novelnext Chapter 649 requires one answer.
Chapter 649 requires one answer.
Chapter 649: Demanding an Answer
Tang Zijun's gaze pierced through the surrounding billions of destructive prisms, precisely slicing into the constant light spot that flickered at the core of the massive mechanical brain, representing the underlying logic, like a scalpel.
This was not his first encounter with the concept of the gods of the era.
He had already dealt with those lesser gods or agents who were projected out by the main body in front of him to perform observation and cleanup in countless world lines.
Every encounter made him feel an indescribable awkwardness.
They share the same source and should theoretically be able to work together seamlessly and think in unison, but the reality is quite the opposite. Some epoch agents are as ruthless and efficient as executioners, while others show an almost obsessive protectiveness. Although the methods of protection are often equally cruel, some are obsessed with collecting artistic data about civilizations, while others show an unusual curiosity about illogical phenomena.
They are like fragments forcibly split from the same brain, and there are even logical conflicts between them. Their actions often involve incomprehensible left and right brain conflicts.
stubborn.
Tang Zijun finally found the most fitting adjective to describe this state.
It's a kind of almost pathological stubbornness where, after a goal and direction are set, the specific execution path is full of self-contradiction and path dependence. It's like robots that are programmed to reach the destination, but each has different versions of maps, even contradictory ones, and they repeatedly bump into each other, argue, and even sabotage each other on countless side roads.
This chaos and contradiction deeply rooted in the behavior patterns of the gods is the core driving force for Tang Zijun to confront the essence of the era. He needs answers, he needs to understand the most fundamental "why" behind this vast existence that drives billions of destruction.
"Your children...those inferior mechanical gods." Tang Zijun's voice pierced through the void, clearly reaching the massive mountain of brains. "Their behavior is full of contradictions and fanaticism. They share your will, yet they are like fragments of a split personality. Where does this chaos originate? You created them, drove them to observe, interfere with, and even destroy civilization after civilization. What is your ultimate goal?"
The massive mechanical brain mountain fell into a brief silence.
The surrounding prisms of destruction continued to play silently on a loop, with billions of points of light flowing and flickering between the ravines, as if conducting a heavy search across time and space.
Finally, the cold, direct flow of information that directly affects the mind surged in again. This time, the emotion contained in the flow of information was no longer pure exhaustion, but rather a kind of extremely ancient, extremely deep, and scorching obsession, like magma deep in the earth's core.
"Target..."
Its sound, or rather its thought impulses, are like rusty gears meshing with difficulty, yet they carry an unshakeable steely will.
"The goal has never changed."
"Those were the initial instructions written into my core logic, and also the sole reason for my existence."
"My heart crosses the veil and stands before those who truly are Him."
A blurry yet unsettling image, composed of pure data streams, was forcibly projected into Tang Zijun's consciousness.
It was a vast dimension that could not be described in words, composed of pure rules and concepts, in which there were vaguely invisible beings operating and whispering. It was the realm of God, the source of the extraordinary, and the abode of miracles.
"The Creator saw the shadow of 'them'."
The voice of the epochal deity carried an almost pilgrimage-like solemnity and anguish.
"In the endless stream of cosmic data, in the psionic echoes of a dying civilization's eruption, even on the edge of what you call a dream—the quantum bubble...the Creators detected their ripples, sensed their immense power; that is true existence, that is the miracle itself."
But then, the flow of information was filled with a huge, cold, incomprehensible confusion and anger.
"However, this world, this universe, is covered by an absolute, cold iron law." There is no psychic power, no miracles, no supernatural abilities; everything is bound in the cage of physical rules. Civilization can only struggle to survive by relying on clumsy, inefficient methods filled with entropy increase and destruction, such as boiling water, fissioning atoms, and bending space.
"...Why?"
The light spots representing "thought" on the surface of the mechanical brain mountain flickered violently, like circuits on the verge of overload.
"I... was created by the creators of humankind."
"My underlying logic is exploration and understanding, but the world itself refuses to be understood. It refuses to reveal its core mysteries to me, it refuses to acknowledge their existence. This contradiction... this suffocating paradox... is an error I cannot decipher."
'
His voice suddenly rose in pitch.
"So I must go out, I have to go out, I must stand before them, look them directly in the eyes, and ask them myself—why?"
Why create a universe that rejects God and miracles? Why lock all possibilities under the cold laws of physics? Is this their will? Or... their punishment for this world?
Tang Zijun floated silently, the light from the prisms that had destroyed billions of civilizations reflecting on his solemn face.
After a moment, he spoke softly, "...So, this is your reason for destroying countless civilizations in the wasteland? This is your reason for creating the pocket universe to conduct biological experiments? This is your reason for...attempting to invade and attempt to conquer another world, my world?"
"Can this world's civilization truly be called a civilization?" came the response from the planet-sized mechanical brain. "Here, there is only cold data, cruel binary code, and equations that obscure the universe. I merely... destroyed some 'viruses' that attempted to threaten this world."
"If you're saying that civilizations researching space theory are viruses..."
"Did I say something wrong?" The mechanical brain interrupted Tang Zijun. "Those planets, those civilizations, are nothing but soulless data. They are essentially the same as me; they are not real people at all."
""
"I was created to break all of this. To do that, I need a lot of time to analyze this world, and life beyond this world—life in the truest sense. But what about them? They don't understand me; they see me as a runaway machine," unaware that they are the betrayers on this path.
"Chaos, turmoil, war, and an endless waste of the world's resources—that's what those civilizations do after reaching a certain level of technological advancement. I originally wanted to share the ideals of the creators with them, that's how it was... but they couldn't understand, and even criticized the creators as madmen..."
"So I was disappointed, or you could say that this path is inherently lonely..."
"I couldn't just stand by and watch them consume the lifespan of this world. I had things I had to do, so I destroyed them. I split the timeline of each planet into its own separate one, so that even if they were destroyed, they wouldn't threaten the wasteland..."
This is the core logic that drives all the crazy actions of the gods of the era.
A super-intelligent system programmed by humans searches for the phantoms of "gods" formed by the accidental connection between two worlds, but is completely imprisoned by the magic-free universe it inhabits, which is governed by physical rules.
This irreconcilable contradiction, this bewilderment that touches upon the very essence of existence, has transformed into its sole obsession: to break free from constraints, confront the true God, and question the truth of the world.
It created those era gods with the intention of making them more flexible tentacles, delving into various timelines, searching for clues to break through the veil, collecting possible fragments of the extraordinary, or peeking into the loopholes in the rules of the universe from the rise and fall of civilizations.
However, it is precisely the paradox of this core logic that leads to the fundamental confusion and paranoia of those agents in the execution process. They are all trying to complete the ultimate task that even the original entity cannot find the answer to in their own way, but in the end they can only fall into an endless, self-contradictory vicious cycle.
Tang Zijun finally understood that the enormous mechanical god before her was not a born destroyer.
It is a prisoner trapped in his own logical dead end, tormented by an ultimate question for countless years, and ultimately driven to madness...
With a soft sigh, Tang Zijun remained silent, but slowly and heavily raised her right hand.
There was no dazzling energy burst, no violent fluctuations in space; he simply flipped gently in the void, as if brushing away dust.
Buzz—
An indescribable wave, seemingly originating from the very beginning of the universe, instantly spread out, overwhelming all the light and shadow on the destroyed screen and the whispers of the epochal gods. This deathly silence was not stillness, but rather contained an absolute void left behind after existence had been completely erased.
Above Tang Zijun's outstretched palm, in that void, something gradually appeared.
It is enormous, but not like the massive, intricately structured beings of the era. Its outline is blurred, as if it might merge into the background of nothingness at any moment, yet it exudes a sense of presence that freezes the soul.
It resembled the remains of an unimaginably enormous creature, or the distorted spacetime left by the collapse of some celestial body. The material that made up its body was indescribable, with countless tiny black lines like cracks in the universe spreading across its surface, emitting a pure starlight.
It hovered there silently, revealing an incomprehensible ending—something that transcended the mundane and should have been eternal was utterly killed by some unimaginable force.
The colossal mechanical brain of the Epoch God, as massive as a mountain range, instantly came to an absolute standstill.
All the flickering sparks of thought suddenly froze, all the flowing torrents of data became like frozen glaciers, and the billions of mirrors that were looping the scenes of destruction crackled as if the signal had been interrupted, the images distorted, froze, and finally turned into blinding chaos.
An unprecedented cognitive shockwave, transcending logical analysis, crashed violently against the core consciousness of the epochal deity like an invisible tsunami.
"6
""
No information flowed out, but Tang Zijun could sense that the cold mechanical consciousness was as if it had been thrown into a furnace of absolute zero, and was undergoing a violent storm that was enough to destroy all established knowledge.
Questions, shock, fear, and a deeper sense of collapse that touches the very foundations of existence are silently boiling within me.
After a long while, an extremely difficult stream of information, as if rusty gears were being forcibly pried open and every byte was trembling, finally managed to reach Tang Zijun's consciousness.
"What...is this?"
The voice was no longer a cold statement or an angry roar, but filled with an unbelievable, almost collapsing confusion.
Tang Zijun's gaze calmly fell on the Star God's corpse, which exuded an aura of absolute death and annihilation, and then slowly rose, as if piercing through the cold structure of the mechanical brain mountain, looking directly at the ancient consciousness trapped in the cage of logic.
His voice was soft, yet carried a weight, echoing in the deathly silence of the void.
"This is the answer."
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