Book of Arrays

"Why does this give me such a terracotta army vibe..."

The mass of roots spread without pause, sending root-stalks lengthwise and crosswise through the gaps between the cubes.

Rootlets extended from the roots. With practiced ease, they pierced into the cubes, carefully secreting connective proteins to reinforce the cubes themselves while clearing away the dust and rock covering their surfaces.

The root system grew and spread at undiminished speed while cleaning up these "cultural relics."

After the dust and rock had been cleared away, the cubes' true appearance was revealed before Huo Gu. They were two meters long, half a meter wide, and three meters tall. These figures were not absolutely precise; the edge length of each cube varied by about one to three centimeters. Their material was the same as the metal wall, which might also be why this array had remained so intact for hundreds of millions of years.

It was clear that the objects in this cube array were not the same kind of thing as the cubes seen before. In terms of appearance, these array cubes looked more like gravestones.

On the surfaces of these repaired cubes were countless patterns. These had not formed naturally, nor had the seasoned Huo Gu finally slipped up; the cubes had originally come with these patterns.

The patterns covered the cube surfaces, combining into geometric designs of similar size. Each design occupied an area of four square centimeters on the cube's surface, arranged neatly in rows. Scattered among the geometric figures were symbols made up of dots.

Obviously, this was writing, an unknown script completely different from human language.

"This doesn't seem to have much to do with gravestones. It's more like the stone tablets in tombs specifically used to record important information. In other words..."

Huo Gu looked out. The entire array stretched endlessly into the distance, even after Huo Gu adjusted the viewing range of its eyes. Its scale far exceeded any burial complex on Earth.

"Is this a book?"

How could information be preserved for longer?

That was an extremely difficult matter, because in this universe, entropy was everywhere. Natural erosion would inevitably destroy preserved readable information into indecipherable noise; the only difference was how long it took.

On Earth, there was only one method capable of preserving information on the scale of hundreds of millions of years—carving words into stone.

It did not literally mean using stone as the carrier of information, but was a metaphor: "engraving information onto some solid object that is extremely difficult to alter."

Clearly, the intelligent life that had engraved writing onto the cube array back then had thought along the same lines as humans on Earth, which was why it had created such an enormous "Book of Arrays."

"What a shame. Deciphering languages has never really been my strong suit."

Huo Gu stared at the writing on the cubes with longing and regret. Although it came from an archaeology background, it had focused more on improving its skills in excavating relics. If this were ancient writing from Earth's history, it would have some foundation and could read the general meaning. But when it came to alien script with no basis whatsoever, it truly was helpless.

Deciphering a completely unfamiliar language really required a specialized linguistic research team paired with a national-level supercomputer.

For the time being, Huo Gu set the matter of the cube array aside and shifted its attention to the roots that had been spreading forward all along. At this point, the roots had finally emerged from the cube array. Huo Gu made a rough calculation of the cube array's area: one hundred square kilometers, equivalent to fourteen thousand football fields.

Farther beyond the cube array, Huo Gu could see two thin lines in the distance, like ropes hanging down between heaven and earth.

"More seawater columns?"

Huo Gu checked its current distance from the previous water source. Although it was still within an acceptable range, and the issue could be solved by increasing delivery volume, having extra supply points to ease logistical pressure was naturally not a bad thing.

To conserve organic materials, Huo Gu had the root system prioritize growing toward the two thin lines in the distance.

But this time, the thin lines left Huo Gu puzzled. The lines grew thicker in Huo Gu's field of vision, yet their forms remained blurry, as if there was still a considerable distance between them. Both thin lines were like this.

Huo Gu immediately noticed this abnormality.

"Strange. Could the cracks in the upper layer be larger, making these two water columns thicker than the previous one?"

The answer would soon be revealed. The roots continued spreading, covering roughly another forty-plus kilometers before finally extending to the locations of the two pillars.

These two pillars were not water columns. They did not even have anything to do with water. They were support pillars holding up this giant underground cavity, enormous columns with diameters of one kilometer each.

And farther beyond Huo Gu's current position, there were likewise vertical thin lines distributed on both sides. It could be guessed that those, too, were support pillars similar to the ones at its current location.

"The pillars here seem to appear frequently within my field of view. Then why didn't I see any support pillars along the stretch I traveled before?"

So far, Huo Gu had advanced nearly three hundred and seventy kilometers. Yet along that distance, it had not seen any similar giant supporting structures.

Judging from the currently observed structure of the underground cavity, support pillars should have existed along the route Huo Gu had previously passed through. That raised the question: where had those enormous pillars gone?

As Huo Gu was deep in thought, it inadvertently saw the cube array that had already been completely occupied by the root system. In an instant, realization dawned.

Clearly, constructing such a massive cube array required consuming an enormous amount of alloy, one capable of lasting for hundreds of millions of years. Then where had those materials come from?

The metal wall could not have been dismantled, because this was underground, and at that time, the planet might still have been in a molten state, a giant ball of magma overall. Taking apart the metal wall would have been pure suicide.

That left only the support pillars made of the same material. Because the planet was still in a fully molten, or half-molten and half-solid, state, the pressure could not have been as immense as the underground pressure of a solid planet. In that case, it all made sense.

"So, what exactly is this underground cavity...?"

When intelligent life created something, it generally gave it some kind of purpose. As for the underground cavity Huo Gu was now deep inside, this was a feat beyond even the human world's technology. It was already a civilization-level megaproject. So this cavity was absolutely not the product of some bored bastard with too much free time.

Not to mention that "Book of Arrays" covering one hundred square kilometers.

So what meaning had been given to this place at the beginning of its construction?

(If you think this book is still worth reading, could you help promote it a little? Thank you so much, OwO)