The Wizard of Truth: Starting with Analyzing All Things

The name "Eternal Silence Corridor" is truly fitting.

Like a wounded and dying pilgrim who has stumbled for billions of miles through the deepest hell, the "Stargazer" finally dragged its last bit of energy, a gift from the "Tune Room" to maintain basic navigation, and slowly sailed into this absolutely desolate region known as the "graveyard of oblivion" in the universe.

Unlike the sparse darkness of the "Ancient Dust Belt" and the destructive energy surges of the "Annihilation Zone," this place is permeated by a more primal and thorough "nothingness." The density of matter is so low as to be almost negligible; there is no interstellar dust, no cold rocks, and even the occasional wandering celestial body is as rare as a miracle. Space itself seems to be "diluted"; the light of stars, having traveled a long way to reach this place, has long since weakened and dissipated, transforming into a uniform, cold, extremely thin, grayish-white "background glow" that provides no heat or direction. The gravitational field is so weak as to be almost nonexistent; the spacetime structure is unsettlingly stable, without turbulence or wrinkles, only an absolute, deathly, smooth "emptiness" that seems to have frozen billions of years of time.

This is the oldest and most desolate "scar" left by the expansion of the universe, a true "graveyard of all things" where even stars are unwilling to be born and civilizations can hardly imagine.

The "Stargazer" chose this place as a temporary "haven" precisely because of its extreme "emptiness" and "stillness." The effectiveness of the Silent Court's surveillance network depends on the transmission of energy and information. In this environment of "nothingness in the background," both active scanning and passive reception would be significantly less efficient and accurate. The clash with the "Lotus of Harmony" at the edge of the "Annihilation Zone," and the complex and unpredictable escape path that followed, were enough to make any pursuers lose their exact tracks—at least for the time being.

However, safety comes at a price. The emptiness and stillness here are themselves a form of invisible torture. There is no extractable energy, no available resources, not even the most basic gravitational gradient needed for the starship to fine-tune its attitude. Every attitude adjustment, every cycle of the life support system, and even every flicker of the instrument screen consumes its already dwindling and irreplaceable precious energy reserves. Even more terrifying is the continuous "erosion" of the soul by this region—that absolute, unrhythmic, and ever-changing silence and emptiness, like the coldest and sharpest file, relentlessly and slowly grinds away at the spirit and will of the living being, bringing unspeakable loneliness, nothingness, and a loss of existence.

Inside the bridge of the "Stargazer," the silence was starkly different from that of the "Tuning Room." It was a heavy numbness, tinged with the aura of death and utter exhaustion. The emergency lighting system, once removed from the "Tuning Room," was reduced to a minimum, providing only a faint glow to the core of the bridge and a few key compartments. On the main screen, the energy reserve readings, those alarming red numbers, each tiny fluctuation like a death knell tolling softly in everyone's hearts. While the ship's damage had been temporarily "stabilized" by the power of "Harmony," it had not been "repaired." The cracks, broken pipes, and burned circuits scattered throughout the hull, like the old wounds of an old man, continuously emitted subtle yet persistent groans of impending collapse in the deathly silence of the voyage.

Luo Wei wasn't sitting in the control chair. He sat cross-legged on a relatively open floor beside the control panel, his back against the cold alloy wall, his eyes closed, his face ashen from exhaustion. His soul, a late-stage second-ring Star Speaker, was utterly exhausted after experiencing the clash of rules in the "Annihilation Zone," the repeated torment of soul trauma, and now the silent spiritual erosion of the "Eternal Silence Corridor." The subtle cracks hadn't disappeared; instead, in this "nothingness" environment, lacking the nourishment and reference of "rhythm," they had become even drier and more stubborn. He was fully engaged in the most profound soul-repairing technique in "The Initial Explanation of Star Laws," called "Stardust Self-Solidification," guiding his remaining stellar power, closely connected to the "Source Seed," bit by bit, like the most skilled craftsman repairing the most precious porcelain, carefully mending and nurturing every wound in his soul. He could feel that his understanding of time and space, and of "rules," was becoming increasingly clear and profound in this extreme process of confronting the "nothingness" within and without. He even vaguely touched upon some more essential mystery about "existence" itself, about how to maintain "existence" in "nothingness." The threshold of the three rings seemed to have become even more "heavy" and "real" because of this. He knew that if he could cross it, it would not only be an increase in power, but also a kind of transformation in the essence of life. But at this moment, it was just a glimmer of light on the distant other shore, and he had to first ensure that he did not "go out" before reaching it.

In his perception, this "Corridor of Eternal Silence" was not true, absolute "nothingness." Deep within that uniform, thin, grayish-white glow, beneath the unsettlingly smooth "membrane" of spacetime, he seemed to "hear" an extremely low, extremely slow, almost imperceptible "background sound," like the most primal pulse of the universe's birth. It was the remnant of the universe's own macroscopic "rhythm" of "expansion" and "heat death." Perceiving, understanding, and even attempting to resonate with this grand rhythm, which was akin to "cosmic breathing," was the only way for him to maintain his spiritual clarity, resist the erosion of nothingness, and even try to capture that faint, possibly existing external "disturbance" in this desolate place.

Ai Rui sat quietly not far from Luo Wei, her back against the same bulkhead. She wasn't meditating, nor was she using "structural vision." She simply pressed the fragment of the "Fountain of Life" crystal tightly against her chest, her eyes closed, as if she were asleep. But Luo Wei could sense that she wasn't truly asleep. Her consciousness, in a more restrained and "serene" way, resonated slowly, almost like breathing, with the faint yet resilient life force of the "Fountain of Life" in her arms, and with the damaged, quiet "presence" of the "Light of Civilization" and "Spark of Engineering" crystals. The rune between her brows had dimmed to an almost invisible level, with only a faint, warm, pale golden halo flowing beneath her skin, incongruous with the surrounding "nothingness." In this way, she was infusing this deathly steel space with a faint yet crucial breath of "life" and "harmony," nourishing not only herself but also, imperceptibly, soothing the tense, weary, and even somewhat numb nerves of the others on the bridge. She could "sense" Barton's still faint but at least no longer deteriorating life force in the medical bay, and she could "sense" Lina's damaged but slowly recovering spiritual ripples in the adjacent resting bay, nourished by the "source of life." She also "sense" the suffocating "emptiness" of this "Eternal Silence Corridor," but she no longer tried to "see" it with "structural vision," as that would only exacerbate the depletion. She chose to "merge" into this "emptiness," maintaining a small, stable, and unassimilated "self" within this "emptiness" with her complex existence, a fusion of "cradle," "order suppression," "earth veins," and "life."

Barton lay on a specially made life support bed in the medical pod, his body connected to dozens of tubes delivering nutrients, medicine, and a trace of life energy. His arms, from the shoulders down, were wrapped in translucent healing bandages—a mixture of "Life Source" powder, various bio-gels, and psionic stabilizers—that constantly emitted a faint emerald green glow. Beneath the bandages, the silver "Order" erosion patterns and dark red aura backlash cracks on the skin's surface had disappeared, but his arms had an unhealthy, inelastic grayish-white appearance, covered with fine, cracked patterns resembling porcelain that had been forcibly glued back together after being scorched at high temperatures. Lilith judged that the muscles, bones, and especially the energy channels in his arms had suffered devastating, near-"rule-level" damage. Even with the help of the "Life Source" and the "Tune" force field, which had saved his life and prevented further deterioration, the hope of a full recovery, or even regaining his astonishing aura and combat power, was slim. He spent most of his time in a deep, drug-induced coma to reduce pain and energy consumption, but occasionally, in the intervals between sleep, his eyes, which seemed to carry a hint of ferocity even when closed, would tremble slightly, his brows furrowed, as if in a dream, he was still engaged in an endless, desperate struggle against that silver-white beam of judgment.

Lina, meanwhile, lay on a makeshift bed covered with insulating material in another rest cabin. Her condition was slightly better than Barton's; the overload and damage to her senses were recovering extremely slowly thanks to the continuous nourishment of the "Fountain of Life" and the slow operation of her own "Deep Space Rhythmic Listening Technique." However, the absolute, rhythm-free environment of the "Eternal Silence Corridor" was nothing short of torture for her. Like a tuner accustomed to discerning subtle melodies in a symphony, she was suddenly thrown into a completely soundproof room. She had to minimize the "sensitivity" of her senses, even actively shutting down most of her external perception, retaining only the most basic monitoring of the vital signs and energy fluctuations of her companions on board. Most of the time, she was in a semi-conscious, semi-meditation state, relying on a soothing potion concocted by Lilith that could slightly enhance mental resilience to combat the deep-seated panic and discomfort stemming from the "silence."

Verna and Annie were, besides Rowe, the seemingly "busiest" people on the bridge. But this busyness was tinged with despair. The screens before them displayed detailed data on every scratch on the "Stargazer," real-time energy depletion curves, the remaining life support system, and an index of the vast, yet profound, technical data obtained from the "Tuning Room." Their work wasn't about repair or creation, but about calculating how to "wait to die"—calculating how to extend life support by even a single hour given the current energy and resources; calculating which non-critical systems could be completely shut down to save negligible energy; calculating which damage, if it worsened, would lead to catastrophic consequences first; and… after the energy was completely depleted and life support ceased, was there any theoretically possible, extremely slim, possibility of being discovered and "recovered" by other forces (even enemies). For these two technical officers, whose beliefs were rooted in creation, exploration, and construction, this work was nothing short of spiritual torture. But they gritted their teeth and carried out this cruel mission with the utmost rigor and rationality, because it was their final duty as members of the "Stargazer".

Elder Anderson seemed to have become one with the control panel, his gaunt figure almost motionless in the dim light. His hands still rested loosely on the control sticks, even though the starship was now drifting slowly and straight towards the preset coordinates provided by "Harmony" in this "nothingness" relying solely on inertia, requiring almost no manual operation. But his gaze, like that of the most vigilant eagle, never left the dozens of faintly flickering points of light representing the starship's most basic state parameters. He was "listening," using the almost instinctive intuition accumulated by navigators over hundreds of years, "listening" to every subtle tremor of this dilapidated starship, every almost inaudible hum of energy circuits, every extremely faint hissing sound of life remaining during the life support system's cycle. In his own way, he was conducting a final, silent vigil for this ship, for those on board.

Time, in this cage called "Eternal Silence," has lost its meaning, yet it records everything in the cruelest way. Every minute, every second, is accompanied by the relentless, steady decline of energy reserves.

The seventh day since leaving "The Tuning Room".

Energy reserves: 19%.

Life support system expected to last: 112 standard hours.

Just as this suffocating, slowly approaching-end despairing atmosphere was about to extinguish even the last shred of hope, Luo Wei, who had been keeping his spiritual senses at a minimum power level and passively receiving the background noise of the external "nothingness" like a radar, suddenly twitched very slightly between his eyebrows.

It wasn't a warning, nor was it danger. Rather, it was a kind of... extremely faint, fleeting, almost illusion-like, regular "ripple"?

The feeling was like dropping a pebble smaller than a speck of dust onto an absolutely smooth, still surface of water, creating the most subtle, momentary, discordant "wrinkle" that almost cannot be detected by any instrument or even any conventional sense, violating the "absolute smoothness" of the area.

Luo Wei suddenly opened his eyes! His eyes were bloodshot, but they instantly burst forth with a sharp, knife-like light! He almost thought it was a hallucination caused by his soul being too tired, but his keen sensitivity to extremely subtle changes in the level of "rules" brought about by his late-stage second-ring Star Speaker, especially after touching the essence of "existence," made him certain that what happened just now was definitely not an illusion!

"Velna!" Rowe's voice was hoarse from urgency and dryness. "Immediately! Increase the receiving sensitivity of all shipboard passive sensors to their theoretical limit! Filter out all known background noise models, and search... for signal clutter of any frequency, any form, but extremely weak, brief, and exhibiting unnatural 'regular repetition' or 'structured coding' characteristics! The range... centered on our current coordinates, with a radius... initially set at 500,000 kilometers!"

Verna and Annie were both taken aback, but their long-standing, absolute trust in Rowe's judgment instantly snapped them out of their numb despair, and their hands flew across the control panel! Although increasing the sensor sensitivity would slightly increase energy consumption, at this moment, any anomaly could be the only hope to break the deadlock!

"Sensor sensitivity boosted to limit! Background noise filtering in progress... Unknown signal feature scan initiated..." Verna spoke rapidly, her eyes fixed on the rapidly scrolling, almost linear data stream on the screen, representing various frequencies and energy waveforms.

A few seconds felt like centuries.

Suddenly, on the screen in front of Verna, a waveform representing a certain extremely low-frequency, wide-bandgap psionic background radiation appeared, for an extremely brief moment (lasting less than 0.01 seconds), with an extremely subtle but absolutely non-natural random fluctuation, regular combination of "concave" and "convex"! The shape of this combination was complex and exquisite, with a clear, artificially coded "aesthetic"!

"Anomaly detected!" Verna's voice trembled with disbelief. "Signal strength... so low it's almost drowned out by the instrument's background noise! ​​Frequency characteristics... unclassifiable, not matching any known 'cradle,' 'order,' or common natural phenomenon signals! But... its coding structure is clear, non-random, and logical! The signal source direction... is roughly on our port side, the azimuth... cannot be precise, the distance... extremely far, possibly exceeding a million kilometers, and the signal attenuation is extremely severe!"

"Can you parse the content? Even just a single character?" Luo Wei asked urgently.

"Unable to analyze! The signal is too weak, the duration is too short, and the encoding method used is completely unknown!" Verna shook her head, but a flame ignited in her eyes. "But we can be certain that this is not a natural phenomenon! It's artificial! It's a signal emitted by an intelligent creation! Moreover... the signal seems to have a... periodic, low-power pulse characteristic, similar to a 'lighthouse' or 'state self-check'!"

Artificial signal! Deep within the "Corridor of Eternal Silence"! A periodic, low-power signal emitted by an unknown, possibly extremely ancient, intelligent creation!

Is it the last recorder of an exploration ship from an unknown civilization that had long since lost its way and ultimately crashed here? Is it another outpost or beacon of the "Cradle" civilization's "Deep Blue Watch" project, scattered in a more distant region, unrecorded by "Harmony"? Or... something entirely beyond their comprehension?

"Lina!" Lowe immediately connected to Lina's rest pod's communication system. "Wake up! I need your intuition. In the most economical way possible, try to sense our port side, in the far distance, if there is any... extremely faint, but rhythmic, unnatural 'echo'?"

Lina responded weakly but immediately: "I'll try..." She forced herself to concentrate from her semi-conscious state, and carefully, like a snail extending its tentacles, she cautiously and very slowly explored the direction that Rowe had indicated, using the last remaining senses that were like a candle flickering in the wind.

A moment later, Lina's voice came through, tinged with confusion and uncertainty: "Over there... it's so 'empty'... even 'emptier' than here... but... in the very 'empty' depths, it seems... there really is a tiny... very faint, very slow, like... like the last tiny... ticking sound of a pendulum about to stop? No, not a sound, it's... a very 'hard,' very 'old'... feeling of a 'rule'... operating extremely slowly, producing... a tiny bit of 'friction'? It's too far away, too weak, I... I'm not sure if it's just my imagination..."

Is this the feeling of friction created by the slow "operation" of "hard" and "old" rules? This description subtly matches the unnatural yet logical characteristics of the coded signals that Vera captured!

"Irene," Luo Wei looked at the girl beside him, "use your 'eyes,' in the most economical way, to look at the 'structure' of that space in that direction. Is there anything particularly 'not empty' or 'unnaturally smooth'?"

Ai Rui slowly opened her eyes. Deep within her dark golden pupils, the silvery-white star began to rotate at an extremely slow pace, almost imperceptible to the naked eye. She didn't fully activate her "structural vision," as that would be too taxing. She simply cast her gaze toward the absolute darkness and nothingness outside the porthole, attempting to "feel" the "texture" of the spatial "lines" in that direction.

After a long while, she gently shook her head, her brow furrowing slightly. "It's too far... I can't 'see' anything concrete. But... the 'emptiness' in that direction... seems a little different from the 'emptiness' elsewhere? Not that it has something extra, but... it lacks the 'uniformity' and 'inertia' that 'emptiness' should have? It's as if... that 'emptiness' there was... 'used' by something... a very, very long time ago, leaving behind a tiny, almost disappearing... 'trace'? Like... a piece of paper that has been smoothed out billions of times, still has a tiny, almost invisible, most minute... 'crease' shadow?"

Verna captures unnatural coded signals, Lina perceives the "friction" of the old rules at work, and Airi "sees" the almost vanished "traces" of spatial "inertia" being broken...

All the clues point to one possibility—in the despairing, absolute "nothingness" of the "Eternal Silence Corridor," in a place that may be extremely far away from them, there exists an unknown, ancient, artificial "existence" that is still operating periodically with extremely low power consumption and may have high technological value!

Is it a trap? It's highly unlikely; a court of stasis would be unlikely to set up such an inefficient trap in such a remote and difficult-to-monitor area.

Is it an opportunity? An unknown creation that may have existed in the "Corridor of Eternal Silence" for countless years and is still in operation is of immeasurable value! It could be the legacy of a new "Cradle," an outpost of other advanced civilizations, or even contain what they desperately need right now—energy, technology, or... clues to leave this desolate place!

But the risks are equally enormous. Their energy reserves are dwindling, their starship is on the verge of disintegration, and their crew is severely injured. Venturing forth means consuming precious life-sustaining energy and time. If the signal source is abandoned, worthless, or harbors unknown dangers, they might lose even the chance to return to their current "drifting" state, perishing directly in this "nothingness."

Should we stay put and wait for the inevitable, slow end? Or should we gamble everything and make one last, perhaps most frantic, sprint toward that almost invisible, faint glimmer of hope in the darkness?

Rowe's gaze slowly swept across every weary, numb face on the bridge, a face that, upon hearing the word "signal," had been rekindled with a faint spark of hope. He looked at the technician's thirst for the unknown, the resolute determination in Verna's eyes; at Annie's tightly pursed lips and trembling yet firm fingers; at Irene's calm yet expectant eyes; at Lina's weak yet labored breathing on the communications channel; at Barton's faint but still beating heart rate on the medical monitor; and finally, at Elder Anderson's eyes, like a deep well, yet faintly reflecting distant starlight, murky yet resolute.

He knew that for true explorers, for the survivors carrying the "seeds" and hope, for warriors struggling in dire straits... "Waiting for death" was never, and never will be, their option.

"Calculate the course." Lowe's voice was eerily calm, yet in the deathly silent bridge, it was like a boulder thrown into a deep pool, stirring up ripples of resolute determination. "Target: approximate direction of the anomalous signal source. Activate 70% of all remaining energy for navigation. Maintain the 'Veil of All Things' system at minimum maintenance. Calculate the maximum detection range we can sustain in our current state and the critical point for a safe return (if possible)."

"Velna, Annie, continue monitoring the signal and attempt to establish a more accurate location-locking model. Lina, maintain a minimum level of alertness. Irene, conserve your energy and move only when you are within sight. Lilith, prepare to deal with any potential effects of increased mobility on the wounded."

"Elder Anderson," Rowe said, turning one last time to the old navigator, "this may be our last and only voyage. Take us... to see what lies at the end of that darkness."

"Understood." Elder Anderson responded with a hoarse, yet metallic, sound. For the first time, his withered fingers used the true power of "navigation" on the control stick.

The wrecked hull of the "Stargazer," amidst the absolute "nothingness" of the "Eternal Silence Corridor" frozen for billions of years, shuddered violently, like the last flicker of light from a dying person! The remaining attitude engines on the starboard side, and the port side portion barely maintained by the "tuning" force field, spewed out two faint yet incredibly "noisy" pale blue tail flames, propelling the battered starship slowly, yet with unwavering determination, to change course, beginning its final, and perhaps most meaningful, descent into the deeper darkness and nothingness that Verna, Lina, and Irene had all sensed—a place of "anomalies" and "traces."

The energy reserve reading jumped sharply the instant the steering accelerated, then dropped again.

But inside the bridge, the almost frozen despair and numbness were replaced by a new, heavy, pulsating "vitality" that was a mixture of desperate madness, awe of the unknown, and the last glimmer of indomitable hope.

They wanted to see if, at the end of that "nothingness," there truly existed even a trace of echo that could break the eternal silence...