Humanity will be forever trapped in the abyss

An Yu,
I hope this letter finds you in good health.
The Equality Zone is near the North Pole, and also near the source of disaster—the Yug Snowfield. April is spring here, but the temperature still remains very low. Ancient, unmelting snow piles up and, after looking at it for a long time, a person can only grow numb to the snowstorms that symbolize misfortune.
I have only been away from the Main City for half a month, but the world is silently accelerating toward chaos again. Aberrant invasions in the Equality Zone had already been frequent, and recently they have become relentless. This is no paradise. People with low genetic entropy have long been deficient in supplies and defense. Compared to the outside world, the only difference here seems to be letting everyone live together—but this also increases the risk of infection. Mis told me he’s getting old, and lately he often asks himself in the quiet of the night whether the Equality Zone was right or wrong.
Two days ago, I obtained my fourth-level aberrant gene, Arctic Willow, though I don’t know when I was infected. The Arctic Willow is only two or three centimeters above the ground; it’s the world’s smallest tree. I have not yet discovered this gene’s ability. It seems I am just more cold-resistant than before…
If only I could have obtained a genotype that increases mental stability… Then I would have been able to return to the Main City, back to your side.
—Jiang Xiao.

 

normal text for those that have difficulty reading the flamboyant handwriting

An Yu,
I hope this letter finds you in good health.
The Equality Zone is near the North Pole, and also near the source of disaster—the Yug Snowfield. April is spring here, but the temperature still remains very low. Ancient, unmelting snow piles up and, after looking at it for a long time, a person can only grow numb to the snowstorms that symbolize misfortune.
I have only been away from the Main City for half a month, but the world is silently accelerating toward chaos again. Aberrant invasions in the Equality Zone had already been frequent, and recently they have become relentless. This is no paradise. People with low genetic entropy have long been deficient in supplies and defense. Compared to the outside world, the only difference here seems to be letting everyone live together—but this also increases the risk of infection. Mis told me he’s getting old, and lately he often asks himself in the quiet of the night whether the Equality Zone was right or wrong.
Two days ago, I obtained my fourth-level aberrant gene—Arctic Willow —though I don’t know when I was infected. The Arctic Willow is only two or three centimeters above the ground; it’s the world’s smallest tree. I have not yet discovered this gene’s ability. It seems I am just more cold-resistant than before…
If only I could have obtained a genotype that increases mental stability… Then I would have been able to return to the Main City, back to your side.
—Jiang Xiao.

---

In the pristine white hospital room, An Yu sat by the bed, scrolling through a long image of flamboyant handwriting on his terminal.

Taking photos and sending handwritten letters had been Jiang Xiao’s strange hobby as a young master from a wealthy family.

An Yu frowned and typed, “You already have four types of aberrant genes?”

Jiang Xiao immediately replied, “Yes. I didn’t expect the fourth one to come so quickly.”

An Yu detected a trace of pride in those few words, but he still couldn’t resist commenting, “You’re really aberrant.”

Jiang Xiao automatically skipped that topic and continued messaging, “The cleanup battle isn’t over. I have to go offline. I heard many things happened in the Main City recently. That neurotic Poet from the cathedral killed himself. I hope you stay away from dangerous elements, though I believe you won’t be affected.”

An Yu pursed his lips at those few lines of warning.

Eye sat on the hospital bed in front of him, looking out the window.

From the outside, Brain was a white tower similar to the Black Tower. The intensive care ward was on a high floor, offering a view of the vast sky and Main City’s skyscrapers were faintly visible among the drifting, curling clouds.

“The human world is beautiful, isn’t it?” Eye said softly. “Because I couldn’t forget beautiful things, I harbored delusions, thinking it could be kept, could be saved.”

An Yu put away his terminal. “It seems Brain’s assessment is correct. You have indeed fallen into extreme pessimism.”

Eye smiled ruefully, his hand fumbling for the location of his legs.

Seven days ago, the Poet’s suicide incident shocked the Main City, but the suicide wasn’t successful.

Zhu Tao, who just happened to sneak out of the Spire, preparing to go to the cathedral and pray for the deceased Slade, had arrived at the last moment. His grapevines had shot out, but unfortunately, they weren’t fast enough to completely catch the rapidly falling body. Eye’s spine had suffered a severe impact. Although it had been much better than being smashed to pieces, he couldn’t escape the misfortune of lower-body paralysis.

During those few days of emergency treatment, Brain had taken the opportunity to conduct a detailed examination on him—genetically, mentally, and physiologically, he had been a normal human.

Naturally, those above still hadn’t known about his predictive ability. They only regarded him as a charlatan with a talent for inciting people.

Eye asked softly, “How is that Protector who saved me?”

The octopus chibi had warned An Yu that during negotiations, he should learn to use the other party’s guilt.

An Yu stated in a flat tone, “Protectors with a risk of spreading aberration are forbidden from leaving the Spire, let alone using their abilities in the Main City. Zhu Tao has severely violated the rules and had to be confined in the Spire for 14 days.”

He was actually eating popcorn and watching movies with Commander Feng in the confinement cell every day, and had thus escaped the recent surge of missions, making him ridiculously happy.

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Eye suddenly looked at him. “But I guess he didn’t just happen to come to the cathedral that day. Codex prompted him, didn’t he?”

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Afterward, Codex had confessed everything—he had received a message from Eye at noon that day, begging him to go to the cathedral, but their conversation had again ended unhappily. He had had a bad feeling ever since returning. It wasn’t until they were baking the cake that he had suddenly foreseen Eye was going to kill himself.

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“Not just the future, but also the truths buried in the past. The world’s cognition has never stopped pouring into my mind, and it’s the same for him. No, he is even more favored than I. How long has he been awakened? I could only see one ending for everything, but he could see many, many…”

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“Not reasonable! The prerequisite for gambling is seeing at least one good outcome among ten thousand possibilities. But what he told me was that all possibilities led to collapse, except for a single one, which he couldn’t see clearly yet.”

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An Yu watched him go frantic. It wasn’t until he raised his fist again that An Yu reached out and caught it before it landed.

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The hospital room was instantly dead silent.

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Codex had said the Poet could indeed see many truths, but he was also very short-sighted.

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An Yu returned to his senses. The Poet was staring blankly at his eyes. He immediately seized the opportunity to read the Poet’s memories.

But unexpectedly, a sharp pain suddenly exploded deep in his mind. His consciousness was instantly ejected.

Eye asked in astonishment, “What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine…” An Yu released the hand covering his temples. He gave up on the reading and said in a low voice, “I heard that during the night prayers on the eve of your suicide attempt, you told the people of the Main City that at the end of every disaster, a part of the source of chaos would return to the heavens, and that one day, all suffering would depart from the human world. But the next day, you sent me a message that was the complete opposite. I just wanted to know, what exactly had you seen within that single day that had made you so despairing?”

The Poet’s gaze wavered at these words. He fell silent and turned his head to look out the window again.

An Yu continued, “On the day of the incident, I slept until evening. Only later had I learned that my Commander went to the cathedral that morning, to pray for an excellent comrade we had just lost. But afterward, you anxiously summoned Codex, and then, in the evening, you chose to end your life.”

He stood up and walked in front of the Poet, blocking the beautiful view and forcing the Poet to look at him. “Tell me, what else do you see on Qin Zhilu?”

Eye met his gaze for a long time before saying softly, “I’ve been painting for you, intending to give it to you, but I couldn’t finish it. Why don’t you go to the church instead?”

---

The Poet was not here, and the cathedral had been closed for a solid week.

An Yu pushed open the heavy main doors. The lights were not on inside. Light pierced the building through the narrow, floor-to-ceiling window at the top of the tower. In the gloom, dust motes drifted in the beam of light.

The top-floor bookshelf had vanished. The books of poetry that had once been scattered everywhere had been cleared away. Only a lone, single armchair remained, resting in the desolation.

Beside the armchair stood an easel covered by a cloth. An Yu raised his hand and pulled off the cloth. His pupils contracted violently.

Behind the shattered red light, four golden cogs clearly emerged. Their degree of completion was even higher than last time. But this time, a large amount of the red light was smeared, as if it had been forcibly wiped from the canvas with a wet brush.

The disappearance of the red light should have been reassuring, but those large, crude, and dirty marks instead made An Yu feel a chill of horror.

The terminal rang.

Eye murmured over the microphone, “All these years, I have been observing the shattered red light. I told you when we first met that the red light was increasing, but at that time, I hadn’t thought it was particularly dangerous, because the appearance of the red light followed an orderly pattern—every time Black Tower announced that a certain super-aberrant phenomenon had been completely cleared, the red light in the sky would increase. The degree of the increase was almost perfectly proportional to the severity Black Tower reported. I had always thought that once people had rectified all the chaos, the source of the chaos might return to the universe. After the anomaly in District 34 was resolved, the red light in the sky increased until it nearly filled the horizon. I had originally thought this was a good thing, but when I woke up that morning, a large patch of it had suddenly disappeared.”

An Yu stared at the painting, his heart growing cold. He seemed to have a premonition of what the Poet was about to say.

He asked, “Where did it go?”

“Onto your Commander.”

Over the terminal, Eye began to laugh hissingly, his voice like that of a fragile, venomous snake.

“I spent a lot of effort investigating him. He is the child born to one of the pregnant women on the Yug Snowfield back then, the one who had directly faced the advent of the disaster. He is the disaster itself. The disaster escaped from him, and after being resolved, it returned to him, over and over in a cycle. How ridiculous! The final line of defense that humanity is so self-righteous about, the one they rely on completely, just so happens to be the source of it all. As long as he exists, humanity will be forever trapped in the abyss, until its complete destruction.”