Chapter 650

Chapter 650: Memory of the Crystal

The flame seeped into the crystal and spread quickly through the three?dimensional structures inside it, as thin as strands of hair and so complex they made one’s eyes swim. As the flame poured in, Duncan’s consciousness gradually began to sink.

He felt that he had entered a vast, empty place, silent and cold.

It was as if this was a corner that had been forgotten for endless years. A nameless sense of isolation and loneliness rushed along with the flame almost at once. Right after that, he sensed light appearing in his field of vision—strong light, so huge he could hardly grasp its scale, and cold.

He opened his eyes and found himself standing on a huge block of black stone, floating in the void. A golden blazing sun burned quietly before him, so close it was almost terrifying. Flames rolled across its surface. Enormous structures like solar prominences rose into the void and then slowly sank back down again, all in utter silence.

Yet this blazing sun gave off no heat. Even at this distance, Duncan did not feel the terrible high temperature its sunlight should have brought when it shone on him. It only burned there, silent and cold, as if it were nothing more than a scene that had been recorded… an image.

Was this the Black Sun? Had he seen It again?

Duncan frowned and thought this instinctively. But right away, he realized that this heatless golden sun was not the same as the “Black Sun” he had seen before. Deep inside its shell he saw no hideous, eldritch tentacles, nor any dying, pallid eyeball. More importantly… this “Sun” did not try to cry out to him for help.

It was a recording, an image left behind by a real star!

Duncan reacted quickly. Then his gaze finally shifted away from that cold blazing sun, and he began to notice the “black monolith” beneath his feet.

It was a vast artificial construct.

Its surface was flat and smooth, cut by grooves and markings that were clearly carved by hand. The material looked like stone, yet it gave off a faint metallic sheen. At certain nodes in those grooves rose protrusions of unknown purpose, as if they were made from strange crystals.

Duncan let his gaze follow the edge of the monolith outward, toward the endless dark void around the golden sun—

He saw more such “monoliths”. Countless colossal black constructs like stone steles floated around the golden sun, drifting in the boundless darkness. They formed neat arrays, like walls thrown up in space. From this angle, he finally saw more detail on the sides facing the Sun. Precisely cut crystal surfaces covered one face of each monolith, reflecting the sunlight. Beneath the crystals seemed to lie intricate machinery, devices that could adjust the angles of the crystal arrays. The whole structure looked as if… it had been built to gather the energy released by the Sun?!

Duncan stared blankly at the array of monoliths floating around the Sun. In the darkness they formed a vast, loose spherical shell that enclosed the star at its center. Between each floating device he could faintly see twisted lines of light, like some kind of force field. And beyond that enormous “shell”, in the depths of the endless dark, there seemed to be more hazy shadows. But they were too far away, and the sunlight too bright, for him to see them clearly.

What were those?

Distant planets? Habitats in space? giant ships? Or…

Centers that maintained and controlled this astonishing Dyson sphere?

He did not know how long it took before he finally drew his gaze away from the immense shell in space. Even after he understood what he was seeing, it took him a long time to truly come back to himself.

…Inside the crystal device the Sunspawn had left behind, what was stored was not some dark, forbidden truth or the corrupt knowledge of elder gods, but… the design of an ancient Dyson sphere.

Duncan narrowed his eyes a little.

No. This was exactly the dark forbidden truth and the corrupt knowledge of the elder gods. For the Deep Sea era, for the wreckage left behind by other universes, for all things that existed under other systems of mathematics, a Dyson sphere built and supported by parameters from an alien cosmos was the very height of taint and corruption.

After he recovered from his shock, Duncan walked toward the edge of the black monolith under his feet. At the same time, he recalled the “New Hope” he had once seen, the ship that had crashed into this world.

Had that ship also become this world’s “corruption”? After it fell… what had it turned into?

He walked to the edge of the stellar energy collector and looked down.

Sheer cliff?like metal casings and the endless distant darkness filled his view.

Duncan knew that here, strictly speaking, there was no such thing as up or down. If anything counted, only the pull of gravity from the distant star could be called “down”. Yet his senses still told him that the black device under his feet was the ground. Standing on its outer shell felt as solid as standing on earth—he would not fall into the endless void, nor be caught and drawn away by the Sun’s gravity.

That mismatch between what he knew and what he felt helped remind him at every moment that this was only an illusion, a vision recorded inside a “blasphemous archetype”.

What about deeper inside this record? Was there anything else?

Duncan sensed his own flame. He guided it to spread deeper into the crystal, letting his mind sink further down.

The splendid golden sun before his eyes vanished, along with the astonishing Dyson sphere.

Boundless darkness spread in from all directions and flooded his sight.

Contrary to what he had expected, he did not see the fall of the civilization that had built the Dyson sphere. There was no second World Collision. He seemed to skip straight past that stage, arriving instead in the dark chaos after Universal Extinction.

He did not know how long he lingered in that dark chaos. Just when Duncan was about to suspect that there truly was no more information in the crystal, faint lights suddenly appeared in his vision!

Several rays of light appeared. Within the glimmers seemed to be vague shapes—some vast, some uncanny, some twisted and without fixed form. He could not make out their true outlines at all, but he heard… “voices”.

Those voices sounded directly inside his mind—

“…Compatibility was far lower than expected. That ‘King of Dreams’ also failed… We must adjust the plan…”

“The Sanctuary World cannot protect everyone… Some entities have survival conditions that are far too strict. Preserving them while guaranteeing the others… the difficulty was too high.”

“…Draw up a list. Those not on the list…”

“Who will make that decision? On what standards will the list be based?”

“…First establish a compatibility threshold, then run simulations… LH?01 has calculated a plan. If we create a stable anchor, we can ensure the greatest possible number… but we will still have to abandon some…”

After that came a jumble of noise, as if that part of the record were missing. The noise left Duncan’s head spinning, but soon he heard clear messages emerge from it—

“…The entities on this part of the list cannot withstand transformation. The cost of preserving them is too high… We can only abandon them.”

“…There is still three percent redundancy. We can make a few more adjustments…”

“…They must live under a specific stellar environment. For the other entities, their sunlight is lethal poison… LH?01’s plan cannot meet this requirement… There is not much time.

“…Abandon them.”

Boom!

A hollow, echoing roar shattered all the voices and tore apart the endless darkness. Duncan had the sense that he had touched the very bottom of this information. No more messages rose up. In the roar and dizziness, his mind pulled rapidly back from the depths of the crystal.

He opened his eyes and saw the familiar cabin in front of him. The pale golden crystal lay in his palm. Under the burn of the eerie green flame, it quickly turned into a heap of ash.

The information carried in the crystal had been drained dry. This “blasphemous archetype”, which should never have existed in the Mortal Realm at all, lost its stability along with it.

Duncan rubbed his hands together. The last trace of ash in his palm instantly scattered into the air.

He looked up and met Goathead’s gaze.

“What did you see, sir?” Goathead asked a little tensely.

“…The process of them being abandoned. The contents of The Blasphemous Tome have been confirmed once again.”

Duncan did not hold anything back. He told Goathead everything he had seen and heard in the depths of the crystal.

Of course, he did not go into the details of things like “Dyson spheres”. That was not something he could explain clearly in a short time.

After he finished speaking, the captain’s cabin stayed quiet for a long time.

He did not know how long it took before Goathead finally stirred. Goathead spoke in a complicated tone: “…The Blasphemous Tome records that during the third Long Night, some ‘clans’ were cast out into the dark…”

Duncan nodded slightly. He also remembered that passage. It said that “the clans cast into the dark did not die—in their long exile they slowly twisted, becoming… something even more dangerous.”

Goathead thought for a moment, then suddenly asked: “What do you make of this, sir? Do you think the Sunspawn’s actions now… are understandable?”

“In things like this, talking about right and wrong is meaningless,” Duncan said, shaking his head. “The world was not built on fairness. I do not know what state this world was in after the Great Annihilation and before the age of the Deep Sea began. I do not know how many plans the Elder Kings who tried to build the Sanctuary World once had, or how many trade?offs they made. Judging the choices of those who paved the road while we stand in a safe era is foolish and short?sighted. Especially from where we stand now… any form of ‘sympathy’ is both unreasonable and unnecessary.”

“…You are correct, sir,” Goathead said softly after a brief silence.

Duncan said nothing more. He only nodded lightly, then let his gaze fall on the small “Sun” that Vanna had obtained from the giants.