Xiang Qian's Memory Planet

Xiang Qian slowly opened his eyes. He had seen the scene before him too many times—ever since he was six years old, for over twenty years now. It was a stretch of space shrouded in darkness, vast and boundless. The distant void was dotted with countless starlight, converging into a galaxy. Behind Xiang Qian was a main-sequence star radiating a pale blue light; the scorching surface of the celestial body occasionally ejected massive coronal mass ejections, blooming with magnificent colors.

Xiang Qian turned around and, just as he had done countless times in the past, opened his arms toward the pale blue star. This was a rather unstable main-sequence star, and the intense solar winds, which almost never ceased, were enough to kill any living creature that approached it. Yet, Xiang Qian remained completely unharmed.

All the energy spewing from the star—whether it was intense electromagnetic radiation or violent plasma beams—gathered toward Xiang Qian simultaneously. Once the originally wild energy touched his body, it immediately became incredibly docile, obediently converging toward his chest. As the energy continued to accumulate, a dazzling light ignited at his heart.

Behind the intense radiance, an illusory, bright silver dragon rose up. After swimming for a brief moment, it coiled around Xiang Qian's torso. Before long, the dragon dissipated into specks of light, only to suddenly coalesce into a fierce tiger, behind which two faint, floating figures vaguely appeared. These dreamlike, ethereal shadows hovered above Xiang Qian's head for a long time before gradually fading away. The totems of the two great holy lands, Kunlun and Kamar-Taj, drove the intensity of the light on Xiang Qian's body to gradually surpass that of the nearby star; but it was at this moment that Xiang Qian frowned.

"Too much is as bad as too little; this is all I can manage for now."

Xiang Qian seemed to be muttering to himself. After all, this was a void; there was no medium for sound to travel through, so who would there be to talk to? Yet, the moment his voice fell, a voice actually followed, as if in response to him: "Too much is as bad as too little? What is 'too much'? For your body, it is indeed too much. The frail frame of a human cannot contain such vast energy, but why are you so obsessed with keeping a human body?"

The corners of Xiang Qian's mouth curled into a faint, elusive smile: "Trying to convince me to stop being human again?"

"What is so good about being human? A human body, human thoughts, human emotions—they are merely shackles to you. Cast aside these pointless attachments, and you can break your chains. You would be the master of this universe." The voice in the void was ethereal and distant, just like the empty, silent space itself.

Xiang Qian gave a disdainful "humph": "Are you saying I cannot rule this universe as I am now?" As if to prove his ability, Xiang Qian raised his hand and pushed. The massive blue star flickered and vanished, as if it were a baseball struck hard by a bat, instantly disappearing from sight.

The voice in the void did not mind Xiang Qian's action; instead, it took on a hint of mockery: "You have not grasped the full authority of a master. In fact, you know this clearly in your heart: you have not become a true master."

Xiang Qian rolled his eyes with a touch of impatience, then snapped his fingers. A pure white planet suddenly flashed into existence from the far distance and flew rapidly toward him.

"So what? The so-called authority of a master is just like a household item—it's enough if it works. A toilet inlaid with gold and diamonds still has to be installed in the bathroom, doesn't it?" Xiang Qian retorted to the voice in the void while descending toward the white planet.

The voice in the void let out a "hehe" laugh, pouring its mockery into Xiang Qian's ears without reservation: "You are deceiving yourself! You know it yourself; there is only one reason for your refusal, and that is—you are afraid! You once touched the supreme authority and saw the ultimate power of a master, but you were scared out of your wits by what you saw, and you retreated. Like a cowardly hedgehog, you curled yourself into a ball and used your human body as a safe haven, just like a turtle retreating into..." The voice in the void grew increasingly piercing. Xiang Qian waved his hand heavily, as if closing a switch, and all the noise came to an abrupt halt.

Xiang Qian's descent was rapid, and the true appearance of the white planet became clearer as the distance closed. From afar, it looked like an irregular, hemispherical celestial body split into left and right halves. However, looking closer, one would find that the surface was crisscrossed with gullies, and even where there were no gullies, it was undulating; there was not a single flat spot. Anyone who had seriously studied middle school biology could easily recognize that the shape of this planet was exactly that of a human brain.

Xiang Qian landed on the connecting part between the left and right hemispheres, which consisted of fibers magnified countless times. After landing, he walked familiarly toward the deepest gully. Deep within the gully was a scene completely different from the gray-white surface outside. Bubbles shimmering with crystalline starlight adhered to the cliff walls. The number of bubbles was as numerous as the stars, densely packed from the bottom of the cliff to the top. The faint light gathered together, as brilliant as a galaxy.

Xiang Qian looked up, and as far as his gaze reached, the bubble he focused on automatically drifted before him. Segments of text appeared one by one on the surface of the bubble, followed by images, videos, and various types of data, all presented to him completely and quickly. Xiang Qian did not need to make any movements; as his thoughts reached out, the starlight flowing on the surface of the bubbles began to scatter in twos and threes. Each point of light carried a ray, connecting to another bubble on the cliff wall.

Every bubble on this planet was a carrier of stored information, categorized according to the content, and the rays of light emitted from the bubbles represented relevance. Other bubbles connected by these lines of starlight necessarily stored highly related information. Following the command of Xiang Qian's thoughts, the related bubbles detached from the cliff one by one, converging before his eyes along the rays of light as more information surged in like a tide.

Time passed bit by bit, and the massive amount of information consumed a long time, but Xiang Qian was not in a hurry at all. Not only did he control the planet here, but he also controlled the time here, because this was the place of his thoughts and soul; this "Brain Planet" was the "Memory Planet" deep within his mind. The "Method of Loci" that was touted as miraculous in the world of ordinary people was laughable compared to Xiang Qian's—how could building a memory palace compare to building a memory planet?

Xiang Qian extracted useful content from the massive amount of information without haste. The human brain was indeed miraculous; it could record more information than any computer terminal in reality, and the speed of processing and extracting information was actually faster, but it was also more prone to crashing than a computer in many cases. Fortunately, such problems did not exist for Xiang Qian. He maintained high-speed operation of his brain until a long-dusty document from reality appeared before his eyes.

"February 14, 1991."

Looking at the date marked at the beginning of the document, waves surged in Xiang Qian's heart, and his originally calm expression changed. It was at this moment that the voice in the void, which Xiang Qian found so annoying, sounded again, as if to remind him that he was not the only one existing in this void: "This is it. One of the goals you are obsessed with originated from this time. It is also the greatest shackle on you, or at least one of them." The owner of that voice seemed to be able to see the secrets of Xiang Qian's heart, or perhaps it was precisely because ripples had arisen in Xiang Qian's heart that he was given the opportunity to break the barrier and converse with Xiang Qian again.

Xiang Qian did not respond to the provocation from the voice in the void. He expressionlessly skipped over that document and continued to process other information. The voice in the void seemed to feel it was being ignored and fell silent, not making another sound until Xiang Qian left.

There was no concept of time in the endless void. Perhaps a long time had passed, or perhaps it was just a fleeting moment, but Xiang Qian had extracted all the necessary data. Just as he was about to leave, he suddenly stopped. The memory bubbles pulled by the starlight were flying back to their original positions one by one, but a ray of starlight on the first bubble was still swaying gently. The bubble at the other end of the ray was located at the deepest part of the gully, shimmering with a unique golden luster, yet it remained in place, unresponsive to the pull of the light.

Xiang Qian hesitated for a long time before finally being unable to resist walking toward the golden bubble. That unique golden bubble had the brightest light. Xiang Qian reached out and tapped it gently, and ripples like water waves spread across the surface of the bubble. Scenes appeared alternately: sometimes a young woman was teasing a chubby baby; sometimes a man with a thin face was seriously pressing on the baby's acupoints and meridians; sometimes a four- or five-year-old girl was deliberately pinching the baby's nose to tease him into crying—the center of the scenes was always a baby who looked a bit chubby but lacked energy. As the scenes changed, the baby's age gradually increased. He began to learn to walk and speak, and various sounds began to ring out in the scenes:

"Mom, what is a doctor?"

"Mom, am I sick? Why do I always have to see a doctor?"

"Dad, can your fingers blow wind? Can you blow wind into my tummy?"

"Mom, when I sleep, I see a little black dot, circling around me over and over again. I feel so dizzy."

"Big sister is mean, go away, go away! Aww..."

"Mom, Dad, I dreamed of that little black dot again yesterday, and there was a ball of bright wind. When the wind blew over, the little black dot exploded..."

"The little black dot is gone. The little black dot turned into many, many stars..."

Xiang Qian's eyes were filled with nostalgia as he looked up toward the vast void outside the gully, where the brilliant galaxy created by the explosion of the little black dot lay.