Chapter 201: The Battle of the Last Day, Begins..._1
The world of Quantum Space is not as wonderful as we imagine, filled with solitude and dazzling complexity, rising and falling unpredictably like the tide, bringing an endless sense of confusion and bewilderment.
It is not silent, on the contrary, it is filled every second with vast streams of information, but these streams are usually indecipherable, resembling the snowy dots on an old television screen.
Spending a long time in such a place, dizziness is the least of one's problems, but being overwhelmed by a perpetual sense of inefficacy and loneliness never ends.
Quantum life is a stream of quantum consciousness, and Lin Yun was also just such a stream of quantum consciousness, having existed in this world for 200 years.
A normal person would have already dissipated in consciousness, but Lin Yun maintained her quantum state through self-observation, and here "living" was the real torture.
Lin Yun was always the stubborn girl, and her perseverance, seemingly meaningless, since she had become a quantum life form and no longer held any responsibility to humanity, there was no need to persist.
In her dialogue with Lin Sen, she revealed her profound contemplation of the universe and her resigned feelings about life.
She had once tried to find the meaning of life's existence but found instead that life in the universe might just be an endless struggle, and their conversation continued.
Lin Sen, "Thank you, cousin, you're always able to enlighten others. I am not so much worried as I am unclear about which path is the right one.
"To live is the most humble request, and perhaps the greatest luxury life can ask for.
"I once unscrupulously sought to win a glimmer of hope for humanity, caring not for the sacrifices, convinced that my actions were just.
"Now, on the eve of the decisive battle with the Trisolarans, I'm filled with uncertainty again, and I can no longer see the road ahead.
"The ship of human civilization has sailed alone into the vast ocean, looking around, there's only the boundless and treacherous waves, and no one knows if the other shore truly exists."
Lin Yun sighed, "Perhaps there really is no other shore!
"I have always been pondering, why does life have to exist in the universe?
"The earliest answer was very romantic, that life is meant to transform the universe;
"Later, the answer changed, life to the universe is like a virus to the human body, frantically expanding its living space, yet endlessly squeezing the space of others in the universe. With the intersections of living spaces, war becomes inevitable.
"Later, I no longer knew the answer; the evolution of the universe on the whole is towards increasing entropy, and perhaps the emergence of life is also slowing down this increase of entropy.
"For example, the natural evolution of the sun is too intense, wasting most of the energy. If an advanced civilization could disassemble the sun, stopping its nuclear fusion, then the sun's rich resources could provide energy for humanity for several billion years, reducing the increase of entropy in the universe.
"But when life becomes powerful to a certain extent, a war can consume the resources of tens of thousands of stars, can that be said to be reducing the universe's increase in entropy?
"Actually, in Quantum Space, I saw another phenomenon, a frightening conjecture. I maintain self-observation to keep my consciousness from dissipating in Quantum Space, precisely to wait for an answer."
As expected, Lin Yun saw the most likely truth of the universe's dimensional reduction, a truth more terrifying than the Dark Forest.
If the Dark Forest is the "culling policy" of advanced civilizations towards less advanced ones, there is a faint hope of breaking free from this Dark Forest.
The simplest way is to become an advanced civilization oneself.
But the dimensional reduction of the universe tells us that the universe is no longer as pure as it was initially, the universe is too fragile, it hardly has any immune system, and once damaged, it's almost impossible to repair, and repair would be pointless.
This universe seems to be always degrading from higher levels to lower ones, the lower the level, the more stable it is.
The energy required for macroscopic material's chemical bonds is very small, even just heating will do. To break an atomic nucleus, several hundred million electron volts of energy are needed, and to break a proton, even more gigaelectron volts of energy are necessary.
Even space is continuously falling from higher to lower dimensions, a trend that is unstoppable, and that is the truly suffocating horror.
This is real despair. In the original timeline, Yang Dong also saw this point, the author believes this to be the real reason she chose to commit suicide.
Lin Sen no longer concealed anything, revealing to Lin Yun what Logic had realized about the Dark Forest Theory.
At this moment, Lin Yun doesn't know whether to be shocked or to feel the burden lift, "So it really is like this...
"To seek meaning, that is the greatest sorrow of life...
"The two basic theorems are self-evident, but the chain of suspicion and the technology explosion, these two premises can't deduce the cosmic picture of the Dark Forest, the truth might be crueller than we understand.
"Your deduction of the Dark Forest lacks the most crucial link, which is living space.
"The more powerful a civilization is, the greater its need for living space. At the same time, the greater the destruction it causes to living space.
"Often times, once the space for survival is destroyed, it can't be restored, and the only solution is to continue to expand the living space.
"Eventually this leads to a vicious cycle, but the universe is finite, and this kind of vicious cycle will eventually backfire on the civilization itself.
"If my research isn't flawed, our three-dimensional world actually fell from higher dimensions, and it will continue to fall.
"Those fallen higher dimensions haven't disappeared, they're just curled up on a microscopic scale—yes, the microscopic scale is also a world of higher dimensions.
"The original higher-dimensional matter didn't disappear either, it exists in quantum space, invisible and intangible, which is what we refer to as dark matter.
"Quantum life forms like myself, a concentration of electrons spread out in two dimensions, are matter between the macroscopic and microscopic space, and can also be considered a type of dark matter.
"All civilizations are in search of a haven or beyond, but when they reach the other side, they find they've come to a cliff.
"Moving forward has no endpoint, yet if we don't move forward, we risk being annihilated at any moment…
"Sigh... my life!
"From a young age, I always believed the enemy was across the sea, and I was willing to sacrifice my life to fight the enemy.
"Only after sacrificing my life did I realize, the enemy came from above, our neighbor in the Solar System.
"I thought this was my ultimate enemy...
"Now... the enemy has turned into the entire sea of stars, and furthermore, even this universe has become our enemy.
"To live... that is the greatest luxury!"
As a Spirit Master, Lin Sen immediately realized Lin Yun's state was too negative and needed some guidance:
"Whether we like it or not, we've already embarked on this journey and there's no turning back. We have no choice but to keep going.
"Only from a higher position can we consider problems of an even higher order.
"We look upwards to higher places not to make them mountains in our hearts, but to choose our methods.
"But when we get to the top, we may find that this is just the base of another mountain. The advancement of civilization has always been like this.
"The enemies of your past can't become the mountain in your heart, the Trisolarans can't become the mountain in your heart, the Dark Forest can't become the mountain in your heart, and even this universe can't become the mountain in your heart.
"Right now, our primary goal is only the Trisolarans, which will also determine whether humanity is worthy of entering the dark sea of stars.
"Threats come from darkness, and hopes come from it too.
"To see into the future, we must first reach the future.
"No one can see the future clearly, and sometimes we don't need to see it clearly.
"We do what we think we should do, success is not something we should worry about."
Lin Yun was also influenced by Lin Sen's words. Only from a higher position can we consider problems of an even higher order.
After listening, Lin Yun took a deep breath and said, "I'll support you!
"I truly wish I could take your eyes and travel deep into the Milky Way, shimmering like a galaxy reflecting the transformations of the ocean and the fields, to witness the hopes hidden in the dark." (This is also the origin of the author's pen name.)
After talking about other topics for a while, Lin Sen quit the Quantum Space.
Exiting the Quantum Space, Lin Sen felt as though his brain contained additional thoughts, uncertain if they were his own or a tangled resonance with others' minds.
This state still required some adjustment, but by this time it was already possible to declare that the Mental Quantum Sensing Array for human thought had been established.
Lin Yun and Tyler, as quantum-state life, could enter other materials from higher dimensions and transmit their thoughts to Lin Sen and Hines through mental entanglement resonance.
Humans now had their own "Sophon;" the current goal was to find the Trisolaran Soothsayer Imprint.
The battle of Doomsday had begun...