Capítulo 974: Chapter 974: Secret Sin of the Future
Actually, we all really wanted to immediately figure out what was going on with this strange girl who seemed very familiar with us, but time seemed to be running short. This red universe was collapsing; the Fallen Apostles apparently possessed slightly superior universe control technology than us. Their speed in destroying this world’s constants was beyond imagination—of course, it could also be that this world was indeed too unstable. A universe built on the foundation of Fragments, most of its constants teeter on the edge of contradiction; once a single lever is broken, a chain collapse of the entire world follows. To avoid further losses due to such absurd reasons, we had to leave this world with a large group of Abyssalized Battleships that were out of place but no longer threatening.
The retreat process was slightly smoother than expected because Lin Xue’s Prediction Ability was gradually recovering from “interference.” In fact, as long as she did not peek at a certain peculiar girl, her ability would not be affected. Having a Prophet during military operations is immensely valuable; the Fallen Apostles would never find the Imperial Army’s retreat path. We always managed to change course several minutes before their intelligence probes arrived. As Miss Lin would say, such trivial matters were hardly satisfying.
However, after successfully leaving the Fallen Apostles’ sphere of influence, Lin Xue was still quite exhausted. She had performed excessively frequent precise foreknowledge today.
Because of a special battle and gaining a rather special group of “followers,” the main force did not return directly to the Empire. The Sixth and First Fleets took a detour, first heading to a Low Energy Level universe located at the border for a comprehensive inspection. No one could guarantee what kind of contamination a fleet might encounter after continuously fighting on the Fallen Apostles’ land for over two hours. Only after completing inspection could they proceed to the Imperial District, while the Imperial Admiral and Royal Fleet temporarily stayed in the Void. Our location was far from both the Empire and the Fallen Apostles’ borders, with only one Void Node nearby, jointly established by the New Empire and the Divine Race, which served as a long-term monitoring post. This node was one of the first collaborative projects restarted after restoring communication with the Divine Realm, primarily used to observe the Abyss’s movements in the Void and the evolutionary rules of the wasteland areas. Occasionally, it could monitor the movements of Fallen Apostles. However, so far, this third function had never been activated. Although it was assured this Void Node was not exposed, it seemed the Fallen Apostles also sensed it wasn’t entirely safe, as they never appeared within this node’s scan range.
The Royal Fleet and thousands of Abyssalized Spaceships docked within the node’s scan area to resolve some troublesome matters.
In the rest area, the First Family sat in a large circle, with three main parties involved inside. Lin Xue and I sat side by side, and opposite us, in a chair, was the strange girl who casually and familiarly acknowledged us as mom and dad right at the start. Miss Lin looked utterly distressed, and couldn’t help tapping the table as she saw the girl fiddling restlessly: “Sit straight, don’t fidget, stop biting nails, don’t make faces—why on earth am I nagging you like your mother?”
After Miss’s casual mutter, she was filled with confusion, while the girl across laughed cheerfully: “Haha, Mom, you really are my mom. These words feel so familiar now. Have you guessed how I came here?”
This girl truly left us in exasperated amusement, cheerfully and casually joking around with us like an old acquaintance, never treating herself as an outsider, and stubbornly refusing to reveal her origin, insisting we piece it together ourselves. Strangely, though, none of us could bring ourselves to act against her: such a person, likely from the Fallen Apostles’ camp, should definitely not cause a stir among us. Yet, not only Lin Xue and I, but even Sandora and Big Sister had an inexplicable sense of familiarity with the girl. Lin Xue called it a hyper-intuition specific to strong mental entities regarding matters involving themselves, akin to a Sixth Sense. Intuitively, we felt the girl before us was not an enemy.
“What’s your name,” I shook my head, pointing at the girl’s forehead, “don’t grin like that; why do I find you so familiar?”
“My surname is Chen,” the girl deliberately pursed her lips, holding back her words for several seconds before blurting out just as Lin Xue was about to burst, with a mischievous grin, “I’m called Chen Xiaoxue!”
Everyone around couldn’t help but be stunned.
I rubbed my forehead: “Don’t lie.”
“Seriously, I really wish this were a lie,” the girl claiming to be Chen Xiaoxue looked at me with deep regret. “This name must be something you randomly picked using Sogou Input Method’s autocomplete. Of all the nice names possible, why choose something so mundane—when Teacher Ge Mu did roll call at school, at least four people responded along with me, not counting those with similar-sounding names. I even asked you about it; you said that ‘Chen’ and ‘Xue’ were must-haves, and that I could pick the other characters myself: Chen Daxue, Chen Zhongxue, Chen Xiaoxue, or Chen Yujiaxue… Childhood, what a nightmare! Is this the name of a Princess!?”
Big Sister gaped and then poked my neck from behind: “Ah Jun, this sounds like your style.”
“Alright, based on all your talks, now I guess you time-traveled from the future,” Lin Xue lay weakly on the table. Although the girl never directly stated her origins, her actions consistently steered the answer in a specific direction, but neither Lin Xue nor I were willing to acknowledge it, as it was too outlandish. Miss Lin looked at the opposite girl, more cunning than herself, pondering how she ended up before us after presumably looping around the Fallen Apostles. She turned her head to Qianqian, “Hey, you’re the expert. Can reversing history like this happen on a macro scale?”
Qianqian was busy taking pictures of Chen Xiaoxue and paused at the question, then switched personalities and began explaining earnestly: “Of course it can happen. Forcing someone back to the past is possible, but what follows is catastrophic, leading to logical paradoxes. Altering history could result in two outcomes: one is the current world timeline collapsing, turning the entire world into a static snapshot, like a person going into shock to protect themselves in a massive physiological crisis; the world also halts its operation to protect its logic tree…”
Bingdisi interjected: “We call this downtime. When a world encounters a huge error, it suddenly stops, and then the Divine Race comes to troubleshoot.”
Qianqian glared at Bingdisi: “I don’t like being interrupted while speaking!”
So it happened, this inner personality, even Bingdisi couldn’t handle it. The female hooligan shrugged and sent me a “she’ll surely apologize to everyone once she recovers” look.
Qianqian continued: “Besides the timeline stalling, the other outcome would be the creation of Parallel Worlds. Some world structures are odd; they can split themselves. Whenever there’s a timeline deviation, a copy is made at the deviation point, forming two worlds. Although I haven’t done it in reality, I’ve simulated similar scenarios in Taville’s lab; basically, these two are the situations. In summary: fixed history is hard to change; going back to the past is operationally feasible, but doing anything after returning is infeasible.”
Qianqian finished speaking and withdrew from this sharp, meticulous, and irritable personality, beginning to apologize to Bingdisi…
“Ahem, I’ll add a few words. This is intelligence from our Divine Race,” Bingdisi coughed a couple of times. “Actually, regarding timeline settings, there are several fixed templates in Creation Science, which can be divided into the two categories Qianqian mentioned. Both are safety locks to prevent world-level collapses. The first is called ‘Logic Fault Emergency Stop Process,’ commonly known as a dead brake. When someone tries to attack the timeline, the entirety of world information flow will freeze, and then the local world’s Management God will troubleshoot and restart the world. The second is called ‘Progressive Data Stack Repair Process,’ commonly known as ABS anti-lock—this term should be understood in spirit. This procedure method creates a world backup when the historical process is altered. If there are further changes, another backup is made. The survival duration of each backup is uncertain; in each backup, except for the fault source, everything else is essentially a copied Shadow from the main body. After a period, the backup will return to the correct historical track, and then the two worlds merge back into one. Besides these two methods, there are some more niche error-correcting methods, but those are essentially strange phenomena developed by Native Worlds themselves. The Divine Race wouldn’t mess with such systems with potential liabilities; otherwise, if detected by quality control, you could be locked up for thousands of years…”
I: “…”
“So you claim to be the daughter of Chen and Lin Xue from the future, which is inherently suspect,” Bingdisi turned to look at the girl claiming to be Chen Xiaoxue. Although expressing skepticism, there was little hostility. “First of all, everyone here is either a Void Creature or Void Derivative, all somewhat linked to world origins. Involving us, the world cannot generate parallel histories due to insufficient data flux. Secondly, emergency stops are also impractical—the reason is the same: the world’s braking system doesn’t have that capacity. Thus, it’s basically impossible for an individual from the future to appear before us, and any attempt to alter the history of people like us would be corrected before occurring, and—would be corrected by the Void.”
When Bingdisi said this last sentence, she glanced at me, and I immediately sat up straight with a dignified expression: as a Void Creature, nothing but the Void itself could alter the history of a Void Creature.
The mysterious girl named Chen Xiaoxue looked at us one by one and said, “Hmm, hmm, what you said is not wrong, not wrong at all—the grandfather paradox is quite a troublesome concept. Oh, sometimes it’s also called the grandmother paradox. However, it doesn’t apply to me—I never claimed to have traveled back in time. This body is merely a medium, hence its presence before you doesn’t affect the coordination of order. My mode of existence is somewhat peculiar; within a conventional dimensional worldview, it’s impossible to comprehend at which node I exist. Well, this will be explained later. I was born after that event—by the way, Dad, what year is it now? Um, I mean, have you already learned about that matter?”
Lin Xue gritted her teeth: “Speak clearly, or we’ll have a mixed doubles match.”
“Oh, I meant the Void Catastrophe; you should already be aware of it, right?”
The atmosphere froze for a moment as Sandora grew serious: “You mean, that event actually occurs in the future?”
“I thought it was merely a prediction by Father God,” Bingdisi glanced at me, “Could it be happening soon?”
“It happened, and I was born after the Void Catastrophe,” Chen Xiaoxue tapped the table, “Everything was divided into two parts by that event, much like two logical partitions of a hard drive. Altering history truly can be troublesome, but if it’s beyond the Void Catastrophe, it won’t have any impact. As for the specific reasons, well… even up to the time I left, you were still researching it with my second uncle, and neither of you understood what was going on.”
I was taken aback: “Your second uncle?”
“Oh, Father God, he’s not exactly a second uncle, but you’ve made me call him that since I was young.”
Sister poked my neck again: “Ah Jun, this is so you.”
“Alright, someday in the future, I and your second uncle are studying the Void Catastrophe… That event indeed happened. Now then, what consequences did it lead to? Uh, more importantly—you say you’re not traveling back from the future, but at least you yourself should exist at a certain point in the future, doesn’t that mean… to you, everyone here is walking on a path determined by history?”
With these words, even Sandora’s face grew conflicted. No matter how you put it, everyone had been feeling pretty good about their days. Now, suddenly realizing that to some people, they’re already a part of determined history, it’s not an entirely pleasant thought.
“No, no, no, that is the crux of the problem. The Void Catastrophe broke everything apart, Dad. From the birth of the first Void Creature to the Void Catastrophe was one segment, and from the Void Catastrophe to when I set off to find you and Mom was another. However, when I jumped from my departure point, there was no way to connect the two timelines. You can feel free to do whatever you like, because no matter how much I ramble on here, in the future, only one thing is certain—that I was born. That’s the only definite information I can bring from the future. Even if, starting today, a sharp-witted and lovable daughter suddenly appearing affects some decisions you may make, none of the things that are to happen after the Void Catastrophe will be influenced—not unless you conduct an experiment and blow up Shadow City right now, in which case I can do nothing, because no one dares to try that.”
Everyone was left bewildered by the convoluted theory, even Sandora began to rub her forehead, as this matter had jumped beyond any scientific logic, reaching an absurd level: Alright, history, after all, is not certain. Even events that have already occurred are merely what you currently believe they are. Thinking this way, we can regard this Chen Xiaoxue as nonexistent and do whatever we want, including blowing up some world or pledging allegiance to the Abyss, and the only sure thing in the future is that Miss Lin and I finally have a daughter—an especially rambunctious one who traveled across unknown timelines to surprise her dad…
Miss Lin suddenly knocked on the table: “So, you actually don’t know the future path? Um, I mean the future path before the Void Catastrophe, which should be historical to you.”
“I know quite a bit, things Dad told me when he was young,” Chen Xiaoxue shrugged, an action remarkably similar to my own, “but that’s useless; those events may not necessarily happen, or at least the process isn’t fixed. For instance, a person destined to die, in my memory, died from a gunshot, but in the history you and Dad truly experienced, he might have died from food poisoning. My research topic is, when carrying these memories across the temporal node of the Void Catastrophe, are my memories immediately corrected, or will two sets of memories coexist? Of course, it’s possible nothing happens. After all, I’ve grown accustomed to living in a world where everything is uncertain…”
It seems that this daughter who descended from the sky indeed has plenty of secrets—what does she mean by saying that for her, everything in the world is uncertain? By the way, what on earth are Lin Xue and I developing in the future…
“What exactly happened during the Void Catastrophe that divided everything into two segments?”
Seeing that Chen Xiaoxue temporarily did not explain her “essence,” Sandora asked another question that concerned us all.
“The end of the world, a collective end of worlds,” Chen Xiaoxue’s tone was heavy, and this time she wasn’t joking around, “By now, my second uncle should have detected some hints. In the original history, the consequence was something he first calculated, but this time, I’m the first to tell you: the entire Void stretched lazily and extinguished countless worlds.”
I took a deep breath, then the girl before me completed her sentence, “But no one knows which specific worlds perished.”
Seemingly quite satisfied with the astonished glances she received, Chen Xiaoxue nodded her head and counting on her fingers, explained to us about future events that are destined to happen, although no one knows when or how it will happen: “At the time of the Void Catastrophe, no one noticed, including my second uncle and the big sister-in-law (I guess she means Huron God King—but how is this relation calculated! These titles defy ethics, don’t they?!), it lacked a symbolic event, because in the sights of the Empire, Star Domain, and Huron, everything continued orderly and normally developing, yet gradually someone noticed a strange phenomenon: the exploration fleets had not discovered new worlds for a long time.
“Normally, explorers from the Empire, Star Domain, and Huron collectively can discover a new native world in the Void nearly every day, but suddenly, all exploration fleets returned empty-handed, and what should have been a vibrant Void became seemingly desolate. Only the worlds we already knew continued to function normally, yet we could no longer find an unexplored frontier. Initially, some speculated that we had finally reached the boundaries of the Void and discovered the last native world. Of course, this suspicion was immediately dismissed because the Void still had no end; it was just that those worlds unknown to the three Void Creatures quietly vanished. That was the Void Catastrophe.
“After this event, you, your second uncle, and the big sister-in-law all paid close attention, utilizing almost all the exploration fleet and radars to scan the Void. In areas where worlds should be congregated actively, there was only a vast emptiness, not even world fragments or wreckage. Gradually, new, unmarked worlds were discovered again, but these worlds were all just being born—they were only birthed after the Void Catastrophe.”
“The old worlds, except for those already discovered and located by the groups led by the three Void Creatures, vanished without anyone’s knowledge.”
(Get ready for a brainstorm!) (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, feel free to vote for recommendations or monthly tickets on Qidian (), your support is my greatest motivation.)