Apocalypse Forecast

Rattling things off together like reciting a menu, with all kinds of random stuff, Huai Shi’s head was spinning, and he basically didn’t remember a single thing.

Anyway, to summarize the main idea: nobody’s easy to get along with, they’re hostile to outsiders, and they look down on your low level of education—but it’s fine. If you ever feel depressed, bored, and want to have a heart-to-heart, just remember to come find your dear uncle me.

He’d just been taken advantage of for nothing.

By the time they finished talking, they had already boarded the "ship".

Passing through a giant mouth like a Sperm whale’s lock gate, the space beyond was unexpectedly spacious—conference rooms, lounges, even single rooms for everyone. And of course, most importantly, a fully equipped, top-of-the-line Alchemy Workshop...

Every single piece of equipment was the kind that had been lying on Huai Shi’s shopping list for hundreds of years, the sort he could only take out to look at on holidays and never dared to hit the "buy" button on.

Back in the day, Huai Shi would have definitely risked it all to pull off a big heist on this place...

Fortunately, the times have changed.

Now that he could freeload anything from the Ivory Tower at any time, Huai Shi’s confidence had inexplicably grown a lot; he could even pull up his pants and sneer, "Is that all?"

After they arranged good rooms for everyone, those Puppets that looked just like ordinary people, vivid and lifelike, went back to their posts on their own.

The Child of Leviathan, in the shape of a Sperm whale, swished its long tail amid a silent whalesong, swimming toward the deeper and darker reaches of space.

Holding the dog’s leash, Huai Shi stood before the floor-to-ceiling window in the corridor and suddenly felt the upside of a fantasy art style.

Countless stars streaked past before his eyes, yet he didn’t feel even a hint of shaking—gravity was completely normal. There were even green plants arranged on both sides, and at the corners, seats and round tables for guests to rest at any time.

Unlike the miserable, stretched-thin life on other Space Stations, here supplies and services were so plentiful it could make a person cry.

Ring a bell and you’d get twenty-four-hour service, and there was even massage and SPA.

This fantasy was off the charts.

So this is Alchemy, huh? I’m in, I’m in!

After leaving The Moon, everyone’s complexion looked much better; at least they’d gotten away from misfortune and bad luck dogging them, and their own safety was guaranteed.

Only Huai Shi still tread carefully, stuffing his spacesuit into the saddlebag, always ready to bolt.

Take a drop pod, the drop pod explodes; go to Kepler, the base explodes.

He was afraid this ship would blow up too...

These days, the world was getting more and more outrageous. People even dared to break out of the Dark Side Prison, so you had to stay on guard.

You never know, right!

Now, in front of the window, Huai Shi stared at the twinkling starlight, gradually getting lost in it.

Until Raven’s Phantom emerged from his shoulder.

"What are you thinking about?" Tong Ji asked. "So absorbed?"

"How should I put it, it just feels weird that in such a fantastical world we still have something as sci-fi as outer space."

Huai Shi pinched his chin and commented in confusion, "There’s this subtle channel-hopping feeling, you know? Like we’re sitting in a fantasy Domain but eating sci-fi food... Isn’t that kind of inappropriate?"

"Isn’t that perfectly normal?" Tong Ji calmly flapped her little wings, wearing a total ’basic operation, don’t overthink it’ expression. "Science was originally the thing that replaced Magic, right? Nothing strange about it. If anything, having this is what makes sense.

Otherwise, what did you think the Current Circumstances are?"

"Uh..."

Huai Shi thought for a long time, then asked tentatively, "A big ball inside a glass dome?"

"Isn’t that more or less the same as how Earth is defined?" Tong Ji said. "When you get down to it, the Current Circumstances are just a conglomeration of matter. Aside from being able to sunbathe, there’s no real difference from Hell."

"No, that’s not what I meant." Huai Shi shook his head and explained, "Before I became a Sublimator, I always believed in an infinite Starry Great Ocean and the existence of Aliens..."

"Hm?"

Tong Ji looked over in puzzlement. "You can still believe that now; did you think all that was fake?"

"Huh? Isn’t it?"

Huai Shi was dumbfounded. "Didn’t they say the sun is essentially the manifestation of the Central Pillar of God Marrow? All those stars are just projections of the Sky’s Command... Besides, isn’t there no life out there in space either?"

"That depends on how you understand it."

Tong Ji thought for a moment, then told him, "Essentially, everything in the Current Circumstances now—including Earth, outer space, all these stars, and this infinite expanse—is nothing but a way of manifesting.

A result of expression.

A ’world’ articulated through laws and science, ingrained day after day from a few hundred years ago until now, unshakeable. But this doesn’t contradict the ’common sense’ that Sublimators know."

Huai Shi shook his head. "But in such a world, where is Hell, Tong Ji?"

In this kind of world, do we really still need something as vague and insubstantial to ordinary people as Hell?

"Ha, that’s a good question."

She laughed, lifting her wings to rest against Huai Shi’s neck, and suddenly asked, "By the way, how do you view the existence of Depth, Huai Shi?

Where do you think Hell’s physical form is in relation to the Current Circumstances? How do you explain the spatial relationship between one Hell and another?"

Huai Shi froze.

He was at a loss for words.

And Tong Ji kept pressing him: "Isn’t what’s before your eyes, this stretch of cold vacuum where humans can’t survive, also a kind of Hell? Aren’t astronauts, in relation to Earth, very similar to Sublimators? And in humans’ eyes, are Abyssal Creatures really any different from Aliens?"

Huai Shi stayed silent for a long time and instinctively shook his head. "You’re mixing up concepts; you know this isn’t the same thing at all."

Their Depth hadn’t changed at all.

Huai Shi also couldn’t feel the presence of Abyssal sediment.

This was indeed the Current Circumstances, no mistake.

But Tong Ji’s words still made him fall into thought.

Because this world before his eyes was also, for humans, a "Hell" where they couldn’t survive.

And moreover...

"Starting to get it, Huai Shi?"

Tong Ji chuckled softly, as if sighing. "The world has always been the world, Huai Shi; it’s just been redefined, that’s all.

Ah, to use a modern term, it should be called the ’Observer Effect’, right?"

"In ancient times, people’s world was so simple—just a round sky and a square earth were enough to satisfy them. At most, add an elephant underneath to hold it up, and if that didn’t feel sturdy enough, toss in a Giant Turtle.

If the sky was going to fall, they’d chop off a few Turtle legs to prop it up; if a great flood came, then it had to be God’s wrath, and you needed to build a boat and go Gone with the wind."

She said, "Back then, the existence of God was the wall of the Current Circumstances. They extended from the Pillar, living in accord with the Sky’s Command, obeying human wishes, interpreting the world, and warding off Hell’s incursion.

But the age of God is over; they’re all dead.

The century of man has come.

Unlike in the past, Magic vanished, God died, and humans redefined everything—the world changed with it. Yet in essence, nothing ever changed.

The only thing that changed was the angle from which everything was observed.

So there came to be laws, frameworks, the three Great Seals, and science, and with them this endless expanse of space that never existed before.

But nothing exists without reason."

"Admittedly, the radiance of the stars is a sign of the Sky’s Command in motion.

But if you trace their origin, there must be a source.

Even if the dark outer void is empty, and so-called celestial bodies are nothing but lifeless clumps of matter, they still possess a meaning that cannot be replaced."

"—So-called outer space was originally the manifestation of endless Hell in the Current Circumstances."

Tong Ji gazed at the countless stars and told him, "At the end of billions of stars, where that cold radiance comes from—that is Hell itself."

For humanity, there was never much difference between the so-called Abyss and the so-called outer space.

Both were distant and mysterious places, full of danger and taboo.

In the pitch-black void, those glimmering things, those drifting Phantoms, are all projections from Hell, cast from far below in Deep Depth.

Separated by a vast Depth, their Power draws matter together, forming barren husks that proclaim their existence.

Ultimately, under the Power of the law called the "Law of Universal Gravitation", they form this brilliant ocean that lies above this layer of Depth.

"Look, Huai Shi, the sun’s flames have already vanished."

In the reflection in the glass, amid countless flickering lights, that magnificent Phantom wrapped an arm around his shoulders, lowered her head, and whispered softly in his ear:

"Right now, we are sailing above the Abyss..."