Song Zang was silent for a long time before speaking faintly. “Yin Chen, don’t you think the range of knowledge you possess is a little too broad?”
“Mm?” Yin Chen did not understand.
“Some things you know naturally, while I might never know them. That’s the difference in perspective caused by the direction we were reincarnated into.” Song Zang gripped his damp arm and spoke with complete justification. “So explain it more clearly. I can’t understand when you leave everything vague.”
That made a lot of sense.
Yin Chen thought for a moment, pulled Song Zang’s hand into the hot water with him, and said, “Do you remember how xianxia worlds usually have the Heavenly Dao and Dao Ancestors?
“They consciously control the balance of power among populations and interfere with the growth and development of all things so the world remains stable.”
Song Zang slowly nodded, his expression becoming serious. “So Earth has a Heavenly Dao too? Or some underworld government that maintains order?”
“You can think of it as the Heavenly Dao, but in reality it’s only a way the power of rules manifests. Every celestial body, regardless of size, has a ‘Heavenly Dao’ that maintains order. Rules are everywhere, and usually no one knows they exist.”
Yin Chen explained that cultivators in xianxia worlds could perceive the Heavenly Dao because their method of comprehending heaven and earth was highly unusual. It was equivalent to opening an entirely new evolutionary path for humanity.
Once cultivation reached sufficient heights, even to the point of ascending, the perception of so-called “immortals” rose beyond anything ordinary humans could imagine. They transcended the cognition and vision of normal life, but still could not become omniscient or understand every 【unknown】 thing, so they simply defined the rule power they could perceive as the Heavenly Dao.
Song Zang more or less understood, but he was still puzzled. “Then why do rules themselves appear? How were they established in the first place?
“That’s actually what I’m most curious about. Any rule that already exists should have been created by some intelligent, energetic consciousness and then strictly enforced…”
“Not necessarily.”
Yin Chen suddenly interrupted. “Did you know that the universe you live in can itself be regarded as a form of living entity? Humans don’t think of it that way.
“The universe humans recognize isn’t the spacetime where I was born. Beyond the world we’re in, there are infinitely many independent worlds. If you regard universes as one similar life-form after another and interpret them in concrete terms…
“Then from the perspective of Earth’s universe, every existing galaxy and celestial body, as well as every life-form and material structure contained within them, can all be regarded as organs, nervous systems, and cells inside the universe’s 【body】.”
“…Now that you put it that way, it actually does make sense. I can’t take this anymore. Now I want to eat some grilled universe cells.”
Song Zang had genuinely become hungry listening to him. He quickly opened the portable grill and neatly arranged the pre-marinated beef and chicken wings on it.
The glowing charcoal occasionally crackled, faintly echoing the tiny bursting sounds of carbonation moving through their drinks.
He brushed thick layers of honey onto both sides of the chicken wings, and the smell of food quickly began spreading through the air.
Yin Chen accepted the budget mojito Song Zang handed him, took a sip, and continued explaining. “Here’s a simple example. From birth, humans grow, become sick, and age. They kill bacteria, expel useless cells from the body, and constantly metabolize, maintaining a complete and stable energy cycle.
“By analogy, once you regard the universe as a form of life, you’ll find that its lifespan has limits too, and that it goes through similar cycles. The structural systems are simply too different and the cycles are stretched across such immense spans of time that humans have no way to observe every change from beginning to end.”
Yin Chen thought for a moment, then emphasized again that humanity even struggled to observe the full life cycle of a single “universe cell.”
Metabolic cycles lasting tens or hundreds of billions of years were astonishing even to Yin Chen, whose own lifespan was sufficiently long.
Song Zang turned the chicken wings as they gradually became golden. After thinking for a moment, he suddenly raised his head. “For example, if the sun is a cell, its birth and death probably have nothing to do with humanity forever…”
“Exactly.” Yin Chen picked up a towel, casually rubbed his wet black hair until it was half dry, and slowly stood. “In human eyes, many kinds of matter don’t count as life. But to me, they’re not only manifestations of life, they also contain special energy I can seize and devour.”
If something had energy, a cycle, specific patterns of change, and a life-and-death process, then even an utterly ordinary rock could be treated as an independent entity. Yin Chen could survive by eating rocks too, but there was no need.
Clear droplets still carrying the heat of the water slid down his cold-pale neck, chest, and abdomen. Song Zang froze for a moment, then blushed and murmured, “Baby, maybe put some clothes on before you keep talking?”
“Is there anywhere on my body you haven’t seen?”
Yin Chen did not care at all. He stepped out of the tub, wrapped a towel around his waist, and took over Song Zang’s position at the grill while still wet.
“In short, you only need to remember two things. Anything within the rules can be done. And if you can get around a loophole in the rules, you can do whatever you want there too.
“Your grandparents came from another spacetime. If they expose themselves to the public, friends who knew them might discover inconsistencies. Once ordinary people realize they came from the future, Earth’s spacetime order could fall into chaos because of it.
“But as long as they hide inside Unit 606 at Jinyuan, they can forcibly continue pretending to be their past selves. In other words, they’re like viruses that enter the human body and disguise themselves as histones, DNA, or similar material, enough to fool the immune system’s detection.”
The Ji elders had hidden like this for many years without any danger appearing.
Until… Song Zang’s abrupt visit disturbed their already sensitive, fragile, terrified nerves. The loss of control and tragedy that followed collapsed one after another like dominoes.
Song Zang thought about it. “So the rules are Earth’s immune system. I suspect future humans discovered the existence of those rules too, which is how they found more than one way to exploit loopholes, like… the Infinite Game.”
After all, the physical and mental strength of game players had long surpassed normal human limits. If the strongest players joined forces, they could even destroy Earth outright.
Logically, such a terrifying and unreasonable path to becoming stronger should never be tolerated by Earth’s order unless a loophole existed in the rules.
It was like the aircraft carriers and rockets humanity kept developing, □□ nuclear bombs, nutritional supplements and stimulants acting on the human body. To ancient people, all of those would have looked like incomprehensible miracles…
Elio’s Notes: The two square placeholders before “nuclear bombs” are present in the source text. They are preserved rather than guessed at.
The Infinite Game looked unbelievable from the present-day perspective, but it was likewise the product of human intelligence and could absolutely be categorized as one form of 【reasonable】 advancement.
Using the energy of an artificial game to make oneself stronger was entirely compliant with the rules. Even if that energy came from the distant future… who would know? Not even the player population knew.
As long as the secret never truly circulated, the Infinite Game quietly existing on Earth could perfectly evade pursuit by the “immune system.”
The only dangerous point was that present-day Earth’s technological development was still nowhere near the level of future humanity.
If ordinary people became aware of the terrifying power players possessed, or even learned of the Infinite Game’s existence, worldwide chaos would be inevitable. The order of human society on an enormous scale could be rewritten because of it.
In that instant, Song Zang suddenly understood the importance of the game’s strict rules.
The erasure restrictions that functioned like gag orders were not malicious threats. Despite the cruel selection mechanism, they also provided strict protection for the entire player population.
Players could not know the truth behind the game’s rules, but neither could they reveal what was currently known to outsiders. Only this could guarantee absolute safety and stability, keeping their existence hidden beneath the inspection of the supreme rules.
The people who designed the Infinite Game system had to have been geniuses among geniuses, extraordinarily thorough in their planning and painfully devoted to the task. No one knew how much effort and blood they had exhausted before finally creating such a powerful virtual world in order to rescue humanity from catastrophe.
The more Song Zang thought about it, the more shaken he became. Then he remembered that both he and Yin Chen had “bullied” the game system before, and his mood gradually turned awkward.
But he could not exactly have helped it.
Yin Chen handed him a skewer of chicken wings and said darkly, “So from now on, you’re absolutely forbidden from getting into conflict with the system again. If you punch through another spacetime channel and let a few chimera-type dark creatures enter this world… we’ll have a real problem.”
“Are chimera-type monsters all strong?” Song Zang asked curiously. He had barely encountered them in the game.
“The weak ones are very weak, like Hot Dog. Any ordinary nuclear weapon could kill them.” Yin Chen rubbed the sleeping dog beside his leg and searched through old memories. “But the strongest can crush every false-god-tier boss.
“They combine the advantageous traits of every powerful organism into one body. Their structures are perfect and precise to the absolute limit, without weaknesses, and they can even exist in extremely high-dimensional forms that ordinary people simply can’t comprehend.”
Even the Collective had once been beaten savagely by one, suffering so badly that it lost control of its own size and nearly got dismembered and devoured by a predator hidden in the darkness.
Song Zang understood. “Got it. A double devastating blow of resistance and physical defense… Good thing our universe doesn’t have freaks that ridiculous.”
Of course, Yin Chen’s concern that Song Zang might lose control was completely unnecessary.
Even if Song Zang died, Yin Chen would not die easily. He could give rise to a new body from tiny cells and fragments, which made Song Zang feel enormously reassured.
Step by step, uncovering the motives behind the Infinite Game’s mechanisms also finally set down the stone that had long hung suspended in his heart.
He was extremely satisfied with life now, and even more satisfied with Yin Chen’s perfectly controlled barbecue technique.
As expected of a terrifying being with a flame form. The golden, fragrant chicken-wing skin glistened with honey, while the meat was tender, juicy, and exceptionally delicious.
The two enormous eaters talked while eating and consumed three ordinary people’s meals’ worth of meat in one sitting. Only then did the bright sun slowly rise into the sky, sketching magnificent swaying streaks of orange and violet across the heavens.
“Want to go see your grandmother? It’ll be the last time.”
Bare-chested, Yin Chen cleaned up the leftover food, lazily fastened his shirt buttons, then finally tilted his head and asked with casual indifference.
“Nothing has happened to her yet.” Song Zang glanced at his phone. A nurse had reported that she was fine half an hour ago. “How about we sleep first?”
“The dirty kind?” Yin Chen raised an eyebrow and undid one of the buttons he had just fastened.
“…Baby, you’re forbidden from learning human slang ever again.”
“So are we sleeping or not?”
“Absolutely.”
The atmosphere at the campsite turned suggestive. The two dogs were bewilderedly chased out of the tent and lay facing each other over the cow bone they shared.
The atmosphere at the hospital was completely different.
Old Mrs. Ji, sedated, was trapped in a nightmare from which she could not wake.
Black wings vast enough to blot out the sky and moon shimmered with dim light. A slender, beautiful young man floated in the blood-colored night sky, his black eyes without any whites slowly transforming into eerie demonic scarlet double pupils.
His right hand hung at his side, covered in dense wounds and cracks. Flesh split deeply enough to reveal bone bloomed like thousands upon thousands of roses, only to be filled one by one with strange molten gold surging inexplicably from within his body.
No, it was not only one right hand.
His nearly perfect human body kept collapsing, being destroyed, then growing and reconstructing itself again. Brilliant, intricate golden patterns overflowed through rapidly cracking pale skin, reflecting the enormous, horrifying black wings behind the young man.
It resembled some distant, ancient, obscure magical formation using a human body to complete a magnificent fallen-angel summoning ritual.
The young man slowly lowered his eyes. Thick lashes like raven feathers were damp. When he looked up again, cold, indifferent killing intent flickered within his scarlet double pupils, and a dazzling serpentine tail suddenly lowered behind him, gleaming beneath the moonlight like an extravagant jewel.
He looked like an evil deity that had descended into the mortal world without permission.
He was not human at all.
He could no longer even be called human.
The humans trembling in fear inside the air-raid shelter fell into a long, hopeless silence.