The truth had more or less come to light.
The origins of the Thunder Art, put plainly, amounted to nothing more than the ashes of some colossal powerhouse from another world.
"If I'm not mistaken."
"That world should be the supernatural source on the other side of the Abyss."
"Well, damn."
"I really didn't see that coming."
"I thought that world would be gloomy and haunted. Who knew it would be brimming with immortal aura?"
That had genuinely stunned Jiang Qiao.
According to the scattered bits he had previously learned from the [Simulator].
The supernatural was, in essence, a force of increasing entropy.
Increasing entropy meant that things in an isolated system would spontaneously and irreversibly move toward disorder and chaos. This was also the core of the second law of thermodynamics in physics.
Setting aside thermodynamics and scales as vast as the universe.
In everyday life.
Increasing entropy manifested itself just the same.
Many things gradually descended into chaos as they developed. Clean, concise code, for instance, would turn into a mountain of shit through successive updates, until even its original author was baffled.
A lean startup team would need to bring in more and more people as the business grew.
Eventually, it became a bloated organization.
Efficiency plummeted.
All of that could, in fact, be considered manifestations of increasing entropy.
Essentially.
Entropy, as a parameter.
Represented the unusable energy within a system.
But... one civilization had tried to control that chaotic, disordered, utterly unusable force.
And to some extent, it had succeeded.
Through some unknown method, they had created something called supernatural power.
"That civilization."
"Was probably the world shown in those images."
"In theory, mastering the supernatural would let you control increasing entropy, and thus reverse disorder and chaos."
"And as it happens."
"The immortals of legend