Faced with the dark energy tide, Gao Gong was not as shocked as he had been when he encountered the white hole.
After all, the latter belonged to an extreme environment on a cosmic scale.
Although regions of dark energy and dark matter were deadly threats to most low-level civilizations,
they were not uncommon in the universe at large, and they were not particularly threatening to Gao Gong, either.
Gao Gong opened his palm, and a "Book of Darkness" materialized.
The cosmic treasure began flipping through its pages automatically, soon stopping at the page on "Ordinary Dark Energy."
Name: Ordinary Dark Energy
Analysis: 0% (Composition unknown, properties unknown)
Effect: Forms energy tides and possesses powerful devouring properties; after devouring enough energy and matter, however, it tends toward stability.
Gao Gong's call seemed real and illusory at once. Stimulated by it, the page soon evolved another "dark energy tide."
Like two transparent colossal waves stretching beyond sight, they were not made of matter, but of distortions and pulses in space itself. One side shimmered with a deep-blue quantum radiance, like auroras flowing through a polar night sky; the other steamed with dark-red energy mist, as though molten stars had blurred across the void.
At the boundary between the two tides, folds in spacetime constantly formed. In some regions, the flow of time suddenly accelerated, and stardust could be seen gathering and dispersing in an instant; other regions sank into an almost frozen sluggishness, where even quantum fluctuations became visible to the naked eye. Matter lost its certainty here, sometimes becoming a wave and sometimes a particle, wavering between existence and nothingness.
In the end, the two tides collided and discharged completely. The result was a state in which inside and outside could not be distinguished and the boundaries were self-consistent, yet