At Depth Three, Etched Wisdom still hadn't seen a trace of the concept of shadows.
Fu Qian had of course noticed this, and there were only a few possible explanations—
For instance, as the situation grew more dire, the calamity might have vanished.
Don't forget the first time he encountered the Brain Jellyfish. He hadn't seen anything shadow-like then.
And the current state of ruin was undoubtedly closest to that.
Or perhaps, back at Depth Two, he had been a shadow without realizing it, and from the researchers' reactions afterward, he had deduced that shadows and real people couldn't see each other.
So it was possible that the current state was so bad that everyone had become shadows.
And since they couldn't perceive one another in that state, everything carried on as usual.
Yet now it seemed things weren't that simple.
At least here and now, the two states had once again come face-to-face.
This had directly caused the mystery surrounding the "Wisdom Creator" to skyrocket.
Was the appearance of shadows also connected to the secret of "the beginning and the end"?
"What do you think wisdom is?"
The Wisdom Creator had accomplished all this, yet at that moment, he seemed utterly composed. He really did seem to have tossed a cricket into a fighting bowl and forgotten all about it, turning to chat casually with Fu Qian.
"Wisdom is what's right. Everything wrong has no place in it."
Unfortunately, his conversational skills left something to be desired. Before Fu Qian could respond, he answered his own question.
"I used to think like you: that every effort to get closer to the answer was part of wisdom. But now, for the first time, I know with absolute clarity that it's nothing but a fool's self-consolation... Only what's right has meaning!"