Chapter 434: The Fate of the Universe

When Divine Vessel returned to the Milky Way Galaxy, it found the galaxy resembling an old man who had experienced vicissitudes, covered in wounds, nearly shattered.

It was as if an invisible gigantic hand had kneaded it, throwing large areas into two dimensions, leaving only twisted shadows struggling for survival in endless nothingness.

Physical laws were brutally trampled, light and darkness, large and small, all lost their boundaries here, chaos and order intertwined into a long scroll of Judgment Day, with less than 5% of the area sustainable for level 3 living conditions.

The Divine Vessel Civilization, in its circum-universal voyage, had also witnessed the same fate befall countless galaxies, whose once bright lights of civilization, like candles in the wind, were mercilessly swallowed by relentless waves of war in the endless cosmic darkness.

The destructive power of civilizational wars was not increasing at a steady pace, but rather, like an out-of-control nuclear fission chain reaction, was expanding exponentially.

Their living environments, the more devastated they were, the deeper they sank into the state of Dark Forest. The larger the wars that broke out between civilizations, the more cruel they became, and concurrently, more devastating to the living environments, forming a vicious cycle.

In these 3 billion years, the frequency and brutality of cosmic civilizational wars far exceeded the total of the previous 13.8 billion years by a thousandfold, threatening the entire universe.

At this time in the original timeline, Cheng Xin left the Small Universe; they could barely find a habitable space. It took several months in the Small Universe to find a level 3 living space, where a few months in the Small Universe might be millions of years outside.

If not for the protection of the Divine Vessel's offshoots, the Milky Way might have long since lacked living spaces suitable for carbon-based life.

The Divine Vessel Civilization, in its voyage around the universe, had divided into trillions of offshoots sent to various major galaxies, and these efforts also barely delayed the "decay" of some universes.

The galaxies that Divine Vessel Civilization went to, in the grand scheme of the Big Universe, were but a drop in the ocean, insignificant, and any effort was almost futile and pointless in the vast universe.

At the moment of completing the circum-universal journey, all offshoots also sensed the completion of Divine Vessel's monumental endeavor. They seemed to experience a subtle change at the same moment, seemingly connected on a soul level.

Curiosity is an instinct embedded in the bloodline of every civilization. When the high-level civilizations in the Milky Way learned that Divine Vessel had completed its circum-universal voyage, their shock and awe were indescribable, and they too seemed to have undergone an internal change quietly.

Moreover, some kind of change seemed to have occurred in every galaxy where Divine Vessel's offshoots were located.

It's just that no one could clearly say what this change was.

*

Lin Sen often looked up at the starry sky, his gaze seemingly awaiting a certain destiny to arrive, or perhaps waiting for the final Judgment Day.

By now, the vast majority of cosmic civilizations had realized that this universe was poised to face its ultimate Judgment Day.

The design of the universe in terms of mass was extremely intricate; the total mass of the universe was just enough to allow it to collapse, not a bit more, not a bit less. Should the mass decrease slightly, the universe would switch from closed to open, expanding forever.

Today, the universe was gradually approaching a critical point. No one could know what lay behind this critical singularity, or how the universe would develop.

The universe could end in three ways:

One was that the universe, after this critical singularity, would expand forever; such a universe would fall into eternal heat death.

This heat death was not as we understand it, where constant stars extinguish and the distance between atoms spans light years; as bad as that ending might be, it was relatively less dire.

But the real heat death, where the gravity constant gradually becomes zero, the fine structure constant gradually becomes zero, and the speed of light gradually dwindles, and even ultimately, time itself gradually disappears.

That would be true despair, eternal despair; no, actually, there might not even be time to despair left.

Two was that the universe, after this critical singularity, would cease to expand and maintain the status quo.

At first glance, this result might seem ideal, as the universe maintains a constant size, which appears to support cosmic civilizations for trillions of years.

However, this view fails to profoundly understand the true implications of the universe ceasing to expand. If the universe stopped expanding, it would also mean that time in the universe would halt, and the entire universe would be eternally frozen in that moment.

Moreover, the universe's mass is not as plentiful as we imagine.

If we were to gather all the matter observable in the universe into one place, calculate its volume using the density of water, and ignore the effects of gravity and other physical laws, this matter would only accumulate into a cube with sides about 5.6 light years long.

This distance is only slightly further than from Earth to the Trisolaran Star System. From this, it can be seen that all the material of the universe, when gathered, occupies only such a small space.

In comparison, it becomes evident how empty the universe is, how scarce the material within it is, far less than we could imagine.

Third, after this critical singularity point in the universe, it will begin to collapse, returning to its original point, and then trigger another Big Bang, thus giving birth to a new universe.

This outcome is perhaps what all civilizations hope for, as although the Big Universe will die, the reborn universe will inherit much information from the Big Universe.

The civilizations from the previous universe can also retain their memory bodies into the next universe.

In such a cyclical universe, although each cycle of the universe has its lifespan, the newborn universe is not just a rebirth of the Big Universe, but also an inheritance of the old universe.

Just as humanity must go through birth, aging, sickness, and death, every step of growth is actually a step toward the end of life, "Life is an apprentice to death, death is the beginning of life."

We once existed, we carved indelible marks in the river of time. We shall also foster offspring, like passing the torch, carrying our information.

This information is passed down through generations, like stars that never extinguish, illuminating the path forward.

The significance of life does not merely lie in "birth", but more in "destiny".

On the journey of "life", we will face many hardships, many challenges, yet all these are for drawing us closer to our own "fate", tightly linked with the fate of human civilization.

Although we will eventually return to dust, our spirit and information will forever be passed on.

The fate of human civilization will also merge into the fate of the universe, as Cheng Xin's final words exemplify:

"Every civilization's journey is such: awakening from a tiny Cradle world, tentatively stepping out, taking flight, flying faster and faster, further and further, until finally merging with the fate of the universe. For intelligent civilizations, they eventually become as vast as their own thoughts."

The fates of individuals, civilizations, and the universe itself nearly all go through the same processes.

Individuals rely on reproduction to continue the torch, civilizations rely on rebirth from fire to pass on the mission, and the universe also needs destruction and rebirth to achieve its transcendence and sublimation.

Now, the life of the universe has reached its final moment, a time when the fate of civilization and the fate of the universe are closely linked.

The Returner must have arrived by now!

When Divine Vessel became a Divine-level Civilization, they had already sensed that another Divine-level Civilization had been silently watching them.

Lin Sen knew, this must be the Returner, who had been observing the Divine Vessel for three billion years.

And all this watching and waiting was just for the potential "answer" that Lin Sen mentioned.

*

Lin Sen gazed at the shattered starry sky, when suddenly, the cosmos seemed to merge into an illusion, and the scene before him abruptly changed.

At that moment, a huge balance scale appeared in Lin Sen's vision.

Lin Sen stood alone on one side of the scale, while the other side held an indescribable giant entity, boundless and formless, with the only certain thing being the terrifying "weight" it radiated.

Surprisingly, Lin Sen and this colossal entity surprisingly achieved a delicate balance on the scale.

Lin Sen understood, this was the world of the Returner.

The Returners, they took the art of balance and origin to the extreme, it seemed like Lin Sen alone was leveraging the whole universe.