and protect her. But there was no need.


    “I may cultivate here for a bit,” he said. “If you grow tired, just return by yourself. I can find the way to my house.”


    “No way! I’ll wait for you!”


    “Whatever you prefer. See youter.”


    With that, he turned and flew into the darkness. He didn’t really go yet—instead, he hid himself and waited until he was sure Mia had returned to the firstyer. Only then did he actually venture deeper.


    Well, as deep as there was to go. The darkness could not hinder his perception. He could see the core of this world directly in front of him—a small ck sphere spinning in reverse, emitting a unique form of radiation and unraveling itself little by little. The energy packed inside it was as vast as an ocean, so the process was extremely slow, but Jack could sense that this core, whose existence had supported the entire ck Hole World for over a billion years, was nearing the end of its life.


    If nothing happened, this world would copse in another million years or two. Jack shook his head. Did the Elders know and were keeping it a secret to avoid frightening the popce, or had their cultivation degraded to twhere they couldn’t sense such a thing?


    It seemed obvious to Jack, but the rate of decay of this mini ck hole could only be perceived by those possessing deep spatial understandings.


    “I guess I have to save them,” he muttered, sitting cross-legged before the ck hole—at a respectable distance away, though there wasn’t any suction force. This object was an oddity. He could sense that this was the true form of the Animal Abyss, the ck hole with the fragmented event horizon. It served not only as the core of this world, but also as its connection to the wider universe. In order to open a passage, Jack would need to fully attune himself to this object.


    A normal C-Grade, or even a B-Grade, would be helpless. Jack, however, had already assimted with the Life Drop, a treasure very simr to this ck hole. He had confidence that, given enough time, he would be able to at least let himself out.


    But all those were impossible if he did not repair the crack in his Dao. That was his first order of business. And so, with a deep sigh, Jack closed his eyes and sank into meditation.