Shrinking Without End

Thump!

The three people Qin Yiguan suddenly plunged into a vast ocean.

The azure seawater was very pure, but also slightly viscous.

The impact of their fall was enormous; they spun like three tops in the water, then sank.

No one knows what kind of "sea" this is or where it is located.

The Underworld were bubbling away.

Suddenly, the entire sea began to spin rapidly, forming a huge whirlpool, and the seawater was absorbed by the deepest hole.

Qin Yiguan's mind was racing.

The seawater formed a whirlpool, only to be absorbed by the black hole at the bottom... Why does this feel so familiar?

"Could this be a toilet?"

The Underworld could actually speak underwater, and their voices were remarkably clear.

Qin Yiguan: "..."

At the same time, the three of them felt difficulty breathing, and their lungs could no longer take in oxygen.

Suffocation in the deep sea is truly a painful way to die.

Even if the Underworld members had regenerative abilities, they would probably only be able to Infinity cycle between death and resurrection.

Suddenly.

The three people's bodies shrank again.

The world around them had changed. The liquid seawater was no longer visible; instead, the surroundings were filled with enormous blue water droplets, each droplet exactly the same size. They were arranged in a specific way, with even gaps between adjacent droplets.

The three of them could breathe normally again, and their bodies kept passing through the gaps in the water droplets.

"The space here is sometimes incredibly vast, and sometimes extremely cramped."

The Caregiver said, "When it's huge, it feels as boundless as the universe; when it's narrow, it feels like it has exceeded the smallest limit of object size, and even quarks cannot define this place."

Quark?

The Underworld was somewhat puzzled.

In earlier years, the atom was the smallest unit of matter known to humankind.

"People believed that objects could be Infinity divided in two until only one independent, indivisible point of matter remained. This unimaginably small unit could no longer be divided, hence the name 'atom,' derived from the Greek word A-tomos. A means 'not,' and tomos means 'divisible' or 'divisible.'"

The Caregiver tumbled through the air, Big Head, one hand pressing down on his baseball cap, while patiently explaining, "Later, people discovered protons and neutrons in atoms, overturning the 'minimum atomic theory'."

"And then."

"The definition of 'quark' has emerged."

"Quarks are the smallest particles we encounter in scientific research. The discovery of quarks means that protons and neutrons are no longer the most basic building blocks; the limit of 'small' has been redefined."

"Quark-level beings are no longer observable."

The Caregiver rolled over again. "What frightens me is that I still have a vague sense of space. To put it simply, if there were a quark-sized object in front of us, it would appear to us as large as a planet."

The Underworld was somewhat shocked. "So, we're now as insignificant as dust?"

"Dust?"

The Caregiver shook his head helplessly. "To us now, a speck of dust is as large as the Solar System."

Qin Yiguan frowned slightly. "In other words, the surrounding space has never actually changed; only we have changed. We have been constantly shrinking, and even now, our current location is still next to the Sniper Aoke's corpse, but it has become extremely small, as if it has disappeared into thin air."

"Yes."

The Caregiver nodded. "I'm really curious, if we Infinity shrinking like this, what will we become? What will we see? Will we enter some legendary 'quantum space' or 'subspace' and see the true face of quantum physics, the true principle of quantum entanglement..."

I said.

The Underworld grinned and said, "How the hell do you, a Caregiver, know so many scientific terms?"

"This is for tutoring the children."

The Caregiver adjusted her baseball cap. "Many children in the orphanage are seen as crazy by outsiders, but I know very well that they are geniuses who are not good at expressing themselves. As the Caregiver of these geniuses, I must be strict with myself and master all the knowledge that the children want to know."

The Underworld fell silent for a moment, then thought, "I'm definitely not cut out for legitimate work."

Five lights and ten colors around.

Various bubbles kept rushing backward at high speed.

The Caregiver didn't know what size these substances were, nor what to call them.

Time was very long.

The three of them felt as if they had been falling for almost an hour.

Qin Yiguan began analyzing the situation, "It's obvious that the Ao Council remotely detonated the ' String of Jumping ' carried by the Sniper Aoke, and the reason we're in this state is due to the effect of that string."

In other words, we've fallen for the Ao Council's dirty tricks.

"What we are facing now may be an endless imprisonment. We may very well shrink indefinitely like this. Although we are not dead, the Ao Council has actually 'killed' us."

"The Boundless One."

Qin Yiguan called out.

But in the next instant, the surrounding scene seemed to darken slightly, as if shrouded in a thin mist.

But the figure of the Boundless One did not appear.

Qin Yiguan was stunned for a moment, then a bizarre possibility came to mind.

The Boundless One had actually arrived, but Boundless One now far too enormous. His appearance merely obscured some of the light. Or perhaps the three of them were currently inside the Boundless One's body, in a rift countless times smaller than a quark.

The 'thin mist' surrounding them is very likely the body of the Boundless One.

What's that saying again? "You can't see the true face of Mount Lu because you're standing in the mountain yourself."

The phrase sounds somewhat absurd and bizarre in this context, yet it aptly conveys the corresponding meaning.

"Even the Boundless One couldn't take us away?"

A sense of gloom immediately settled over Qin Yiguan's heart.

Don't be so pessimistic.

"I believe that things like size will eventually have a limit."

The Caregiver calmly said, "Moreover, we might have some unexpected gains. Based on my observations, as our size shrinks, our weight and density are also decreasing proportionally. This may seem illogical, but it's the truth."

"The most illogical thing is..."

"The acceleration due to gravity on our bodies has not decreased."

"In other words, we are becoming Infinity lighter, but the Earth's gravity remains constant, which causes our falling speed to keep increasing."

The Underworld were somewhat bewildered. "So what?"

"In the physical world, a major reason why humans cannot break the speed of light is that we cannot find a sufficiently 'light' substance."

"We are becoming lighter and lighter."

The Caregiver paused, then said, "Who knows? Perhaps we've already broken the speed of light barrier."

Qin Yiguan suddenly looked up, "According to relativity, if we break the speed of light, we'll be ahead of time."

The Caregiver pulled down his hat brim again. "Who knows? We might be falling at a hundred times the speed of light, or even ten thousand times the speed of light, but because of the strangeness of the surrounding space, we can't perceive it. Our vision and sound are also unaffected for some reason."

"Let's assume we can escape from here."

"After returning to the real world."

The Caregiver frowned. "That time will probably be 100 years, or even 10,000 years from now."