One Hundred and Thirteen: The Mysterious World Origin Energy

Like a violent thunderbolt plunging from the sky, it pierced straight into the deepest core of my soul, driving away all the fog of concealment and pretense in my heart, cleaving open my chest, and unearthing the secret I had buried deepest within.

I am a being rejected by the laws of the gods, a sinful existence that ought never to have appeared.

I do not know what this truly signifies, but I know it shall remain a secret I can never speak of to anyone for the rest of my life.

Though I knew not what would transpire should I publicize this secret, some inexplicable notion convinced me beyond doubt that if I were to do so, it would summon terrible calamities upon me and ultimately obliterate everything I hold dear.

Throughout the passing years, whenever these thoughts arose, I could feel a creeping dread seeping from the marrow of my bones and the ends of my nerves.

This causeless, groundless terror was so clear, so intense, like countless shards of ice thrust straight into my veins, filling me with an uncontainable chill.

To escape this, I went to great lengths to seek out my friends from otherworldly planes, longing to remain with them every waking moment.

Only thus could I temporarily forget my true identity, fancying myself a "normal person" who shared their goals and convictions. And now, right before my eyes, stood such a troll, whose casually spoken words laid bare the greatest fear in my heart.

My heart seized with a stabbing pain, as if it were about to shatter on the spot. A hysterical sense of panic drove my emotions into a frenzy, and a sudden, violent impulse seized me to pierce the old troll before me through the heart with my sword, chop his corpse into countless fragments, and scatter them into the most secluded corners of the vast continent of Falvey, letting this secret rot beneath the soil, fester in the swamps, dissolve in the ocean waters, never, ever to surface again.

Before I even realized it, my right hand was gripping my sword hilt so tightly that my knuckles had turned chalk-white.

Had I not known my utter inability to slay this troll named Carlson, I might truly have put this terrible, sinful thought into execution.

At that moment, I felt like a landmass wracked by an earthquake, my entire body tearing apart inch by inch. Even as I felt myself being destroyed, I felt the urge to destroy everything around me as well...

"From the very first step you took into the fortress, I have noticed you..." Ignoring my agitated state, the troll Carlson spoke with relaxed ease.

"...What I find amusing is that you actually mingle with those sky-farers. From the beginning, I wanted to find an opportunity to approach you, but you always stayed together. I have constantly worried for you, you know; your levels are far too low, and the Black Knight is not someone easily dealt with. Should you perish here, I would be entirely helpless. Fortunately, however, your luck has been exceptional—or rather, our luck has been exceptional."

"That's impossible!" I shouted.

"We were extremely cautious the entire way here. If anyone had been trailing us, we would certainly have noticed!"

"Trailing?" Carlson chuckled.

"I never used that word. In fact, I possess much better methods." With that, he extended his withered, dark green left hand.

With a gentle sweep through empty air... an astonishing phenomenon occurred. An image displaying the scene of the fortress gates suddenly materialized, suspended mid-air.

I swear it was neither an oil painting nor a blueprint; through it, I could see the weeds at the city gates swaying in the breeze, several decaying corpses infected with toxin lying to one side, and some worthless herbs and low-tier equipment scattered across the ground.

These things looked so familiar, as though they were truly the fruits of our battles upon entering the fortress. Carlson waved his arm again, continuously adjusting the floating projection. One moment, he enlarged the view to intricate detail, rendering even a single grain of sand or a speck of soil perfectly clear; the next moment, he shrank it down,

even revealing the full panorama of Gravel Fortress, as if we were soaring high in the sky and looking down upon it.

This novel gadget slightly eased the terror gripping my heart. I leaned in, reaching out a hand to touch the magical imagery, only to find my fingers passing right through it without feeling the slightest touch, not even the faintest sensation.

Fearing I might ruin the picture, I hastily jerked my hand back in fright, only to be astonished to find it still floating there intact, without the slightest damage.

"Can you see the entire fortress with this thing?" I asked.

"As you can see." He shrugged and nodded gently.

"Then how did you find out that I... well... am different from the others?" This was the question I cared about most, and the one that baffled me beyond measure.

I had always believed my disguise was flawless, and even my closest sky-farer friends had never detected anything amiss with me.

No matter how I imagined it, I could not fathom how this troll witch doctor could discern my true identity merely through a fleeting glance at this magical chart.

"This..." The troll Carlson scratched his head in mild embarrassment.

"...That is a rather complex question. But if you truly wish to understand, I am quite willing to share this secret with you." The thirst for knowledge of a half-baked alchemist was instantly stirred, especially since this concerned me so directly.

Temporarily casting aside the differences of our races and factions, I quietly took a seat beside him, listening as intently as a student.

"To begin with, this touches upon the primal origin of the world. Do you know what the world is made of?" Carlson glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, speaking with an air of profound mystery.

"There is a school of thought claiming the world is composed of four elements: earth, water, wind, and fire." This was the most common explanation on the continent, and the only one accepted and endorsed by the followers of the Supreme God.

Carlson seemed to feel slighted, frowning with dissatisfaction: "If the question were that simple, do you think I would have asked you with such solemnity?"

"I have heard of a five-element theory from a distant eastern continent; they believe the world is constituted by five elements: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth." I replied once more.

"Do you suppose there is any great difference in that?" The old troll waved his hand impatiently.

"There was an alchemist named Mendeleev who believed the world is composed of 118 different elements." I shook my head.

"And an alchemist named Dalton once proposed a hypothesis: that all matter in this world is made of tiny particles called atoms." This was clearly another incorrect answer.

"Could it be energy and matter?" I recalled the chapter on *Relativity* from that thick stack of alchemical textbooks.

Old Carlson did not seem interested in this. Suddenly, a flash of insight illuminated my mind, and a philosophical, thought-provoking perspective burst forth, possessing a wisdom that was simply irresistible.

"I understand..." Contemplation always invites absorption. By this time, I had completely forgotten the terror of my exposed identity, sinking entirely into this academically significant discussion.

"...The origin of the world is merely my own consciousness. Because I exist, they can be perceived. To me, everything in this world truly exists. And if I do not perceive them, they hold no meaning for existence, which implies they do not exist at all. In short, this world is the result of the collision between the subjective experiences of my personal awareness—which cannot exist independently of the perceiving subject—and the reflection and reaction of my private, subjective environment." This was perhaps the most philosophical utterance I would ever produce in my lifetime.

"What in the bloody hell is all this gibberish!" Confronted with my profound and lofty conclusion, the previously unflappable old troll finally revealed the crude nature of his savage race.

He burst into curses, failed to catch his breath, and ended up choking into a fit of coughing.

"Then you tell me, what on earth is the world made of?" Repeated wrong answers stripped me of any desire to continue guessing.

I spread my hands in helpless surrender and countered.

"You shall see..." Carlson smiled slightly, closed his eyes, and said to me slowly.

"What did you say? See?" His vague words left me utterly stunned.

"Are you insane..." Before my voice trailed off, I believe I had already seen it: everything around me dimmed instantaneously, and the background color of the world shifted into a pure, absolute darkness.

Above that seemingly endless darkness, vast swathes of fluorescent green characters surged forward like a tidal wave, overwhelming heaven and earth.

All the familiar shapes and forms in this plane vanished, and the entire world seemed to transform into a pitch-black plane,

bearing those countless characters, allowing them to leap and flicker in complex patterns. The three-dimensional world we inhabited was thoroughly converted into a two-dimensional space—a simple medium meant for writing and recording.

Although the ceaselessly flickering and shifting characters were almost infinite in number, their content was confusingly monotonous.

Filling this entire world were only two kinds of characters: a "0" and a— I looked down in terror, attempting to gaze at my two arms, but this was utterly impossible.

At some unknown moment, my entire body had also dissolved into a collective set of "0"s and "1"s, thoroughly merging into this flat world saturated with binaries. Every single thought and movement of mine stirred up turbulent ripples within this endless data stream, and billions of digits shifted violently in response to my actions.

"What is the meaning of this?" I roared at the top of my lungs, but in truth, I could not even "hear" my own voice. I could only perceive a long string of characters sweeping through this flat world like a tempestuous gale. Though there was no physical evidence, I instinctively knew that these were the disturbances triggered by my shouts.

"This is the very origin of the world!" An equally intense torrent of data washed over my position, and then I received Carlson's consciousness.

There was no hearing, no sensation; there was only the violent transformation of countless "0"s and "1"s. Yet somehow, I was able to comprehend his meaning under such circumstances.

"I have seen enough, let me go back. Quickly, let me go back!" I screamed like a madman, helplessly attempting to wave my limbs and body, flinging the turbulent currents of data as far forward and backward as possible, as though desperately trying to tear open this curtain of a world woven entirely from "0"s and "1"s. I admit it—I was terrified, and I feel no shame in that.

Should the day ever come when you discover your own body has also turned into a string of dispensable fields of data, I guarantee your performance would be no better than mine.

As suddenly as it had arrived, this ocean of data retreated without leaving a trace. In a daze, I found myself sitting once more within the windowless, doorless chamber of Gravel Fortress. The old troll Carlson still sat before me with a smile, his turbid eyes gazing at me with profound meaning.

Though dim, that gaze penetrated straight to the marrow, as if he were an ink-dipped quill, ready at any moment to draw another "0" upon me or erase a "1". This sensation made my hair stand on end.

"You have seen it; this is what I wished to tell you. Zeros and ones. This is the origin of the world. When I first discovered this secret, I was just as astonished as you are now: How could this be? What do they represent? And what do I signify? I beheld this riddle left behind in this world by the Creator, yet I knew not where to seek the answer."

"Then what about you?" I snapped back to my senses as if waking from a dream, pointing at his nose and demanding urgently,

"Who on earth are you? A deity? A demon? Or some other transcendent existence? Why do you possess such extraordinary, almighty power? And what is your purpose?"

"Me?" My question drew a faint, bitter smile from Carlson.

"I do not know who I truly am, nor why I appeared here. However, perhaps I can explain who I once was..." He summoned the magical chart that displayed all the details of the fortress once more, selected an inconspicuous little corner within it, and fished out the image of a corpse lying among a clump of weeds near the inner side of the city wall.

"This is me, or rather, this was once me: a level 47 troll witch doctor. That elfin girl in your party just batted this version of me to death right here. I suppose you likely missed it." Above the head of that corpse floated a grey-white name tag belonging exclusively to the dead: "Troll Witch Doctor Carlson"!

"Wait!" I felt as though I had been struck by lightning. An incredible answer grew increasingly clear in my mind.

I extended a trembling finger, pointing first at the corpse in the projection and then at the troll before me, my mouth agape in agitation.

Countless words surged toward my throat, yet I dared not utter a single syllable: I feared these words would act like a spell dispelling a nightmare, vanishing the moment they were spoken aloud.

"You..." I mustered all my strength, yet managed only to squeeze out this meaningless word.

"Me!" Carlson nodded firmly.

"You are..." My heart thundered wildly, an unnamed joy swelling within my chest,

almost threatening to burst me apart.

"I am!"

"You are also..." I heard the damp breath flooding my voice; inexpressible emotion and agitation choked my throat, leaving me on the verge of sobs.

"I am too, my friend. I am too!" Carlson gently extended a hand and patted my shoulder.

Yes. I, Jeffrey Fritz Kidd, am not a solitary life. Throughout the brief and fervent journey of my existence,

I have walked alongside many life-and-death companions and kindred spirits. Yet, until this very moment, have I finally found a true peer and kin.

Though he is a troll, possessing blue skin and massive tusks utterly unlike my own, here, he alone can be considered my kind, my folk—the sole friend who defends and guards the same secret alongside me.

We are both beings rejected by the laws of the gods, primitive entities detached from the arrangement of our destinies, free rebels.

I had shouldered this profound secret alone for far too long; now, I had finally found a fellow traveler to share this heavy burden with.

"How did you become like this?" I grabbed Carlson's hand, pressing him for answers.

"I do not know either," Carlson shook his head.

"I only know that one day I suddenly appeared here, wandering aimlessly, knowing neither whence I came nor whither I was going. Even though no one gave me any duties or tasks, I nonetheless patrolled solely within that tiny patch of land, never taking a single step beyond it. To me at that time, the clump of weeds in the corner of the wall was the entire world."

"I know not how much time passed before a band of adventurers slaughtered their way into the fortress. I knew not who they were, nor understood what they sought; upon discovering them, I simply rushed forward instinctively, and they fell upon me as well. Those people were far more formidable than I, hacking me half to death in moments. Then, a knight thrust his sword toward me. Just as his blade pierced halfway into my body, the world suddenly plunged into pitch darkness, as if everything had been extinguished."

"When I woke up later, I possessed my own consciousness. I discovered I was nearly free; I could roam everywhere. I traversed every corner of the fortress, climbed to the top of the Black Knight's tower, and toured the laboratories of A. Vesalius and the rest. For a time, I desired to leave this fortress, but a powerful magical force was set upon the fortress gates, rendering me completely unable to leave."

"Later still, I found that I somehow possessed some unusual powers—just like the ones you saw earlier. I knew I had become entirely different from everyone else here. Race, nation, faction—none of these held any meaning for me anymore. I seemed to have caught a fleeting shadow of the true origin of this world, yet I could never quite grasp it. It was then that I discovered you."

"You must understand, although I do not entirely comprehend what the origin of this world signifies, I have groped in the dark for quite some time. I discovered that behind the foundational state of existence of those sky-farers, there are peculiar and magical strings of characters; they seem to be the power passwords enabling travel between various plane worlds. Through the power represented by these strings of characters, they can move freely from one plane to another."

"Yet your body lacks this soul password carrying the power to shatter space and time. On the contrary, the characters of your fundamental traits are remarkably similar to mine. It was precisely for this reason that I recognized you as my own kind."

"So that was it." I finally understood how this old troll, awakened from his destiny, had unraveled the mystery of my identity at a single glance.

Suddenly, an important matter occurred to me: "With such formidable power, does that not make you the true master of this fortress?" I asked hastily.

"Can you join us in defeating the Black Knight?"

"That is impossible!" Carlson shook his head decisively.

"Well said. I knew you still couldn't give up on the Doomsday Empire." Seeing him refuse so bluntly, I glared at him in exasperation.

"This has nothing to do with factional alignment, my friend," old Carlson hastily explained.

"In truth, doing so is far more dangerous."

"When I first comprehended the power of the world's origin, I strove to experiment and decipher it, and indeed discovered certain patterns and functions of these characters. I found that this is simply too immense a power. Before such power, the Black Knight you encountered is utterly insignificant; I even believe that the Lord of Doomsday himself, should he descend in person, would be easily erased by this power. More importantly, this power can not only destroy but also create—bringing things into existence out of nothingness that were never there before."

"I once attempted to use this ability to alter certain things around me. Fortunately, I proceeded with the utmost caution. At first, I merely tried adjusting the position of a wild grass. Among the foundational symbols I could comprehend, this was also the change that would produce the minimal impact."

"The terrifying part is that shortly after I completed the modification, a colossal power I had never witnessed before instantly swept across from some unknowable, mysterious void. Believe me, the aura of destruction was too overwhelmingly powerful to resist. I wisely chose to flee, escaping through certain flaws in power that I had discovered. However, all the entities I had altered were utterly wiped of their traces. Mind you, they were not killed, nor were they destroyed—they were erased. Not only did they vanish completely without a trace, but the places where they originally stood were entirely replaced by what had been there before, as if they had never undergone any change at all."

"The gods are watching this world!" Carlson roared at me, and in his eyes, I saw uncontainable terror.

"Once they discover something has become different from what they desire, they really will destroy everything—including us, do you understand? Including us! I can only remain within this fortress, utilizing certain inherent loopholes in the world to carve out a refuge for myself, hiding deeply, or employing these loopholes to accomplish things that seem miraculous—including this small room, which, according to the rules of the divinities, shouldn't even exist—along with the secret method that brought you here, and everything else I have shown you."

"And now, helping you and your friends strike down the Black Knight requires a level of power that far exceeds the bounds of what I can keep safe. If I were to do this, do you know what the consequences would be? I, you, including every trace we have ever left in this world, would be utterly erased. We would become things that never existed; your memories, your glory, your battles, your friends, and yourself—everything would vanish. Death still leaves behind a silent soul, whereas we would have nothing left at all."

"Modify yourself through the rules..." Carlson told me with utmost solemnity,

"...and never attempt to modify the rules! I implore you, engrave these words deeply in your memory." (Damn it, having been away from Qidian for too long after getting married, I actually forgot my reader account, which is why I couldn't reply to certain questions these past couple of days.

The phrase "thirty miles" comes from a joke about eating a steamed bun where "the filling is still thirty li away," meaning there's still a long way to go. This chapter should probably be considered a tribute to the great *The Matrix* (strictly the first film, absolutely not the second film dubbed by Li Yapeng). However, despite knowing nothing about computers, I still maintain that piling up numbers to form the shapes of characters is clearly unscientific—when all is said and done, it's just a screen full of flat digital code anyway.

Today my typing session exceeded midnight once more, and her ladyship will subject me to a cold mattress. My wife cares deeply about my health, and in principle requires me to sleep before eleven; I understand this completely.

Yet for anyone who writes any kind or form of text, this is simply impossible—including myself, and including the official documents required by my daily work.

For this, my wife has quite a few grumbles... No, not "grumbles," but massive tirades. Sometimes I truly suffer: the agony of failing to write is an internal struggle, but when you clearly have things you want to write yet find your train of thought and emotions strangled, or even have your tools confiscated, that depression can sometimes feel excruciating.

What am I to do?)