Chapter 698 Welcome Back (5800)

Su Zhou’s confusion had been accumulating for a long time.

He originally thought that the Great Existences were all beings with both good and evil aspects. They would treat their own dependents and clans extremely well, with loving kindness, approachability, and gentleness. But when facing enemies, they would be like true evil gods, terrifying, and brutally bloody.

Just like the Chaos Gods in a certain classic sci-fi game, *Warhammer x0k*, one of them, known as the Nurgle, could be taken as an example.

He was truly good to his own people, otherwise, he wouldn’t be called the Plaguefather. His dependents and clans were also united and friendly—but towards enemies, he would unleash a whole set of plague daemons, doing everything to be disgusting and terrifying.

Su Zhou originally thought so—otherwise, why would the dependents of other Great Existences be considered ‘devils’ by other dependents?

But now, after understanding the seal of the multiverse and the nature of the Great Existences more deeply, he realized that his thinking was wrong.

To put it in a more cliché way, the Great Existences were all loving the beings of the multiverse in their own way.

This love was an indescribable great love, transcending the boundaries of race, nation, civilization, and even the world and the universe, even the barriers of the essence of life—this love transcended space-time, causality, and logic, to the point that mortals might not be able to understand the specific essence of this love at all, only able to grasp it blindly.

And blind men touching an elephant were bound to misunderstand.

Su Zhou believed that the Great Existences would not deceive mortals—not even with deliberate concealment and misleading, because that was essentially a self-deceiving act done to achieve the purpose of ‘deception.’

Deceiving themselves? Mortals could do that, but how could a Great Existence deceive itself? Wasn't that also a form of deception?

They might only say half the story in other matters, acting like riddlers, but when it came to what was correct, even Yala would become serious, earnestly elaborating on her chaotic correctness and facing her own essence.

So, what exactly happened to the Nihilist Order to make it become what it was now?

How did a group of shut-in autists, who should theoretically be self-isolating deadbeats, develop into the calm madman group that aimed to destroy the entire universe?

Su Zhou thought there were several possibilities.

And the greatest possibility was ‘thinking they understood.’

And these dependents who ‘thought they understood’ were the true ‘devils.’

So, after Su Zhou raised this question, Yala’s answer was very simple.

“This question is actually very simple… Su Zhou, do you think you understand the Twilight?”

If it were Su Zhou from a few years ago, he would probably answer very firmly and quickly: “I understand.”

That wouldn’t be wrong, because in this universe, probably no one understood the Twilight better than him. If he said he didn’t understand, then no one would.

But now, Su Zhou had another answer.

Because he knew one thing.

—Not understanding is not understanding, even if one is the most understanding of all those who don’t understand, they are ultimately one of the non-understanders—

“I don’t understand the Twilight.”

He said, “To be honest, it’s precisely because I understand more than others that I understand less… The thoughts of the Great Existences are like a circle, unless I also reach the realm of infinity, I’m afraid the more I understand, the more I don’t understand.”

“Oh?”

Yala was a little surprised. She smiled, and her tail wagged. “I thought you would say another answer… It seems that you have already found the answer yourself.”

“I’m not that arrogant yet.”

Su Zhou shook his head. He gazed at the bizarre cosmic radiation and space-time distortions of the warp, staring at the blue shift phenomenon ahead, and said calmly, “Actually, I have always kept what the Lord of Silence said in my heart.”

“He said, ‘Su Zhou, you have not yet transcended the perspective of space-time, you cannot see our full picture’… He’s right. I haven’t even transcended space-time, so how can I understand the Great Existences?”

“My thoughts can’t even be considered wrong—because even errors have the value of being denied.”

Listening to the youth saying this, Yala shook her head slightly, but she didn’t say much, instead letting the youth continue.

And Su Zhou lowered his head, looking at his hand, his tone calm: “However, I can grasp a little clue and hint.”

“The Twilight cannot be considered a mistake, because the birth of the earliest life was indeed a coincidence, and existence is also the same. No one gives life an absolute reason to live. In that case, nothingness is the inevitable end, and existence and nothingness are relative and mutually supporting.”

“However, ‘wisdom’ is the weapon against nothingness—if the World Tree supports all existence, then the Great Dao Tree supports the shade of wisdom. The meaning born from wisdom is the weapon against the Twilight… because only wise life will constantly give itself new meanings.”

When they were kids, they wanted to win fights, get a hundred points on exams, be stronger than other classmates, play games, read novels, and watch comics, and hang out with friends.

Even wanting to eat stir-fried pork with chili for dinner, wanting more lean meat or more fatty meat in braised pork.

These might all be instincts, but when people genuinely wanted to do something, to believe in something, they would be detached from nothingness and be fulfilled.

As long as they lived earnestly, they would be insulated from nothingness.

Whether it was creation, ending, chaos, or destiny, all of these were the meanings given by wise life itself. The Great Existences supported these meanings, telling all life that these were correct—so those who were wandering didn’t need to be confused, because there were towering banners there, they could choose, choose the path they firmly believed in, and walk forward with confidence.

“Yala, you fight against the Twilight precisely because you are the eternity of wisdom.”

Su Zhou said in a low voice, “You are the eternal motivation and meaning, so you can never understand the nothingness of the Twilight, and you will never try to understand it—how can a mind that rejoices in exploration, delights in creation, and will eternally rejoice and delight understand autism?”

Just like humans find it difficult to understand their own kind, let alone their kind’s autism.

What’s more, the Twilight itself would cause many people who were originally full of vitality to begin to doubt the meaning of everything. Negative energy could spread, let alone nothingness? Thousands upon thousands of worlds had been destroyed because of the Twilight, just like the Aeon World. Although it seemed that the Solar Emperor went astray for other reasons, without the catalysis of the Twilight, it wouldn’t have reached that point.

Yes, the Great Existences might simply be waiting.

But the light they emit, when misunderstood by limited mortals—just like when the Solar Emperor despaired—would cause destruction far exceeding waiting.

Because nothingness was correct, then the destruction of worlds because of nothingness, was its demise also correct?

Su Zhou didn’t think so.

“Mm.”

The serpent spirit nodded at an imperceptible angle, but she also shook her head. After Su Zhou saw this scene, he smiled and said, “This is the eternal perspective. What I said is superficial, but it’s obvious that it’s not the same as your true thoughts.”

“Other aspects are even more so.”

“So, how can I say that I understand the Twilight?”

After speaking, Su Zhou’s smile faded, and his expression gradually became solemn.

The youth looked around at the ever-warping universe, constantly traversing distances of thousands of light-years, each time a brand new sight. He said in a deep voice, “In that case, on what basis does the Nihilist Order say that it is truly ‘nothingness’?”

“So I’m wondering, are all the twisted devils and dependents not the malice of the Great Existences, but simply that they can’t understand?”

“Just like the Solar Emperor, if he could go to the Pioneer Space, could he become a normal person and, after returning, change the entire Aeon World with another correct method?”

“I don’t pity the wicked, I just understand very clearly, understand a corner of the correctness elaborated by perfection.”

“That is, everyone has the possibility of achieving ‘perfection.’”

Light was flashing.

“So you’re saying,” Yala said after pondering for a moment, “that the Nihilist Order was not deceived, but simply misunderstood the meaning?”

“Just a guess.”

Su Zhou answered succinctly, “It’s even possible that it’s just the choice of one leader of the Nihilist Order, one person’s misunderstanding.”

“Perhaps there are indeed Great Existences giving them power… but perhaps it’s not as Yala you think, deliberately to create ‘monsters.’”

“Because… becoming a ‘monster’ is a possibility that ‘wise life’ possesses and can choose.”

Su Zhou and Yala looked at each other.

“Chaos—Yala, you understand it best, don’t you?”

The serpent spirit listened calmly.

Then, she nodded slightly and said with a light smile, “Yes.”

“Otherwise, how could there be a war between Greatness and Monsters?”

“But if that’s the case, Su Zhou, what is their purpose?”

The serpent spirit asked, and the youth shook his head with regret, then gave a carefree laugh: “Who knows? Whether they are arrogant people who think they understand, or lost people who have gone astray because they cannot understand, how do I know their purpose?”

“So, I want to see for myself.”

In the Milky Way, a vast fleet was traveling in the vacuum, stirring up a storm of psionic energy.

The Judgment Death Star was warping alongside the Golden Fleet, crossing half of the Milky Way.

Inside Su Zhou’s body, all the fleet members were discussing nervously and excitedly. They had been away from home for two years, which was not a long time, but their experiences were unmatched by anyone else—fighting and fleeing from enemies powerful enough to occupy half the star field in the edge of the Milky Way, and finally returning after defeating them.

Such an honor, such an achievement, no one on Earth could compare, their excitement and anticipation were perfectly normal.

Soon, Su Zhou heard a voice like the friction of metal.

[Su Zhou, Manifest Lord]

The speaker was the commander of the Seresstia Golden Fleet, one of the elders of the council, a Star Child named Haiweitar.

His essence was an activated iron mountain, now remodeled, he was the living fortress in the Golden Fleet, the most powerful single output point in the entire Golden Fleet, who had fought with many evil god dependents for tens of thousands of years and made remarkable achievements.

In fact, the Seresstia civilization's Golden Fleet was essentially a group of Seresstians who were good at fighting and specialized in fighting, and the total number of the entire fleet did not exceed twenty ships, but each ship's strength could be worth a hundred.

The other seemingly numerous small ships were essentially derivatives, like the insect Candle Dragon generated by the Candle Dragon warship form.

In its heyday, the Seresstia civilization could send hundreds of Heavenly Immortal-level powerhouses to form a fleet and launch expeditions across the galaxy.

Haiweitar was a member of the former Golden Fleet, but before the final battle, he missed the decisive battle and counterattack against the Twilight Starfield due to severe injuries and slumber, and had been sleeping until the psionic energy recovered and he woke up, so for a while, his mentality was a bit twisted, and he looked down on Earth civilization, a small and unknown local civilization in the past.

But now, naturally it was different.

A powerhouse who defeated an Annihilation Envoy, and a civilization that gave birth to such a powerhouse, was enough to earn his respect. Even the Golden Fleet in its heyday would have found it difficult to defeat an Annihilation Envoy, let alone this scaled-down version of less than twenty ships.

His title for Su Zhou was the honorific used in the galaxy for immortals. Haiweitar said solemnly: [Ahead is the star field range of Earth civilization, the Seresstia Fleet will stop here.]

[Su Zhou, Manifest Lord, our escort ends here.]

"What, we're there already?"

Haiweitar’s words brought Su Zhou back to his senses. He turned his head and looked at the Death Star screen in front of him.

It must be said that the Seresstian-provided warp engines were indeed much better than the Earthlings' original ones. Each space-time warp could reach distances of up to thousands of light-years away.

Although it was necessary to detect in advance whether the warp zone was safe, and whether there were other celestial bodies in the vicinity, this was a trivial matter for an ancient civilization with a map of the entire galaxy.

At this moment, the youth’s pupils focused, his eyes swept across the stars in front of him, and then he quickly identified which bright spot was the sun, and then deepened his observation to observe the situation in the solar system.

He saw the star and its children.

He searched for that long-lost third planet and the position of its satellite.

"It seems there have been quite a few changes."

Smiling as he spoke, the Judgment Death Star, transformed into a dragon form, joyfully wagged its long tail, causing endless psionic waves to surge towards both sides: "Okay, thank you, soldiers of the Seresstia civilization."

"If it weren’t for you holding back the main force of the Twilight Fleet, the Earth United Fleet might not have been able to wait for me to return from another world, and would have been caught up and annihilated."

"We owe you a favor."

[You are too kind, Manifest Lord]

Hearing Su Zhou's praise, even the Seresstians would smile. Haiweitar's tone was noticeably more cheerful: [Fighting against the Nihilist Order is the responsibility of all civilizations in the galaxy.]

[What's more, the Seresstia civilization has a request to make of you—if possible, when you return to Earth, Manifest Lord, the Seresstia Elder Council will contact you.]

"Naturally, the orderly civilizations of the galaxy should help each other."

Su Zhou naturally agreed. This time, the Seresstians had indeed helped the Earthlings a lot in resisting the invasion of the Twilight Fleet.

Leaving aside other things, if it weren’t for this galactic superpower using its influence to contact other galactic superpowers and forming an alliance against the Nihilist Order, and sending a fleet to protect the vicinity of the solar system, Su Zhou felt that Earth might not have been as safe as imagined.

What’s more, as a holder of a fragment of the Inner Great Seal, Su Zhou had long known that he would have a frank and sincere exchange with the other party.

The dragon-shaped Judgment Death Star separated from the galaxy-like fleet and flew alone towards the direction of the solar system.

But just after separating, Su Zhou noticed something was wrong.

"Wait?"

He frowned and said hesitantly, "What is that?"

"Why is there a series of ring-shaped metal clouds added to the orbit of Mercury in the solar system?"

In Su Zhou's eyes, he could see in the distant end, in the solar system, around the orbit of Mercury, a layer of hazy metal clouds was centered on the equator of Mercury, deriving towards both sides, making Mercury look like it had grown a pair of wings, and its visual volume had increased a lot.

It blocked a considerable degree of sunlight, and the surface area of the metal cloud was larger than the entire Earth spread out, which meant that it absorbed even more energy than the total solar psionic energy absorbed by the entire Earth.

And this metal cloud looked simple, but Su Zhou sensed a grand formation structure from it. It was this formation structure that connected the entire nebula body into one, so it would not be pulled by the sun's gravity and fall into the star.

[The orbit of Mercury? Oh]

Haiweitar, who knew more about Earth's recent movements over the past few years than Su Zhou, nodded. He knew what Su Zhou was talking about: [That is the 'Pan-Galactic Network Base Station' built by Earth civilization, used to resonate with stellar psionic energy and connect to the 'Galactic Network AI' intranet, a space building.]

[Most orderly civilizations will build such a base station to communicate with other civilizations in the galaxy… As everyone knows, the most important thing between civilizations is a platform for safe communication.]

A base station?

Such a massive architectural structure was just a base station…

In that instant, Su Zhou even thought of Dyson clouds, ring worlds, and other messy things… various powerful giant construction structures, and even the god-made stars in the world caves opened up by the former immortals, which were enough to cover the sky.

How vast was the galactic network that needed to rely on such a base station to access?

——Although it wasn’t impossible, when did the Earth side become so powerful?

Thinking of this, the youth's eyes were full of astonishment.

It was not surprising that the former immortal civilizations could do this, but Earth…

Hmm…

No, even Earth civilization was not surprising.

After all, Earth civilization was originally a new civilization that pursued and intended to surpass immortal civilizations.

Su Zhou just marveled that so many interesting things had happened in the two years he had left Earth.

He couldn't help but accelerate, impatiently preparing to return.

The black divine dragon shuttled through space-time in the azure light, warping towards its homeland.

And the golden fleet, composed of strangely shaped giant ships and auxiliary derivative ships, slowly turned and returned to the other end of the galaxy.

The end of this mission was far from the end—the communication between the major galactic superpowers would be more frequent than ever before. In this era when no country or civilization had fully recovered to its heyday, the danger of the Nihilist Order was further increased.

After all, destruction was always easier than creation.

Around the orbit of Jupiter.

On the orange-red gas giant, endless storms swept, emitting a dim red light.

In the dark space of the universe, blue-purple psionic fluctuations rippled, like the surface of a lake in the rain, the ripples spreading rapidly.

Soon, a few seconds later, with the distortion of space-time, a gray-black divine dragon, carrying azure glory like stars, arrived at the warp point of Jupiter in the solar system.

The divine dragon opened its eyes, and looked around the starry sky in front of it, but could only see darkness.

There was no light, even the Jupiter space station and space observation station, which should have been shining, were silent and dark, and the port, which should have been stationed with many alien warships, was also silent, which was particularly quiet.

"Huh? Where is everyone?"

"What happened? Why is it so dark?"

"What's going on? Isn't this Jupiter Port?"

The crew members inside the Death Star, who were looking forward to returning home, did not have powerful divine eyes like Su Zhou, and could observe various psionic wavelengths. In their eyes, the entire surroundings of Jupiter were a silent darkness, a lightless gloom.

The divine dragon circled in the vacuum, and Su Zhou narrowed his eyes, staring at the front, somewhat absentmindedly.

Then, at this moment, a little light lit up in the dark vacuum. It was the probes on the many icy satellites. They lit up, projecting colors onto the canvas of the universe with psionic energy.

Then, it was the ports, warships, and research stations—lights lit up in the darkness, and starlike dots flickered.

After that, beams of light focused in the dark vacuum, turning into flickering virtual characters.

Then, they condensed into substance.

[——Welcome Back——]

In the vacuum, white characters as large as the moon, which could be seen even from the distant end of the universe, were flashing in the universe.

And Su Zhou slowly smiled.

The youth looked gently at everything in front of him, and the star behind him.

He looked around at the sky full of light, and amidst the cheers in the Death Star after the crew members' shock, he smiled softly and said in a low voice, "Yes, fellow soldiers."

"We are back."