I'm trapped in a block

Chapter 1258 Relative Disappearance
Martin was a little confused about the current situation.

"Can these afterimages take me to the moment the explosion occurred?"

why?
They are merely empty outlines sketched by the field of consciousness, and should not possess time-related abilities. Or is it that they are not time-related abilities, but rather illusions?

Moreover, the outline of the figure changed, stopping at the posture he had before returning to reality.

What exactly happened at the moment of the explosion?

Why are the other people looking terrified? What did they see?

Martin was filled with confusion, so he no longer hesitated and reached out again, sticking his hand into the figure in front of him.

It's that feeling of breaking boundaries again...

A thunderous roar resounded, the earth began to tremble, the lake water rose, and everything was just as it had been when he first touched it; time seemed to be flowing backward at breakneck speed.

Countless water droplets floated into the air, and the mine pit dried up again.

A speck of dust drifted onto Martin's face, and he felt a strange sense of familiarity.

The mine carts were making noise in the distance, and I could hear a cacophony of conversations nearby.

Wearing earmuffs, Martin couldn't hear the sounds clearly at all; they all seemed to be mixed together.

Only one sentence was audible:

"Send the preparation signal."

This is another preparatory signal. After the siren sounds for about ten seconds, the explosion will begin.

Martin made a decision immediately and rushed towards the person in charge.

The piercing horn sounded, and Martin rushed to the person in charge.

"Don't detonate! Don't detonate!" he shouted, repeating the same phrase to the other party, but his voice was completely drowned out by the sirens.

The person in charge just stared at him blankly without saying anything. After the siren ended, he reached out and pressed the button for the detonation device.

Martin's heart tightened instantly, and he quickly leaned out, pushing the person in charge aside.

"Don't detonate!"

After being pushed aside, the person in charge looked at him with a puzzled expression, as if she could read his lips.

Just as the person in charge was about to ask a question, a deafening explosion suddenly came from the blasting point in the distance.

"Boom!"

The earth began to tremble, and vision shook violently.

Martin was immediately stunned.

Why did it explode even though it wasn't detonated?
The person in charge's expression changed as he looked into the distance, his eyes gradually turning terrified.

The demolition team members who had been watching Martin also turned to look in the direction from which the sound came, and then their eyes widened.

"What did they see?"

Martin immediately turned his head and looked in the same direction.

Then he saw it—the disappearance of the world.

With the explosion point as the reference point, an invisible force is spreading. When the boundary of that force touches things, things will change from "existence" to "non-existence". And when all things become "non-existent", the area covered by that force becomes completely "empty".

It was a complete void, without soil, air, light, or color. Even space and time were gone. The space outside the void seemed to rush into the area covered by that force, like air rushing into a vacuum. The frozen time made the space stagnate, remaining in that fleeting moment of flow.

This is a scene that is beyond human imagination.

There is no space there, yet you can still see it.

There is no time there, yet it can be perceived from the relative flow of the outside world.

There was no sound or light there, no information perceptible to humans, yet it could be felt through human emotions, evoking a deep-seated fear. It was utterly unknown, distinct from the surrounding known world; it was an ever-expanding expanse of space, yet a constantly shrinking horizon.

All that could be seen was the unknown.

The moment they looked in that direction, a wave of terror washed over them as the compressed space engulfed the entire demolition team in an inescapable void. Everything around them vanished, including themselves, but the frozen time froze their consciousness. They simply stared at their surroundings, watching everything disappear in an instant…

Has the world really disappeared?

Or did the person simply disappear?

Disappearance and existence are also relative...

When the world disappears but people still exist, what people see is the disappearance of the world.

When people disappear but the world still exists, what people see is the disappearance of the world.

Whether something exists or not seems to depend solely on perspective.

When absolute "emptiness" occupies a person's body, the person feels that everything around them is "empty," and the angle of observation determines their own situation.

Martin fell into the void, feeling as if everything about him was being stripped away, and he gradually lost all sense of the world around him.

It felt like he had traveled a long way, like a very long time had passed, yet it also felt like it was right before his eyes, like it happened in an instant. The disorientation of time and space struck his soul, and he reflexively withdrew his trembling hand. That emptiness was instantly filled with endless things:

Lake water, silt, ore...

Green, white, black...

As his hand left the figure, everything began to flow again, no longer obliterated by the collapse of space, no longer stagnant by the escape of time. The past and the present re-established their distance, and he returned to the world he knew.

Martin collapsed instantly, fear and exhaustion erupting from the spacetime compressed to a singularity, taking over his heart.

"I'm so tired."

It felt like he had walked a very, very long road, farther than walking from the end of the world's roots to the beginning. It felt like a very, very long time had passed, longer than he had been born, longer than the entire duration of human civilization, and longer than the time it takes for a new bud to grow from the roots.

Martin collapsed in the mud and sand, the flow of the lake water became "momentary," and his perception of the speed of time became distorted, as if everything in the world had become very slow.

The swirling of the silt and sand seems to be part of countless spatial movements. Within the vast root system, these tiny movements cannot disturb the whole; they are all ineffective "internal forces." Human activities can only produce faint sighs and cannot stop the changes in the world.

Once one understands the insignificance of one's own perspective, endless despair arises.

Martin had experienced this kind of despair before...

In the Sea of ​​Tears, that abyss-deep sea of ​​despair, lies the same despair.

It was as if a voice was whispering in my ear: "Give up... give up..."

"All things are empty, all colors are pale, all affairs cease, all thoughts are put to rest..."

Martin didn't know what the force he saw was, nor did he know why he was thinking about it.

He lay quietly in the lake, watching the water flow by, the light patterns falling on the transparent glass jar, which was now empty.

The figure from before was no longer beside him, but had moved to the side of the "person in charge," gazing into the unknown distance.

Martin's behavior was "recorded" once again.

This small change was reflected in Martin's glass jar.

Although human movement plays no role in the enormous changes in the world, this little bit of progress seems to have some effect.

As the figure shifted, a flash of color appeared in the glass jar, followed by tiny pieces of kimchi that began to swirl within. Tentacles then emerged again, grasping at the hope that had been lost and regained…

Martin propped himself up, stood up, and walked towards the figure not far away again.

Is this all the despair you can hope for?

"Still a long way to go!"

(End of this chapter)