On the Roof of the World, at Nawa Base.
At an altitude of six thousand meters, it stood closer to the stars. Its skies were impossibly clear, and its nights cold enough to pierce the bone.
Ning Qing sat before a huge machine. The display showed dull, broken waveforms, seemingly repetitive yet never quite the same—just like life here. Day after day might look identical, but each one carried the vast dreams of those who pursued the stars.
The repeated beeping;
the whir of the machine's fan;
the wind outside the window.
It seemed silent and noisy all at once, noisy and silent all at once.
Just like the universe overhead.
Ning Qing could not help observing that lifeless neighboring plane again. It was just as it had been last time, without a trace of life. Researchers at the base had already discovered and published their findings on this plane that had inexplicably lost all life, so she could no longer write her graduation thesis on it—unless her observations could prove its withering had not occurred naturally, but had some other cause.
But there was little point.
The deities probably knew why it had been destroyed. She only needed to keep growing until she could reach them, and she could obtain the answer directly.
There was no need to pour so much effort into a graduation thesis.
For her, it did not really matter whether she graduated. Whatever topic she chose, the thesis would be incidental.
"Creeak..."
The stool legs scraped against the floor.
Ning Qing rose and went to another machine. She intended to verify the Spirituality Force proposed by Mr. Ling Boxin.
In her view, the main reason his Spirituality Force—the force by which "two worlds influence each other and alter the course of each world"—could not be