Chapter 2: We Too Shall Inevitably Fade Away |
Yin Shen felt himself soaring out of his body, gently drifting towards the firmament.
He gazed down upon the building, the city, the continent.
And even…
The Earth itself.
He ascended higher and higher, floating above the orbit, when he suddenly noticed rapid changes unfolding on the Earth below.
In the blink of an eye, cities vanished, leaving no trace of human existence.
The plates of the continents shifted, and verdant vegetation gradually enveloped everything.
Yin Shen immediately grasped what was transpiring.
“Time is accelerating at a breakneck pace. What I perceive as a mere instant could span a hundred thousand or even a million years.”
He gazed into the cosmos, only to be pulled by an intangible force, or rather, flung into the vast expanse of the universe, vanishing from the Earth.
Eternal silence enveloped him.
He bore witness to the birth and annihilation of countless stars, the rapid collapse of galaxies.
Never had he imagined such wondrous sights existed in the world, majestic and awe-inspiring enough to reshape one’s beliefs, to make one’s lifelong pursuits seem utterly ridiculous, even to feel dread over the mediocrity of one’s existence.
Does our fleeting existence hold any meaning at all?
The birth of life, the dawn of civilization, and the grandeur of technology—are they truly as magnificent as we humans proclaim?
The lifespan of an individual, the history of the human species, and even the entirety of Earth itself.
In that moment, Yin Shen could only describe it with a phrase he had once heard.
“We are but specks of dust!”
The species and civilization known as humanity were like a fleeting glimmer suddenly emerging in a corner of the universe.
Gone in the blink of an eye, devoid of any significance.
Unnoticed, uncared for, and powerless to change anything.
We originate, we are born, we shine our light to the fullest extent possible, and we too shall inevitably fade away.
Disappearing in that insignificant, isolated island in a corner of the universe, vanishing in what is but an instant to the cosmos.
Yin Shen’s spirit was shaken to the core. To witness such awe-inspiring scenes, his dark and brief human life seemed to finally gain a glimmer of light.
He transformed into a beam of radiance, heading towards the depths of the universe.
Time flowed in reverse as he traveled towards the origin of all things in a manner transcending space, time, and dimensions.
It was as if at the source of time, a powerful gravitational force was pulling him towards the beginning of everything.
Finally…
The stars were annihilated, and the universe converged into one.
Everything disappeared.
He too had reached the end.
———————
“Where is this place?”
Yin Shen asked himself.
In this realm, even darkness ceased to exist. Yin Shen felt as if he himself had disappeared, with only his consciousness remaining, silent in the endless void.
A place without space, without time, without anything at all.
He could only answer himself, for he might be the first living being to reach this place, the sole existence here.
“Have I been cast outside the universe? Or entered an unknowable dimension?”
He couldn’t cry out; he couldn’t perceive any existence.
Suddenly, he felt a sense of trepidation, and his friend’s words echoed in his ears.
“It could be another universe, the origin of time, another dimension, or some unfathomable unknown.”
“There might be nothing at all there, like a prison, and your soul would be trapped for ten million years, a hundred million years.”
“Until…”
“Eternity.”
For a moment, his dread and unease reached their zenith.
However, as soon as this thought surfaced, he suddenly saw a light appear before his eyes.
He heard the sound of seawater and tides, which from the sound alone felt exceptionally clear and warm.
He even felt bubbles rising from his side, floating upwards.
Trickling, splashing, gurgling.
The sound moved him deeply.
Before his eyes appeared the vast ocean and the seabed paved with sand and gravel.
He saw a trilobite no larger than a finger crawling across the sand and gravel into the distance, and a noodle-like worm writhing upwards in the seawater.
The trilobite known as Redlichia, and the tiny, nearly imperceptible unknown worm.
He recalled his friend’s words once more and realized what had transpired.
“Anchor points!”
“Anchor points on Earth have appeared for me, allowing me to observe the planet.”
“They are my eyes, my ship’s anchor and coordinates in the vast ocean.”
He never expected that the trilobite fossil his friend had gifted him would re-anchor him to Earth, pulling him out of eternal darkness and the bottomless abyss.
Though his friend likely hadn’t anticipated that the fossil contained not only a trilobite but also a worm from a distant era.
He reached out to grasp the creature named Redlichia.
Breaking free from his prison, he returned to the universe once more.
His consciousness was drawn back to Earth, pulled from that unknowable realm outside the universe, transcending time.
Anchored at a point in time across the eons of the vast universe, anchored on an inconspicuous planet in a remote corner of the cosmos.
This was a shallow sea, with sunlight shining down from above.
The seabed was filled with various ancient algae and naked ferns, with large expanses of tulip-like underwater flora gently swaying with the waves.
There were also cactus-like sponges with sharp, elongated spicules extending from their outer walls.
Lingulella shells were embedded in the sand, and he saw swarms of trilobites crawling on the sand and gravel.
Yin Shen walked step by step up from the seabed, feeling dazed and at a loss. He sensed the abnormality of this place.
It should be Earth, yet it couldn’t possibly be the Earth he was familiar with.
He finally emerged from the shallow sea, standing upon the land.
A barren terrain, a continent devoid of anything.
Yin Shen gazed upon the Earth from eons ago, at the pristine sky and sun, the only existence in the entire world known as human.
“Is this…”
“The Earth in ancient times?”
He stood on the shore, but the sea behind him suddenly surged with colossal waves, erupting with a thunderous roar.
“Boom~”
The worm, accompanying Yin Shen’s appearance, underwent a mutation.
It devoured sand and gravel, algae, and seawater, swelling in the blink of an eye into a behemoth dozens of meters tall.
Plants and creatures alike were assimilated, becoming a part of it.
Immense spiral shells could be seen growing on its back, with spikes protruding from inside its body, and eerie tentacles emerging from the shells.
Its flesh split open with cracks, and repulsive green eyeballs peered out from within, gazing in all directions.
It was a terrifying, deformed monstrosity, an invincible overlord in terms of size in this era.
Yet as Yin Shen’s gaze fell upon it, the giant beast prostrated on the ground, not daring to move a muscle, as humble as if it had no sense of self.
Immediately after, an ever-growing trilobite slowly crawled out of the shallow sea.
As it emerged from the water, it too underwent a transformation.
It grew a humanoid torso, limbs, and a head.
It transformed into a humanoid creature covered in black carapace, its head tightly encased in a three-lobed bone helmet.
This being gradually walked up the shore, gazing at Yin Shen standing on the coast with reverence, step by step approaching him.
Yin Shen could sense its emotions. He touched the bone helmet on top of its head with his finger.
Listening to the most ancient life on Earth, he heard it utter the planet’s first language, the first syllable.
“God!”
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