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Like Halo, Hunter was equipped with both a curvature engine and a fusion engine. When traveling between planets within the same system, only the fusion engine was used, because the curvature engine would have caused the ship to overshoot the target with no time for deceleration.
Cheng Xin was mesmerized by Yifan’s account of the new human worlds. But she noticed that while he discussed Worlds I, II, and IV, nothing was said about III.
That world is sealed inside a light tomb.” “A light tomb?” “It’s a reduced-lightspeed black hole produced by the trails of lightspeed ships. Something happened on World III that caused them to think that their coordinates had been exposed. They had no choice but to turn their world into such a black hole.” “We call such a place a black domain.” “Ah, good name. As a matter of fact, the people of World III initially called it a light curtain, but outsiders referred to it as a light tomb.”
Yifan said, “Lightspeed spaceflight was a tremendous milestone for humankind. It was like another Enlightenment, another Renaissance. Lightspeed flight fundamentally transformed human thinking and changed civilization and culture.”
“Some call them doomsday ships. These lightspeed ships have no destination at all. They turn their curvature engines to maximum and accelerate like crazy, infinitely approaching the speed of light. Their goal is to leap across time using relativity until they reach the heat death of the universe. By their calculations, ten years within their frame of reference would equal fifty billion years in ours.
“You don’t need to pity them. Really, let me tell you: don’t. The reality of the universe is not something to envy.”
“For us, the dark forest state is all-important, but it’s just a detail of the cosmos. If you think of the cosmos as a great battlefield, dark forest strikes are nothing more than snipers shooting at the careless—messengers, mess men, etc. In the grand scheme of the battle, they are nothing. You have not seen what a true interstellar war is like.”
“My heart is already completely dark. I want to know.” And so, more than six centuries after Luo Ji had fallen through ice into that lake, another dark veil hiding the truth about the universe was lifted before the gaze of one of the only survivors of Earth civilization.
There are many laws that can be manipulated into weapons, but most commonly, the focus is on spatial dimensions and the speed of light. Typically, lowering spatial dimensions is a technique for attack, and lowering the speed of light is a technique for defense. Thus, the dimensional strike on the Solar System was an advanced attack method. A dimensional strike is a sign of respect.
When will the collapse of space in the vicinity of the Solar System into two dimensions cease?” “It will never cease.” Cheng Xin shuddered. “You are scared? Do you think that in this galaxy, in this universe, only the Solar System is collapsing into two dimensions? Haha…” Guan Yifan’s bitter laughter caused Cheng Xin’s heart to seize up.
“There’s a way for the attacker to avoid death. Think about it.” Cheng Xin pondered and then said, “I can’t figure it out.” “I know you can’t. Because you’re too kind. It’s very simple. The attacker must first transform themselves into life forms that can survive in a low-dimensional universe. For instance, a four-dimensional species can transform itself into three-dimensional creatures, or a three-dimensional species can transform itself into two-dimensional life. After the entire civilization has entered a lower dimension, they can initiate a dimensional strike against the enemy without
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The fish that dried out the sea went onto land before they did this. They moved from one dark forest to another dark forest.
“The speed of light is also frequently used as a weapon. I’m not talking about building light tombs—or, as you call them, black domains. Those are just defensive mechanisms employed by weak worms like us. The gods do not stoop so low. In war, it’s possible to make reduced-lightspeed black holes to seal the enemy inside.
Some reduced-lightspeed belts are large enough to traverse an entire arm of a galaxy. In places where the stars are dense, many reduced-lightspeed black holes can be connected together into chains that stretch for tens of millions of light-years. That’s a Great Wall at the scale of the universe.
“Dimensional strikes will eventually cause more and more of the universe to become two-dimensional, until one day the entire universe is two-dimensional. Similarly, the construction of fortifications will eventually cause all the reduced-lightspeed areas to connect, until the different lowered lightspeeds all average out: This new average will be the new c for the universe.
“At that time, any scientist from a baby civilization—like us—would think that the speed of light through vacuum is barely a dozen kilometers per second, and this is an ironclad universal constant, just like we now think the same of three hundred thousand kilometers per second.
“Will the universe turn into a war ruin? Or, maybe it’s more accurate to ask: Will the laws of physics turn into war ruins?” “Maybe they already are.… The physicists and cosmologists of the new world are focused on trying to recover the original appearance of the universe before the wars more than ten billion years ago.
“You are saying that the universe of the Edenic Age was four-dimensional, and that the speed of light was much higher?” “No, not at all. The universe of the Edenic Age was ten-dimensional. The speed of light back then wasn’t only much higher—rather, it was close to infinity. Light back then was capable of action at a distance, and could go from one end of the cosmos to the other within a Planck time.…
during the wars after the Edenic Age, one dimension after another was imprisoned from the macroscopic into the microscopic, and the speed of light was reduced again and again.…” “As I said, I’m not saying anything, just guessing.” Yifan’s voice grew softer. “But no one knows if the truth is even darker than our guesses.… We are certain of only one thing: The universe is dying.”
Only the 3G hypergravity had brought some sense of solidity. She had welcomed the powerful embrace of those arms, an embrace that had provided some protection against the terror and frigidity of the dark myths of the universe. But now the hypergravity was gone, and only nightmare remained. The Milky Way appeared as a patch of ice hiding bloody remains, and DX3906 nearby appeared as a cremator burning over an abyss.
if what I told you is true, those events are measured at the scale of hundreds of millions of years. Come with me to our world, which is now also your world. Live out your life and stop skipping across the surface of time. As long as you live your life within a hundred thousand years and a thousand light-years, none of those things need concern you. That ought to be enough for anyone.”
five black lines. One end of each line was connected to the surface of the planet, and the other end extended into space, like five black hairs growing out of Planet Gray. Each line stretched higher than Hunter’s orbit. “What are they?” “Trails left by curvature propulsion. Those lines are the result of extreme curvature manipulation. The speed of light within the trails is zero.”
“These are the deadest things in the universe as well,” said Guan Yifan. “Zero-lightspeed means absolute, one hundred percent death. Inside it, every fundamental particle, every quark is dead. There is no vibration. Even without a source of gravity inside, each death line is a black hole. A zero-gravity black hole. Anything that falls in cannot reemerge.”
Death lines are usually the products of Zero-Homers.” “Zero-Homers?” “They’re also called Resetters. Maybe they’re a group of intelligent individuals, or a civilization, or a group of civilizations. We don’t know exactly who they are, but we’ve confirmed their existence. The Zero-Homers want to reset the universe and return it to the Garden of Eden.”
But if they’re disturbed, they’ll spread very rapidly. A death line of this size can expand to cover a region the size of a solar system. Scientists call this phenomenon a death line rupture.” “Does a rupture make the speed of light zero in the entire region?” “No, no. After rupture, it turns into a regular trail. The speed of light inside goes up as the trail dissipates over a wider region, but it will never be much more than a dozen meters per second. After these death lines expand, this entire system might turn into a reduced-lightspeed black hole, or a black domain.…
“The universe contains multitudes. You can find any kind of ‘people’ and world. There are idealists like the Zero-Homers, pacifists, philanthropists, and even civilizations dedicated only to art and beauty. But they’re not the mainstream; they cannot change the direction of the universe.” “It’s just like the world of humans.” “At least the Zero-Homers’ task will ultimately be completed by the cosmos itself.”
the universe will continue to expand, and become sparser and colder forever.” “That’s the old cosmology you know, but we’ve disproved it. The amount of dark matter had been underestimated. The universe will stop expanding and then collapse under gravity, finally forming a singularity and initiating another big bang. Everything will return to zero, or home. And so Nature remains the final victor.”
“This confirms our guess. The First Trisolaran Fleet founded a colony nearby, within a hundred light-years of here. They must have received the gravitational wave signal from Halo.”
she experienced an eerie moment—eerie, because she couldn’t be sure it was just a moment. The moment seemed to be infinitely short but also infinitely long. She had a strange feeling of stepping across time but being situated outside of time. Later, Yifan would explain to her that she had experienced a “time vacuum.” The length of that moment could not be measured in time because, during that moment, time did not exist.
The space suit had no automatic systems, and everything required manual operation. “There are no computer chips inside this suit at all. Right now, none of our computers—electronic or quantum—work anymore.” “Why?” “The speed of light right now is less than twenty kilometers per second.”
“We’re orbiting Planet Blue at lightspeed,” said Guan Yifan. “Except the speed of light is now very slow.” The shuttle had been moving far faster, but as the speed of light was an absolute speed limit, the shuttle’s velocity had been cut down to that. “The death lines ruptured?” “Yes. They spread out to cover the entire solar system. We’re trapped here.” “Was it due to the disturbance from Tianming’s ship?” “Perhaps. He didn’t know the death lines were here.”
No computer could operate when the speed of light was below twenty kilometers per second. The shuttle’s AI and control systems were all dead. Under such conditions, not even a light inside the spacecraft could be turned on—it was just a metal can with no electricity or power.
Cheng Xin thought about Yun Tianming and 艾 AA. They were both on the ground, and should be safe. But now there was no way for the two sides to communicate. She never even got to say hello to him.
“You’ve been preparing for situations like this?” she asked. “Yes.” Yifan’s voice sounded distorted in Cheng Xin’s earpiece due to the use of ancient analog signals. “Not for ruptured death lines, of course, but we were prepared for accidentally drifting into the trails of lightspeed ships. The situations are similar: The reduced lightspeed stops everything.… Next, we need to start the neurons.”
Yifan sighed. Cheng Xin noticed his sorrow, despite his effort to hide it. And she knew why. She understood that every time the pattern repeated on the broad belt, it meant that the shuttle had completed another orbit around Planet Blue at lightspeed. Even at reduced lightspeed, the demonic rules of the theory of special relativity still held. In the planet’s frame of reference, time was passing tens of millions of times faster than in here, like blood seeping out of her heart. A moment here; eons there.
I know about your experience as the Swordholder. I want to let you know that you didn’t do anything wrong. Humanity chose you, which meant they chose to treat life and everything else with love, even if they had to pay a great price. You fulfilled the wish of the world, carried out their values, and executed their choice. You really didn’t do anything wrong.”
When we’re on long expeditions like this, we equip all our spacecraft with reduced-lightspeed propulsion systems.… Our world puts a lot of effort into developing such technologies. The goal isn’t to solve the problem of accidentally entering trails left by curvature propulsion; rather, it’s because we have to plan for the possibility of having to conceal ourselves inside a light tomb, or a black domain.”
“I think they’re stars,” repeated Yifan. “A star’s light must pass through two interfaces before getting to us: First, it must go through the interface between regular lightspeed and reduced lightspeed, and then through the event horizon of the black hole. That’s why the stars look so strange to us now.”
We’re inside the light tomb.” The DX3906 solar system was now a reduced-lightspeed black hole completely sealed off from the rest of the universe. The starry sky woven by the multitude of crisscrossing silver threads was a dream that could be seen but would never be achieved.
As a matter of fact, the very existence of the sun puzzled Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan. Since E = mc2, reduced-lightspeed nuclear fusion could produce only small amounts of energy. Perhaps the interior of the sun maintained normal lightspeed?
Cheng Xin didn’t like purple. She’d always thought of it as a sick, depressing color that reminded her of the lips of invalids whose hearts did not supply them with sufficient oxygen. Yet now she was surrounded by purple everywhere she looked, and she would have to spend the rest of her life in this purple world.
Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan had to turn to a task that terrified them but was absolutely necessary: determining how much time had elapsed in this frame of reference.
Many elements had been tested and the charts were complicated. All the samples yielded similar results. Underneath, the average of the results was listed simply: Average atomic decay dating results (error range: 0.4%): Stellar time periods lapsed: 6,177,906; Earth years lapsed: 18,903,729.
More than eighteen million years after the DX3906 system turned into a reduced-lightspeed black hole, seventeen billion years after the birth of the universe, a man and a woman held each other tightly.
There really were worlds where one could step through a thousand years at will. Consider the death lines: If they ruptured and expanded just a bit, the speed of light within would rise from zero to an extremely small number, like the rate at which continents drifted over the ocean: a centimeter for every ten thousand years. In such a world, if you got up from your lover and walked a few steps away, you would be separated from him by ten million years.
They returned to the shuttle. Although this was a walk of only a few steps, they leaned against each other as if afraid time would divide them if they were physically separated.
WE LIVED A HAPPY LIFE TOGETHER WE GIVE YOU A LITTLE SURVIVE THE COLLAPSE INSIDE GO TO THE NEW
The object had indeed survived eighteen million years. And, if necessary, it could survive until the end of the universe, because it existed outside of time.
the object had always remained brand new. It had no fear of time because its own time had not yet started. It had been thirty meters underground, next to the carved rock, but it had detected the presence of humans and risen to the surface. During the process, it did not interact with the crust, moving like a ghost. It now confirmed that these two were indeed the ones it had been expecting.
this is a completely enclosed world in which the end is also the beginning. The images we see all around us are the result of light returning to the starting point after crossing the world. We’re still in the same world we started from, because this is the only world that exists. Every copy we see around us is just an image of this world.”
