The Unknown Darkness

October 31

The front door swung open. Huang Si held up a very long pole and pushed it out into the darkness beyond the door.

He could now do more than create metal—he could make metal poles with tremendous strength.

His power recovered quickly, his reserves were vast, and his consciousness was strong. Creating a metal pole was no big deal.

The hard part was making a new section whenever he needed one, attaching it to the end of the pole, and ensuring that it was hollow without suffering metal fatigue or breaking.

Huang Si set a stand on the floor. It had two rings, allowing him to thread the hollow metal pole through them and prop it up.

Then all he had to do was hold down the stand with his foot and push the pole into the darkness outside.

After pushing it a long way, he ran out of pole. Huang Si created another section and kept pushing.

He estimated that he had extended it about ten meters, but still hadn't hit anything.

Even when the ten-meter pole began to wobble, it didn't strike a thing.

Fortunately, the darkness seemed to have some unusual physical properties. Gravity was normal inside Huang Si's room, but once an object left the room and entered the darkness, it was no longer affected by gravity.

If the part of the pole outside hadn't been free from gravity, Huang Si would have been unable to hold it up long ago.

"What kind of place is the darkness outside? Does it block gravity? Could it be another space?"

Huang Si could only speculate. But he wouldn't dare go out and take a look himself—not even stick his head outside.

At least he was safe in this room. What if there was danger out there?

The unknown darkness always inspired fear.

Huang Si pulled the pole back in.

When he had reeled in about half of it, he froze.

The pole was too long. There wasn't enough room in the house to fit it all!

After thinking for a moment, Huang Si simply tossed the pole out the door.

His recovery was so fast now that he was practically rich and could afford to be reckless. What was one metal pole? With a snap of his fingers, Huang Si could make a whole bunch in no time.

Still, his attempt to probe the darkness with a metal pole had failed.

It looked like he'd need some tools to explore the darkness outside. A camera, perhaps?

His laptop had a camera. If he could imitate its components, he might be able to make a standalone camera of his own.

Once he had the idea, Huang Si got to work. He spent some time studying the camera's structure. Fortunately, his soul had grown much stronger lately, and he could pass through the plastic components. He could even work around the camera's internal metal parts and peer inside through the gaps.

On November 3, Huang Si made a standalone camera. He plugged it into a power supply, connected a network cable, and clipped it to the metal pole before extending it beyond the door.

After propping up the pole, Huang Si looked at the laptop beside him.

The laptop showed the feed from the external camera. It had displayed the scene inside the house, but as soon as the camera passed through the doorway and entered the darkness, the screen showed nothing but black.

Huang Si kept maneuvering the pole, moving the camera around. After a long while, the darkness still hadn't changed at all.

Suddenly—

A distinct vibration traveled through Huang Si's hand.

The camera had hit something!

But he hadn't heard a sound.

Huang Si stared into the darkness outside. There was something in there, and it must have been hard, or the impact wouldn't have made the camera shudder.

He pulled the camera back. It didn't seem damaged.

Then Huang Si removed it and used Creation Power to add a curved shape to the end of the metal pole.

It was a hook. He wanted to drag the unknown object back inside.

The hook soon struck the object in the same spot. Huang Si tried several times to catch it, but he couldn't. The thing seemed smooth and long.

"..." Feeling the shape of the object outside, Huang Si had a bad feeling.

Next, Huang Si tied a magnet to the metal pole. Sure enough, it pulled the object back.

There was nothing unusual about it. It was the long pole Huang Si had thrown out the door a few days ago.

Huang Si dragged it as far as he could into the room, until it bumped against a corner and wouldn't move any farther.

He found that the pole wasn't damaged at all. It was exactly as it had been when he threw it out.

"Hypothesis 1: The darkness outside doesn't corrode objects."

"Hypothesis 2: Things thrown outside disappear. The first time I used the long pole, I didn't hit anything, but the second time, I hit the pole. But I've thrown out a lot of trash already. There's no reason I wouldn't have hit anything the first time."

"Hypothesis 3: To make both hypotheses fit, I have to assume that things thrown out disappear at regular intervals, and today just isn't one of those times."

Huang Si stopped writing and looked at his notes. A chill crept through him.

He had always thought he was the only one here. But if that was true, if there was nothing outside but darkness, then why did the trash he threw out disappear on its own?

And why was the steel pole he'd just thrown out still there, completely intact?

Was someone outside coming by to clean up at regular intervals?

Had he been watched for the entire three months he'd lived here?

Just thinking about it was terrifying.

"First, I'll assume there's no intelligence outside. Otherwise, after the three months I've lived here, there would have to be some kind of sign. It's more likely that the darkness outside has some kind of cleanup mechanism I don't understand, which is why the trash disappears."

Huang Si thought it over, then wrote that down.

People needed hope and faith to keep living. If he let fear of the unknown defeat him, what else would he have to live for?

After pondering the strange phenomena for a long time, Huang Si decided to keep developing new things.

For example, he could build a robot that moved freely through the darkness and have it explore for him.

Huang Si had a master's degree in computer science and had been a wage slave. He could learn from and understand books on artificial intelligence, and he could write chatbots himself. But actually building a robot that could move around was far beyond him.

People who didn't understand IT often assumed that robots and computers were more or less the same thing. In reality, they were worlds apart.

Huang Si had studied electronic circuits and the like, but those courses had been part of his undergraduate degree ages ago, and the technology was badly outdated. They were no use to him now.

And before he could build a robot that moved freely, Huang Si would have to master at least the following technologies:

integrated circuits, central processing units, motherboards, operating systems for robots, robotic arms, and so on...

He only had experience making batteries. He didn't know how to make anything as complex and precise as an integrated circuit.

Besides, he only had two computers, both full of important data. He couldn't cut either one open to take a look inside.

If Huang Si wanted to explore the mysteries of computers, the first thing he had to do was improve his soul strength enough to pass through metal. His range was only a few millimeters, far too small to be useful.

Huang Si grabbed some paper and a pen and made a list. Then, in despair, he realized just how much he had to do.

November 26

Huang Si lifted his head from the computer screen. It still displayed information about integrated circuits.

His eyes were dull and unfocused. He slumped in his computer chair, unable to muster the will to move.

Over the past twenty-odd days, he had gone through most of the information on integrated circuits he could find on his computer and bookshelf. He'd also tried building a few circuits based on the examples in the books.

It was so difficult. It really was. No wonder the electronics students always looked so miserable. They had it much worse than people in software engineering.

Huang Si had nearly finished all the materials and video tutorials, but he was getting more and more exhausted.

At first, whenever he got tired of studying, he'd do something else—play a single-player game, rewatch a movie, train his consciousness, make some everyday items, write a few logic routines for the AI, or have the AI chat with him.

At first, Huang Si had thrown himself into all of it with enthusiasm. But as time went by, so many things began to lose their appeal.

Sometimes, he didn't want to do anything at all. He just wanted to lie down.

Huang Si sat dazed in his computer chair for a while before slowly getting up and closing all the integrated-circuit materials.

He opened the artificial intelligence chat interface.

This time, Huang Si had scrapped the personalities of his AI and rewritten them. He had kept their old databases, though.

He was tired of anime girls. He no longer needed characters like Meow Meow or a sunny big-sister type to comfort him.

Huang Si had rewritten twelve AI personalities.

Each had a distinct personality and way of behaving.

He had even given them a setting for their world. For now, it was called the Mountain and Sea Realm, and it was roughly in the style of Eastern fantasy.

Of course, since he'd only just started, all twelve AIs were still silly and couldn't yet be called truly intelligent.

But Huang Si had placed them in the setting and configured them to load a machine-learning system, so they could learn and evolve on their own.

Huang Si had only just copied that machine-learning system from his study materials, too. It was still extremely rigid and needed plenty of adjustments.

Huang Si wanted to create a group of AIs that seemed a little more like real people.

To that end, he had given the twelve AIs some fairly nice names and assigned them genders.

Six were female and six were male, keeping things balanced.

Huang Si opened the map window in the AI system. Under his settings, the AIs could move around on a virtual map. It was all happening inside the AI system, so Huang Si could monitor them at any time.

Twelve symbols moved around the map in pairs and groups of three. Some weren't with anyone else and moved around on their own.

For now, the AIs were extremely stupid. They could barely even talk.

Huang Si opened the software now and then to see what they were up to. It was a bit like keeping pets, and it was quite fun.

After spending a while watching the AIs act stupid, Huang Si went off to do something else.

Life had to go on.