Chapter 483: The Eleven-Dimensional Pastoral Era! Dimensional Reduction Strike! Light-Speed Reduction Strike!
After finishing a series of personnel changes, Li Ang finally moved on to the main topic, speaking to the Universal Megacorp employees present about the situation in the Three-Body universe.
What kind of universe was Three-Body? This was the question everyone was most curious about.
On the way here, they had all heard bits and pieces. Some said that universe had no value worth integrating. Others claimed it was a world a hundred times more brutal than the Warhammer universe.
But no matter how many rumors there were, none could compare to hearing the truth directly from Li Ang's mouth.
The only thing they could be certain of so far was one piece of gossip—that this time, the integration of the Three-Body universe would involve bringing along the newly completed Aether Phase-Coupling Engine!
This would be the first time the Universal Megacorp carried a cataclysmic, law-tier weapon into an integration. That alone showed this integration was destined to be anything but ordinary.
What's more, the overall commander for this operation had already been decided— Li Ang himself would personally take the helm. Very few universes warranted the Chief Executive of the Megacorp to step in and micromanage.
And this time, he would be overseeing the entire integration process!
What exactly was it about the Three-Body universe that required them to take such elaborate precautions?
"Everyone, in this meeting I won't go into a long lecture on the history of this universe. I'll only tell you what the ultimate goal of its advanced civilizations is, and the operating laws of that universe."
Facing the staff in the council hall, Li Ang spoke with solemnity: "Similar to the Warhammer universe, this one also possesses a mechanism of cycle and restart."
"And how the universe restarts—that is the key focus for this integration."
As he finished, Li Ang gestured for the Transcendent AI Europa to distribute part of the data to the staff below, so they could follow along with what he was about to say.
The dark threads and hidden metaphors of the Three-Body universe were extremely complex and vast. Without someone helping to unravel them, these employees would have no awareness of just how difficult this integration truly was.
When they first heard the phrase "universe restart," the high-ranking Megacorp members weren't particularly concerned. After all, the Megacorp had already learned more than once about the secret of universal restart.
Back in the StarCraft universe, they had discovered that the end purpose of most universes was exactly this—restart, a cycle like the Taiji diagram, Infinityly revolving.
All things perish, but the cycle never ceases.
And what was the Universal Megacorp striving for now, if not eternity?
If the pursuit of eternity was the ultimate goal of all civilizations, then at this stage, the Megacorp was sitting in the top chair of that field!
After all, the universes under its dominion far outstripped any civilization in the Three-Body universe. By all logic, those civilizations could never hope to achieve the pursuit of eternity as the Megacorp had.
So what gave them the right to do it?
Yet Li Ang's next words left them stunned.
"The god-tier civilizations in the Three-Body universe set as their ultimate goal the avoidance of the cycle—to exist eternally, never to be extinguished. In fact… in a sense, their experience in this field surpasses our own."
This statement instantly threw the senior staff into confusion. What did he mean, they had experience with eternity? Could it be that in the Three-Body universe, some god-tier civilization had truly achieved immortality?
How was that possible? Nothing was eternal. Besides, according to the documents Li Ang had just handed out, wasn't the ending of the Three-Body universe death? Was this another form of "eternity"?
Before they could voice their doubts, Li Ang continued, laying out the fundamental points of the Three-Body universe.
"After the Big Bang, the Three-Body universe possessed eleven-dimensional spacetime. At that time, the speed of light had no limit—it could, in the blink of an eye, traverse from one end of the universe to the other."
"This superluminal state gave the first batch of civilizations an incomparably blissful pastoral era. They lived in God's Eden, freely reveling in the joy of new life."
Superluminal light, eleven-dimensional spacetime…
Just these two pieces of information were enough to jolt every employee present. Even with the Megacorp's present development, their maximum capability was only tens of thousands of times the speed of light.
Aside from the Xeelee Nightfighter being able to achieve superluminal travel, no other warship or engine could execute such leaps.
As for eleven-dimensional spacetime— Megacorp scientists couldn't even begin to picture it.
So far, their theoretical research had reached at most a nine-dimensional state of undifferentiated chaotic proto-consciousness. In practice, they could only access from the six-dimensional parallel-universe observational state to the seven-dimensional causal-observational state.
What would eleven-dimensional spacetime be like? No one could imagine.
At that moment, V and the other Expansion Department staff were all deep in thought. If they could acquire this kind of superluminal technology, the Megacorp's control costs across all universes could be cut by more than half!
And their efficiency in exploring other parallel and multiverses would increase several times over!
"How wonderful…"
"We must secure this universe quickly."
"The integration of the Three-Body universe is absolutely necessary…"
Just as the senior staff were dreaming about conquering the Three-Body universe and catapulting their technology into another qualitative leap, Li Ang suddenly shifted his tone.
"But the outbreak of war drove this universe rapidly toward collapse. The long Paradise War not only wiped out countless civilizations and species, but also threw its physical and mathematical laws into imbalance and breakdown."
"The rampant use of law-tier weapons caused the very fundamentals of physics to change moment by moment. Space and time themselves were continually shattered by the strikes of higher-dimensional civilizations."
As Li Ang spoke, a series of terms appeared before the executives' eyes: Dimensional Reduction Strike, Mathematical Law Weapons, Four-Dimensional Fragments, Black Domain.
"The wars among those advanced civilizations broke the dimensions of the Three-Body universe, sending it plunging from eleven dimensions down toward zero."
"By the human era, its spacetime had already fallen to three dimensions. Only a few regions still retained remnants of four-dimensional space. But even in three dimensions, collapse continued unabated."
"The universe would gradually fall from three dimensions to two, until its final death."
These calm, understated words sent a chill down the spines of everyone present. They had seen many universes, but none like this.
Of course they knew that every universe would eventually head toward death and collapse. But to see one smashed down from eleven dimensions to three, still plunging headlong toward zero—that was something they had never encountered before.
Just those few words from Li Ang carried the icy sting of death that permeated the Three-Body universe.
Why would they go to such lengths to integrate such a dangerous universe?
"I don't understand. Why would that eleven-dimensional, blissful pastoral era come to an end? Wasn't there any way to prevent the war from breaking out?"
The one who spoke was Song Zhaomei. But the moment the words left her lips, she regretted them. After all, a civilization's survival and development required vast resources.
With prosperity inevitably comes decline. Conflict among civilizations over limited resources is destined, especially since they lack the ability to open stargates and expand into other universes.
The only reason the Universal Megacorp has managed to expand its dominion to such a colossal scale lies in the virtually limitless supply of resources, allowing humanity and other intelligent species to squander and exhaust them at will.
As for where this inflation will ultimately end, no one cares for now.
Faced with Song Zhaomei's naïve question, Li Ang only cast her a glance. "The end of the pastoral age was inevitable."
He then went on to explain in detail the weapons these god-tier civilizations used, and the methods of their wars.
As the protracted "War of Heaven" escalated, all civilizations realized it was a fight to the death. They resorted to every possible means to strike down their enemies, and in this struggle, the laws of physics themselves became the ultimate weapons of mass destruction.
Among the many physics-based weapons, the most frequently employed were dimensional reduction strikes and light-speed reduction strikes.
As the name suggests, a dimensional reduction strike forcibly lowers the dimensionality of a target region of space.
Once spatial dimensions are reduced, they can never be restored. The structures of higher dimensions are destroyed in the process, and all resources that once existed within them become unusable in lower-dimensional space.
Because the physical laws of lower-dimensional space differ entirely from those of higher dimensions, a dimensional reduction strike is an extinction-level attack—leaving a civilization forever unable to rise again.
"So in that case, the Three-Body universe may once have been a brilliant age of myth. Nüwa was in fact a genetic code engineer, creating species through sequence editing.
"Kua Fu, who 'chased the sun,' was likely using a photon capture net to harvest stellar ejecta, building mobile energy stations for his interstellar fleet.
"Xiwangmu gained immortality through entropy-reversing gene manipulation and consciousness uploading. And Zhong Kui, the 'ghost catcher,' was actually a security specialist who trapped quantum-state organisms.
"But when the higher-dimensional strata collapsed, they either perished or were forced to reduce themselves into lower dimensions, losing those abilities."
This theory came from Chisagi fox, who, as a researcher steeped in Chinese traditional culture, often felt that ancient myths hid clues to truths long forgotten. History's reality, he believed, might be buried in those tales.
"It can't be ruled out," Li Ang said. He did not dismiss the notion as fanciful—on the contrary, he believed such seemingly outlandish ideas often brushed very close to the truth.
The eras of gods, of cultivation, of martial arts—all seemed to carry the same aura of dwindling energy. Civilizations in the idyllic eleven-dimensional age had only one real shortcoming compared with the Megacorp: they lacked the ability to open stargates into other universes.
Li Ang then went on to describe the light-speed reduction strike—the very weapon responsible for dragging the Three-Body universe's speed of light down from infinite superluminal distances to its current sluggish crawl.
A light-speed reduction strike flattens the curvature of a designated region of space, thereby lowering the speed of light. This cripples a civilization's travel and communications capabilities.
Once the local speed of light falls below that star system's escape velocity, the trapped civilization will be imprisoned there forever, unable to leave.
This was precisely why Li Ang had no intention of bringing FTL engines or communications devices into the Three-Body universe: such technologies simply wouldn't function there.
The only technology still capable of instantaneous information transfer was the Reducers' supermembrane broadcast.
"Dimensional reduction and light-speed reduction strikes both have clear strengths and weaknesses. They can exterminate targets far more thoroughly than our neutron annihilation strikes.
"But the damage they inflict upon the universe is irreversible. Light speed will grow ever slower, space ever lower-dimensional, until the cosmos ends in absolute death."
At these words, the hearts of the Megacorp's executives sank.
From eleven dimensions down to three, from limitless superluminal speeds down to a mere 300,000 kilometers per second—the destruction wrought by these god-tier civilizations was nothing short of tragic.
What a waste! Squandering such a magnificent universe into ruin.
Would they really rather destroy themselves than find a way to coexist?
"I still don't understand," Lucius said, giving voice to what most in the chamber were thinking. "Why should we pour so much effort into claiming such a battered, scarred universe? The Three-Body cosmos holds no colonization value whatsoever.
"The dangerous StarCraft universe at least brought us into the era of psionic cultivation.
"The Star Wars galaxy, with its extragalactic cracks into higher-dimensional space, revealed the marvel of the Force.
"And the bloody chaos of the Warhammer universe elevated the Megacorp to a true god-tier civilization—where even gods themselves can be mass-produced.
"But what does the Three-Body universe offer?
"A world where physics is collapsing and dimensions keep falling—what could possibly be worth the risk?
"If we open a stargate into it, those god-tier civilizations will surely hurl themselves through in desperation. It would be like a besieged city: those outside longing to break in, those inside desperate to escape."
As countless puzzled eyes turned toward him, Li Ang only gave a mysterious smile. After all this careful buildup, he was finally ready to reveal the secret of the Three-Body universe's cycle of rebirth.
"Before I explain why the Megacorp will integrate the Three-Body universe—and the secret of its cycle of reincarnation—let me first tell you an old story."
With deliberate suspense, he asked: "How many of you have read Journey to the West? Raise your hands."
At this, the executives exchanged baffled looks. No one knew what medicine Li Ang was selling in this gourd, yet many still lifted their hands with doubtful curiosity.
Journey to the West was a household tale in Megacorp society. Even the most ignorant human knew of the pilgrimage led by a mischievous monkey and his hapless companions.
Even representatives of other species had some familiarity with its plot.
But what connection could Journey to the West possibly have with the collapsing, science-fictional realm of the Three-Body universe?
One was a fantastical myth, the other a shattered cosmos of physics. No one could see the link.
(Show your support and read more chapters on my Patreon: [email protected]/psychopet. Thank you for your support!)