The Circle

March 21, 2023, early morning.

Huang Si was still fast asleep under his covers when, suddenly, he felt a vague sense that something was wrong in his dreams.

But because he didn't want to get up, he just rolled over and went back to sleep.

When he woke up in the morning, the feeling that something was amiss grew stronger; it seemed as if something had happened in the darkness outside.

Huang Si's sensory perception was already quite powerful by now; if he felt something was wrong, then something had definitely happened.

Huang Si immediately went to his computer to check the surveillance.

Sure enough, of the 10 symbols representing the robots on the monitor, only one remained; the other nine were nowhere to be found.

These robots transmitted data via a Wi-Fi connection—could the network have been interfered with?

Huang Si checked the location of the sole remaining robot and discovered that it had drifted very far from its originally assigned exploration zone, nearly a kilometer away from the house.

Something must have forced it to travel such a long distance, swallowing the other nine robots in the process.

Huang Si immediately issued an order through the computer, commanding the last surviving robot to use its current position as a center point and continue exploring outward.

The robot followed the command, beginning to circle around again and again.

Meanwhile, Huang Si stayed in the house and continued to manufacture small robots to replenish his stock, though he didn't deploy them yet.

March 23, 2023.

The small robot in the distance seemed to have bumped into something in the dark. Since it couldn't see in the darkness, Huang Si ordered it to explore the shape of the object through touch sensors.

After a while, Huang Si rested his chin on his hand, staring at the 3D outline forming on the screen.

Was this an arc?

The robot continued to climb over the object, and the 3D model on the screen gradually became more complete.

A ring?

No, the robot hadn't finished exploring yet; Huang Si manipulated it to continue exploring toward the center of the ring.

Suddenly, the robot's signal vanished.

Huang Si: "???"

Was this ring a monster? It could actually eat his robots!

Huang Si looked at the blank space on the monitor, feeling a bit of heartache. He had assembled these robots by hand because he couldn't mass-produce them yet. Not to mention the Creation Power consumed, the manual labor alone was enough to give him a headache.

To lose 10 of them all at once—how could he not feel the sting?

However, to his surprise, after a while, the robot's signal reappeared.

Huang Si hadn't been happy for long before the signal disappeared again.

Huang Si: "?????"

This was absurd; the ring could eat the robot, spit it out, and then eat it again.

Still, there seemed to be some kind of pattern to it.

Huang Si waited patiently for another two minutes.

The signal appeared again.

Huang Si hurriedly operated the computer, ordering the robot to stop.

Sure enough, once the robot stopped, the signal didn't disappear again.

Now, Huang Si was itching with curiosity; he desperately wanted to go to the ring and see what was happening.

The next day, Huang Si made two more small robots and had them fly to the edge of the ring.

It was impossible to see in the dark space, but fortunately, he could use the first robot as a coordinate to navigate.

Before long, the two new small robots cautiously approached the ring, and Huang Si had them execute a new program: explore the ring, but do not transmit information immediately; store it instead and wait for instructions to transmit.

These two small robots were equipped with storage devices, and Huang Si had even installed cameras and video recording functions on them.

The two small robots were spider-shaped with eight legs, allowing them to cling to any surface. Under the preset commands, they crawled toward the center of the ring.

They hadn't even reached the center; they had only crawled a little way when the signal vanished again.

Huang Si waited patiently. After a few minutes, the two small robots returned, and under the computer's command, they sent the shape data and video footage they had stored during that time.

When the video footage was transmitted back, Huang Si was stunned.

What appeared on the video was a clear, azure blue sky.

There were even white clouds drifting in the sky.

Because the small robot was recording while crawling, the image was constantly rotating.

However, perhaps because the field of view was quite narrow, the lens never turned toward what might be the ground, so Huang Si still didn't know if there was any ground in that place.

For the first time in years, a spark of hope ignited in Huang Si's heart.

"Could this ring be an exit? Or a spatial passage? Am I free? Can I go home?"

He played those two video clips again.

Blue skies, white clouds—how long had it been since he last saw them? Those beautiful colors were simply as wonderful as paradise.

Huang Si, whose state of mind had long been as still as an ancient well, could not help but feel like weeping at this very moment. After years of effort, he finally saw a glimmer of possibility for success.

The most urgent task was to continue investigating the situation on the other side of the ring.

Huang Si first directed one of the small robots to continue exploring outside the ring, and he set a program for it to automatically find its way back.

After a long while, Huang Si received two new video clips.

The first was still of the sky, but this time the robot had crawled in a different direction, and so he saw the sun.

There was another video that was tilted slightly toward the ground; Huang Si saw the horizon, followed by some ground mixed with green and yellow. It should have been a scene of vegetation growing on the ground, captured from a great distance.

In other words, the position of this ring on the other side was likely high in the sky—very high.

After watching these two clips, he wanted to direct the small robot to record a third video facing directly toward the ground, but he waited for a long time and the robot never returned.

Huang Si speculated that it most likely lost its grip and fell from the high altitude.

After all, this robot was designed only for exploration, and its gripping strength was not particularly strong.

Huang Si sat in front of the computer, deep in thought. To see the video feed in real-time, it seemed necessary to develop a wired signal transmitter. Because that ring seemed to allow matter to pass through, but electromagnetic waves could not.

On March 27, Huang Si had two small robots carry a wired signal transmitter toward the ring.

This signal transmitter was equivalent to a Wi-Fi relay station; it could handle Wi-Fi at both ends, but the middle was connected by a network cable.

As long as one end was passed through the ring and hung on the other side, it would allow the space on the other side of the ring to connect to the network.

The other end was fixed to the surface of the ring in the dark space using clips.

After the small robots reached the ring, they quickly set up the signal transmitter and threw the other end into the world within the ring.

Along with the signal transmitter, a small robot equipped with a 360-degree camera also went through. Similarly, the small robot was tethered to a safety line, with one end of the line connected to the two robots on this side.

This strategy was quite successful. The network cable could maintain a connection, and after some debugging, the computer finally received a real-time video signal from the other side of the ring.

The small robot's camera whirred as it rotated, capturing a panoramic view of everything above, below, and to the sides.

The world on the other side slowly revealed itself in the video.

The sky there was very blue and extremely beautiful, while the ground featured terrain that appeared to be a forest, occasionally interspersed with yellow or grayish-white patches—perhaps withered plants, or perhaps soil and rocks.

Preliminary estimates suggested the ring was at least 5,000 meters above the ground.

The camera tilted toward the ring itself, and the true appearance of the ring unfolded before Huang Si.

It was a gray ring, seemingly made of stone. The stone ring extended slightly toward the center before being replaced by a layer of deep, dark black.

It appeared that the area where that blackness resided was the gateway.

However, what surprised Huang Si was that no matter how the robot moved, it could not see what platform the ring was mounted on or what its point of support was.

"Could the ring be floating in the air? How strange..."

It seemed necessary to explore further, and the first step was to develop a stronger wireless signal device.

Huang Si's idea was to have the small robot carry a parachute and descend, but to communicate normally at a distance of over 5,000 meters, the Wi-Fi signal device he was currently using would absolutely not work.

Several new research and development directions were put on the agenda, but just as everything was beginning, Huang Si witnessed a terrifying scene.

On the afternoon of March 30.

Huang Si was wearing an apron, deep-frying sanzi in a wok of oil. This was a common type of pasta in the Hubei region that didn't require any special seasonings; one simply pulled the dough into thin strands and deep-fried them in hot oil until crispy. As a childhood food, it was quite delicious.

Suddenly, he faintly sensed that something had happened outside.

It was as if a hurricane were howling in his ears.

Something seemed to have happened in the dark space again!

Huang Si hurriedly turned off the heat, put down the skimmer, and went to the computer to look at the monitor.

The signals belonging to the small robot, the signal transmitter, and the small robot in the world on the other side had all vanished!

Huang Si walked to the main entrance, opened the door, and spread his consciousness out, covering a distance of over ten meters around him.

"Wind?" Huang Si was a bit puzzled. "No, it's not wind; it's something very much like wind."

Invisible and intangible energy traveled through the dark space like wind, and that surge of energy even pierced directly through Huang Si's mental field!

At first, Huang Si only felt that the wind was very strong, but as the force of the wind increased, it actually impacted his mental field and "blew it apart."

Huang Si's consciousness had a very peculiar sensation in the wind; the scattered mental field did not completely lose control, but instead followed the wind forward for a distance before dissipating entirely.

In other words, as if traveling with the wind, the mental field could spread much further, although the perception became extremely blurred.

Huang Si stood at the entrance, his consciousness constantly exploring into the darkness. He could feel the wind passing through his consciousness, a process that caused his consciousness some pain.

But Huang Si endured it.

The wind brought him a very wonderful feeling; he seemed to be able to learn something from it.

However, before ten minutes had passed, Huang Si "retracted" his consciousness.

It was nothing else, primarily because it hurt.

This was the first time Huang Si had felt his "consciousness" in pain. As soon as he fully retracted his consciousness back into the room, detaching it from the wind's embrace, the injuries he had sustained within the gale began to take effect.

Huang Si clutched his head, feeling as though his brain had been struck hard by a hammer.

"Ouch, ouch, ouch!" Huang Si couldn't help but roll around on the sofa a few times.

His soul seemed to be injured; knowledge regarding the state of his soul surfaced within Huang Si's consciousness.

Come to think of it, the Creation Book had once stuffed quite a bit of knowledge into his consciousness. Having persisted through two resets, this knowledge was likely linked to his soul, so it would not disappear even if his physical body were reset.

As for how the soul was connected to knowledge and memory, Huang Si did not understand.

However, there was a kind of innate, instinctual knowledge in his consciousness telling him that he needed to rest and recover from his injuries.

All Huang Si could do was lie on the sofa, clutching his head and gasping for air.

His soul was already very strong now; not only could he move objects with his mind, but his spirit could form its own field, enveloping his surroundings.

Yet, this wind-like energy was capable of directly harming his soul.

Truly terrifying.