The cat, which had been quietly nestled in Su Huilan's arms, let out a Hanran meow.
Alice remembered it as a fat orange cat, but now, for some reason, all its fur had turned white, without a single other color, like snow on the Alps; its eyes had become as clear as sapphires, and it stood radiantly on Su Huilan's shoulder, looking as noble as a princess from some cat kingdom.
The Crow Guagua, speaking in Chinese that Alice could barely understand, " Ruxue, you're getting more and more beautiful. Would you like to have dinner together? I can go to the lake and catch a few alien fish for you."
The white cat turned its head away, leaped lightly off Su Huilan's shoulder, and walked gracefully along the deck toward the bow of the ship. The further it went, the Alice felt its body grew, until it transformed into an ancient behemoth.
The Crow cawed and flew into the sky, its outstretched wings turning into a hanging cloud, as if deliberately blocking the sunlight for the cat.
Alice exclaimed, "What's going on! Is Ramla about to change again?"
The people around them smiled without saying a word.
Alice looked at Mrs. Larry, puzzled. Mrs. Larry frowned, and after a long pause, said, "I think we're already dreaming."
This was probably the dream with the most Awakened Qingmu had ever experienced since he could remember. Situ and Duwa's Mental Power was no weaker than his, and with the addition of Crow, Hanran, and Su Huilan, their combined Mental Power was enough to expand the dream into an unimaginable space.
Of course, their current goal was to decipher those characters. After entering the dream, the characters on the deck shimmered with a strange light in Qingmu's eyes. They seemed to leap and move, as if they were coming to life. But something was still missing, preventing him from seeing the truth hidden behind these symbols.
They began to search for a direction to extend these two-dimensional symbols in their dreams, attempting to transform them into three-dimensional characters. However, this dimensional direction was extremely difficult to find; it was clearly not simply a matter of writing the characters in a three-dimensional way as seen by humans, but rather of using the power of the mind to change their shape.
This is a time-consuming and laborious task, and even for awakened experts like them, it is extremely difficult, like asking a frog at the bottom of a well to find the direction of the ocean.
With each attempt, the entire dream became distorted and blurred.
Alice cried out, "I'm so dizzy!"
Mrs. Larry also clearly felt dizzy; if it weren't for Qingmu and Situ protecting her, she would have exited the dream long ago. In comparison, Alice was able to scream so loudly, so she seemed to be in a slightly better condition than Mrs. Larry.
She endured the mental torment and carefully observed the changes in the symbols in her dream.
She suddenly remembered the wonder she had witnessed at the altar of the Sangqi Tribe that day: the stones, pulled up by the giant moon's gravity, were arranged in a regular pattern in the air, and moonlight shone through the cracks in the stones, displaying these symbols on the ground. She understood then that the real writing was in the air, and what appeared on the ground was merely a projection.
"I think I know!" Mrs. Larry said excitedly.
Everyone was looking at her.
"I need to test it with a script whose meaning we already know; hieroglyphics, or Chinese, should be the closest script to this symbol."
As she spoke, she wrote an ancient Chinese character for "horse" on the ground. Since she was in a dream, she didn't need a pen or anything. As soon as her mind moved, the word "horse" appeared on the ground.
"Try using the method you just learned to expand on this word," she said.
Qingmu and Situ did as instructed, trying the same method again. The dream began to distort, shake, and flicker, like a television with an unstable power supply.
In a fleeting moment, the character for "horse" suddenly came to life, transforming into a three-dimensional mass of light and shadow. This mass of light and shadow was clearly nothing in particular, yet you could instantly recognize it as a horse. Even more remarkably, this horse wasn't like the ones we usually see, where you can only see one side; in the dream, it was shown in its entirety, and no matter what angle you looked from, you could see its whole form.
Mrs. Larry exclaimed "Good!" and wrote another word on the ground in hieroglyphics that Qingmu didn't recognize, letting them unfold in the same dimension as before, but the word didn't change. She wrote another word, and that word immediately turned into a snake writhing on the ground.
Mrs. Larry said, "This is it! I'm certain that Chinese characters and hieroglyphs share the same origin, but Chinese characters are closer to the original higher-dimensional script, or rather, they are easier to develop in the spiritual dimension. Hieroglyphs, on the other hand, incorporate too many phonetic symbols and have strayed far from their original meaning. The dimensional transformation of Chinese characters in this dream is consistent with how our brains understand the meaning of Chinese characters. Now, let's see the true face of three-dimensional writing!"
Everyone understood her meaning. They all activated their spiritual power, just as they had revived the Chinese characters earlier, and the symbols on the ground leaped up one after another, transforming into many strange orbs of light.
These clusters of light tumbled and twisted in the air, sticking together and eventually forming a single, shimmering nebula.
Nebula spread, gradually covering the deck, enveloping the entire ship, and then spreading throughout the entire dream.
People were in a nebula, surrounded by countless twinkling stars. And amidst those starlight, Qingmu actually saw many scenes, etched into the void like murals.
Then, the murals came to life, and the entire nebula covering them transformed into a giant holographic projection of the celestial sphere.
In reality, a person standing inside such a massive holographic projection would be unable to see anything clearly because of limited field of vision. But in a dream, direction and distance are not obstacles; Qingmu can see the entire content of the projection—or rather, he perceives it with his consciousness.
The first thing that appears on the celestial sphere is a panoramic view of the Milky Way: a dark galactic center surrounded by strange lights, like a glowing rugby ball. Several huge spiral arms extend from the galactic nucleus and rotate around the galactic center.
Next, the scene shifts to the area between the Perseus Arm and the Sagittarius Arm, where there is a relatively small spiral arm— the Orion Spur. Although short, it shines just as brightly as its neighbor.
The scene continued to move, magnifying the Orion Spur, where a large nebula resembled a large bird with outstretched wings. Suddenly, the bird flapped its wings twice, and a wave of energy emanated from the sky, even causing Qingmu to feel a strong mental shock.
The entire nebula undulated like ocean waves. Wave after wave of folds overlapped, piling up more and more until they formed a shape resembling a human brain.
Not far from it—at the center of the Sea of Nebulae—a small black vortex appeared, relentlessly devouring the surrounding starlight.
At the same time, a name appeared in Qingmu's consciousness— Gaia!
He didn't know why the name appeared; it didn't seem to be information contained within these expanded-dimensional texts, but rather something that had been awakened from his memory.
He knew that the scene he had just witnessed described the birth of Gaia —the Boltzmann Brain.
The scene then shifts to the left side of the Orion Spur, where a yellow dwarf star stands out. Inconspicuous in the dazzling Milky Way, it possesses a unique and captivating charm. Surrounding it is a ring of asteroids and dust, and inside that ring, eight planets of varying sizes orbit it.
Qingmu immediately recognized the yellow dwarf star as the Sun and the outer ring as the Kuiper Belt. When he noticed the blue planet, an overwhelming sense of familiarity washed over him—it was the direction of home.
Suddenly, a soft, delicate tentacle emerged from the wrinkled cortex of Boltzmann Brain in the Great Nebula and burrowed into the black hole at the center of the nebula, not far from it.
In that inconspicuous yellow dwarf galaxy at the edge of the spiral arm, the surface of the third blue planet orbiting the Sun is suddenly covered with dense tentacles.
A primitive man holding a harpoon stood on the seashore. Above the sea were countless tentacles, like floating seaweed. The closest one touched his forehead and then suddenly burrowed inside.
He was still holding the harpoon, completely unaware, when suddenly a jade-green eye opened above his brow.