Chapter 238: First Glimpse of Truth
Seventeen steles, tens of thousands of lines, countless dots—no pattern whatsoever. It looked like ink splattered randomly onto white paper, a design no one could have ever seen before. So why did it feel so familiar? Chen Changsheng silently pondered, always feeling as though this image was something he saw often, yet had never truly examined closely. What exactly was it?
The stele inscriptions had been simplified into countless dots. In the intangible paper of his sea of consciousness, there were only countless dots. No matter how he looked, there were only dots.
Dots, dots, dots, dots... like stars twinkling?
Even while still in self-contemplation, he felt as if his lips had become dry.
Because of tension.
Could this image formed by the seventeen steles of the Mausoleum of the Former Emperor possibly be... the starry sky?
The next moment, he felt a strong lack of confidence and doubt toward his own speculation. Because the number of dots before his eyes was too vast—even greater than the number of stars in the night sky. If the Mausoleum of the Former Emperor truly had some connection with the starry sky, then the starry sky would actually be more monotonous than the pattern on the steles.
Following the simplest logic, there was no reason to use a more complex pattern to describe something simpler. An even more important reason was this: if the steles of the Mausoleum of the Former Emperor were truly describing the starry sky, there was no way to simplify it further. Unless these steles depicted many different starry skies.
But there was only one starry sky in the world.
Chen Changsheng was silent for a long time. Then he pushed his thoughts backward for a moment, and some lines slowly reappeared between those dots. If those lines were used to describe the trajectories of the dots' movements, then the seemingly countless dots on the pattern were actually the positions of the same dots at different moments in time. Everything could then be resolved.
Yes, it should be like this.
But now he faced another problem—one so difficult to solve that it made the situation even more perilous.
Because stars do not move.
The brightness or dimness of stars might have extremely subtle changes, but their positions in the night sky were eternal. This was a fact proven over countless years. The star charts drawn by countless observatories across the continent were essentially identical, and the focus of observation was entirely concentrated on changes in brightness.
No one had ever dared to question this view, because it was the truth witnessed by countless people over countless years. Just like the sun always setting in the west, just like the moon always being in the far distance, visible only to demons, just like water always flowing downward—these were truths that could never be overturned.
When he saw Wang Zhice's notes in the Lingyan Pavilion, Chen Changsheng had felt great confusion and doubt about changing one's fate by altering the positions of stars. This doubt stemmed from that very belief. Even later, in the illusion, when he personally saw the Purple Star of Heavenly Emperor slightly shift the positions of several surrounding stars, he still didn't believe it—because that was an illusion, not the truth witnessed with his own eyes.
But... Xun Mei's notes had mentioned several times that observing the steles would reveal the truth. Yet he had spent decades observing the steles in the Mausoleum of the Former Emperor without ever seeing it. In the end, to reach the top of the mausoleum and see the truth, he even paid the price of his life. So what truth was he trying to see? What was truth? Was what one saw with one's own eyes the truth?
Chen Changsheng stopped his self-contemplation.
He opened his eyes and looked at the real stele before him.
Night had fallen, and there were still many people in the stele hut. Contrary to what Chen Changsheng had assumed earlier, Tang Thirty-Six, Zhe Xiu, and Gou Hanshi had never left. They had been here all along, watching Chen Changsheng's process of deciphering the stele, from dawn to dusk, until now, when the night was deep and the stars had appeared.
At dusk, they saw Chen Changsheng spit out a mouthful of blood and were very worried.
Then, they saw him clench his fists and raise his brows, as if he had discovered something, looking somewhat excited.
Now, they finally saw him open his eyes and wake up.
Tang Thirty-Six breathed a sigh of relief and prepared to step forward, but then stopped in his tracks.
Because he realized Chen Changsheng hadn't seen him.
Chen Changsheng was still looking at the stele, still deciphering it, his expression so focused it was unsettling, making it impossible to disturb him.
Chen Changsheng had been looking at this stele for over twenty days.
Morning light and evening glow, light rain and clear skies—in different environments, the changes in the stele's inscriptions were all imprinted in his heart.
He had also looked at this stele under starlight before, without finding anything unusual.
Tonight, the starlight was still brilliant, seemingly no different from previous nights.
But his eyes suddenly lit up.
That glimmer came from a very thin, inconspicuous line in the lower left corner of the stele.
This line had nothing particularly special about it, except that its position and angle were just right, reflecting the starlight falling from the night sky into his eyes.
So his eyes lit up.
Over twenty days of focused observation and contemplation had brought him close to the truth. Tonight's glimmer finally made him understand everything.
If the lines on the stele could appear or disappear with natural light, they could transform into countless characters or images. Then where did the changes in the stars' brightness come from? That was because the stars were moving. But if the positions of stars could shift, why had no one ever observed this?
The seventeen steles appeared in his eyes again.
Those inscriptions overlapped, and the lines on the last stele connected with the lines on the first stele in many places.
At least, that was how it appeared in his eyes.
But in reality, there was still a long distance between those lines.
The reason he saw it differently was that his line of sight was perpendicular to the stele's surface.
The stele's surface was the starry sky.
People stood on the ground looking up at the stars. Because the relative distance between the stars and the ground was too vast, it could be assumed that the line of sight when observing stars was always perpendicular to the plane of the stars. So when stars moved forward or backward, people standing on the ground naturally couldn't observe it. They could only sometimes observe them becoming dimmer or brighter.
Yes, that was it.
Chen Changsheng withdrew his gaze from the stele and only then noticed the many people around the stele hut.
Tang Thirty-Six looked at him with some concern and asked, "Are you alright?"
Chen Changsheng looked at him and said, "Position is relative."
This was the first sentence he had seen when he opened Wang Zhice's notes in the Lingyan Pavilion. Only now did he understand what it meant.
Tang Thirty-Six didn't understand why he had blurted out such an abrupt statement. He instinctively replied, "And then?"
Chen Changsheng thought for a moment, pointed at the star-filled sky above the Mausoleum of the Former Emperor, and said, "You know? Stars can move."
The area around the stele hut fell into complete silence, so quiet that not even a crow's caw could be heard. Everyone thought that Chen Changsheng had been observing the stele for too long, that his mental energy was too depleted, and that he was now a bit delirious. But for some reason, looking at the serious expression on his face as he spoke, people felt a vague unease, as if something terrible was about to happen.
Ji Jin shouted sternly at him, "What kind of crazy talk are you saying!"
"But they really are moving."
Chen Changsheng said calmly, his tone and expression absolutely certain.
Because this was the truth.
This was the real truth.
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