Leaving behind one last message, the voice from the unseen realm faded into nothingness.
More than that.
The gaze from nowhere dissolved alongside that unseen voice, vanishing as if it had never been there at all.
Intuition told Chu Guang that they would not meet again... at least not within any future he could foresee.
In truth, even this meeting had been an accident that was never supposed to occur.
Seeing Chu Guang staring blankly at the bookshelf, Xiao Qi whispered worriedly, "Master... are you all right?"
Pulling his scattered thoughts back, Chu Guang looked at the anxious Xiao Qi. He reached out an index finger, gently stroked its hair, and gave it a reassuring smile.
"I'm fine. Just... happened to run into a fellow calling himself an Observer."
Xiao Qi looked at him blankly. "An Observer?"
"Yeah," Chu Guang nodded with an intriguing expression, turning his gaze toward the lush green trees outside the window. "How should I put it? Though it was an unexpected encounter, thanks to him, I caught a glimpse of another possibility beyond our timeline... and found the answer to a question that had baffled me for so long."
According to the Observer's theory, the multiverse and parallel worlds existed simultaneously, and out there was another universe entirely identical to this one—except without him in it.
It was somewhat like the famous "infinite monkey theorem."
Namely, suppose one monkey or an infinite number of monkeys were seated before typewriters, striking keys at random. If given enough time, they would almost certainly produce the complete works of Shakespeare.
Naturally, not just Shakespeare, but also *Journey to the West* or any other novel imaginable.
Including the stories of Wasteland OL and Reality OL.
In fact, the "infinity" described by the Observer was precisely such a colossal concept.
From the moment the very first particle in the Primordial Universe vibrated, heat death had already begun, reaching the zero point of the Big Bang after consciousnesses were born.
From that instant onward, the movement of matter no longer followed its original trajectory of dispersion alone, but began evolving into infinite possibilities under the interference of the three primordial consciousnesses.
An infinite number of universes was born from this—truly infinite in every sense of the word!
Within these boundless parallel universes, there were stories about him, Chu Guang, stories about others, and stories with other people where he did not exist at all.
Moreover, the outcomes under these controlled variables were compounded by countless additional variables...
For instance, the Alliance was still the Alliance and he was still himself, but the Precursors they encountered were not the "Psionic Explorers" of this timeline, but the "Oldest Civilization" the Observer mentioned, intent on wiping out every living soul in this universe.
The divergence between universes could be as grand as having an entire civilization more or less, or as subtle as having one person more or less across a specific span of time—even down to whether a particular person did a particular thing on a particular day, hour, and minute.
All these endless possibilities were determined by "consciousness"—or rather, the mind.
And they corresponded one-to-one with the infinite physical universes.
Chu Guang attempted an imperfect yet vivid metaphor: the infinite parallel universes were like infinite typewriters.
The "three primordial consciousnesses" the Observer spoke of were the male and female monkeys capable of siring infinite little monkeys.
As for the Observer himself, whose avatars and projections spanned across infinite universes, along with his companion the Sower... and even that slain entity, TAG.7444154, they were essentially all "monkeys seated before typewriters."
Though their presence accelerated the wear and tear of the typewriters and the bankruptcy of the publishing house, it also allowed an otherwise half-dead publishing house the possibility of turning a profit.
Among them, the two types of monkeys known as Sowers and Observers were the most numerous.
Supposedly born of the Primordial Light, they were ubiquitous just like the three primordial consciousnesses born of the Primordial Universe, possessing projections across endless parallel worlds.
Yet they possessed stronger subjective agency and far more distinct, concrete motives than the latter.
One was responsible for striking keys at random, while the other was tasked with "proofreading." Together, their goal was to hammer out the story of a "Boundary Breaker" before each typewriter ran dry of ink.
Every time a Boundary Breaker was born, two or more typewriters on the brink of being scrapped could be merged into one.
After all, these monkeys did not peck out letters purely at random. They referenced "success cases" from other typewriters, making fine adjustments within the rules to machines typing similar content, generating a "Boundary Breaker A" or "Boundary Breaker B" in a universe where none originally existed.
Though this endeavor did not succeed every time, it undeniably boosted the odds of a Boundary Breaker's emergence.
As for TAG.7444154 and other arbitrarily numbered Void consciousnesses, they were the "troublemaking monkeys."
They would randomly scurry up to a typewriter and punch their own names in, scrambling the neatly arranged text to produce good or bad outcomes—or else get thrashed black and blue by the keyboard and flee the desk in disgrace.
They might harbor grand ambitions, or they might have none at all.
For example, the Observer mentioned that over their long study of the Void, the Precursor civilization was seduced by "bad voices" emanating from it, plunging their entire civilization headfirst into the abyss.
Meanwhile, the Alliance's scientific expedition at the Seventh Research Institute heard nothing at all, merely drawing in a ravenous lizard by accident. Before the beast could even take a few warm bites, it was given a sound beating, hurriedly hurled a parting threat, and scurried off.
As for the typewriter beneath the Alliance's feet, the Observer had likely abandoned it at some point.
For instance, someone or some civilization it had chosen failed to fulfill a mission as it had wished, causing the situation here to spiral entirely out of control under a cascading butterfly effect.
Chu Guang was unsure whether this so-called total loss of control referred to the collapse of the Human Alliance.
After all, judging from the possibilities described by the Observer, no matter how the wastelanders struggled, they all seemed to perish beneath that sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.
And that fateful day had likely been preordained long before the Human Alliance even entered the Era of Prosperity.
Yet due to certain unforeseen accidents, a Boundary Breaker that was never meant to appear seemed to have emerged after all?
So much so that even the "Outer Gods" of the Void were taken aback.
Not only had the Observer drawn close once more, but even that so-called Nameless Mist had gotten involved, to the point of allowing Chu Guang to converse with an Observer he was never supposed to meet.
Looking at the bewildered Xiao Qi, Chu Guang offered a faint smile and picked up where he had left off.
"I've actually always wondered where our players truly come from, and why that world has no record of me whatsoever..."
"At one point, I even suspected that the 'real world' was virtual from the start, just like the world inside Shelter 101... existing purely as data."
"How could that be?" Xiao Qi gasped, its eyes wide with astonishment. "The servers in Shelter 101 can rival Ideal City's Endpoint Cloud... Shelter 404 doesn't have anywhere near that kind of computing power, does it?"
"And it also couldn't explain the real-time transmission of information, right?" Chu Guang smiled at Xiao Qi, speaking in a gentle tone. "So that explanation was flawed from the beginning, even if it seemed closest to the truth."
Without question, the players were not AIs on a virtual machine, but living consciousnesses existing in another world.
As for why, it was because the pocket universes spawned from the Primordial Universe were infinite.
One could never find two identical leaves in a forest, but finding two leaves that were nearly alike was entirely feasible—it just took a little more time.
Chu Guang did not know the exact technology the first Administrator had used to establish and sustain this continuous resonance field bridging two worlds.
Perhaps he had imbibed some potion that awakened psionics, or signed a pact with some entity in the Void, or used some other bizarre method.
Yet Chu Guang could roughly deduce what that man had done!
"In this cosmos, there is not only another universe and another 'me,' but also another 'first Administrator' and a universe from when that guy was still young."
"If I'm not mistaken, the parallel universe he targeted was that one—"
"Or to put it another way."
"He connected with his past self."
Wiping an individual's information entirely from the early internet?
For a native living in that era, that might indeed present some difficulty.
But for the "Professor" who created the Academy and catalyzed the entire Era of Prosperity, it was simplicity itself.
It was no exaggeration to say that descending upon the eve of the Era of Prosperity with all of his knowledge, he was likely far closer to an "omnipotent" deity than Ye Shi had been upon descending on Planet Gaia...
...
Rolling yellow sands swept across the earth, hastily burying relics of the old era under neglected dunes.
At the very moment the Alliance exchanged that fleeting glance and parted ways with the Observer in the Void, a solemn meeting was underway in the deepest recesses of Shelter 13.
The meeting had two primary agendas.
One was to determine what order the new world would operate under after "Heaven's Punishment"—such as establishing the Celestials' postwar rule and the political rights of shelter residents who pledged allegiance to them.
The other was to fix the exact date for the descent of Heaven's Punishment, along with subsequent operational plans, such as taking over the "unattended" production and living facilities of the various survivor factions.
These included Pioneer City and the Ravanka Industrial Zone, which were closest to Shelter 13, as well as the relatively distant Daybreak City Industrial Zone and North Island Industrial Zone, extending all the way to Ideal City on the eastern coast and the Wilantes' coastal strongholds on the new continent.
To prevent the loss of productive assets, they intended to formulate a plan for swift takeover.
The Celestials sent five representatives to the meeting, every single one of them an android.
On the shelter residents' side, there were a full twelve representatives: half were members of the Enlightenment Society, a quarter were residents of Shelter 13, and the remaining quarter came from other shelters scattered across the Great Desert.
Though the Enlightenment Society and the Celestials formed a community of shared interests to a certain extent, this forced alliance had clearly been plagued by ulterior motives and mutual distrust from the very beginning.
The Celestials held the weapon the Enlightenment Society needed most—a tool capable of "playing Match-3 on Earth."
And the Enlightenment Society held what the Celestials required: the latter could not journey to the *Orion* alone and had to rely on tangible, physical forces.
Even if those forces were mere rats in the gutter.
As for the other shelter residents, each had their own reasons for joining the Enlightenment Society.
Some, like Zhuang Lan, had been duped; others genuinely endorsed the society's ideals, while the majority simply adopted an attitude of neither opposing nor supporting.
After all—
Why oppose it?
A neutron plume could not harm a shelter in the slightest.
Even if they disapproved of the extreme methods employed by the Enlightenment Society and the Celestials, the thought that those disgusting wastelanders, mutants, and every other nuisance on the wasteland would dissolve into dust and scatter with the wind gave them reason enough to turn a blind eye.
The entire process would be painless, far more comfortable than living in this dying world... like embracing eternal slumber in warm sunlight.
If an afterlife existed and they reincarnated into this world, they would likely be born inside a shelter.
Or live in a "New Era" rebuilt by shelter residents.
For the lives still struggling upon the wasteland, this was perhaps a form of mercy.
At least, that was what they believed.
It was precisely for this reason that Shelter 13 had opened its gates to the Enlightenment Society.
With defenses fortified layer upon layer, no one could have forced those doors open unless the residents chose to unlock them themselves—let alone permit outsiders inside to remodel their home.
Thus, through the efforts of a few and the silence of the majority, the "Heaven's Punishment" plan proceeded in an orderly fashion.
In fact, had a minor accident not occurred, this Heaven's Punishment would have descended two months ago.
Yet, as luck would have it, that accident came to pass after all.
The timetable for Heaven's Punishment was pushed back time and again, and predictably, this month's launch schedule had been canceled as well.
Now, not only were wavering voices emerging among the peripheral shelter factions affiliated with the Enlightenment Society, but unrest had also begun stirring within the society itself.
Because of this.
From the moment the meeting commenced, uncertain and troubled expressions were written across every face present.
Seated at the head of the conference table, Guixu, President of the Enlightenment Society, had uncharacteristically remained silent since the start of the proceedings. Instead, his gaze darted repeatedly toward Tianqi, the android dispatched into this desert by the Celestial Organization.
This fellow had once belonged to the Church of the Torch and was one of its Harbingers.
Though Guixu did not hold high hopes for his competence, the android was ultimately the only one who could establish contact with the Lagrange Point Space Station.
Furthermore.
He had clashed directly with the Alliance on the battlefield.
While the Enlightenment Society had also experienced friction with the Alliance, their skirmishes had mostly been limited to small-scale military engagements.
Guixu felt this fellow might be able to offer constructive insights.
Unfortunately, the android paid him no mind, sitting expressionless and indifferently batting the ball back.
It was not that he refused to engage with the president of the Enlightenment Society, but rather that there was truly nothing they could do at present.
All they needed to do was wait.
Just as the orders from the Lagrange Point Space Station dictated, they needed to take no action for now; they simply had to wait quietly for victory.
These organics were far too impatient...
Sensing the glances constantly cast in his direction, a flicker of irritation stirred within Tianqi's sapience module.
Perhaps influenced by the Celestial Organization.
Devoting himself to higher evolution, he felt a genuine revulsion toward these fragile sacks of flesh for the very first time...
As if they were filthy contaminants.
Silence stretched across the conference table for a long while.
Finally, someone refused to endure the endless waiting. A man in his early thirties stood up from the table.
His name was Feng Zhiheng, the eleventh-generation director elected by the survivors of Shelter 13.
Back then, he had overridden all objections, persuading the majority of residents who harbored reservations about the Enlightenment Society, and welcomed these dreamers dedicated to "rebuilding the prewar era."
The two sides initially enjoyed a lengthy honeymoon period, and the society's arrival had indeed brought unprecedented development to Shelter 13.
Yet as the situation progressively deteriorated for both the Enlightenment Society and the Celestial Organization, suspicions among Shelter 13's residents mounted, leaving his position within the shelter on shaky ground.
Had there been any alternative, he would not have chosen this moment to confront the high command of the Enlightenment Society directly.
Sweeping a sharp gaze over Guixu and the leadership of both the society and the Celestials, he braced his hands on the table and demanded in a resonant voice:
"'Heaven's Punishment' has been delayed—and not for the first time... Before we proceed to the core agenda, I would like the gentlemen of the Enlightenment Society to explain this far more critical matter."
Silence fell over the conference table.
Tianqi gave an irritated click of his tongue, seemingly eager to end this pointless charade.
Guixu, however, was far more tactful. Knowing full well that now was not the time to burn bridges, he let out a cough to mask the android's inadvertent impatience and swiftly picked up the topic.
"The preparations for the neutron torpedoes require a little more time. I am confident it will be completed next month."
Yet Director Feng was not so easily brushed off by these hollow words. He pressed on aggressively:
"I want to know exactly how long that will take."
Guixu's brow twitched violently, a barely perceptible glint of murderous intent flashing in his mild eyes.
*Does this fellow think too highly of himself?*
Shelter authorization was indeed a nuisance for him, but nothing more.
If necessary, he wouldn't mind replacing Shelter 13's director.
He was certain that without even needing to lift a finger himself, that fellow Tianqi would be more than happy to oblige.
Confronted by that unpleasant gaze, Guixu forced a genial smile, preparing to deflect with bureaucratic platitudes.
Yet right then, something entirely unexpected occurred.
The man seated not far beside him suddenly stood up without warning.
Paying no heed to the bewilderment on Guixu's face, the man swept his gaze across the table, then spoke in a voice blended with pity and chilling coldness, uttering words that caught almost everyone present completely off guard.
"Don't bother waiting."
"Heaven's Punishment will not be coming."
Chapter 1043