Chapter 14: Joshua's Light of Order
What exactly is life?
Life is an open system. It feeds, draws in, and absorbs other negative entropy bodies. Through metabolism, it expels high entropy, maintaining its own low entropy state and preserving the orderliness of its own system.
From this perspective, the definition of life is incredibly broad. Humans are undoubtedly life, magical beasts are undoubtedly life. Elementals, fairies, and even constructs can be considered life. Even a Legendary expert is merely someone who has completely transformed their original life system into a more efficient, more powerful existence.
Then, can a world be viewed as life?
Every time Joshua contemplates the path he should take next, he ponders this question—if the world within his body were to truly be born in the future, would the original 'Joshua' be a super-lifeform whose body envelops a world, or would he *be* that world? This situation cannot be confirmed for now; he can only take it step by step. But regarding whether a world itself can be considered life, Joshua believes the answer is yes.
At the very least, within the multiverse system where the Mycroft World resides, a 'world' that can draw energy from the void, maintain its own orderliness, and continuously grow, change, and evolve is, in essence, a giant lifeform beyond the imagination of ordinary people. Moreover, it can even develop a self-will—the Steel Serpent—through the complex systems within it, namely the information, energy, and soul cycles generated by civilized racial societies.
But this raises a problem—since worlds are life, they must also eventually die. The concrete manifestations would be the end of the soul cycle, the destruction of civilizations within, the extinction of intelligent individuals, the cessation of material cycles, and the collapse of complex material and energy structures into simple, disordered elementary particles and elements. Finally, even the outer shell of the world would collapse, the entire world dissolving into countless steel particles and a sea of heat slowly fading into the void.
If that's the case, then on what basis are 'Evil Gods' born?
Surrounded by countless 'Chaos Mana', Joshua felt he saw a great deal. Countless lights and shadows flickered—information preserved within the Evil God's remains, spanning millions or even billions of years. In the past ages, the 'Plenty' Evil God had destroyed an incalculable number of worlds. In the World Star River, that long stretch of empty world space, and even the Void Great Maelstrom, might merely be traces left by its 'passing'.
But why was it born? It makes no sense! After a person dies, there are undead. That's because the soul itself is essentially a living organization that can exist independently of the body. It can also absorb free-floating elements from the atmosphere, expelling waste soul structures through energy exchange. The lifespan of a soul is even longer than that of a human body—undead, in essence, are not dead at all; they are a peculiar, living form of life!
But what about Evil Gods? If an Evil God is the undead of a world, it should be transformed from a Steel Serpent. However, the existence of a Steel Serpent is rooted in intelligent civilizations. When an intelligent civilization is destroyed, there is no information flow or soul reincarnation within the world to sustain the Steel Serpent's existence. Unlike a human soul, when a world perishes, the Steel Serpent perishes with it. Order transforms into disorder; everything dissipates. It is absolutely impossible for it to become something like an Evil God—a product that roams the multiverse, destroys other worlds, infects normal order, and is more akin to a 'virus' than an undead.
Joshua had studied Chaos for a very long time, because he considered Evil Gods to be the true great enemy, far more terrifying than any Abyss or Demon. But for various reasons, Joshua had never directly contacted so-called 'Chaos'; he had only indirectly encountered the projections, minions, and erosion results of Evil Gods. But now, he was right next to the Evil God's main body.
So, in the darkness like the depths of a ten-thousand-meter oceanic abyss, Joshua reached out his hand and touched the surrounding, materialized, seemingly ethereal 'darkness'.
If the universe is an independent, closed system, then within this system, the exchange and transfer of energy will inevitably lead to an increase in entropy.
Simply put, if the universe initially was a system with extremely uneven energy distribution, high-temperature objects will always transfer energy to low-temperature objects, eventually achieving complete energy balance. The result of this is the complete cessation of the macroscopic world, the impossibility of any orderly motion, and everything turning into a static, constant sea of heat, colder than death.
If the nothingness before the birth of the multiverse was a state where nothing existed, a 'balance' created by 'eternal stasis', like the unchanging, disordered yet balanced sea of heat after heat death, then the so-called First Flame was the forceful insertion of the information of 'existence' into that nothingness.
It disrupted the original balance, distinguishing high temperature from low temperature, light from darkness, and naturally, life from death.
High energy transfers energy to low energy—this is the beginning of motion, the source of the breaking of 'eternal stasis' and the birth of all things in the universe.
And now, what Joshua is doing is similar to the deed of the First Flame illuminating the void and creating the multiverse.
He ignited his own 'flame', causing all surrounding Chaos to no longer be dark and disordered, but to become clearly structured.
In the Central Black Forest, at the deepest part of the Chaos Spring, Joshua stood coldly in the center of the bottomless Chaos Mana. Now, a ball of silver flame was burning in his palm. This flame continuously emitted streams of materialized light, illuminating the surrounding darkness.
No, perhaps it shouldn't be called 'illuminating', but rather 'eroding'!
It could be seen that the flame in Joshua's palm released an incredibly bright light. As soon as this light touched the Chaos Mana, it rapidly dissolved it into nothingness—but upon closer inspection, one would find that the essence of this light was actually countless, incredibly tiny aggregates of Steel Force! Because of their own high energy, these aggregates emitted light visible to the naked eye; this was the true nature of the light stream.
These aggregates of Steel Force, the largest of which could only be observed through a nanometer-scale microscope, were constantly eroding the surrounding Chaos Mana, converting it into the energy they needed, and then rapidly self-replicating. This process was entirely exponential growth. Soon, all the deep Chaos Mana around Joshua was completely devoured and eliminated by these continuously self-replicating, self-multiplying steel particles!
If any other being that had contacted Chaos Mana saw this, they would surely be stunned—after all, it had always been the principle of Chaos Mana eroding orderly matter; how could orderly force devour Chaos in return?
But Joshua knew there was nothing strange about this. Since Chaos nothingness could be converted into order, then order could certainly devour Chaos nothingness—otherwise, how did the earliest worlds come into being? Back then, there were no naturally formed Steel Crystals or Void Behemoths to nurture world embryos. So-called erosion was merely a matter of the sheer volume of Chaos Mana overwhelming order.
As long as one was strong enough, there was no need to worry about erosion.
Inside the silver giant cocoon, Joshua reconstructed his thinking organs. He used Steel Force to construct numerous calculation matrices, control devices, and storage facilities within his body. He used the Divine Soul Network and superluminal particles as the medium for information transmission, input, and output. This was a thinking system that completely surpassed ordinary human and conventional supercomputers, providing unimaginable computational power.
Through this thinking system, Joshua could now easily control a vast area of microscopic particles, down to the nanometer or even atomic scale, and manipulate them to perform different actions. Relying on this microscopic-level processing capability, the warrior designed for himself a cluster of steel particles that was completely under his control and capable of self-replication—a magical version of the 'Von Neumann machine'.
Using the program Joshua designed for it as a template for action, it could continuously absorb high-energy mana and matter from its surroundings and then self-replicate. In its design, it could even be deployed into a world completely infected by Chaos Mana, where it would frantically self-replicate, devouring all Chaos power and converting it into an ordinary, lifeless world... If Joshua also added normal matter to its self-replication program, then even devouring an entire world would just be a matter of spending a bit more time.
The flame in Joshua's palm was essentially the factory for producing the 'Steel Cluster', and the light was the trajectory and channel for the 'Steel Cluster's' actions. The light illuminating the darkness meant that the surrounding Chaos Mana was completely devoured, everything was under Joshua's control, devoured and eroded by his Steel Force! Completely and thoroughly occupied by order!
This was the weapon Joshua had painstakingly devised against world-level Chaos creation, his very own 'Light of Order'!
"Chaos Mana concentration has dropped significantly. The overflowing information stream of the Plenty Evil God has disappeared within the observable range, but the main body of the Chaos Spring remains intact, its underlying structure still concealed."
Endless information was fed back from the Steel Cluster to Joshua's thinking network. In the next instant, he gave a stern command in his spirit: "Release the first stage limit. Continue deploying the 'Light of Order'!"
Instantly, at the bottom of the dark Chaos Spring, a brilliant silver light blazed forth, and immeasurable Chaos began to boil.
Around the Chaos Spring in the center of the Black Forest, countless hazy dark mists surged, eroding the surrounding space and all things. Here, the soil, rocks, and the Black Forest itself were being transformed into an extremely strange and peculiar substance, inert and almost non-reactive to any energy.
High in the sky above the center of the Black Forest, a dozen cracks appeared in space. From each crack, a white-gold vine extended, bearing numerous bulging, translucent crystals. These were the observation organs of the legendary magical beast, the White-Gold Vine Mother. It was currently monitoring every move of the Chaos Spring, waiting for the arrival of other human Legendaries.
It had already informed other Legendary experts that the Northern Empire's human Legendary, Joshua van Radcliffe, had entered the Chaos Spring alone. Both the Prison Void Dragon, who was controlling the rampaging magical beasts, and the other human Legendaries, who were still clearing the Black Forest, were stunned by this news. They didn't complain about the warrior's recklessness, seeming to be used to it, or perhaps thinking it was normal. Even so, two Legendary experts temporarily paused their clearing operations and rushed over at high speed, preparing to assist Joshua in suppressing the Chaos Mana.
And now, they had arrived. The White-Gold Vine Mother, located to the south and east, trembled slightly. It sensed two high-energy beings flying in from high altitude at dozens of times the speed of sound. This wasn't their full speed, but considering the need to avoid causing too much impact on the Mycroft World's environment, it was already extremely fast.
Soon, two streams of light fell from the sky, arriving at the center of the Black Forest. It could be seen that they were two women. One had lush green hair and long elven ears, while the other had a special crystalline hair texture, but her face was indistinct.
The two were Nature Mentor Galannod and Ocean Sage Faina. As Legendary experts, they already knew each other. After a simple nod of greeting, they both looked at the vines extending from the spatial cracks. Sensing the gazes of the two Legendaries, the White-Gold Vine Mother slightly shook its limbs and spoke in a distorted voice: "The Inferno Prison Lord has been inside the Chaos Spring for a long time. While these Chaos Mana are thick, they cannot harm him. But I fear he might contact the Evil God's main body and be overwhelmed by its information stream, losing himself."
Joshua's widely known battles in Mycroft included suppressing the beast tide, shattering the Northern portal, annihilating the Northern White Dragon, fighting alongside the Church of the Seven Gods in the Bloodmoon Abyss, and the Dragon Calamity battle at the Holy Mountain. In these battles, Joshua displayed immense high-temperature power and pure destructive force. The battlefields he left behind were like hell, and according to intelligence, Joshua possessed the power to create 'suns'. Even his Legendary true form used miniature suns as a power source.
Coupled with the joking nicknames often used by the Lord's Manor staff, the title 'Inferno Prison Lord' gradually became Joshua's current epithet. It could represent both the essence and majesty of Joshua's power and indicate that he was the Lord of the Moldavia Territory. The warrior himself didn't seem to mind it.
"I trust in the Inferno Prison Lord's power."
Regarding this, Faina nodded gently. She had returned from the Star Sea worlds and even had some exchanges with the Midgard civilization, so she naturally knew the origin of his 'Inferno Prison Lord' title and simply used it. The Sage surveyed the surrounding environment and said solemnly, "But the situation here seems worse than thirty years ago—hasn't the Vine Mother been restricting these Chaos forces lately?"
To this, the Vine Mother expressed its helplessness appropriately: "Originally, this place was jointly sealed by myself and the Platinum Ancient Dragon. But a few years ago, it split into countless divisions to re-enact the cycle of life. Until it returns, I alone cannot hold out."
This was indeed unavoidable, and Faina said no more. However, just as she lowered her head to carefully observe the current state of the Chaos Spring and consider how to help Joshua, the Nature Mentor on the other side let out a soft exclamation.
"Wait. Something's wrong."
Galannod frowned—this time, she had come as an avatar, but this avatar contained forty-five percent of the Nature Mentor's main body's power, sufficient for most situations. But just now, Galannod sensed an incredibly terrifying force, enough to threaten the safety of this avatar: "There's a change inside the Chaos Spring. We need to prepare—"
Just as the Nature Mentor was about to warn Faina and the Vine Mother to be careful, suddenly, within the originally deep, dark, abyss-like Chaos Spring, a few scattered silver lights flickered. Amidst the rolling Chaos darkness, something even more terrifying seemed to be swelling, as if trying to tear through this surface layer.
"This is!"
Beside her, Faina, who had once discussed the nature of their powers with Joshua up close, narrowed her eyes. She had already sensed the essence of those silver lights. Standing in mid-air, the Sage erected a psionic shield and said sternly, "This is Radcliffe's Steel Force!"
And in the next instant, following Faina's voice, a blinding stream of light burst through the dark outer layer of the Chaos Spring, shooting straight up into the high sky above the Central Black Forest!
Rumble—immediately, the black clouds rolled, and thunderclaps exploded in succession. Accompanied by the sound of thunder, the Chaos Spring, which had been quietly churning on the ground like a lake, suddenly erupted like a fountain, spewing a black stream of Chaos Mana. The White-Gold Vine Mother, Galannod, and Faina all rapidly retreated to avoid it. But this black stream of Chaos Mana had only flown halfway before it was 'converted' from the inside out, transforming into a dazzling silver radiance!
Crash—the silver radiance scattered in mid-air, turning into a 'heavy rain' composed of tiny crystals. This rain fell from the sky onto the land that had been corroded by Chaos Mana for centuries, turned into who knows what substance. Instantly, with a faint hissing sound, billows of black smoke rose wildly. The originally hardened, black soil immediately turned into vast expanses of white and yellow sand. Silvery-white light pulsed within the sand's inner layers, like throbbing blood vessels.
Within just a few dozen seconds, nearly sixty percent of the eroded land was purified by the silver light. The two Legendary experts and one Legendary magical beast watched this scene with wide eyes. By now, the originally dark Chaos Spring had transformed into a beautiful, yet incredibly dangerous and terrifying, silver amber! It was no longer a lake, but solidified amber. Countless Steel Clusters coalesced into a semi-transparent solid structure, allowing the three Legendaries to clearly see Joshua standing at the bottom of what was once the Chaos Spring.
Joshua also saw them. The warrior looked up, nodding from a distance of several kilometers to the Nature Mentor and the others, who were so high up that a normal person couldn't even see them as a dot. An instant later, after Joshua confirmed that the surrounding Chaos environment had been mostly purified, he raised the 'flame' in his right hand.
With the warrior's movement, all the pulsing, solidified Steel Clusters turned into a hazy mist, then converged, like streams of silver dragon-like light, being sucked back into the unremarkable silver flame. This recycling process took only a dozen or so seconds.
From beginning to end, from the moment the Chaos Spring began to change to the silver radiance erupting and purifying the surrounding environment, it took less than a minute. The Chaos Spring, which had troubled the people of the Mycroft World and left them unsure how to handle it, was so easily cleansed by Joshua. And all of this happened right before the eyes of the Nature Mentor, Faina, and the White-Gold Vine Mother.
"This..."
Faina, who prided herself on being calm and rational, suppressed the urge to gasp. She blinked and murmured, "Is this a matter of specialization? Is the Sage's inheritor this effective at purifying Chaos?"
But why didn't the Church of the Seven Gods have such methods?
"It's like a natural enemy."
On the other side, the Nature Mentor patted her chest, squinting her eyes, trying to calm her startled thoughts as much as possible. "And this light... is alive!"
Galannod was not wrong. Joshua's Light of Order, the Steel Cluster he created, was like the Black Mist created by the Sanctuary Civilization—a 'living power'. This power constituted his current incarnation. The silver light was not only alive but also a part of Joshua's current thoughts and life.
But Joshua, at the bottom of the former Chaos Spring, paid no attention to the thoughts of his friends in the sky above. The warrior had now noticed, deep underground not far from him, a twisted ring of Chaos, its interior completely unobservable to the naked eye.
Its radius was about forty meters, not very large compared to the original extent of the Chaos Spring. On the periphery of this ring, a vast dark Chaos aura was being generated. The surrounding land and rock, which had only just been purified with great difficulty, were rapidly being eroded again, and the bottomless abyssal darkness was quickly recovering.
Undoubtedly, that was the final remnant of the Plenty Evil God.
So Joshua unhesitatingly strode forward, approaching this continuously expanding mass of Chaos Mana. He ignored the warnings and attempts to stop him from Galannod, Faina, and the others in the sky, walking right up to the twisted ring.
Joshua raised his hand, as if to touch this ring. Silver light flowed on his hand.
He touched the ring.
Chapter 15: The Ultimate of Civilization
The moment Joshua truly touched the twisted ring, as expected, an immense amount of information surged towards him with the force of a tidal wave, threatening to drown his will.
Just as long ago, when the warrior had received the memories of the Famine Evil God, the Calamity Evil God, the Atmosphere Evil God, and the Plague Evil God, the violent and raging information stream of the Plenty Evil God, originating from the 'point of contact' between the two, raced forward at an inconceivable speed.
This was the memory of an ancient will spanning billions of years. For an ordinary Legendary expert, such as Joshua a year ago, he would undoubtedly have been swallowed by this memory, involuntarily falling into the Evil God's illusion.
But now, Joshua was no longer as helpless as before.
Materialized information turned into surging black mists, rolling towards the warrior like waves. This scene was seen by the distant Nature Mentor and Faina, causing their hearts to tighten. They had long known that the remains of the Plenty Evil God lay at the bottom of the Chaos Spring, and the reason they hadn't touched this Chaos source before was precisely this peculiar information-inducing phenomenon.
The Mycroft civilization hadn't even grasped the surface-level understanding of the Evil God's essence, but many researchers knew that if a Transcendent being contacted the residual power of an Evil God, their soul and will would be washed over by the vast amount of information contained within. If they weren't firm enough, they could even be washed clean, becoming a blank slate. That was considered lucky, because if unlucky, the contactor could even be directly brainwashed into an Evil God's minion. Ordinary people were even more vulnerable; just a single glance at an Evil God's true form, or even its minions, could cause mental chaos due to the influx of massive information.
Previously, Joshua couldn't avoid this either. But now, with his new thinking system and the Light of Order as support, not only could he avoid being drawn into the illusion, but he could also turn the tables and fully absorb this information.
Beside the warrior, countless tiny points of light, like stardust, lit up. These were minuscule Steel Clusters. They rapidly spread out, forming a semicircle with a radius of three hundred meters. Within this semicircle, every few millimeters in all directions, there was a tiny Steel Cluster. Between each cluster, bright streams of light connected them. They formed countless storage, control, and operation devices, constantly flashing and glowing, devouring the terrifying information flow. Faintly, there was a shadow of a nervous system.
But this system was too vast and too fast. The information network, transmitting at the speed of light, was operating with unimaginable efficiency.
The seemingly violent and raging Evil God's memory pressed down like a tsunami. The black mist rushed into the Steel Cluster network surrounding Joshua, intending to invade the warrior's mind. But in an instant, this Chaos information, which could have suppressed the will of an ordinary Legendary expert or magical beast, was instead suppressed by the entire cluster network. The information contained within the mist, the billion-year memories of the Plenty Evil God, was calmly encoded, edited, and cut by Joshua. He deleted meaningless junk information, translated its meaning, and even had the spare capacity to extract important parts of these Evil God memories, copying and storing them.
In a few breaths, just as the Nature Mentor and the others were rushing to the bottom of the Chaos Spring to help Joshua deal with the Evil God's information impact, Joshua had already completely devoured these memories.
"...Joshua, are you alright?"
Seeing the black mist dissipate and the huge semicircular thinking network retracted into the warrior's body, Galannod felt she had arrived a step too late. She walked forward a distance, intending to ask about the warrior's condition.
"A bit dizzy... The Evil God's memories are too chaotic. I overestimated my information translation ability."
In response to the Nature Mentor's question, Joshua didn't turn around. He raised his hand to wipe the liquid nitrogen constantly seeping from his forehead. Above the warrior's head, due to the overflow of extreme heat, the air was even ionizing, with small lightning bolts formed by wind elements flickering.
At this moment, within Joshua's spirit, memories of the Plenty Evil God were rapidly flashing—but unlike before, when he passively accepted those fragmented memories, this time Joshua held the initiative.
Memory backtracking. The warrior gazed upon the past of the Chaos Evil God within his own spiritual world.
It was the final remnant left behind by an ancient existence that towered above countless worlds—
The trajectories of countless stars flashed rapidly, turning into thread-like paths flowing through the dark void. Time scrolled upwards in units of millennia and millions of years. One could see an expanding nebula in the empty void contracting, reverting to a star on the verge of destruction. At the center of a massive group of worlds, a stable, huge ball of light began to oscillate, finally splitting into dozens of smaller worlds. The long river of time surged violently, racing towards the past.
Joshua held the helm. He ignored the meaningless memory fragments, controlling the direction of the river of time. He traced upwards, returning to tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of years ago. He coldly skipped over countless moments of world and Evil God destruction and birth caused by the Plenty Evil God, because he didn't need to understand them.
What he needed was the reason for the birth of the oldest Evil God within the observable range of the current Mycroft civilization's multiverse.
So, after a long backtrack, Joshua's memories finally returned to the Evil God's original starting point.
It was one hundred and sixty million years ago, the pastoral era of the multiverse.
A plant-based space station, suspended in the void, spun happily in the spatial currents. It spread its twenty-seven wide energy-harvesting leaves, absorbing the radiant energy diffused in the void. Beside this plant space station, which nurtured a small plane within its body, there were many other types of space stations. Some were made of metal, some from biological remains, and some were like living creatures themselves. The most wonderful and ingenious was a twisted stream of energy, constantly changing, with countless runes flashing on its outer layer, but its core preserved a safe and stable space.
Within these numerous space stations lived a vast number of completely different lifeforms. There were races like octopuses, using numerous tentacles and psionic levitation for movement. There were also creatures similar to humans, with a central thinking organ, a spinal nerve network, a pair of forelimbs, and a pair of hind limbs. There were even shapeless, freely deformable metal particle species that communicated using magnetism, as well as various pure energy, pure elemental, and other strange and peculiar lifeforms.
These different species lived in space stations not far from each other, residing in uniquely styled buildings. They had no conflicts, living harmoniously, occasionally even dispatching airships to exchange goods, like a single, huge entity. They lived peaceful, happy lives with access to nearly unlimited resources, like the perfect ending of any legend.
Expanding the view, one could see that these thousands upon thousands of space stations, converted from countless small and medium-sized planes, even formed a straight river. They were lined up, forming a massive, nearly 'straight' structure. Behind this huge straight structure were tens of millions, even billions, of enormous luminous bodies. They seemed to reflect the light of something, shining so brightly that even a Legendary expert would instinctively squint.
After Joshua realized this, he let out a soft exclamation of admiration.
Because those were millions of worlds floating in the void.
Behind the straight river of space stations, constructed from billions of planes, was an even more spectacular, even more massive river of stars. Countless worlds seemed to be artificially arranged in order, forming a straight, linear structure. They were the parent bodies of those countless space stations. One could see that, from time to time, many newly created small planes were expelled from the outer shells of worlds, then modified in the void by numerous experts, becoming part of that river of space stations...
No.
Joshua, who was observing the Plenty Evil God's memories with great interest, suddenly paused. He looked up towards the even more distant void.
Because the warrior discovered that the river of space stations and the river of world stars were not straight.
They were part of a massive ring structure. It was just that the thing this 'ring' surrounded was so enormous that even a structure composed of a number of celestial bodies far exceeding the upper limit of ordinary cognition couldn't show a clearly observable curvature.
Feeling an emotion called 'incredulity' rising in his heart, Joshua controlled his perspective to continuously retreat, continuously retreat. He frantically zoomed out his view until, after a long time, he could finally vaguely see what that massive ring structure was revolving around.
Then, his body trembled.
It was a 'ball of light'—or rather, a 'flame'—that defied description. It had no color, no brightness. The human eye, this shallow electromagnetic wave perception organ, couldn't see it at all. Even using the Steel Force vision, it could only be described as 'existence', containing no extraneous information.
The river of space stations and the river of world stars orbited on its outer track. Even with millions of them stacked together, they couldn't form an 'arc' around it. This flame pulsed, releasing an unimaginable amount of existential information. The dazzling radiance of those outer worlds was merely the observable energy after the flame's light had been degraded and decayed layer by layer. The flame's light intercepted by the world ring was only an insignificant fraction of all the radiance. The vast majority of the flame's light dissipated into the void, forming an energy surge sweeping across the multiverse.
A tsunami of existential force washed over the void. It was reversed, repeated, and then, in an indescribable, unknown process, condensed into the first substance with physical form—the particles of Steel. Endless Steel Particles converged and coalesced due to self-gravity, forming the prototypes of billions upon billions of worlds. They were pushed towards the outer void by the flame's light. Only the part with the highest Steel Force concentration and the greatest relative mass could stay near that 'flame', basking in its radiant light.
That was the First Flame.
In that instant, Joshua understood what he had just seen. It was the First Flame and the central region of the multiverse. The surging Light of Existence was creating countless observable worlds in units of billions. Worlds with low mass and low energy density were repelled towards the edges of the multiverse, while worlds with high mass and high energy density were retained in this core region.
And that river of world stars, along with the countless rivers of space stations, was an artificial structure jointly created by countless high-energy worlds and their civilizations!
Although, according to Joshua's observational perspective, the civilizations nurtured in those worlds were not very advanced. Some were even in feudal-era kingdoms or primitive slave systems. But each world had at least one high-level being capable of entering the void and traversing the multiverse. It was the joint effort of thousands upon thousands of such high-level beings that constructed this astonishing wonder.
In that instant, Joshua recalled a concept from his previous life on Earth: the 'Dyson Ring', or more commonly, the 'Dyson Sphere'.
A Dyson Sphere is a theoretical concept proposed by physicist Freeman Dyson. It is a megastructure that transcends planets, used to envelop a star and harvest its energy—a natural nuclear fusion reactor using a star as an energy source.
This massive artificial structure would exist as a composite ring or a complete spherical shell, surrounding the star to capture most or even all of its energy. In his prediction, this should be a method used by an advanced civilization to obtain more energy.
Although the Dyson Sphere concept is extremely difficult, if not nearly impossible, to realize due to various material science, astronomical, and structural issues, in the multiverse Joshua now inhabited, which possessed supernatural powers, it was not impossible. For example, the Void Behemoths roaming the void, upon reaching a certain stage of growth, could spontaneously nurture a star within their bodies, forming a natural biological Dyson Sphere.
But that was only for stars... Stars are indeed enormous, possessing mass and energy that life living on planetary surfaces or single-continent worlds can hardly imagine. But for many supernatural civilizations, it was merely a goal that could inevitably be surpassed. Not to mention Joshua, even the Pope of the Church of the Seven Gods, Israel, could enter the interior of a star, alter the speed of light in a certain area—or even simpler, just disturb the star's structure—and potentially completely destroy a massive star.
And for some super-existences, like the Plenty Evil God, merely passing by or breathing could cause a star to decay and wither.
Joshua moved within the information stream of the Plenty Evil God's memories. This wasn't just one-sided memory, but a simulation and recreation of past information by the Evil God's power itself. The warrior looked from afar at the river of world stars revolving around the 'First Flame'. They were an unimaginable distance from forming a complete Dyson Ring structure. If calculated by one hundred percent completion, they had at most completed a trillionth. But even so, it was a shockingly magnificent artificial multiversal celestial structure!
They actively collected existential energy originating from the axis of the multiverse, using it as an energy source to continuously manufacture numerous plane-space stations as colonies for their races and civilizations!
Insignificant.
Too insignificant.
Joshua gazed at this 'possible' center of the universe and the First Flame, a feeling of awe involuntarily rising in his heart—although the celestial structure recreated by the Plenty Evil God might not be real, even a fantasy must have some basis. How else could a Chaos Evil God imagine such a magnificent multiversal wonder?
Compared to it, all civilizations, all worlds were so insignificant and negligible.
And at that moment, some information quietly flowed out from the Plenty Evil God's memories.
[The 'Infinite Structure' project has failed. Our civilization ultimately has limits. The Infinite Star River surrounding the Primordial Source Point can never be successfully constructed, because the multiverse is expanding, and the First Flame is also expanding. Our construction speed cannot surpass its expansion speed.]
[The multiverse is, after all, finite. We cannot reach the 'Infinite'.]
This information contained endless sorrow and grief, like a dream held for tens of millions of years being cruelly shattered by cold reality.
The number of elementary particles in a single universe is finite. Even if you cut down to the most basic fields, they can be counted. The very fact that they can be counted means that the universe itself is only a nearly infinite finite. Whether the total number of basic units is one followed by one hundred and eighty zeros or one thousand eight hundred zeros, the possible permutations and combinations of these units are also finite. It's just that the number of these possibilities is so large, so unimaginable, that even recording them would require an inconceivable number of carriers. Hence, it is called 'infinite'.
But this kind of infinity is merely false. Even the multiverse is a false infinity. Even if the First Flame creates billions of new worlds in an instant, at the lowest boundary of time, the total number of existing universes is finite and can be counted. Even if the time required to count them one by one is enough for a universe to undergo heat death or collapse, then explode and be reborn millions of times over, it is still finite.
[Except for the Primordial Source Point, perhaps there is no existence approximating 'infinity' in the multiverse. This path is wrong.]
This piece of information painfully left a signature representing its identity on an information document, then slowly dissipated. Along with it, the illusion of the entire multiverse also dissipated.
Vaguely, Joshua perceived that, besides this colossal 'Infinite' structure, the thousands upon thousands of experts from different worlds had once had many similar thoughts and plans. Including the 'Infinite Structure', this vast union of worlds and civilizations had four overarching projects.
For example, 'Eternity', surpassing all material change, even the final end.
For example, 'Infinity', surpassing all finite existence, even imagination.
For example, 'Absoluteness', surpassing all causal concepts, even probability.
And 'Omniscience and Omnipotence', which cannot be described in language, cannot be written in text, cannot be grasped by logic—a single thought is wrong, a single argument is fallacy.
Eternity, Infinity, Absoluteness, and Omniscience and Omnipotence—these were the four 'Ultimates' pursued by the countless initial high-energy civilizations once located at the center of the multiverse.
The illusion of the multiverse completely dissipated. The Plenty Evil God's memories now only contained a dark void and meaningless light. Joshua stood in the center of his own spiritual sea, watching countless dark fragments, like streams of consciousness mixed with faint light, flash past him. It seemed that even the Plenty Evil God could not bear the glory and memories of that era.
This was not surprising, of course. After all, the Plenty Evil God was only an insignificant fragment. The Sage had erased the vast majority of its main body's existence in the void. This was merely a fragment of a fragment from its prime.
Finally, just as Joshua sensed a slender, soft hand patting his shoulder, as if trying to help him, the warrior saw the last fragmented memory illusion.
It was a dark, silent void. Countless stars shattered, turning into ethereal nebulae. They slowly drifted through the multiverse, like the corpses of worlds.
The nebulae themselves emitted light, but their outer layers also reflected other additional radiance. This radiance seemed to drive the aggregation of the nebulae, allowing them to coalesce again under self-gravity into dense clouds of matter, collapsing into the initial prototypes of worlds—but just as the world prototype was about to be born, a force from an unknown source caused it to shatter, reverting back into scattered, drifting nebulae.
Joshua was silent for a long time, then looked up. He knew that the radiance reflected by the nebulae was the light of the First Flame.
He knew that the birth of Evil Gods originated from the destruction of civilizations and worlds. How was the Plenty Evil God, the oldest and most powerful Evil God, born? He felt the next scene should answer this question.
So the warrior looked up, gazing at the First Flame, at the 'Infinite Star River' structure formed by the original river of world stars and countless space stations.
Then, he saw a terrifying vortex, enormous, dozens or even hundreds of times larger than the Void Great Maelstrom. It churned at the location of the original Infinite Star River structure, destroying everything that existed. Any slightly larger structure was completely destroyed by the terrifying force within the vortex, reduced back to the original Steel Particles.
Further beyond this vortex, at the center of its orbital track.
Joshua saw the First Flame again.
And it was contracting.