Container

The wind⁠‍‍‌​⁠​​​⁠‍‌​​‌‍​‌⁠‍‌‌‍‍ and waves of the Sea of Plundered Kisses stopped without a sound.

The terrifying reactor didn’t disappear, but seemed frozen there. The seawater, sky, living creatures, the city and people swept in—all were like a majestic statue on the sea. The seawater washed over it, bypassed it, and continued to flow.

Deep Reverence lay on the beach, looking up at the monstrous object, and murmured in a daze, “Has the chaos… ended?”

An Yu carefully observed the wounds on her body healing at super speed and breathed a sigh of relief.

“Only temporarily. The spacetime it occupies has merely been isolated, as if a pause button was pressed.”

The calm on the sea surface didn’t last long. The sky suddenly turned gloomy. Dark clouds loomed overhead, rushing towards the horizon like a time-lapse video. In the dimness, the terrifying reactor shattered instantly, turning into treacherous red light that spiraled and sank into the black sea like a vortex.

The seawater was calm, absorbing silently.

“It’s Codex.”

An Yu unconsciously clenched his fingers.

After a long time, Chao Wu emerged from the sea. As soon as she got ashore, her legs went weak, and she collapsed on the beach, her face pale, gasping for breath.

“Codex…” Her trembling voice carried a sob, hugging that manuscript tightly in her arms.

An Yu walked over and brushed away the red algae entangled on the manuscript.

It was no longer that old manuscript. Its texture had become firm and warm, emitting a faint luster, and felt somewhat warm to the touch.

An Yu flipped to the back. The line of wild handwriting on the last page, perhaps from Zhan Xue back then, was gone. New handwriting appeared on the title page, with the color of the night sky, writing gently yet majestically: The book contains all things. Everything in the world is in my heart.

Chao Wu wiped the tears all over her face roughly with the back of her hand, suddenly feeling the light change. The dim world quickly returned to brightness, and only then did she realize it was morning.

She looked back at the empty horizon where sea met sky, dazed. “Where is that pile of stuff?”

An Yu gently patted the cover of the manuscript.

Chao Wu was stunned for a good while. “Didn’t they say… the source of chaos is Law? Why can Codex also absorb it?”

“He can’t absorb it; he can only temporarily seal it. He sealed that chaotic spacetime, perhaps because—” An Yu paused, “He awakened the ability originally bestowed upon him by that thing.”

Cognition encompasses all things; Codex is His cognition.

But cognition is an abstract thing, yet it can seal a spacetime. The boundary between the intangible and tangible in this world has begun to blur.

“Is Codex dead?” Chao Wu finally asked this question tremblingly.

An Yu thought for a while and shook his head. “Not exactly.”

Following his instinct completely, he held the book in his arms. A thought appeared abruptly yet naturally in his mind. That thought even had a voice, a familiar voice.

An Yu listened to that voice finish before continuing to answer, “I haven’t encountered this situation, but Codex is indeed still here. My dead brother Ling Qiu. I can only recall what he said before; that is death. But Codex has just completely turned into a book, perhaps like how the high-level officers fully expressed their aberrant genes before death, but he is also different. He is cognition, and cognition will never perish.”

Chao Wu seemed to understand but not quite. “Then should we take him back to the Main City?”

“You go back.” An Yu looked back at Deep Reverence on the beach. “I accelerated the healing of some of Commander Deep Reverence’s wounds, but the most troublesome rupture injury inside her is still worsening. You need to take her back as soon as possible.”

Chao Wu nodded immediately. “What about you?”

“Codex asked me to take him to another place.” An Yu hesitated for a moment. “He said… he is a container.”

The plane bumped amidst the air currents. The Polar Region was right in front. The nearby spacetime was still disordered. An Yu watched for a while, guiding Billy to lower the flight altitude.

—Why come here?

He asked in his heart.

Codex’s answering voice appeared in his mind.

[Qin Zhilu’s fate is the Chaos Body. All chaos will eventually converge towards him, but the Chaos Body has been cut too finely. If it doesn’t converge completely before he loses control thoroughly, then in infinite parallel spacetimes, destruction will be the set outcome. I am a container. I will temporarily store some chaos and deliver it directly to Law.]

An Yu didn’t quite understand.

[An Yu, He is a high-dimensional existence, wandering aimlessly in the universe. Getting trapped in our world was purely an accident. Like a person accidentally falling and crushing a nest of ants, but the human bears no malice towards the ants themselves; as long as he stands up, he will leave. We need to help Him stand up.]

Read at Mizushi Novels

Visit Mizushi Novels

[Yes. Order and Chaos are two extremes split from one thing. Once the complete Order Body and the complete Chaos Body merge again, and then merge the Cognitive Body back, He will be complete, awaken, and then leave. The entropy increase of this world will return to its original speed, like a runaway train finally hitting the brakes before the cliff.]

Support the original translation

Read on Mizushi Novels

An Yu looked out the porthole. The plane’s altitude was already decreasing. He saw that folded spacetime where he temporarily hid Xi De’s body at a point in the air.

Don't scrape

Don't copy

—By being a container, can you make it in time to make him the complete Chaos Body before the Commander’s will is lost?

Read at Mizushi Novels

Visit Mizushi Novels

—Then what about the only possibility you couldn’t see clearly?

Support the original translation

Read on Mizushi Novels

Before the plane finally landed, he finally asked the question that had been hovering in his heart for a long time.

— Will we be shattered during the process of absorption?

Don't scrape

[But An Yu, from the very beginning, you were the complete Order Body. You inherited most of Him like a blank sheet of paper, even obtaining some of His will that we dare not even speculate about. You are closer to His main body than anyone else. Therefore, our fusion is not equal, but all other parts merging towards you, facing your judgment and acceptance. Please rest assured, no matter what our fate is, you will always be the safest.]

Don't copy

Read at Mizushi Novels

An Yu shook his head, stood up, and put on the assistive device. “Please maintain hovering altitude. I’ll take Codex down.”

Visit Mizushi Novels

Support the original translation

“It only gradually grew after knowing him. The will that truly belongs to me, the will of the human An Yu.”

Read on Mizushi Novels

Don't scrape

Although Codex hadn’t merged with him yet, perhaps because he had held that book for too long, or perhaps he was awakening rapidly, his perception of spacetime became clearer. So clear that the snowflakes fluttering all over the sky suddenly possessed heavy content. He stood there watching them piece by piece for a long time.

Don't copy

Read at Mizushi Novels

[Because that is simply not snow. Law discussed this with me long ago. He believes those are spacetime fragments crushed by chaos.]

Visit Mizushi Novels

Support the original translation

[Snowstorms are not calamities, but symbols of protection.]

Read on Mizushi Novels

Don't scrape

As he spoke, he curved his lips slightly, lowered his eyes, and smiled faintly. “He also always complains that if it’s snowing heavily when he wakes up, he feels very groggy, and even after the snow stops, he’s exhausted for several days, just like having a cold.”

A rare tenderness flashed through those dark eyes.

“Perhaps he has accompanied me all along the way, only we hadn’t met then.”

An Yu was lost in thought for a long time because of the last sentence in the memory, until Codex called him several times before he came back to his senses.

[You were originally two extremes.]

[But also like an epic.]

An Yu didn’t understand epics. He sniffled amidst the howling snowstorm. Those snowflake fragments seemed to be controlled by his will, automatically steering clear of his body and bypassing the plane piloted by Billy overhead.

“Let’s go.” He turned around. “You’ve temporarily stored the chaos of the Sky and the Ocean. Where to next?”

[The Descending Swamp. Jin Xuyan returned to heat death along with the Black Goat, but the chaos there hasn’t completely subsided; massive amounts of fragments still remain.]

“Okay, and then? Do we go to other places where aberrant tides are rampant?”

Codex seemed to be weighing the options and didn’t respond immediately. An Yu didn’t rush him. After confirming that the pocket of space sheltering Xi De was still safe and sound, he took out his terminal, which was vibrating madly, from his pocket.

Communication functions had returned to normal, and countless messages flooded into the terminal all at once.

Only after becoming the leader of the Spire did he finally realize the terrifying deluge of information the Commander had to endure daily during periods of rampant aberrant tides. Even though the good-natured Tang Feng and the hardworking Jiang Xiao had shouldered most of it for him, and the octopus chibi had taken on the rest, he still couldn’t finish reading it all even if he went without food or sleep, working around the clock.

Those battle reports had already been pre-processed by the octopus chibi and tagged according to importance. An Yu resignedly clicked open the first item in the “Urgent” column; it was actually from Bo.

He really didn’t want to think about why Bo, broken in both body and spirit, had rushed back to the battlefield so immediately. He could only quickly open the report.

[From Bo: Requesting reinforcement for District 14.]

[Large numbers of crows have appeared over District 14, characterized by eerie eyeballs. Millions of residents are experiencing collective mental entropy increase; countless people are committing suicide every second. We suspect the crows will not only turn District 14 into a dead city but also rapidly spread the calamity outward. Furthermore, the more people die, the more crows appear; the rate of trade-off is completely proportional. If possible, please come personally.]

Crows, eyeballs.

An Yu’s heart trembled. He thought of the Poet almost instinctively.

In his mind, Codex seemed to let out a sigh.

The book An Yu held in his hands fell open in the wind, stopping at a page with a totem.

It was the totem from the allegorical painting in District 99.

A golden humanoid figure embracing red light, holding a book in its hands, with an eye embedded in the book.

Subtly, An Yu suddenly sensed the meaning of “container”—it was definitely not just about temporarily sealing chaos.

[The final stop will be District 14.]

[Although our paths differ, the two lines of sight must meet to merge back into complete Cognition.]

[This is the fate of Eye and me.]

Author’s Note:

[Scattered Pages from a Worn Book] 39 – Unbiased Cognition

Most things in the world have “bias”.

For example, black and white, day and night, good and evil, joy and sorrow.

Perhaps these are too abstract.

But there is an interesting anecdote that is figurative enough.

No one knows my gender, not even I myself know.

When I stand there, people naturally do not think about my gender.

Because I am His cognition.

Only His cognition can exist without bias.