Chapter 302
The crowd was caught off guard, their gazes drawn to the central sphere, which had now lost its red hue and returned to its previous state. A few senior bishops, seasoned and ancient, rushed forward, but found no clues about the stowaway on the main control terminal.
The system that should have continued to sound alarms and provide the stowaway's coordinates seemed to have lost its target. The bishops quickly checked their terminals; the previous alerts to eliminate the stowaway were still active, but the main terminal had not updated the coordinates, indicating that the stowaway's location remained unchanged, still beside the main terminal.
Frustrated, the bishops communicated with the sphere, but nothing happened. If there were no records archived, it was as if… everything had been a misunderstanding.
“Where is the enemy?!” More members of the Star Church continued to flood into the hall, eager to complete a special mission that had existed since the church's inception.
The Star bishops, who had been excited and even frantic just moments ago at the discovery of the stowaway, now faced an increasing number of people in this chaotic temporal situation. They angrily unleashed their mental energy at their surroundings, clearing a space, and then coldly shouted, “Search! We must find the stowaway!”
“Yes, yes!” The others snapped back to attention.
With the convenience provided by their terminals suddenly gone, the Star Church could only flail about like headless chickens, blindly searching for traces in the surrounding chaos.
Yet no matter how they stirred the space around them, they could not catch up to Ye Bai's trail.
Long before entering and touching the sphere, Ye Bai had already flickered, allowing her to ‘jump’ back to five minutes before the alarm sounded. In reality, she had finished browsing everything five minutes before the alarm even went off.
So no matter how quickly the members of the Star Church arrived, it was futile; only the cosmic authority of the [Gene Erasure Program] could reach her. During that time, Ye Bai was nonexistent to the cosmic beings at that normal time point, as she only existed in the ‘now’ of those elusive five minutes.
When the members of the Star Church arrived in less than a minute, Ye Bai had already absorbed all the information and returned to the present.
The entire process appeared as if she had appeared, triggered the alarm, and then left.
---
As the Star Church floundered in search of the missing stowaway, Ye Bai had already returned to the lifeless expanse of the chaotic star sea.
Of course, Ye Bai had considered destroying the main terminal, but after her contact, she realized it would be futile—the material that formed the sphere could be destroyed, but the ‘authority’ rooted in this universe could not be shaken.
It was akin to the natural laws governing other existences in the universe; people could influence matter, but they could not destroy the laws of its operation. Even technological advancements had to be built upon these laws.
However, through the information obtained from the Star Church's main terminal, Ye Bai confirmed that the breakthrough point was likely the previously overlooked Fuyou Clan.
Without a doubt, the only effective communication she had with them was during that encounter in the special space where the wormhole was closed, when she unintentionally encountered a torrent of information while using a micro wormhole.
At that time, aided by the unstable special space and the wormhole, they transmitted information to Ye Bai, but her strength was insufficient to comprehend it. Despite her best efforts, she could only capture fragmented pieces of information.
Communication between higher and lower dimensions was difficult, as evidenced by the Star Alliance and the Star Church, which could only communicate through the star network and terminals.
Even though Ye Bai was likely the closest being to a higher dimension in this universe, she still needed to find a way.
If Ye Bai were another psychic, she would have two options: wait for the Star Church to undertake the wormhole closure mission again, or search for clues at the ‘exit’ wormhole she might have crossed over from, Blue Star.
But now, that was unnecessary.
In the next moment, Ye Bai's consciousness began to rewind time. Unlike the B-level rewind of her own state, she was now directly anchoring her consciousness into her past body.
During her time at the Star Church, she could only jump through cosmic time for five minutes, but this method of using her past as an anchor allowed her to rewind all the way back to the moment she awakened in this universe.
Her past experiences flashed by like a fleeting panorama until she reached the moment a few months ago when her past self entered that micro wormhole.
Now, Ye Bai's consciousness directly ‘descended’ into her past body, existing in a state of overlapping consciousness, yet remaining unaffected.
She could not control her body, as in the three-dimensional scale, the past was part of what constituted the present Ye Bai and could not be changed or influenced.
Ye Bai did not need to change or influence anything; she simply used her now stronger consciousness to return to the past, listening to the ‘voices’ she could not hear at that time through that rare open channel.
“Boom…”
As she stepped into the micro wormhole, the torrent of information that Ye Bai had previously missed surged forth once more.
The past Ye Bai, still caught in the rush of information, lost her four-dimensional awareness, left in a daze.
Yet the consciousness that descended from the present, akin to how Ye Bai had once reached the threshold of intelligent beings, now reached the threshold of communication with higher-dimensional beings. Thus, she could finally see and hear the vast information that was too immense for three-dimensional beings.
In that brief moment for the past Ye Bai, this torrent of information was all passively received, but for the present Ye Bai, it was an interface for communicating with four-dimensional beings.
The overlapping Ye Bai engaged in extensive information exchange with them, conducting a delayed conversation in the ‘past’—
---
“Who are you?”
“The Fuyou Clan is the name given to this universe's civilization. If you want a proper reference, you can call us ‘Gu’.”
What appeared before Ye Bai's eyes were numerous shapeless light points, or rather, streams of information that transcended three dimensions, resembling the ‘default image’ she had used during negotiations with the Star Alliance on the star network.
Essentially, this exchange was not linear; each light point could simultaneously communicate different questions to Ye Bai, and vice versa.
However, Ye Bai was not a four-dimensional being. Even though the information exchange was happening simultaneously, she instinctively formed a sequence, making her seem somewhat ‘slow’ from the perspective of the others.
The ‘Gu’ were not dismissive; they conveyed a wealth of information, answering Ye Bai's questions one by one.
“You already know from the ‘Interference Device’ that Universe 00 is the previous universe. Both carbon-based and silicon-based life forms belong to its primitive life.”
“In terms of time, we are actually ‘future beings’ relative to you. Your conjecture is correct; the evolution of Blue Star in the current Era 01 is the historical trajectory that Era 00 experienced.”
“The difference is that silicon-based life forms in Era 01 created a large number of carbon-based civilizations, advancing faster than Blue Star civilization. Consequently, after experiencing a technological explosion, the Blue Star inhabitants of Era 01, upon stepping into the universe, quickly fell under the influence of other civilizations' ideologies, diverging from the path of Era 00.”
“Silicon-based life? Is that the ‘Stars’?”
“When you say they created carbon-based civilizations, does that mean there were other carbon-based civilizations in the previous era, unlike this universe?”
From the perspective of the ‘Gu’, Ye Bai slowly posed two questions.
“Correct.” One ‘Gu’ responded: “Silicon-based life is what you now know as the ‘Stars’. Their depth of knowledge has always been ahead of us; even when we were just breaking through to planetary-level civilization, they were already approaching semi-higher dimensions.”
Another ‘Gu’ answered Ye Bai's second question: “In Era 00, there were only two types of life civilizations in the entire universe: one was our carbon-based civilization of Blue Star, and the other was the silicon-based civilization.”
Both answers left Ye Bai in shock, especially the second one.
“What is semi-higher dimension? Aren't you all fully higher-dimensional beings yet?”
“You're saying that in Era 00, in such a vast universe, there were only two civilizations? Could it be that you just haven't discovered others, so you don't know?”
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