Wormhole Information Dissipation Theory

As Chen Fan fiercely debated the relationship between the church and the gods with Yi in his mind, a somewhat muffled mechanical hum came from ahead.

It was the sound of a hydraulic system and gears in motion. Perhaps because it had been so long, the internal gears clearly had lubrication problems—the piercing creaks rang in his ears, and Chen Fan could not help clenching his aching molars as a shiver ran through him.

Fuck.

How long had this piece of crap gone without maintenance?!

The grating creaks mingled with indistinct chanting prayers, giving Chen Fan a strange feeling as though he had been transported into another era.

The tightly shut metal doors slowly opened, and a heavy breath of history rushed out—

Put simply, it was the distinctive musty smell produced by a large number of books piled together.

What puzzled Chen Fan was that the musty odor also carried a faint, peculiar fragrance that calmed the mind.

Chen Fan narrowed his eyes and carefully examined the scene beyond the metal doors.

The library was probably the area in the entire church that best matched Chen Fan's imagination.

Numerous bookshelves made from dark brown wood stood in neat rows across a smooth marble floor.

The shelves had been coated with a substance similar to tung oil, meant to prevent decay and insect damage.

Countless books bound from rough, pale yellow paper lay quietly atop the yellowish-brown shelves.

Aside from the vast numbers of shelves and books, statues of the Goddess in all kinds of forms could be seen throughout the library. The different materials of these sculptures, combined with their mysterious patterns, made this otherwise ordinary library seem especially sacred.

"God Chosen Esteemed One, please come in."

The Black Robe Priest turned around and addressed Chen Fan and Gao Yuan with neither servility nor arrogance.

At the same time, the indistinct chanting beside them came to an abrupt stop.

The border region of the Number EL001 Cosmic Bubble.

Pan-Universal Human Alliance.

Dangerous Technology Administration.

A black hole with a brilliant accretion disk sat quietly inside a gigantic "cage" measured in light-years.

Near this massive cage, an enormous megastructure shaped like a Möbius Strip slowly rotated around its own center of mass.

Inside the structure.

A middle-aged man with a square face silently watched the enormous Holographic Projection before him.

As the director of the Dangerous Technology Administration, the disappearance of the TE913 Research Ship had undoubtedly caused him immense trouble.

Morr frowned deeply as he watched the complex formulas and numbers flashing rapidly across the projection, then let out a helpless sigh.

After the last inter-universal transmission plan had been declared a failure, all the researchers at the Dangerous Technology Administration had become busy.

Not only did they need to locate and investigate that exceptionally well-hidden Cosmic Bubble, they also had to come up with a new viable plan.

The difficulty of the former went without saying.

Even with the coordinates from the first transmission as a reference, searching for a tiny Cosmic Bubble on a Hyperspace Membrane within the vast Five-Dimensional Space was still harder than finding a grain of sand in the ocean.

To put it another way.

In two-dimensional space, searching for a target based on a given coordinate meant finding a point within a circular area on a plane.

In three-dimensional space, that circular area would expand into a spherical space, and the difficulty of the search would grow exponentially.

And so on.

Five-Dimensional Space meant five mutually perpendicular directions. One could easily imagine the difficulty of finding a specific object in such a complex space!

But that was not even the most critical problem.

Hyperspace Membranes and Cosmic Bubbles moved, and their trajectories were often disturbed by countless external factors. Simply put, they were somewhat like chaotic systems.

Therefore, the coordinates from the first inter-universal transmission had basically become useless by now!

That was the true pain point currently facing the Dangerous Technology Administration!

Without another positioning signal, they could only rely on endless calculations and on-site investigations to find that "slippery" Cosmic Bubble!

At that thought, Morr's expression grew even more solemn.

At this rate...

This year's year-end bonus and performance pay are probably going down the drain again!

Fuck!

Ever since becoming director, he had not seen a single year-end bonus!

Just as Morr was wallowing in sorrow over his missed year-end bonus, a young man in a standard research uniform in the distance suddenly stopped operating his holographic control panel.

"Got it."

Looking at the holographic image before him, joy appeared in his eyes. "Director Morr, I have good news!"

"What?"

Morr froze.

Could his year-end bonus still be saved?

As though he could see his year-end bonus flapping its wings and flying back to him, Morr's eyes immediately became much more animated. "You found that Cosmic Bubble?"

"You lucky bastard?"

The young man scratched his head awkwardly. "Not exactly... Director, you know as well as I do that without a second positioning signal, finding that Cosmic Bubble isn't something we can accomplish overnight."

Morr's heart, which had just risen, sank straight back into the abyss.

He waved a hand without interest. "If you haven't found that damned Cosmic Bubble, then no matter how good the news is, it doesn't count as—"

"The inter-universal transmission may not have failed."

The young man interrupted him.

"..."

The hall fell silent.

Not just Morr—every researcher and academician present stopped what they were doing and looked at the young man with utter astonishment.

Morr steadied himself and gave the young man a strange look.

"Academician Song, are you sure?"

The image of the inter-universal transmission wormhole collapsing remained vivid in everyone's mind. The Administration had even lost a large number of high-precision exploration robots and standard-model Intelligent Terminals because of it.

Those were mountains of Credit Points!

Although the Academy of Sciences had allocated the Administration a substantial Credit Point budget, Morr still felt a sharp pain in his chest whenever he thought of so many Credit Points vanishing before his eyes.

In response to Morr's question, Song Ziliang turned his head and checked the Holographic Interface before him once more. Then he nodded with certainty. "I'm sure."

"If the data is correct, we established contact with the target signal for an instant."

"Simply put, the wormhole was successfully created, but it collapsed again almost immediately."

"According to the Wormhole Information Dissipation Theory, every object that passes through a wormhole leaves behind corresponding traces."

"So, I attempted to retrieve all the information dissipated when the wormhole collapsed and reconstruct and analyze that scattered data."

Song Ziliang quickly projected the holographic data before him onto the enormous Holographic Interface ahead. "We got lucky."

"The results show that at the instant the wormhole collapsed, an object successfully passed through it and entered the universe where the target signal originated."