Designing a World

At night, Lu Zhiyu drove his BYD quietly to Mulan Mountain. Near the lake, the land was lush and fertile-looking. Lu Zhiyu even grabbed a couple handfuls to inspect it.

After choosing the spot, Lu Zhiyu immediately began carrying out his first plan—stealing soil. He had originally planned to buy planting soil, which would have met his requirements while avoiding contamination with too many insects and living creatures. But the price of two hundred yuan per cubic meter had scared him off. At the amount he needed, it would cost well over a hundred thousand!

The air at Mulan Mountain was excellent. If he had come during the day or in the morning, it would surely have felt refreshing and invigorating. But in the middle of the night, the cold wind whistled like ghosts howling, making one's heart tremble.

Lu Zhiyu was a little nervous too, but not about stealing soil. He was nervous because he was about to open the entrance to the Painting Space. This was an entrance connecting to the two-dimensional world, only sealed by the force field of the Universe Scroll. Universe Scroll was the name he had given the painting.

The moment he opened the entrance, a gap would appear in that force field. If he lost control even slightly and something went wrong, the consequences would be unimaginable.

As for what could go wrong, Lu Zhiyu had specifically asked people on online forums about the settings of a two-dimensional world. When he brought up this issue, one netizen had told him, "What could go wrong? Brother, do you know about the Two-Dimensional Foil?"

Thinking about how the thing in his hands might destroy the entire Solar System in minutes, Lu Zhiyu couldn't help swallowing.

Once he was ready, Lu Zhiyu sensed the silver symbol deep within his mind flash. A black vortex immediately appeared on the Universe Scroll, and an immense suction force swept across an area spanning over a thousand meters.

"Enough, enough!"

The gale raged for several minutes. Lu Zhiyu felt as if he could barely open his eyes, and he could hardly breathe. The air within a thousand-meter radius had been sucked away in huge quantities in that instant, leaving it thin and sparse.

When he opened his eyes, he saw that the huge hillside before him had turned into a sheer cliff, exposing the mountain ridge. The once-clear lake had been drained to the bottom, though its water level was still slowly rising.

Staring dumbfoundedly at everything before him, Lu Zhiyu immediately put away the Universe Scroll and took a detour along the mountain path. Only after reaching the main road did he get into his car and hurried away.

The next day, what had happened at Mulan Mountain even made the news. Experts conducted all kinds of analyses before concluding that it had been done by a group of people stealing planting soil, whom they sternly condemned.

But none of that had anything to do with Lu Zhiyu. He hung the Universe Scroll on a rack in his bedroom. The scroll was no longer blank; a small island had appeared on it, surrounded by an endless sea whose waters actually swayed.

The water had been drawn from the lake, and there should originally have been fish in it. But they had all vanished. Sure enough, the Painting Space could currently only support microorganisms.

Through the symbol in his mind, Lu Zhiyu spent an entire night separating and stabilizing the original matter and water, finally forming a stable world. However, the silver within the symbol in his mind began to fade. Its formerly bright silver light weakened noticeably, as though such alterations consumed energy. But Lu Zhiyu still couldn't figure out what that energy actually was.

Looking at the scene within the painting, Lu Zhiyu discovered ants on it. The ants were actually moving, and he jumped up excitedly. "Just as I guessed, mass determines space, and space determines time."

Only at this point did the Painting Space truly possess stable space. Lu Zhiyu carefully observed the ants and found that they moved across it like characters in a 2D side-scrolling game. Yet the ants showed no discomfort whatsoever. He didn't know whether beings in a two-dimensional world lost their perception of three dimensions, or whether ants were inherently two-dimensional creatures.

But the space within the two-dimensional world still lacked the feel of a real world. Everything was stiff and lifeless. Then, in the blink of an eye, Lu Zhiyu saw the ants gradually begin to die. With no sun, no temperature, and no air, the moment time began to flow, all the ants and some other insects died and disappeared one by one. Lu Zhiyu was caught completely off guard.

"Temperature? A sun?"

Lu Zhiyu found it troublesome. He couldn't possibly create a sun out of thin air. Create one? That's right, create one. Although Lu Zhiyu had gained control of the Painting Space, he had yet to fully understand how to operate it. Still, using the energy within the silver symbol in his mind to create a sun seemed possible.

"Since it's a two-dimensional space, what if I draw a sun onto it?"

Lu Zhiyu suddenly had a wild idea and immediately acted on it. Using a red paintbrush, he drew a red sun in the sky of the painting. The moment he did so, he felt the energy within the silver symbol in his mind drop by a third.

But what thrilled Lu Zhiyu was that the sun in the Painting Space immediately began to move. Following the operational parameters he had set, it circled through the sky, illuminating the land in a round-heavens, square-earth pattern. He then added a blue moon, creating a cycle of day and night.

As the various data of the two-dimensional space gradually stabilized under Lu Zhiyu's settings, he began making further plans. At this moment, he felt as if his imagination had been unleashed, with every bold idea imaginable bubbling up in his mind.

"Since the data of a two-dimensional world can be adjusted, then time should also be adjustable. So-called time is merely an external manifestation of matter in motion. Imagine a space where no matter or energy exists—time would not exist there either. It would have no meaning."

"Only in a world where matter exists can the movement of matter give time meaning. The movement of molecules, atoms, electrons, and photons causes plants and animals to grow old; on the small scale, food molds and clocks turn; on the large scale, the Earth rotates and the Milky Way changes. All changes in the world form an enormous system through the flow of matter, creating the concept of time. If matter does not move, time will stand still. If the movement of matter accelerates, time will accelerate. If it slows, time will slow!"

Lu Zhiyu felt his blood begin to boil. "If I accelerate the speed at which matter moves in the two-dimensional space, then time should speed up accordingly. One day outside could equal one year, ten years inside. Would that work?"

"Let's try it. Let's try it!"

Lu Zhiyu got to work again, looking up vast amounts of information online. With a notebook in hand, he filled it with all sorts of ideas, crossing out some and checking off others. After spending more than half a month, Lu Zhiyu finally completed what he had envisioned, though he still had no idea whether it would work.

Sitting before the Universe Scroll, he closed his eyes and placed all his consciousness into the symbol in his mind. He could immediately sense the information within the Painting Space. The parameters and changes he had set for the entire two-dimensional world, its size and data, all flooded into his mind—the strength of gravity, changes in the sun's temperature, the length of a day, and the changes of the four seasons.

At that moment, Lu Zhiyu felt like a creator god. He continuously fed his ideas into the silver symbol, manipulating the changes of the two-dimensional world. During this process, the silver energy within the symbol was constantly consumed, gradually running dry. Only then did Lu Zhiyu finish setting up the two-dimensional world he had envisioned.

At that moment, Lu Zhiyu seemed to hear a bell ring. Time began to turn rapidly like the hands of an alarm clock, ticking faster and faster. When Lu Zhiyu opened his eyes, he saw that the world inside the painting seemed to have been colored in and had truly begun to operate.

Time continued to accelerate, but before Lu Zhiyu's energy was completely depleted, he stopped and fixed the parameter in place. Every adjustment to a parameter required a massive amount of energy.

Lu Zhiyu accelerated time to ten thousand times that of the outside world. Since the length of a day and the four seasons in the Painting Space had also been set according to external data, one day outside now equaled twenty-seven years inside.

One hour was equivalent to more than a year in the Painting Space. Lu Zhiyu watched the land within it rapidly change. Seeds mixed among the trees, flowers, and grass began to grow, and within an hour, the entire island was covered in a layer of green.