Giving You a Black Hole to Play With

When in doubt, quantum mechanics.

Qin Luming felt that the divine particles Fairy Jiang had mentioned were probably similar to certain concepts in quantum mechanics. Or rather, if he understood quantum mechanics better, he would be able to better understand what Fairy Jiang was talking about.

Qin Luming decided to go back and buy a few books on quantum mechanics... While it had not been long since he graduated from high school and before he had completely forgotten the foundations of science.

It did not matter even if he could not understand them. Reading was never a waste of time; one could always gain something from it. Even occasionally watching porn could regulate the endocrine system, relieve stress, and let one experience the heart of a sage.

"Now that we've signed a contract, does it do anything besides letting you come here?" Qin Luming was not hoping to gain any benefits, but since it was a contract, it ought to be mutual, right? It should not merely provide her with convenience while being of no use to him at all.

"No." Fairy Jiang studied Qin Luming suspiciously. "Do you want me to become a broodmother like the ones in your stories, spending all day playing gacha games?"

As she spoke, Fairy Jiang lowered her staff, pressed her hands together and stretched them out, then leaned forward slightly. Then, as if she had given up on doing something, she picked up her staff again and sat upright without saying a word.

Qin Luming somewhat suspected that she had just wanted to imitate the natural way the "bugs" she spoke of wriggled their bodies. But perhaps she had felt that her imitation was not convincing, or perhaps for some other reason, she gave up.

"It's not like you get no benefits at all. I can let you play with this ball." Fairy Jiang pointed at the tip of her staff.

Qin Luming looked at the sphere in confusion. It did not appear perfectly round, occasionally twisting in unstable distortions. It seemed incapable of reflecting even the slightest light, yet though bound to the top of the staff, it still gave him the impression that it contained an indescribably immense amount of energy.

"What is that thing?" Qin Luming did not rashly reach out to touch it. The other party was a God King. Something brought out by a powerhouse of her level might be no more than a toy to her, but to an ordinary person... In front of her, Qin Luming felt there was nothing wrong with considering himself ordinary. Such a toy might be lethal to him.

"An primordial divine particle ball." Fairy Jiang reached out, and the primordial divine particle ball left the tip of her staff and floated before Qin Luming.

Qin Luming examined it. At this moment, it gave him an even stronger sense of immense energy, as if it could provide an inexhaustible supply of power.

As he stared at it, Qin Luming even recalled the sight from his dreams, where countless worlds floated through the void. The primordial divine particle ball before him seemed like one of those worlds, compressed into this form.

"According to the fluctuations of divine particles, when your world was first born, there were endless explosions. Some matter absorbed the energy from those explosions, causing their material structures to be directly compressed, collapse, and be destroyed, forming primordial divine particle balls." Fairy Jiang reached out and stroked it, signaling for Qin Luming to touch it too. "Look, it's soft, like a fluffy little animal."

Qin Luming jumped in fright, his feet kicking wildly until he crashed into the edge of the tent. He pressed one hand against the canvas. If not for the tent, he would already have fled as far as he could.

Forget it. It was not as if he could run off Earth anyway.

"This thing... this is a black hole, isn't it?" Qin Luming said, his teeth chattering. The moment he heard the word "primordial," he should have realized it.

In modern general relativity, black holes formed when sufficiently massive stars exhausted their nuclear fusion fuel, died, and underwent gravitational collapse.

Primordial black holes differed from such black holes. They were high-density matter from the early days of the Big Bang. They could weigh as little as one hundred-thousandth of a gram or as much as a billion tons, but their volumes were all small.

Because they were matter from the era of the Big Bang, they were extremely mysterious. Recently, Jacob from Durham University and James from the University of Illinois published a paper suggesting that the various signs pointing to the existence of a ninth planet in the solar system might have been caused by a primordial black hole.

"Perhaps it's what you call a black hole. That description is fairly fitting, but I still prefer to call it a primordial divine particle ball. During my descent, my first landing point was on the outskirts of the solar system. Then I encountered it. I exhausted nearly all my divinity before I managed to calm its will to resist." Fairy Jiang stroked the primordial divine particle ball that she claimed felt soft to the touch. "If not for that... I would not have fainted earlier because my will was in chaos."

Qin Luming blinked slowly. His neck twisted unconsciously from side to side, his gaze unfocused. Only after he raised his hand and slapped his thigh several times did he ask in lingering fear, "This thing... will it swallow up this entire place?"

"Of course not. It's a collection of divine particles with self-awareness, and it's very docile." Fairy Jiang continued stroking it. "You can think of it as me catching a pet. It's actually no different from me signing a contract with a bug."

"My apologies, but I dare not compare myself to a black hole." Qin Luming clasped his hands in salute, his mind in complete chaos. This was too world-shattering... How could a black hole have consciousness? And how could it be kept as a pet?

Could primordial black holes truly be less terrifying than people imagined, with humanity's fear merely being an instinctive fear of the unknown?

Fairy Jiang gave Qin Luming a couple of looks, then reached out and gripped her staff. The tip of the staff drew in her primordial divine particle ball, and then the entire staff vanished before her.

"Do you feel a little safer now?" Fairy Jiang raised her head slightly and looked at the pitiful bug with pity.

"A little." Qin Luming knew this was probably not like putting a primordial black hole into a bag, but rather some form of spatial storage. In other words, the black hole had been placed in another space. Even if it went out of control, it presumably would not affect Earth's space, right?

"It seems you don't think letting you play with the particle ball is a very beneficial thing." Fairy Jiang was somewhat disappointed, but she could understand. After all, the other party was only a bug from a remote region of this universe.

Qin Luming nodded. There really was no benefit at all... If he were a physicist or astronomer, perhaps he would feel that hearing the truth in the morning would make dying that evening worthwhile. But he only wanted to live well. He had no interest whatsoever in how to play with a black hole.

In the face of the great terror between life and death, curiosity could still be restrained.

He had originally thought that Ma Shilong, that damned eunuch, bringing Zhou Nan here had already plunged the world into a grave crisis. Who would have thought that compared to this, what Ma Shilong had caused was child's play?

A black hole on Earth sounded like the end of the world, and the kind where humanity would be wiped out so completely that no one would even have time to comprehend the great terror before the world fell into silence.

Even if Zhou Nan summoned the army of the Kingdom of Zhou, she would not destroy all life on Earth and then blow up the entire planet, would she?

Now he could only hope that primordial black holes, which no one had truly studied, were not as terrifying as people imagined whenever they thought of black holes, but were merely a conscious, controllable, docile form of matter as Fairy Jiang had said.

"Considering that I need you to continue producing divine particle fluctuation effects and to assist me while I am weakened, I can teach you how to write novels as payment," Fairy Jiang continued.

"Huh?"

Qin Luming looked at Fairy Jiang with deep suspicion. This Aizen King was truly unpredictable in every way. Normally, should she not have tossed him some divine artifact, an immortality fruit, or some cultivation technique from the divine realm?

"It seems you don't quite understand what divine particle fluctuation effects mean." Fairy Jiang continued looking at Qin Luming with pity. "I hear that most bugs have neither brains nor nerves. They act through physiological hormones secreted by parasites."

"Bugs have brains, and bugs have nerves. A simple calculation only requires a few hundred nerve cells to participate. In other words, a few thousand nerve cells are enough to support an animal's consciousness." Qin Luming shook his head. Perhaps the bugs in the Divine Kingdom had no brains.

"Oh, then it seems you're the kind of bug that doesn't even have a few hundred nerve cells."

"I... fine. Explain what you want in terms I can understand." Qin Luming was a little disappointed. His excitement today had been for nothing... Sure enough, novels were just novels. The Fairy Jiang in novels was so adorable, but now that she had really appeared before him, all he wanted was to turn her into a bug too.

"I already told you. The reason you and I can establish a Summoning Contract is because of the divine particle fluctuation effect. Since your writing can influence my current state and create a fluctuation effect with me, then it can surely influence my other states as well. For example... in the following plot of your novel, you can describe me more accurately and raise the description of my abilities in an orderly manner that conforms to the foundations of particle fluctuation effects. The divine particle fluctuation effect produced by that may strengthen my future state." After Fairy Jiang finished speaking, she clapped her hands, took out her staff again, and pointed it at Qin Luming. "You understand now, don't you?"

Qin Luming scrambled backward and hurriedly said, "I understand... I understand. Put the black hole away first... Right, the primordial divine particle ball. I get it. I just have to keep writing the novel and portray you as wise, mighty, and incomparably powerful. That will benefit you."

Qin Luming understood, but he was also incredibly annoyed. So his fate was either to be captured by Zhou Nan and made to write novels, or to be captured by Fairy Jiang and made to write novels.

He certainly did not want to continue someone else's novel, but with Fairy Jiang looking like this before him, how could he ever again have that warm, swelling, tender, sweet mood needed to write one?

Ah, he would treat it as saving the world. He only hoped that once he finished this novel, Fairy Jiang would recover, recuperate, and grow stronger, then quickly take that black hole back to her Divine Kingdom.