Collapse Iron: I just transmigrated! You want me to save the Black Tower?!

Watching a Movie (151) - No destruction, no construction; no death, no life

"New students?" Aha repeated, his voice returning to its usual cheerful tone. "What's that? Did Aha show you this? Aha doesn't remember."

"Aha only remembers taking you to see a huge fireworks display, BOOM—! It exploded all over the sky, it was so beautiful!"

[March 7th: I feel like Aha is pretending to be stupid.]

[Star: Be confident. Remove the "seems" part; He's just pretending to be stupid.]

[Himeko: It's not necessarily that she's pretending to be stupid; perhaps there are some things she can't say?]

[March 7th: Isn't that just playing dumb?]

[Hanabi: Oh dear, that's how it is with pleasure, it's a small problem, a small problem, we understand.]

[Qingque: That's... truly a magnificent fireworks display! It treated the entire world like fireworks; how could it not be considered a magnificent fireworks display?]

[Fu Ruo: Romantic!!! This is the joyful romance!!!]

[Fireworks: Where's the romance?]

[Sambo: I don't know.]

[Fireworks: Well, now even the Fool can't find the joke. This just proves you told a bad joke; it's not funny at all.]

[Fireworks: But Aha was just too awesome! Let's just take the MVP title!]

Jiang Jiu didn't respond to Aha's words; he just looked at Him for a while.

Aha spun around twice, then stopped. A mask was placed in front of his eyes, and he asked curiously.

"So, little madman, did you see the newborn? Was it beautiful?"

Jiang Jiu thought for a moment, then shook her head: "It doesn't look good."

Why is it not good-looking?

"Everything has disappeared. Even if the universe can be reshaped, will the world still be the same world?"

"Was that really a freshman...?"

Jiang Jiu felt calmer than he had imagined.

"Is it rebirth or a different kind of destruction? Everything is destroyed in an instant, and then new things sprout from the corpses. Is this kind of rebirth really rebirth?"

[Star: So, does something that sprouts from a corpse count as new life?]

[Fireworks: Why did you repeat what Jiang Jiu said?]

[Star: I don't know, I just wanted to ask.]

Sambo: Must every new life die once? At the end of the universe's collapse, all life is crushed, and then reborn from the singularity, but is it still the original universe? Or just a similar-looking copy?

[Danheng: It's not a copy, it's a cycle. He's not questioning the authenticity of new life, but the price of it. If new life must be built on destruction, then what's the point of him risking his life to stop the end? After all, there will be new life after the end, won't there?]

[March 7th: So do you consider them the same?]

[Dan Heng: ...That doesn't count.]

[Topa: Don't try to change the subject.]

[Topa: What Jiang Jiu wanted was never a new universe after the destruction of the world; what he wanted was to ensure the survival of this universe.]

[Wan Di: But... if it's a loop, shouldn't it be the same?]

[Xia Die: The world goes through cycles, and we are still the same people we were before, aren't we?]

[Yao Guang: Forgive my bluntness, but the Golden Descendants of Onpharos, your essence is a string of data code. Your so-called loops are nothing more than forcibly freezing the timeline within the same period.]

[Xia Die: But, Lord Yao Guang, how can you be sure that your essence isn't just a string of code?]

[Yaoguang:? 】

[Yao Guang: You shouldn't ask me this question. You should question the very existence, ask that supreme being whether we truly exist, or are merely a string of data.]

[Saifeier: Okay, okay, stop arguing. Even a string of data can be real.]

[Sai Fei: Aren't I a perfect example?]

[Jingyuan: Isn't this topic a bit too off-topic?]

Unlike everyone's various interpretations and reflections on this statement, Aha did not directly answer Jiang Jiu's question.

His mask transformed into a sorrowful, weeping face, and he spoke to himself, laughing as he spoke: "Aha thinks you're right. Aha is so sad. Aha wants to tell you a joke."

"...What joke?"

Have you ever wondered why new students have to die once before they can even be admitted to university?

Jiang Jiu was silent for two seconds: "..."

Aha didn't wait for his reply, but simply floated away and started telling his own jokes with a grin.

"Aha once saw a very hardworking seed. That little seed tried so hard to sprout, so it diligently absorbed water and desperately absorbed nutrients, but no matter how hard it tried, it just couldn't sprout."

It asked Aha: Why can't I sprout?

"Aha said: 'Because you are still a seed. For a seed to sprout, it must die first.'"

"So the seed thought for a long time, and finally buried itself in the soil and never came out again."

“Aha waited for a very, very long time, so long that Aha himself was about to sprout, but he never saw that seed again.”

"One day, a new sprout grew on the ground, but unfortunately Aha did not recognize the sprout, and Aha's seed died."

"Isn't that seed stupid? In order to make the world sprout, it ended up dying itself, and it didn't even know if the world had sprouted at all."

After Aha finished speaking, he looked at Jiang Jiu with a grin.

"Is it funny?"

“...It’s not funny,” Jiang Jiu said.

"You little madman actually didn't find Aha's jokes funny? Aha is so sad!" Aha said sadly, but the smile on his mask stretched all the way to his ears. "Aha is going to punish you by making you copy Aha's joke collection a hundred times! Hahahahaha!!!"

"..."

[Long Night Moon: For new life to sprout, its seed must be dead...]

【star:???】

[Fireworks: Here we go again. Aha's jokes are more like fables than jokes.]

[Fireworks: As the god of fun, the jokes He tells are all unfunny; I really don't understand what He's thinking.]

[Star: Who said that for new life to sprout, its seed must be dead? Who is Changyeyue? Why does this sentence sound so much like the concluding remarks of that lame joke by Ahaha?]

March 7th: ?

Sambo: Aha's joke collection is never a joke.

Sambo: For a seed to sprout, it must first die; for the universe to be reborn, it must first collapse. Is every death a prelude to the next proof?

[Qingque: What about Jiang Jiu? What is he trying to prove? What price will he have to pay for that proof?]

[Fireworks: Ah, you've put it this way: a seed can only sprout after it dies, the universe can only be reborn after it dies, so what about variables? For a variable to become a constant, does it also have to die once first?]

[Fireworks: So the question is, how can Jiang Jiu truly die and begin his new life?]

[Gui Naifen: To be honest... I don't understand this at all right now.]

[Gui Naifen: What exactly is this all about? Can one become a god simply by observing some deaths? Isn't that a bit hasty?]

[Su Chang: Agreed, agreed. Besides, Jiang Jiu has died so many times and still hasn't ascended to godhood, how could he possibly do it so easily?]

[Dr. Truth: It's not your fault you can't understand.]

[Su Chang: You weren't secretly cursing us in your heart, were you?]

[Dr. Truth: Do I need to hide it when I'm cursing you?]

[Jingyuan: Lord Changle has already given a clear hint.]

[Yao Guang: Yes, I never expected that the one who had been trying to pull Jiang Jiu forward was actually Chang Letianjun.]

Jiang Jiu has experienced death far too many times.

His reverence for death was far below the threshold of ordinary people.

Must new life always be new life? Must death always lead to the end?

Can it move into the future?

"When death no longer means death, what does it mean? Is it crossing the threshold of death to move into the future, or returning to the past like I have?"

"When death no longer means death..."

Jiang Jiu's thoughts came to an abrupt halt.

He stiffly touched his face, and was somewhat surprised to find that he was actually smiling.

He's laughing...?

"what......"

“Aha,” he said.

"Hmm?" The masked figure leaned closer, its eyes curving into two crescent moons.

"The seed in your joke..." He paused, then asked with a smile, "did it eventually die?"

“Dead,” He said, his voice light and airy. “Dead completely, not even a trace remains.”

"Was the sprout that grew later that it?"

Aha did not answer immediately.

He floated up to Jiang Jiu, hanging upside down, the smile on his mask revealing neither joy nor sorrow.

"you guess?"

[Topa: No wonder...]

[Gold Sand: You understood it, what did you realize?]

[Topa: No wonder this canopy was jointly sponsored by Aha and Jiang Jiu. It seems Aha did Jiang Jiu a huge favor.]