Spiral

In an encampment within the forest, inside a military tent draped with animal skins, the once-unrivaled king of Doma City lay frail upon his cot. Rain had poured throughout the previous night, and perhaps from being drenched in the downpour, his wounds had grown increasingly swollen. It seemed that not only the Progenitor, but even the great Tree of Ein Sof stood on the side of the Qiu People. But why? Those people clearly couldn't hear the voice of the Tree of Ein Sof, yet they had gained Its favor. Lying in bed, Tun Nan couldn't fathom it no matter how hard he thought, yet his consciousness was already beginning to drift into a blur. At this moment, he still had not realized just how minuscule he was in the grand scheme of heaven and earth. What had defeated him was never the Qiu People, nor the Progenitor, nor the Tree of Ein Sof, but the arrogance and greed buried deep within his own heart. He thought he had deciphered the secrets of the Tree of Ein Sof, never realizing that he was merely an ant at the base of a great tree; the minuscule scraps he had grasped didn't even scratch the surface, amounting to nothing more than withered leaves and dead bark. Yet this was not his fault. The limitations of his era doomed him to see the world solely from the perspective of an ant. The giants of the forest tribes had yet to emerge, and intellectual enlightenment had not yet dawned. Perhaps with the passage of time, when his descendants finally walked out of this forest, truly kindled the sparks of civilization, set foot toward the stars, and came to understand the Tree of Ein Sof anew... perhaps they would hold a different understanding. Yet that would be a story untold thousands of years in the future. Provided their civilization could weather the test of time and reach that day... Watching the weakened chieftain, Saqui, sitting beside the cot, sighed softly and spoke with a trembling voice. "...The prophecy has come to pass after all." Fire, corpses, death... That was the revelation he had received upon connecting to the Tree of Ein Sof, something he had already foreseen before the war even began. And all of it had indeed come to pass. The omniscient and omnipotent Entity seemed to pierce straight through causality—or rather, It was causality itself! Terrified by that dreadful karma, Saqui pressed his left hand against his chest while his right hand pinched a handful of beast bone ash and scattered it into the fire, muttering fervent chants under his breath as he repented and prayed to the great Tree of Ein Sof and the Progenitor. Tun Nan, who had been half-closing his eyes, suddenly opened them. A rare look of piety surfaced on his sharp-featured, feeble face. "I saw the Tree of Ein Sof... It is calling to me." Hearing this, Saqui's expression changed drastically. He grabbed the young leader's hand, his voice laced with a plea. "Please do not abandon us." Tun Nan let out a sigh and murmured in a faint, threadlike breath: "I don't wish to either, but my time is short... Failing to heed the Progenitor's warning was the greatest mistake I made. The descendants of Doma City must remember this profound lesson." As he spoke to this point, a faint flush of color suddenly surged across his wan, sickly face. As though experiencing a final rally before death, he raised his arm and grasped Saqui's wrist. "I must return to Doma City. Bring me before the Progenitor... I want to apologize to him in person." That was his final wish, and also a revelation he had glimpsed through the Tree of Ein Sof. It was the last thing he could do for his people. Seeing the reverence and resolve in those eyes, Saqui choked back tears and nodded, granting the dying chieftain's request. "Alright." Escorted by three hundred remnant soldiers, the warriors of the Doma tribe marched day and night, finally bringing Tun Nan—clinging to his last breath—back to Doma City before the sun set for the third time. And at this very moment, outside the shrine at the roots of the sacred tree, devout believers were prostrated beside roots as massive as mountains. Myriads of fireflies swirled beneath the majestic, rustling canopy, turning night into day and illuminating the green leaves into brilliant gold. Witnessing this incredible scene, the tribal warriors returning from the front widened their eyes, while the priests accompanying the army wore expressions of utter disbelief. Even Tun Nan, who possessed the strongest psionics in their tribe, could never command so many Bugs of Holy Light. Ordinary clansmen who had awakened psionics could command only a few dozen or at most a hundred. Yet the Bugs of Holy Light swirling here right now had lit up the entire sacred tree! The sheer quantity was beyond anything the language of the people of the Tree of Ein Sof could describe! "The Golden Tree..." Saqui murmured under his breath, staring unblinkingly at the canopy that seemed to radiate pure light. He recalled an ancient legend. Legend had it that at the dawn of the distant Barbaric Era, when all the people of this land lived in the Forbidden Forest Valley, the original sacred tree that sheltered all living beings had shone in this very same manner! Now, that long-faded sight had descended once more upon this forest, right upon the sacred tree of the Doma tribe. Beyond ecstatic wonder, Saqui felt an overwhelming confusion. What on earth had happened?! Right then, he spotted the shrine maiden kneeling in prayer at the shrine's entrance— Dora, who had delivered prophecies on behalf of the Progenitor. Stumbling forward on trembling legs, he hastened across the winding roots toward the entrance of the shrine. Falling to his knees beside her, the old man pressed his hands together in prayer, established a telepathic connection with her, and asked: "What happened here?" Eyes closed, Dora's reverent face was completely calm. Ripples of silent resonance echoed from her lake-still mind. "...The Tree of Ein Sof has manifested a miracle. The Progenitor heard Its voice once more." Hearing this, Saqui froze, his expression instantly changing. "Lord Progenitor is still inside?" Dora nodded gently. "We begged him to come out, but he refused..." Saqui stood dazed for a moment. Snapping out of it, he rose immediately from the ground and strode toward the shrine's entrance. Dora made no move to stop him. She merely opened her eyes, watching his figure vanish into the shrine's entrance. Before long, the elderly priest emerged from the shrine once again, his eyes blank. His face was fraught with bewilderment, shock... which slowly transformed into panic and dread. He had clearly been walking toward the depths of the shrine! Yet as he walked, he had somehow ended up back at the entrance! Looking at him, Dora spoke in that silent tongue: "No one can enter the shrine..." "Without his permission." She had already tried many times before this... ... Bright as day as it was outside the shrine, inside was just as brilliantly illuminated. Sitting upon the vine-woven bed, Ye Shi quietly gazed at the murals on the wall, feeling his spiritual world brimming with unprecedented fullness. It was a marvelous sensation. It was like logging into two alternate accounts on the same computer, and one of them had entered a dungeon. Back when he was in the hyperspace conduit, he had experienced this strange sensation once before, though he had departed in a hurry before he could thoroughly examine it. Now, as he sank his consciousness into his surroundings and let his dispersing psionic perception spread outward, the feeling of his consciousness traversing time and space returned to him! And unlike before, this time his consciousness in the "main world" had not fallen asleep; rather, it remained awake alongside his consciousness in the dungeon. The trade-off, however, was that he couldn't touch anything in the dungeon this time. He could only watch events quietly unfold from behind a layer of flickering mist. This was probably what "psionics" was. At first, Ye Shi had felt somewhat at a loss when faced with such bizarre phenomena, but by now he could skillfully control this ability and freely choose the target with which to establish a link. Take right now, for instance: he had connected his consciousness to Doma City's sacred tree. Through the growth rings carved into the roots of the sacred tree, he sent part of his consciousness back over 150 years ago, back to when this towering tree had first been planted in this forest. Just as he had speculated, the sacred tree in the forest had indeed been planted by the crew of the Gemini. Not only that— After some testing, Ye Shi was pleasantly surprised to discover that not only could he establish a telepathic connection with the murals at the roots of the sacred tree, but while inside the dungeon, he could even continue using his ability, using targets within the dungeon as a "springboard" to jump into new dungeons! In other words, dragging the "progress bar" further back! Back over 200 years ago, before this sacred tree had even been planted! Naturally, this iteration could not go on indefinitely. Once he jumped into a new dungeon using a target inside the previous one as a springboard, what he could see became quite blurry, as if an even thicker fog had enveloped the outer layer of mist. Through that void mist, all he could make out were indistinct silhouettes, and all he could hear were scattered, isolated words drifting in; there was simply no way to search for another "springboard." Still, even if he could only catch fragmented words and fleeting glimpses, that was already quite impressive. At least for Ye Shi, it was more than enough to combine with the information from the murals and reconstruct the history that had played out on this planet over the past two hundred years! Near the end of the Three-Year War, the Gemini and the Orion had respectively received orders concerning the "Final War" initiative. Just as Captain Zhao Tianhe had presaged, they and their sister ship, the Gemini, had received entirely different orders. The Orion was the executor of the Final War initiative, tasked with rebooting Earth's ecological environment and thoroughly purging the lingering hazards of the Seed of Gaia to help the shelters better rebuild the order of the Human Alliance era. As for the Gemini, with its meager ammunition reserves, it was the overseer of the plan, tasked with monitoring the Orion's execution of the order. In truth, neither side had any choice from the very beginning. Especially since the Gemini knew there was a high probability the Orion would not carry out the mission, their only chance of survival was to strike first. Yet even if they struck first, their chances of surviving were exceedingly slim, at best ending in mutual destruction. Such a victory would be meaningless, even worse than defeat. And so, Song Yuchuan, captain of the Gemini, made an extremely risky and daring decision— Namely, to upload the consciousness of the entire crew onto circuit boards! They would kill themselves before their opponent could kill them, and after mutually annihilating each other, they would resurrect to continue carrying out orders in the form of synthetics. This was the optimal solution they could devise. Between the survivors and the Human Alliance, they chose the Human Alliance without hesitation. The plan won the approval of the majority. After all, they had no better alternative, and most of their families were in the shelters anyway. However, a small minority believed that uploading their consciousness to circuit boards was indistinguishable from suicide, and that the "Final War" initiative formulated by the Lagrange Point Space Station was utter madness. The proper course should have been to talk things through with the Orion; they believed there had to be a way for everyone to survive. As to how this dispute arose and how it ended, Ye Shi couldn't see any further details. Through the void mist, that was all the history from two hundred years ago he could observe. After all, for this sacred tree above his head, truly comprehending memories that "belonged to the heavens" was no easy task. Furthermore, the crew member who had planted it clearly had little desire to dwell on matters of the "old era." Seventeen crew members were ultimately packed into hibernation pods, loaded into a landing craft, and launched into geosynchronous orbit. What followed needed little elaboration; it was essentially what Ye Shi had witnessed in the hyperspace conduit and among the wreckage of the Orion. The Gemini launched a landing craft containing a neutron bomb and the "souls" of its entire crew toward the Orion, while the Orion fired a neutron torpedo at the former right before plunging into the hyperspace conduit. The wreckage of the Gemini remained in orbit around Gaia, while the Orion, carrying its crew who existed in a superposition of indeterminate life and death, jumped five light-years away. As for the seventeen "exiled" crew members lying in hibernation pods, they slept in geosynchronous orbit for nearly forty to fifty years before finally awakening at the tail end of the Barbaric Era. They descended onto Gaia in their landing craft and discovered the descendants of the colonists on this planet—the green-skinned Gaians. In studying and observing those Gaians, they gradually realized that the Human Alliance's understanding of Gaia had been flawed. Utterly mistaken, in fact! Whether this misconception stemmed from intentional deception by "radical factions" among the colonies, or from the Human Alliance's own condescending arrogance and prejudice, was no longer knowable. After examining the living habits and cultural traditions of the Gaians, the seventeen crew members ultimately reached a conclusion— An infinitely prosperous civilization had once existed on this planet. And unlike the Human Alliance, which had only just stepped into the cosmos, the prosperity of this advanced civilization extended far beyond the single star system of Alpha Centauri; its footprints reached vastly beyond the bounds of human civilization's comprehension! As for Gaia— it was merely an "ecological maintenance system" left behind on this planet by that advanced civilization. Needless to say, this discovery was utterly fascinating. Whether it was the existence of that advanced civilization itself, or where they had ultimately gone. After all, if even these "Precursors," whose achievements far surpassed human civilization, could not escape the fate of self-destruction in the end, then the decline and fall of human civilization hardly seemed worth lamenting. All things move from life to death, and from death to life; it was nothing more than predetermined destiny. Filled with curiosity about the "Precursors" and a longing to uncover the "cosmic truths," the seventeen crew members temporarily set aside their thoughts of returning home, using their limited tools to conduct a series of investigations into the Gaians and their sacred trees. And through a convoluted journey of exploration, they ultimately discovered Its existence! This occurred on the eve of the "Awakening Era," and the one who first discovered It was Qiu Shiye, a physicist from the Fifth Department. These fellows, usually deemed useless on ordinary days, always managed to prove in baffling ways that they weren't as useless as they seemed—their usefulness was just rarely obvious. In short, over more than a decade of research, he finally decoded the "psionics" possessed by the Gaians. Upon awakening his own psionics, he uncovered the existence of the "Tree of Ein Sof" and went on to explain it using dimensional theory! All of this was recorded in the murals of the shrine. Once Ye Shi understood the murals' contents, he naturally inherited these clues, and just like Qiu Shiye, who had once "succeeded once before," he engaged in direct dialogue with "It"... It was precisely that conversation that drove Dr. Qiu Shiye completely mad, plunging him into hysterical insanity. Or in other words, he had become obsessed to the point of delusion. He learned from the Precursors that this universe possessed a "Creator," and that everything in this universe, including himself, was nothing more than a character in some book or a painting on some wall. To take destiny into one's own hands, the only way was to break the "Window of the Event Horizon"! Which meant breaking the fourth wall! In Dr. Qiu's view, that was the destiny every civilization was bound to face in the end—they would ultimately come face to face with their Creator! Moreover, a living example stood right before him: the "Precursors" who had once existed in this universe had accomplished it, shattering the barrier between themselves and the Creator! To achieve this goal, he needed the reactor from the guided-missile cruiser Gemini to conduct further experiments, which required dismantling the reactor and hauling it down to the surface. The other sixteen crew members naturally opposed this mad scheme; after all, that reactor was their sole hope of returning home. In the eyes of the other sixteen crew members, they had successfully excavated the entire ruin, and it was time to leave. Not to mention they had already suffered at the hands of madmen once before, having been kicked off the ship because of it. To prevent this black sheep from pulling off some outrageous stunt, they attempted to lock him up, only for him, unfortunately, to escape into the forest with his followers. And these people were the later "Qiu People"—the "materialist" natives who could not perceive psionics. What happened afterward was the "Second Judgment Day" well-known to every native in this forest— The burning palace crashed to the ground! It was worth mentioning that the murals in Doma City's shrine were not left behind by Dr. Qiu, but by one of the other sixteen crew members. They had brought seeds of the sacred tree into the forest, nurtured a new sacred tree with the aid of natives who had awakened "psionics," and recorded this history at the tree's roots. Because of this, the information on the murals was actually colored by heavy subjective bias. Analyzing the clues on the murals from a third-party perspective, Ye Shi was suddenly astonished to discover how strikingly similar this history was! The seventeen crew members had clashed over whether to follow the path of the "Precursors," coming to blows as a result. Qiu Shiye, who led the "Sinners" to conquer the Forbidden Forest Valley, had undoubtedly won, yet he had also undoubtedly suffered total defeat. If the fourth wall were truly so easy to break, the "Precursor" civilization wouldn't have gone to such immense lengths. Although the murals contained no record of it, Ye Shi could already guess what happened next. Just like himself. Dr. Qiu Shiye had ultimately discovered the final truth. "It" had indeed broken the fourth wall, but It had not become the "omnipotent" Creator that Qiu, as a materialist, had envisioned. And the voice he heard had not been uttered by It as some "predecessor Creator," but was merely an echo of "It" lingering in this universe. He had never truly conversed with "It." He had merely greeted the shadow "It" left behind in this world... "Fuck! Isn't this just the exact same thing as the 'First Judgment Day'?" The survivors of the Three-Year War, fighting for their own version of truth, picked up their unfinished weapons and brawled once more on the planet Gaia after the war had ended. History was like a loop, repeating past events time and time again, even spinning another full circle right under his very nose. Thinking back to the rain that had made all the natives rejoice and Tun Nan, who had thought himself so clever, Ye Shi didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He finally understood the profound, mocking chuckle "It" had given upon first meeting him— *You are always like this.* "Forgive our sorry display."