Chapter Summaries

Light and Shadow explained the universe’s wider structure to Luo Qi, then took him through countless universe-bubbles to witness their varied laws, civilizations, and fates. It revealed that its body consisted of universes and that, with only minutes left to live, it was beginning to shed them into the void.

• Light and Shadow told Luo Qi about the void, cosmic consciousness, and the different paths civilizations took beyond their own spaces.
• Light and Shadow brought Luo Qi through a universe where two space-level civilizations exhausted its matter in war before departing into the void.
• Luo Qi saw a universe whose candy-like worlds and sugar-based life had developed weapons and conflict.
• Light and Shadow guided Luo Qi through other universes, including one that shattered and scattered its fragments.
• Light and Shadow revealed that countless universes formed its body and said its death would dissolve the order holding them together.
• Luo Qi noticed Light and Shadow’s edges blurring as golden motes, each a universe, drifted away.

Luo Qi showed the Traveler the worlds of his microcosm and watched it disintegrate after sharing its memories, advice, and a silver coin. The coin revealed a route toward the universe’s edge, and Luo Qi left Universe No. 4 to follow it into the darkness.

• Luo Qi introduced the Traveler to No. 1 Water Blue Star and No. 2 Water Blue Star, recalling how he had helped their people survive and develop.
• Luo Qi took the Traveler to a mountaintop on No. 2 Water Blue Star to watch the sunrise and reflected on how he had changed.
• The Traveler gave Luo Qi a silver coin, urged him to keep exploring, and disintegrated in the morning light.
• Luo Qi used the coin to reveal a navigation map marking a location at the edge of the universe, facing the encroaching void.
• Luo Qi accelerated the microcosm, broke through Universe No. 4, and traveled into the darkness as black anomalies pursued him before losing his trail.

Luo Qi’s infinite perfect replication clones ravaged Universe No. 5, while the White Light civilization organized a retreat as its defenses failed. The Luo Qis debated how much more matter to seize and whether to blockade the civilization’s spatial layer before withdrawing.

• Luo Qi’s clones seized more than half of Universe No. 5’s matter, and their battles devastated civilizations across its spatial layers.
• The White Light civilization determined that retreat was its best option and ordered its members to prepare to abandon the universe.
• The White Light civilization’s overseers used the Illusory Void Layer to coordinate their response, but the Luo Qis’ spatial barriers kept its forces divided.
• The Luo Qis reported that 56% of the White Light civilization’s resistance forces had been sealed off and 60% of the universe’s matter had been plundered.
• The Luo Qis identified the approximate location of the White Light civilization and discussed blockading its spatial layer or withdrawing after seizing 65% of the matter.

The White Light Civilization withdrew after the universe’s stolen matter began returning, while Luo Qi used his experiments in Universe No. 6 to create a universe from energy and matter. He realized that countless universes contained infinite versions of himself, many of whom were beginning their own experiments and wars.

• No. 7 urged the White Light Civilization to delay its retreat after seeing the universe’s matter return, but the civilization abandoned its trapped Fighter Corps and restored the galaxies.
• Luo Qi observed the repaired universe and saw that its expansion might eventually bring another cosmic flash billions of years later.
• Luo Qi created a space bubble in Universe No. 6, altered photons, and expanded them into a universe, then transformed energy into universal matter.
• The other Luo Qis learned from his experiment and scattered to create their own derivative universes.
• Luo Qi perceived countless universes containing versions of himself and realized that infinite selves were creating more universes and fighting over them.

Luo Qi left his role as Universe Administrator to search for the source of reality, after restoring the universes and scattering his replicas as restricted rings and beads. He sank into the darkness and lost his power, ending in a frozen world where a scarred arm emerged from the snow.

• Luo Qi released the civilizations inside him, then crossed the universes and headed into the void to pursue his doubts about reality.
• He awakened as one of seven eyeless, elongated beings around a rainbow orb and saw a Wandering Traveler take another version of himself from a universe that was then swallowed and recreated by a void anomaly.
• Luo Qi watched his replicas invade universes, clash with civilizations that manipulated time, and multiply across countless realities.
• He used blue lightning to remove his replicas from the universes, turn them into restricted rings or beads, and restore the civilizations and universes they had damaged.
• Luo Qi plunged away from the orb toward the darkness, losing his power as he sank and recalling that he wanted to discover whether the world was real or fake.
• In a freezing, lightless world, a scarred human arm thrust out of a mound of snow.