A pale blue guiding path of light silently stretched beneath their feet, like a glowing stream winding through this silent forest of cold silver geometric structures.
Ming Xin and Shadow Fiend followed the path, their footsteps swallowed by some sound-absorbing field. All around them lay a heart-palpitating silence.
The mirror-smooth building surfaces reflected their figures. Countless Ming Xins and Shadow Fiends moved in unison at the edges of their vision, creating an eerie sense of detachment, as though they had been replicated without end.
The air carried an extremely faint, refreshing scent resembling a mixture of ozone and metal, the result of high-purity Energy Fields and the evaporation of special materials.
The temperature remained as constant as the most precise thermostatic chamber, without the slightest fluctuation.
Everything here seemed too "perfect," so perfect that it had lost the disturbances and accidents inherent to life.
"The Energy Field here... is terrifyingly stable." Shadow Fiend sent his voice in a low murmur. His shadow senses were greatly restricted here.
He could only barely sense a very narrow area near the guiding path. "And I can't feel any remnants of the past—no emotions, no fragments of memory. It's like... everything was completely cleansed."
"What the Observer Civilization pursued was likely this absolute objectivity and Order."
Ming Xin swept his gaze over the buildings on both sides. Though his senses were restricted as well, the resonance of the Miniature Universe within him allowed him to catch deeper things.
"These buildings are not merely residences or workshops. They are themselves enormous Energy Nodes and information-processing units.
"The entire nexus was once a living, thinking super-lifeform that monitored the universe's 'finality' phenomena."
The guiding path led them to a relatively low but exceptionally vast hemispherical building.
There was no entrance on its surface, but as they