Chapter 2: The No-Hair Theorem and Coming Home

Chapter 2: The No-Hair Theorem and Coming Home

What is memory?
Memory is the process by which humans classify and store information from past experiences; recollection is the extraction of that information. Memory is the fundamental function of human thought. Without the ability to remember, humans would lose everything they rely on to live, including self-awareness, interpersonal relationships, and various technical knowledge.

In ancient times, humans believed that their souls, memories, thoughts, and will existed independently of the body. Destroying the flesh, they thought, left the soul and memories intact, and thought and will would never perish. This was the origin of the concept of an afterlife and ghost stories.

But in reality, at least in the Mycroft World, memory, thought, and will all have carriers. Specifically, these are the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, hippocampus, striatum, amygdala, temporal lobe, and parietal lobe—brain tissues. If one possesses transcendent power, then the soul also carries a portion of memory and thought.

The destruction of the body is equivalent to the destruction of the soul, and memory is no exception.
—Unless one reaches the Soul's Ultimate Essence.

Only by reaching the Soul's Ultimate Essence can the soul exist independently of the body, enduring and immortal. Memory will then break free from fragile brain tissue, neural networks, brain cells, and synapses, reaching a state close to immortality. Even after millions of years, all memories will remain as fresh as ever.

But even such immortality is not true indestructibility.

And Joshua now faces a dangerous situation that threatens to erase his 'immortal memory.'

At this moment, the warrior's body had transformed into a silver cocoon. His mind had never stopped working from beginning to end, but he had no spare energy to focus on the outside world. Joshua felt as if he were at the bottom of an abyss, holding a torch called will, but the infinite darkness around him devoured the light, slowing his thoughts, dimming his memories, and the flame was about to be extinguished in the shadows.

This was because the power originating from Joshua himself was destroying the very foundation of his self—that is, the warrior's memory of being Joshua—with irresistible force.

"The Black Hole No-Hair Theorem…"

Inside the silver cocoon, amidst the warrior's will pressed to its limit, a fragment of knowledge from his past life about the study of massive celestial bodies flashed through his mind.

The so-called Black Hole No-Hair Theorem, specifically, means that no matter what kind of black hole, once it is fully formed, it will only retain three physical quantities: mass, angular momentum, and electric charge. All other information—the so-called 'hair'—is lost during the extreme compression and collapse of matter. Regardless of whether the black hole's predecessor was a star with a glorious history or had a shocking past, the moment it becomes a black hole, it is left with only those three physical quantities.

This is easy to understand because the essence of a black hole is matter compressed to its extreme. It has no complex structure capable of recording information, so it naturally cannot extract information. In a sense, a black hole is a celestial body without 'memory.' As an aggregate of matter, it is too pure, to the point of losing its 'self.'

What Joshua is experiencing now is essentially a problem similar to the 'Black Hole No-Hair Theorem.'

When the warrior achieved Legendary status, he chose the stars as his future path. Joshua used stars as his energy furnace and white dwarf matter as his armor. From the very beginning, he forged his body into the ultimate weapon of the material world. At the outset of his intention, he surpassed countless veteran Legendaries. The indestructible degenerate matter shell shielded him from countless powerful attacks and allowed Joshua to defeat many enemies who had become super lifeforms before him.

At that time, the warrior's body was not entirely composed of degenerate matter. His central nervous system and various specialized organ modules were assembled from various transcendent alloys. But as Joshua's assimilation with the Steel Force approached one hundred percent, his body's composition became increasingly pure degenerate matter. After the Void Great Maelstrom incident, when the Genesis Nebula poured a massive amount of power into him, this process was accelerated.

Choosing the stars as a path naturally grants the power of stars and the fate of stars.

Before he was fully prepared, Joshua had to undergo his most important transformation in the void—shedding low-density matter and becoming a complete degenerate super lifeform.

The price required for this process was the self.

Joshua's power was too great, his mass too large, and his matter compressed too purely. So, in the midst of the transformation, the carriers of his memory, and even his soul, were being erased by the continuously purifying Steel Force, just like a black hole that annihilates all information about itself, becoming a pure aggregate of Steel Force. A pure aggregate of protons and neutrons cannot form brain tissue structures like synapses and the hippocampus, let alone the computational center of a supercomputer. In the constantly compressing and collapsing degenerate matter, there was no space or room left for Joshua to think and remember.

Hum, hum. The continuous vibration from the microscopic level of matter was the 'sound' of electrons being forced into protons by powerful gravity, transforming into neutrons. It echoed within the silver cocoon that was Joshua's body, accompanying the collapse and compression of matter. This simple and direct transformation process destroyed all original structures of the matter within, whether they were once Fusion Core Heart reactors or Psionic Leap engines. Now, they were just pure, constantly compressing and transforming degenerate matter, and the information stored within had long been completely destroyed and no longer existed.

However, this process was not one-way. The silver metal sphere sometimes shrank and sometimes expanded, and the transformation of degenerate matter would start and reverse with the expansion and contraction. Because the mass was insufficient to completely convert itself into pure neutron degenerate matter, the silver cocoon's transformation was always difficult to complete.

But for Joshua, this was a fortunate thing. Because if he had truly begun the transformation smoothly, the day it was completed would have been the day his will and even his soul completely dissipated. Only by struggling in the darkness like this, constantly fighting against his own power, was there a possibility of successfully crossing this step.

After all, he had not yet transformed into a black hole; he was only in the gap between white dwarf and neutron star matter. Only in this way could Joshua, within his increasingly pure Steel Force, inscribe the mark of his self and gain the opportunity to reconstruct his thinking organs once again.

In the darkness within the silver cocoon, the warrior's self-will continued its silent battle.

"By manipulating electromagnetic forces, interfering with microscopic material structures, constructing stable modules that can store information."
"Using the soul as a bridge, penetrating various information storage points, forming a linked network that can ignore ultra-high-density matter."
"Spreading divinity, tearing divinity completely apart, dispersing it within the soul network, achieving instantaneous information transmission regardless of distance."

From nothing, spending nearly twenty days, he forged 'information storage modules' that were extremely inconspicuous even in the microscopic world, formed by mixing a small number of electrons and protons with a continuous flow of neutrons. Then, bit by bit, he linked them together, forming a 'soul network' that penetrated the entire silver cocoon and was clearly visible even from a macroscopic perspective.

The further he went, the faster Joshua rebuilt his thinking organs. In the final stage, relying on the soul network to maintain his self-memory, he even decisively shattered the divinity he could already control and used it as material to forge a transcendent thinking structure that could ultimately ignore distance and have zero delay.

Countless information storage modules were like ganglia in the human brain, and the divine soul network was equivalent to the neural network. At this point, Joshua had completely become an ultimate lifeform that ordinary humans could hardly imagine, because the foundation of his thinking was no longer the microcurrents and neural networks of ordinary life.

Joshua's soul and body coexisted, no longer needing a brain or a central nervous system. Every part of his body was a node for storing information and memory, a carrier for his thoughts. In a sense, Joshua had achieved his former vision of 'immortal power.' From then on, as long as all his matter was not completely destroyed and all records in the information storage modules were not eliminated, one day the warrior would revive and descend into the world again.

At the center of the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground, within the silver sky light that illuminated the entire plane, the Dominant Will paid no attention to the Winterfell Academy team slowly approaching from afar, nor to the various major forces' teams cleaning up in various parts of the plane. Instead, it stared intently at the silver cocoon enveloped in its own radiance.

Every collapse, every expansion, which region's matter had moved to another region, how the fundamental particles in which region had moved—the Dominant Will meticulously recorded every change in the silver cocoon. Based on this information, it calculated whether Joshua's will still existed within, and it was always ready to act, to rescue the warrior's self-will.

Although it believed that Joshua could control his power and overcome this most important step of transformation, this did not mean it would stand by and watch a failed warrior die. At most, it would greatly lower its expectations of him and remove Joshua from the highest authority position in the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground, that of 'First Successor of the Sage.'

But happily, judging by the current reaction, Joshua, in his long self-struggle, had finally completely controlled his power and maintained his self-will.

"Congratulations, Joshua."

Only then did it offer a sincere congratulatory voice to the silver cocoon: "You have taken a huge step towards infinity. By this act alone, you are worthy of being remembered in the multiverse."

"Thank you, Dominant Will."

After a long time, a low voice with strong electromagnetic noise came from the silver cocoon: "Although it was probably by accident, thanks to Israel, Nostradamus, and you for constantly shielding my body's gravity. Otherwise, this reconstruction of my thinking system would not have been so easy."

Joshua meant these words sincerely. Fortunately, the old Pope had immediately discovered the cocoon that Joshua had transformed into in the void and used an alternate space seal to completely isolate the warrior from the material world. Fortunately, everyone had carefully kept the cocoon sealed to avoid causing any natural disasters. Otherwise, even in the void, Joshua would have received a large amount of material replenishment, making it even harder for him to reconstruct his thinking network.

Just imagine: countless scattered and solid matter, under the influence of powerful gravity, crashing into the surface of the silver cocoon, releasing nuclear-level energy that surpassed most Ultimate-level spells. For a warrior who was constantly reconstructing his thinking core inside the cocoon, this situation was simply catastrophic. A few such impacts would interrupt his construction process, forcing him to start over.

"All for Order."

For Joshua's thanks, the simple-minded Dominant Will of the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground did not say much in reply. It only searched its database and gave a prompt based on relevant information: "Joshua, your current body's energy level is too high. Simply existing could cause catastrophic disasters to the material world."
"According to records from the Era of Radiance, you should create an avatar to replace your body in the human world and continue your activities there."

"Avatar?"

Hearing this word, Joshua couldn't help but recall his recent trip to the Siberia World.

At that time, because the Siberia World was still a mid-to-low magic world, he had specifically used only his soul to descend, possessing an avatar… He hadn't expected that after returning to the Mycroft World, he would still need to use an avatar to walk the world.

But there was no help for it. Joshua himself knew that his strength had greatly increased, and he could no longer be as leisurely and carefree as before. A simple isolation field was no longer enough to eliminate the terrifying gravity caused by his body's massive mass. If he still went to Moldavia in his true body, it might… no, it would definitely turn the entire territory into a sunken basin, and even the entire crust of the Northern Lands would undergo drastic changes.

Joshua was still in the form of a silver cocoon. The warrior had expended most of his mental energy to construct a new thinking module. To adapt to this completely different thinking organ in a short time, he couldn't quickly transform into his usual steel giant form. He estimated that he would have to maintain his current state for several months or even most of the year. Thinking of this, Joshua did not hesitate. He immediately prepared to act, mobilizing his body's matter to create a sufficiently powerful avatar.

But just then, Joshua's will suddenly froze.

"Wait, I forgot to put the 'Nameless Technician's' body back in the Siberia World!"

In the Siberia World, when he formally fought with Fatlervi inside the world, Joshua's avatar, the steel puppet, tore through space and struck the Star River Giant, the avatar of the Time Pusher, with his true body, trying to pull him into the void for a decisive battle. At that time, to protect the steel puppet, Joshua's true body had taken the puppet and the body of the Nameless Technician inside it into his own body, keeping it safe.

But later, Fatlervi stirred up time, backtracking the past again and again. He even observed future possibilities and, together with Joshua, beat 'Fate' into a mess. In the repeated mutual bombardments, Fatlervi was beaten into a daze, and Joshua also forgot that he had a substitute and a Siberia person's body inside him.

Then, because Joshua sensed that he was about to advance, he hurriedly planned to return to the Mycroft World for more stable preparations. He should have remembered this matter at that time, but then he encountered the anomaly of the Void Great Maelstrom… Everything was too coincidental. The surging energy poured into his body, accelerating Joshua's realm, and made him overlook this matter.

As for now, both the steel puppet and the Nameless Technician's body had been compressed into degenerate matter during Joshua's advancement, becoming raw materials for the warrior's new body.

"Fortunately, I'm still somewhat familiar with creation, or this would have been awkward."

At the center of the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground, the surface of the silver cocoon floating in mid-air moved slightly, and then a tiny particle the size of a pen tip rose from it. This seemingly insignificant particle split in half in mid-air, one part taking up the vast majority, and the other only a negligible fraction. Under Joshua's control, these two particles, one large and one small, immediately began to expand rapidly. One transformed in mid-air into a tall, black-haired man who seemed to be forged from steel, while the other became an ordinary Siberia youth, clearly still a carbon-based lifeform.

With Joshua's current level of control, as long as he had raw materials, he could create various avatars at any time based on relevant information, whether it was a combat body like the steel puppet or an ordinary carbon-based humanoid. Although the Nameless Technician's body had been absorbed by him, as long as the information was sufficient, he could naturally create an identical one to return to him.

Of course, the Nameless Technician's soul was still recuperating in Joshua's Soul Abyss. It would probably take some time before he could regain control of his own body. After he fully revived, Joshua would naturally ask him if he wanted to return to his homeland. If not, the warrior would hire him to continue researching puppets at Winterfell Academy. If so, he would send him back to the Siberia World to be with his own people.

"After all, it's just on the way."

Joshua had not forgotten the black mist lingering around the Void Great Maelstrom and the possible existence of the Alpha Sanctuary. To completely erase this 'darkness among the stars' from the multiverse, he would inevitably have to return to that space-time domain to investigate.

Of course, that was a matter for later. Reminded by the Dominant Will of the Myriad Realms Sacrificial Ground, the avatar Joshua had just created—the tall, black-haired man—moved his limbs and then turned his head to look east, towards the direction where faint human voices could be heard. That was the direction of the Winterfell Academy visiting team, and within it were many life auras that Joshua was extremely familiar with.

Thinking of the owners of those auras, Joshua, who had not walked the world in human form for a long time, awkwardly curled the corners of his mouth, forming a somewhat stiff but sincere smile.

After all, he had just come home.