Xyrin Empire-Chapter 1470: Cooling and Solidification

I looked around at the deeply dark space, my mind filled with heaps of confusion.

This is indeed the interior of the Abyss Gate, and moreover, it’s the interior of the oldest Abyss Gate. The faintly unpleasant sensation in the surrounding environment also proves I am in the right place. However, this place is different from the Abyss Gate I had jumped into in my memory: in my memory, the inside of the Abyss Gate is a chaotic space between perceivable and unperceivable, where all information is in an indeterminate state. Because the scenes you see with the naked eye belong to "incomprehensible" information, you feel the surroundings are extremely dark. Inside the Abyss Gate, the only "scenery" you can see are the occasional chaotic "masses" surging from that deep darkness. Even these masses aren’t real substances or light shadows; they are indescribable information storms. Your senses come into contact with this information but cannot comprehend it, so they appear as chaotic masses to the naked eye——all this is the normal scene inside an Abyss Gate.

However, here, I didn’t feel that distinct chaotic madness nor the dizziness from contacting a large amount of "indescribable" information. There is only ordinary darkness and a slight discomfort from being unable to rely on anything. I observed the surroundings and didn’t see the chaotic "masses" commonly found inside the Abyss Gate, nor any other strange things. The most unbelievable thing is that the space here is very stable, and the coordinates are perceivable, which means I am just in a normal dark hollow! This doesn’t look like an Abyss environment at all!

Oh right, there’s still a slight difference between here and regular space: a weak Abyss reaction permeates the surroundings. If an ordinary person came in, they would probably go insane in an instant.

"Have you noticed the difference?" Father God slowly floated by ahead, his voice echoing in my mind, "The space here is solidified, aside from the atmosphere, there’s almost no chaotic destructive elements."

"All the spaces behind the Abyss Gates should be shared," I adapted for a moment and found it much easier to move here than inside a normal Abyss Gate, "The Fallen Apostle once used this to traverse from their territory, sneaking through the Abyss Domain to the Empire’s interior before emerging..."

"I know about that, you told me before," Father God nodded, "So you all concluded that there’s a connected space ’below’ all Abyss Gates. We’ve also confirmed this through our research. Moreover, the observation of the same Discontinuous Belt in all Abyss Gates is also a fact... But the situation here is a bit exceptional; beneath this oldest Abyss Gate is such a place."

"It looks like a normal space," I looked up towards the Abyss exit, the silver halos left by the opened Crystal Lake are still visible here, so there’s no worry of getting lost inside, "Even the spatial coordinates here are stable."

"Not only are the spatial coordinates stable," Father God said, casually pointing to the distance, "The earth."

Then, a flash suddenly burst out in the direction Father God pointed, followed by vast, expansive mountains and rivers emerging along the path of the flash out of nowhere. This spectacle lasted a few seconds, and in the blink of an eye, a vast continent appeared before me. However, not long after, this continent began to disintegrate, split apart, and in short six or seven minutes, it was engulfed by disasters of earth-shattering magnitude, then, bit by bit, swallowed by the surrounding darkness.

"Although it’s quickly destroyed, it’s indeed possible to perform Genesis here," Father God explained, "This means, despite the harsh environment, it still supports the existence of the most basic Order, even allowing mundane matter to survive briefly here. You know, a normal Abyss environment is an ’Order vacuum zone,’ anything with Order but without Resistance would instantly have even its fundamental existence stripped away, then shattered in a blink... But that landmass was created without any protection. Its birth means the most basic Order exists here."

"What on earth is going on?" Despite my ignorance of these advanced professional concepts, I could still understand Father God was talking about something astonishing: within the Abyss Gate, something orderly can appear from nothing, which is completely against the very essence of the Abyss.

"I don’t know either," Father God shrugged candidly, "Moreover, there are plenty more strange phenomena. We conducted a Deep Dive here and descended to search for the Discontinuous Belt, and guess what we found?"

I looked at Father God’s half-smiling expression and boldly guessed: "The wrench you dropped while building back in the day?"

Father God: "...I appreciate your optimism, but can we be serious here?"

I spread my hands: "Aren’t you putting me on the spot here? I’ve no idea what you found down there."

"The Deep Diving Core—essentially a deep-diving ship made by the Divine Race—proceeded to the expected location of the Discontinuous Belt and found nothing," Father God looked down at the endless darkness below as if wanting to see the site where the Deep Diving ship reached that day, "Then we let the equipment continue its submergence, and... it reached the end, the Deep Diving Core collided with the space boundary, and then emerged near the Abyss Gate."

I was stunned for a moment before reacting: "You’re saying this place is not only a space but also closed?"

"Arriving at the space boundary and returning to the starting point means the space is closed and continuous. We tested this multiple times, and each return path was identical, proving that it’s not only closed and continuous but has a stable structure. It’s just that since this place is still an Abyss environment, drawing the spatial structure using normal methods is impossible," Father God sat cross-legged in mid-air, his usual unhurried, calm voice echoing in my mind, "So the kids used some indirect methods, like constantly deploying probes in all directions, and roughly figured out the structure here, confirming it’s a massive cavity like a narrow cave. The cavity is symmetrical everywhere, extending from one point to an infinite point. You’ll encounter the closed space boundary and then return precisely to the starting point... Just like a class-two closed Order Universe."

"Is this still the Abyss?" Like Father God, I sat cross-legged in mid-air, full of bewildered confusion.

"Of course, it’s the Abyss," Father God chuckled, "Look at the environment here. If you bring equipment, you can measure various constants here and find that chaos and incoherence are still the main themes. Aside from that, it’s already solidified structurally."

I noticed the word he used: solidified.

Chaos solidifying, movements solidifying, destruction and chaos solidifying, no matter what, when they solidify, they inevitably no longer align with the consistent nature of the Abyss. Because fundamentally, the Abyss is something that propels "change," pushing all things towards destruction, disallowing anything to remain in its current state, and continues to drive anything it infects towards extinction until not even dust remains, which is the true nature of the Abyss.

But what if even the Abyss itself solidifies?

"Do you have any hypotheses?" Father God suddenly looked at me, "The kids are trying to explain this phenomenon through theoretical research, but they’re having a hard time. Perhaps our intuition is closer to the truth than their theories."

"The Void Creature’s talent, huh," I scratched my chin, "Though I really can’t think of anything immediately to explain it... So, this Abyss Gate is independent from others, beneath it is a space with basic Order, with boundaries, symmetry, closed, measurable indirectly, lacking fixed constants, and no Discontinuous Belt... Let me think."

Father God smiled, patiently waiting for me to find a clue. I meditated for a long time, pondering how I might trigger my "intuition," and finally slapped my head: if intuition could be actively triggered, it would be a passive effect!

Not everyone is like Taville, practicing schizophrenia as an active skill...

So I stopped torturing my brain cells and directly voiced the vague thought I had: "I feel like this place is a ruin, or something burnt out... At any rate, something that was once very active and has now cooled down."

"I feel the same way, seems like we are on the same wavelength, so the truth is probably close," Father God laughed, "I’ve mentioned, this place feels ’solidified’, if normal active Abyss is like endlessly flowing magma, then this place resembles cooled down igneous rock, where Chaos is solidified into Order, and space is the first to undergo orderification. If this is indeed the case, then this place might not be completely ’cooled’ yet, over time, it should continue ’solidifying’ until the chaotic tendencies completely disappear, turning into an entirely trivial initial space. However, this process may take a very long epoch, and I may not have the patience to keep observing it."

I suddenly remembered a question I wanted to ask but never had the chance to: "Speaking of, this Abyss Gate has been in the Divine Realm for so many years, is this the first time you’ve learned what’s inside? You haven’t been down here before?"

"I did come down here a long, long time ago," Father God replied, and when he uses the words ’a long, long time ago,’ you know the timespan is already crazily long, "I remember it was shortly after the establishment of the Divine Realm, and my understanding of the Abyss Gate was quite superficial, so I had descended once."

"Didn’t you find the environment here strange at that time?"

"Do you think I usually have nothing better to do than to keep jumping down Abyss Gates looking for excitement?" Father God glanced at me peculiarly, "Back then, I felt this place was too dark and gave a bad impression, so I didn’t stay long. Though I’ve occasionally encountered other Abyss Gates, I never thought much about it afterward. You know, Void Creatures are an inherently inert species; unless necessary, Void Creatures don’t do troublesome things proactively—why would I waste my time analyzing every Abyss Gate’s nature? Later, I created the Divine Race, but their main activity was to eradicate the Abyss. My children conducted several deep dives checking what lay beneath the gates. However, they didn’t see how this would help entirely eliminate the Abyss and thus did not delve deeper... As my derivative force, the Divine Race inherited the inert aspect of Void Creatures to some extent, which should be the sole flaw among the Star Domain Gods. If it weren’t for hearing about the Discontinuous Belt from you guys not long ago, I wouldn’t have paid attention to this gate again: I almost forgot about it."

I quite agreed with Father God’s insights, particularly regarding the inert aspect: "Indeed, the Divine Realm’s own procrastination syndrome is pretty much universally advanced. But why has Xyrin Apostle under me focused on research relentlessly and even discovered the Discontinuous Belt earlier than you all?"

Father God gave me an even more peculiar look: "...Xyrin Apostle isn’t your creation, they lack inertia—do you forget this Empire was basically adopted?"

I slapped my forehead: "Oh right, after being Emperor for too long, I nearly forgot."

Father God and I stayed in this dark empty space for a while to understand more of its eerie properties. This space, though labeled as a closed space, strictly speaking, is semi-closed. The Abyss Gate is a passage between virtual and reality; when the reflection on the Crystal Lake’s surface recedes, this space opens a pinch. However, due to the Abyss Gate’s two-dimensional plane neglecting the usual spatial rules, this pinhole does not impact the space’s intrinsic closure: unless possessing special skills or powers, anything falling into this space could never escape. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

"And how did this space form?" I knew Father God didn’t bring me here just to flaunt his newly discovered colossal underground room; there must be something else, so I curiously asked.

"I have a hypothesis," Father God nodded, "Inactive Abyss... You know about this concept?"

This term coming out from Father God’s mouth caught me off guard, so I promptly nodded vigorously: "Of course, I know—it’s currently a dead-end for my scientist team."

Father God nodded, speaking slowly, "Inactive Abyss also embodies the normal Abyss, bearing destructive force, causing world collapse and various disasters, yet having weaker infectivity, typically infecting only once without secondary jumps. Inactive Abyss is easier to suppress or reverse compared to active Abyss, and transformation progress for infected individuals is extremely slow—these are our summarized rules, probably similar to yours."

I nodded: "Yeah, we’ve studied this for quite some time. You know Sandora was infected by Abyss once long ago, but later recovered entirely on her own, which was highly unusual, so some scientists hypothesized Sandora’s encounter was with the Inactive Abyss. The boundary line between Inactive Abyss and ordinary Abyss is hazy; ’infectivity’ remains an unquantifiable indicator, so Sandora’s incident has never been conclusively defined."

"Regardless, Inactive Abyss is a concept that does exist," Father God scanned the darkness surrounding, "if it evolves to its extreme, could it turn into this kind of Abyss Gate?"

I was shocked—I really hadn’t considered this angle!

This thought carries some initial logic, but somehow it doesn’t fully sit well with me; I hesitated before questioning: "Inactive Abyss admittedly looks ’docile’, but your basement... seems awfully eerie beyond measure? Calling it ’docile’ feels inadequate."

"That’s exactly why I said ’to the extreme’," Father God spread his hands, gesturing around, "This unusual place is somewhat similar to Inactive Abyss: safe, mild, trending toward stability. Yet Inactive Abyss merely reduces infectivity, the destructive force remains whereas the Abyss phenomena of this space deepens the ’inactive’ aspect. We’ve always considered Abyss as an eternal constant, believing no Abyss Gate would naturally degrade, but as you also know now, Abyss is, in reality, ever-changing. With overall variations, why not local mutations? Inactive Abyss might be a middle state, caused by unknown reasons, some Abyss Gates degrading, lowering destructive and infectious powers, thus creating Inactive Abyss. Proceeding further, it might evolve into the Abyss Gate at the base of the Divine Realm through continued change. If normal Abyss is magma, then this is the cooling solidifying phase."

Father God’s hypothesis presents an intriguing notion: typically stable Abyss suddenly stabilizes under unknown causes (he calls this ’degradation’), leading to Inactive Abyss—Sandora’s former encounter possibly aligns with this. Subsequently, Inactive Abyss further degrades, cools, solidifies, transforming disordered tendencies into ordered, establishing the Inactive Abyss Gate. Extending this development ends with what’s under Father God’s basement; the entire process appears fantastical and unbelievable—utterly challenging my worldview.

"Abyss theoretically shouldn’t display ’degradation’ phenomena," Father God also acknowledged this point, "yet there’s confirmed presence of degraded Abyss appearing now, so we shouldn’t fret over logical inconsistencies—it’s better to accept reality and aim to understand the underlying reasons. My intuition senses explaining the relationship between Inactive Abyss and this peculiar space potentially uncovers Abyss evolution secrets, aiding comprehension of the ’Discontinuous Belt’ mystery."

"So have you figured out how Inactive Abyss originates?" I glanced at Father God.

The counterpart unapologetically shook his head: "Not a chance, the project’s just begun. I’m hoping if you have time, you could also mobilize your scholars to join the research. Let’s host a joint project to explore the connection between Inactive Abyss and the Divine Realm’s foundation; samples are readily available here; just send people over, I’ll manage lodging."

"Let’s focus on clearing the current tasks first, the research center is swamped simply with the deep dive plan." I cheerfully nodded yet soon enough, an emergency communication abruptly broke into consciousness:

"Ah Jun, it’s Sandora; Fallen Apostle’s stirring!" (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, you’re welcome to vote on Qidian (qidian.com) with recommendation and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users please read on m.qidian.com.)