Unknown Darkness

October 31st.

The front door of the house was opened, and Huang Si held a very long pole, extending it out into the darkness beyond the threshold.

He was now capable of not only creating metal but also crafting metal poles with high structural integrity.

Furthermore, Huang Si's power recovery was fast, his upper limit was high, and his consciousness was sharp; creating a metal pole was nothing to him.

The difficulty lay in continuously generating new segments to add to the tail end of the pole while keeping it hollow, all without causing metal fatigue or fractures.

Huang Si placed a stand on the ground equipped with two rings, allowing him to thread the hollow metal pole through them and keep it supported.

All Huang Si had to do then was step on the base of the stand and push the metal pole out into the darkness.

After pushing a significant length, the pole in his hands grew short, so Huang Si generated another segment and continued pushing forward.

He estimated he had pushed it forward about ten meters, yet he still hadn't encountered any obstacles.

Even when this ten-meter-long metal pole swayed, it didn't strike anything.

Fortunately, the physical properties within the darkness seemed somewhat peculiar. Gravity was normal inside the room where Huang Si stood, but once an object left the room and submerged into the darkness, it was no longer affected by gravity.

If the metal pole hadn't become weightless upon entering the outside, Huang Si would have long since been unable to hold it.

What kind of existence is the darkness outside? Does it block gravity? Could it be another dimension?

Huang Si could only speculate, but he wouldn't dare to step out himself to take a look—he wouldn't even dare to poke his head out.

After all, he was safe inside this room; what if there was danger outside?

The unknown darkness always filled one with fear.

Huang Si retracted the metal pole.

When he had pulled back about half of it, he froze.

This... the metal pole is a bit too long, there isn't enough space in the house to store it!

After a moment of thought, Huang Si simply threw the metal pole out the front door.

His recovery speed was so fast now that he was essentially wealthy and could afford to be reckless. What was one metal pole? With a snap of his fingers, Huang Si could have a whole group of them ready in minutes.

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

It seemed that to explore the external darkness, he would need to rely on tools—a camera, for instance.

There was a camera on Huang Si's laptop; as long as he mimicked the structure of that component, he could find a way to build an independent camera himself.

He acted on the thought immediately. Huang Si spent some time studying the camera's structure. Fortunately, his soul strength had increased significantly during this period, so he was able to pass through the plastic components.

Even with the metal structure inside the camera, he could find ways to bypass it and infiltrate the gaps to observe.

On November 3rd, Huang Si finished building an independent camera. He plugged it into a power source, connected the network cable, clipped it onto the end of the metal pole, and extended it out the door.

Huang Si set the metal pole in place and looked at the laptop sitting to the side.

The laptop screen displayed the monitoring window for the external camera. Originally, it showed the scene inside the house, but as soon as the camera crossed the threshold and submerged into the darkness, the screen turned into nothing but blackness.

Huang Si continued to manipulate the metal pole to move the camera, but after a long while, the darkness remained unchanged.

Suddenly.

A very distinct vibration traveled through the metal pole into Huang Si's hands.

The camera had hit something!

However, he didn't hear any sound.

Huang Si stared into the darkness outside. There was something in there, and it had to be hard, otherwise, it wouldn't have caused the camera to vibrate upon impact.

He pulled the camera back, and it didn't seem to be damaged.

Then, Huang Si removed the camera and used his creation power to add a curved shape to the front end of the metal pole.

It was a hook; Huang Si wanted to hook that unknown object from outside and bring it back.

The hook soon touched the same object in the same spot outside. Huang Si tried several times but failed to hook it; the object seemed very smooth and appeared to be long and thin.

"..." Sensing the shape of the object outside, Huang Si had a disturbing thought.

Next, Huang Si tied a magnet to his metal pole, and sure enough, he managed to pull the object back.

There was nothing mysterious about it; it was the same long pole Huang Si had thrown outside a few days ago.

Huang Si dragged the long pole into the house as far as he could, until it hit the corner of the room and could be moved no further.

He discovered that the pole was completely undamaged, in the exact same state as when he had thrown it out.

"Hypothesis 1: The darkness outside does not erode objects."

"Hypothesis 2: Objects thrown outside disappear. Because when I used the long pole the first time, I didn't hit anything, but the second time, I could hit the pole. Yet, I have already thrown a lot of trash outside; there is no reason I wouldn't have hit anything the first time."

"Hypothesis 3: To satisfy both of the above hypotheses, I must assume that things thrown outside disappear periodically, and today has not yet reached that periodic time."

Huang Si stopped his pen and looked at the notes he had recorded, a chill running through his heart.

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

Yet the steel rod he had just thrown out remained, completely unscathed.

Was there someone outside cleaning up on a schedule?

Had he been under surveillance for the three-plus months he had been here?

The thought alone was terrifying.

Let's assume there is no intelligence outside; otherwise, it would be impossible for me to have lived here for over three months without leaving a single trace. It is more likely that the darkness outside possesses some kind of cleaning mechanism I am unaware of, which is why the trash disappears.

Huang Si thought for a moment, then wrote this down with his pen.

Humans are creatures that need hope and faith to survive. If he were to succumb to fear in the face of the unknown and be defeated by his own psyche, what else would he have to live for?

Faced with this anomalous phenomenon, Huang Si pondered for a long time and decided to continue developing new products.

For instance, could he build a robot capable of moving freely in the darkness to explore on his behalf?

As a corporate slave with a master's degree in computer science, Huang Si could study and understand books on AI, and he could even write his own chatbots. But asking him to actually build a functional robot was truly asking too much.

Many people outside the IT industry subconsciously assume that robots and computers are much the same, but in reality, they are worlds apart.

Huang Si had indeed studied electronic circuits and the like, but that was back in his distant undergraduate days, and the knowledge was so outdated it was now utterly useless.

Furthermore, before he could build a robot capable of free movement, Huang Si would at least need to unlock these technology trees:

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 create something as complex and precise as an integrated circuit.

Moreover, he only had two computers, both of which contained vital data; he couldn't just cut them open to take a look.

If Huang Si wanted to explore the mysteries of computers, the first hurdle to overcome was that his soul strength was not yet sufficient to penetrate metal, and his range of penetration was only a few millimeters—too small to be of any practical use.

Huang Si took paper and pen to make a list, only to realize with despair that there was far too much waiting for him to do.

November 26th.

Huang Si lifted his head from the computer screen, which was still displaying data on integrated circuits.

His eyes were vacant and dull, and he slumped in his computer chair, unwilling to move a muscle.

Over the past twenty days or so, he had roughly gone through all the material on integrated circuits he could find on his computer and bookshelves, and he had even tried to build a few circuits following the examples in the books.

It was too hard; it was truly too hard. No wonder the students in electronics majors always looked so haggard—they really had it much worse than those in software engineering.

By now, Huang Si had nearly finished reading all the materials and video tutorials, but he felt increasingly exhausted.

At first, whenever he grew tired of studying, he would do something else—play a single-player game, rewatch a movie, practice his consciousness strength, make some daily necessities, write logic circuits for his AI, or have the AI chat with him.

Huang Si had been enthusiastic at the start, but slowly, as time passed, 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 blankly in his computer chair for a while before slowly rising to close all the integrated circuit materials.

He clicked on the chat interface for his artificial intelligence.

By this time, Huang Si had overhauled the personalities of his AI, though he continued to use the original databases.

He had developed aesthetic fatigue toward two-dimensional anime girls and no longer needed characters like "Meow-Meow-chan" or "Sunny Big Sister" to comfort him.

Huang Si had now rewritten twelve AI personalities.

Each personality possessed its own distinct character and behavioral patterns.

Huang Si had even written a background world setting for them; the current setting was a world called the "Mountain and Sea Realm," roughly akin to an Eastern fantasy style.

Of course, because he had just started, these twelve AIs were still quite dim-witted and could hardly be called truly intelligent.

However, Huang Si placed them into the background world and set them to load a machine learning system to undergo self-learning and self-evolution.

This machine learning system was also something Huang Si had just copied from his materials; it remained extremely rigid and stiff, awaiting further adjustment.

Huang Si wanted to craft a batch of AI that felt a bit more like real humans.

To that end, Huang Si gave the twelve AIs pleasant names and assigned them genders.

Six female, six male—a balanced distribution.

Huang Si opened the map window within the AI system. Under his settings, the AIs could move within the virtual map. Since all of this was occurring within the AI system, Huang Si could monitor it at any time.

Twelve symbols moved about the map in twos and threes, though some were not with others and moved independently.

Currently, these AIs were incredibly stupid and barely knew how to speak.

Huang Si would open the software whenever he had nothing to do just to see what they were up to; it was like keeping pets, and it was actually quite fun.

After watching the AI act foolishly for a long time, Huang Si went back to busy himself with other things.

Life had to go on.