Chapter 149 His Thoughts Back Then

Izax recounted the events of the past. Perhaps those events were too distant in the past, and his recollections were somewhat disordered. However, what he remembered most vividly was the reaction of that eccentric old human after being captured by the demon guards.

"He wasn't afraid of me at all, not even when I transformed into my original form and stood before him," Izax said, still finding it unbelievable. "The flames on my body ignited his robe, but the old man simply brushed off the flames and earnestly requested that I let him return to continue his experiments. I had never seen such a fellow before. I found him quite interesting, so I gave him two choices."

"I told him that because he was a very interesting human and had brought me immense novelty, I could make an exception and let him choose between two paths. The first choice was to spare his life. He could leave this place freely but was not allowed to take anything, as those things were spoils of war for the demon legion. The second choice was that I would allow him to return to continue his experiments, but he would only have one year left to live, and his soul would belong to me after death."

Izax suddenly made a face as he said this, though it might have just been a roll of his eyes—after all, that guy's face usually looked like a grimace anyway, so any expression he made had too much of a feinting effect. "Recalling it now, it's actually a bit... embarrassing. I was young back then and wanted to keep up with the trends, show off my swagger or something. That was popular among demons back then: scare humans, grant a wish, take their souls, and so on. That was how to display your 'kingly demeanor.' At the time, I figured a normal human would definitely choose to live, but that old man surprised me again."

"He chose to stay and do experiments, right?" Hao Ren had expected as much. Such a story wasn't surprising to him, but it must have been a novelty to Izax back then. "What exactly was he researching?"

"He was researching the universe, researching what was outside the 'space bubble zone,'" Izax nodded. "I didn't understand any of that back then. I just felt that this old human was really interesting, crazy, and dared to challenge demons, so I let him continue his experiments. As a result, that guy actually said thank you and turned around to钻 (zuān - burrow/delve) back into his laboratory, continuing his research in the ruins of a demon-infested kingdom. This time, I couldn't control my curiosity, so I went to see what he was actually researching."

"Then he told me about his 'space bubble zone' conjecture, like a teacher educating a student, not caring at all about my demon identity. He seriously shoved a book at me and then stood in front of his experiment table and started lecturing. He mentioned a very novel guess that scholars of various races had never imagined before—do you remember I just told you that the spatial structure of my home was different from other universes? We have many fragmented spatial 'sac' structures. The entire universe seems to be composed of these small bubbles. Inside the 'sac,' there aren't such vast celestial structures like the Milky Way. Most of them are just a continent occupying a space, or at most a space bubble the size of a single star system. That old human called this structure the 'space bubble zone' and strictly classified each type of space bubble. He spent his whole life studying these things and made a conjecture: the space bubble zone is not the true face of the universe but only a distorted, abnormal galaxy. He discovered that many physical laws in the space bubble zone were problematic, so he guessed that the entire bubble zone was not formed naturally but was twisted and shattered from a normal, large galaxy after some kind of celestial cataclysm many years ago. He thought the space bubble zone was actually just a very inconspicuous little oasis in the real universe, and a very unstable, very abnormal oasis at that. The truly endless world is outside—as long as you cross the outermost layer of space bubbles, you can see the endless starry sky."

Izax suddenly took a breath. "Like the starry sky I see in your world."

Hao Ren thought for a moment. "...There's been smog here for over a year. You can see stars?"

Izax rolled his eyes and slapped Hao Ren on the shoulder. "So Vivian is right, the only thing your mouth evolved for is eating, drinking, and getting slapped!"

Hao Ren smiled awkwardly. "Continue, continue."

"We can't see the same starry sky as you in our world," Izax said, taking a sip of wine. "Looking up at the sky in each space sac, or space bubble, you see all sorts of bizarre things: planets, auroras, illusions of nearby spaces, and the occasional few stars, but never a picture of a sky full of stars. For thousands of years, people there have taken this as normal, only that old human felt it wasn't right. He didn't know how to calculate the theoretical size of the universe but discovered that this size was astonishing, so he desperately wanted to find out where the boundary of the space bubble zone was. According to your terms, he should be a scientific genius—but in our world, he was just a madman, and he was born in a small human country ruled by idiots, so he was even more of a madman that everyone hated. In our place, as an alchemist, if you can't create weapons of war useful to the country or luxury goods useful to the nobles, you're a failure. But that old man only studied stars and space, so he was ostracized by everyone. If it weren't for his aristocratic bloodline, he would have even been driven out of the royal city."

Izax paused, a strange smile on his face. "The irony is that this 'useless alchemist' who was ostracized in human society finally built the large laboratory he had longed for in the demon kingdom. All kinds of advanced equipment that the human kingdom hadn't been able to manufacture were later created in the demon world."

Hearing this, Hao Ren could almost guess what would happen next. "So, under the guidance of this scientist, you broadened your horizons, discovered that the sea of stars is a man's romance, and began planning to create a great world unity..."

As it turned out, Hao Ren's ideas were only suitable for stories. The real situation was probably not so good. Izax shook his head on the spot. "No, in the beginning, I didn't have such high awareness. Like everyone else, I only thought of one thing—if the 'space bubble zone' theory is true, then the entire universe that the world currently believes in is actually so small. Whoever can find where the boundary of the bubble zone is will have obtained endless territory—that's all I thought."

Hao Ren: "..."

"So, the only difference between me and others is that others didn't believe the old man, but I did," Izax grinned, another grimace with a feinting effect. "I thought there were endless territories outside the space bubble zone that could be conquered, and this could show my power, so I decided to support the old man's research project. I made him my chief scholar, responsible for finding the boundary of the space bubble zone. And my ideological transformation happened in the hundreds of years after that."

"The old man's research was indeed not a rash delusion. He spent most of his life calculating the entire world and had already found the laws connecting the space bubbles, but he hadn't found the laws outside this bubble zone. With the help of his half-finished achievements, my speed of expanding territory was more than twice that of other demons. This made me increasingly believe in the space bubble zone theory and actively look for ways to break through it. It was in this process that I slowly discovered the vastness of the universe and the blindness of the various races when fighting—"

"It's very ironic. I was the demon who instigated the most wars, but I was also the first demon to discover the blindness of war."

"In a certain year, I formed an expeditionary force to explore the edge of the 'world' according to the transmission rules researched by the old man. I led the team personally. This exploration was not successful, but we went farther than anyone else and saw magical realms that no one had ever discovered: storms covering the entire planet, atmospheric bridges spanning between two binary stars, deadly cosmic environments, and many other things. My expeditionary force was directly exposed to space in a teleportation accident, suffering more than half casualties on the spot. My most powerful general was captured by a dim planet and turned to ashes in an instant. In that decade-long journey, I saw indescribable great power, the natural power that no race in the world—not even demons, such powerful creatures—could resist. Countless races blindly and ignorantly fought for the scraps and leftovers in the space bubbles. No one had ever thought about what great truths were shrouded outside that small world."

"The old man was also in the expeditionary force. I transformed him into a half-demon so that he could research the secrets of the universe for me for a longer time, but even so, he reached the limit of human life. He signed up for the expeditionary force to see with his own eyes the things he calculated before he died."

"In the end, we failed to reach the border of the space bubble zone, and the old man suffered high-energy radiation on the day the expeditionary force decided to return and soon died."

"Before he died, he told me a sentence: Flying so far and looking back at the direction you came from, everyone will find that they were once an idiot."

"So, I led the expeditionary force back, and in the second year, I began my unified war plan."