Chapter 15

Our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/PazjBDkTmW

Chapter 15: Micro-Light Particle Universe

After Lei Ming finished speaking, she turned around and smiled, waving to them. “Let’s go; we have quite a distance to cover.”

Luo Yu and Ying Zhao turned around too and followed Lei Ming as they flew north. They soared over rolling hills, crossed a wide river, and soon arrived at the edge of a redwood forest.

Luo Yu remembered seeing a redwood forest a few years ago while passing through the northern airspace of the federation during a mission. In low-altitude flight, she had seen towering redwood trees that reached into the clouds, brimming with a primal vitality. She recalled reading that redwood trees could grow over a hundred meters tall, with a trunk diameter of eight to ten meters, and that it took twenty people to embrace the base of one.

However, the redwood trees before her now were much taller than those she had seen before. As they approached the edge of the forest, Luo Yu noticed that these redwoods were nearly two hundred meters high, with trunks around twenty meters wide. Following Lei Ming into the forest, they felt even smaller among the towering trees, as if they had truly become birds or insignificant butterflies in the woods.

The paths among the redwoods twisted and turned. It was no wonder Lei Ming had said their aircraft couldn’t reach directly; they flew inside the forest for about ten minutes and then landed on the ground, walking a short distance. This redwood forest was much quieter than the woods across from the ninth cliff dwelling. Along the path, they could only hear the sound of their feet crunching on the gravel beneath, with towering giant trees overhead and mottled sunlight at their feet.

After passing three redwood trees, they turned around a wide trunk where a huge tree hollow appeared before them. The entrance featured a layer of translucent green laser curtain, similar to the beast barrier at the entrance of the ninth cave villa.

“We’re here,” Lei Ming said, turning back to them with a bright smile. “Let’s wait here for a moment.”

Within ten meters in front of the laser curtain, there was an infrared sensor area. Before they stood there for long, a robot slowly rolled out from inside and stopped in front of them. “Hello, please follow me.”

They followed the robot through the laser curtain and entered the tree hollow.

The entryway inside the tree hollow stood about ten meters high, surrounded by twisted thick branches. The inner walls were dimly illuminated by a few lights filtering in from outside, reminiscent of the hidden refractor lights in the cave villa.

Once inside, the robot gestured towards an opening on the right, separated by branches. “Please hang up your outer suits.”

Luo Yu looked over to the right and saw a row of hangers, resembling a coat room. The three of them removed their wing suits, and the robot extended its arm, taking each one to hang them up before turning to guide them further inside.

The space inside the tree hollow wasn’t very large. Walking further in, they found a circular arrangement of soft cushions surrounding a round table—familiar seating configurations reminiscent of the lounge. They didn’t linger there but took the side elevator with the robot to the second floor of the tree hollow.

Surprisingly, the tree hollow had a second floor, and perhaps even a third or fourth. Luo Yu glanced at Ying Zhao, and they both felt unfazed. It was indeed not strange for a cosmology expert to reside in such a high-tech tree hollow.

“Sorry, sorry! I should have come out to greet you, but I have an experiment result that I need to replicate. I really can’t step away,” a voice called from the inner room as they reached the second floor. “Niu Niu, please have the guests sit for a while, and bring out some juice and snacks.”

As they entered the second floor, they heard this message, and the voice came from within the room, though they could not see the person.

The robot who brought them up replied, “Okay.” Luo Yu glanced at the round robot thinking it was indeed Niu Niu.

The robots they had encountered so far had names based on their functions and numbers. This was the first time they had come across a robot with such a friendly name.

They sat at a small table, and Niu Niu rolled in, quickly bringing up a tray with three servings of juice and snacks from underneath the table. Then Niu Niu rolled out again, saying, “Please enjoy.”

Lei Ming casually reached for a glass of juice and took a big sip. “Vegetable and fruit juice, my favorite.”

Luo Yu took a cup too, and as she sipped, the fresh taste lingered on her tongue. Suddenly, they heard a loud laugh from the inner room. “Done! Niu Niu! Quickly invite the guests in to see my masterpiece!”

Ying Zhao had just raised her cup to drink but hurriedly set it down and stood up with Lei Ming and Luo Yu to walk inside.

Niu Niu led the way, extending its arm to pull back a large soft curtain on the right side of the second floor, gesturing for them to enter.

Lei Ming nodded encouragingly at the two behind her and stepped inside, with Luo Yu and Ying Zhao closely following.

Inside the curtain seemed to be a small room, dimly lit, and only the light filtering through the curtain allowed them to see inside. In the middle of the room sat a person with their back to them, long white hair scattered all around. Without turning, they continuously beckoned them. “Come, come see.”

As they stepped closer, they noticed a soft glow flickering in front of the person—a large pale blue sphere floating low above a wooden base, slowly rotating. Inside the sphere were many small spheres arranged neatly, also spinning, and within those small spheres were threads of soft light that resembled a neural network, irregularly distributed, with some nodes glowing brightly.

Lei Ming was somewhat bewildered. She stood nearby and watched for a moment before asking, “Professor, what is this?”

“This is a miniature version of the multiverse,” Ying Zhao softly responded from beside her.

The seated woman with white hair turned her head in surprise at Ying Zhao’s words. “You understand quite well!”

At that moment, Luo Yu finally saw the expert’s face. Initially, when entering the curtain and seeing the long white hair, she had thought the seated figure was an elderly person, but the voice did not match, and now that the person had turned, she realized it was a middle-aged woman with pale skin and light-colored eyes—albinism, Luo Yu thought.

“This is Professor Ti Ran,” Lei Ming quickly introduced as Ti Ran turned around, giving Luo Yu and Ying Zhao a brief introduction as well.

“I recognize you! Please, sit,” Ti Ran waved her hands repeatedly. “I was also present on the day of the assembly hall meeting. Though I wasn’t there in person, my shadow was! I’ve seen the three of you through the projection… Oh? Wait, only two of you came today?”

After sitting down, Luo Yu nodded slightly in acknowledgment. “Yes, our time capsule needs urgent repairs, so the engineer couldn’t join us today.”

“Oh, I see.” Ti Ran didn’t ask further but turned back to Ying Zhao. “Earlier, you mentioned this is the ‘multiverse.’ How did you come to that conclusion?”

Ying Zhao was captivated by the floating sphere since entering and had been staring intently. When Ti Ran asked her, she turned to respond, “I’ve envisioned such a model, but only in my mind. I’ve tried to recreate it with 3D animations, but the results weren’t ideal. Is this a four-dimensional model?”

“No, this is a real miniature universe, one that I cultivated.”

“!?” Ying Zhao looked back at the sphere. “You cultivated a universe? How can that be?”

“Micro light particle collisions,” Ti Ran said proudly, raising an eyebrow. “However, I currently cannot control its rate of evolution, so it will soon perish.”

Indeed, as she finished speaking, the lights inside the small spheres seemed to run out of energy, and they gradually dimmed, one by one dissolving until all the soft light disappeared, leaving the large sphere in desolation.

They had just witnessed the annihilation of a miniature universe.

The room fell silent for a moment, and Ti Ran instructed Niu Niu to turn on the lights, beginning to explain her research to Luo Yu and Ying Zhao. It turned out they had discovered particle units smaller than those known to them, and just north of this redwood forest, there was a particle collision laboratory using the energy from volcanic lava to conduct superluminal experiments.

Among all the particle units they had experimented with, only micro light particles would produce cosmic-like structures during multiplicative collisions, but they would appear and rapidly dissolve within a few days. Thus, after mastering this technology, Ti Ran often brought cultivation specimens home for real-time observation.

“Of course, this is just a simulated miniature body. The universe we actually reside in is much more complex, but from this miniature body, we can infer the connections between the multiverses. Each of those small spheres you saw represents an independent time space, nearly identical due to the symmetrical multibody produced by micro light particle collisions. They exist in parallel, yet entangle with one another. This means that although they appear independent, a certain degree of connection exists, but the specifics remain unobservable from the miniature body.”

After this lengthy explanation, Ti Ran took a large sip from her cup of vegetable and fruit juice. “It is precisely this connection that allows us to traverse historical time periods based on ourselves, while enabling communication signals to cover the same dimension of space.”

Reflecting on the slowly rotating small spheres they had just witnessed, Luo Yu realized that their ability to reach another time space and maintain communication, then return along the same path, was due to both time spaces rotating into the same dimension. The duration in this common dimension typically lasts around fifteen days, which was why they aimed to return before that time.

What they urgently needed to confirm now was whether the positioning and rotation angle of this space followed the same pattern. A larger relative angle would grant them more time, but a smaller angle would be problematic.

Fortunately, according to Ying Zhao’s latest calculations, the connecting channel to their time space should be longer, and they had come today to confirm this with Ti Ran.

Knowing their purpose for coming, Ti Ran didn’t keep them in suspense. She took out a segment from the night before, derived from a descent trajectory to predict time positioning, and said to Luo Yu and Ying Zhao, “I have reviewed this calculation, and the dimensional value is not far off. Although there is a thirty-thousand-year gap in time between our time spaces, the actual spatial distance isn’t great. Moreover, based on the model calculations, the relative rotation angles of these two time spaces overlap more, suggesting that the time channel between them can last between thirty to fifty days.”

Luo Yu and Ying Zhao exchanged delighted glances. This not only meant they had more time but also increased the hope of restoring communication.

Seeing their happy expressions, Ti Ran smiled faintly. “Regarding communication, I believe we can offer you some technical support. After all, having a dialogue with people from thirty thousand years later is quite tempting, isn’t it?”