Chapter 1356: [Y-012]

Hearing Chen Ling’s question, the man hesitated for a moment before speaking slowly:

"Forget it, you’re going to find out sooner or later anyway, so it doesn't matter if I tell you now... Come with me."

After saying this, the man turned and walked toward the depths of the Embers of Civilization.

Just as Chen Ling and Wu Yi were about to follow, the man spoke again:

"Have your subordinate wait here. Its size is too large; it will be torn to shreds if it enters the depths of the Embers."

Wu Yi turned to look at Chen Ling, and Chen Ling didn't hesitate much before telling it to wait where it was.

Although this Angel of Extinction was stronger than he was currently, he held no malice toward him; otherwise, he wouldn't have gone to such lengths to save them both from the collapse... Moreover, he seemed to know many secrets about the Red Star, and Chen Ling was very interested in those.

The two walked side by side along a shattered street, weaving through the grotesque and twisted city ruins. The gray-white snow continued to fall, and the surroundings were deathly silent.

"What do you think the world is?" the man asked proactively.

Chen Ling had discussed this same question in depth with Teacher Ye back when he was with the Fusion Faction. He didn't think long before giving his answer:

"Is it candlelight?"

“？”

The man suddenly stopped in his tracks.

The young man turned his head to look at Chen Ling in surprise, as if he hadn't expected him to blurt out the answer. "They told you?"

"...Who are 'they'?"

"It wasn't them who told you? Then how did you know?"

"A long time ago, I met a doctor surnamed Lin who mentioned this concept to me... However, it was probably just something he said casually." Chen Ling replied truthfully.

"A doctor surnamed Lin?" The young man froze for a long while, his expression shifting repeatedly.

"What's wrong?"

"...Nothing." After a pause, the young man continued, "You're right. Every world can be seen as a ray of light... born from a candle flame, extending infinitely into the void. These rays of light originate from the same source, but they extend in different directions and never intersect with each other."

The young man pointed to the ground beneath their feet.

"This world, or what you call the Gray Realm, and the world where the human domain is located, are actually two adjacent rays of candlelight."

Chen Ling followed his finger and suddenly asked:

"So, a human civilization really existed in the Gray Realm?"

"Of course. The closer the rays of light, the higher the similarity between the worlds. This place was once the same as your world—not only did it have human civilization, but it also had similar geological environments, similar countries, and even similar history...

In some film and television works, you can see the concept of traveling through parallel worlds. Someone accidentally experiences something and ends up in another almost identical world, where there are equally prosperous cities, similar cultural concepts, and one can even find people very similar to those in the original world.

Your world and the former Gray Realm have that kind of relationship."

After seeing the state of the Embers of Civilization, Chen Ling had actually guessed that a human civilization might have existed in the Gray Realm, but he never expected that this place was once a world just like Earth.

The eternal lead-gray clouds, the barren and desolate black earth, the strange pollution harmful to the human body, and those fierce and terrifying Calamities... No matter how you looked at it, everything here couldn't be linked to the former Earth.

"Then how did it become like this?" Chen Ling couldn't help but ask.

“【Y-012】。”

"What?"

"The serial number of that meteor." The young man paused for a moment. "In the parlance of your human domain, it's the Red Star."

Chen Ling was stunned.

"The Red Star... has a serial number??"

"Yes, the Vice-Captain specifically categorized and numbered them to distinguish them."

These two short sentences brought Chen Ling an unprecedented shock. He didn't know where to start asking... He could only pick the most urgent question:

"Them?? The Red Star... there’s more than one???"

"Everything in the universe is a unity of opposites. Where there is the 'candlelight' that gives birth to everything, there will naturally be the 'darkness' that light cannot reach... Outside the candlelight world, there is a meteor shower approaching." The young man spoke slowly.

"No one knows where this meteor shower comes from. The only thing we know is that its target is the source of the world—the 'candlelight' itself. And the Red Star you speak of, [Y-012], is just a part of this meteor shower.

Each meteor in this shower possesses different characteristics. For example, G-series meteors contain pure destructive power; they explode the moment they touch a candlelight world, directly shattering the entire world-line. J-series meteors can influence the thoughts of all living beings, usually causing the corresponding world-line to fall into war and eventually move toward self-destruction...

K-series meteors will slowly erode a world-line in the form of special life-forms until it is completely devoured, for example... the Mythological Invasion.

And Y-series meteors are an extremely special existence among all meteors. It does not possess the absolute destructive power of the G-series, nor does it have a substantial body like the K-series. What it influences is 'civilization' itself.

After [Y-012] arrived at the candlelight, it pierced through the candlelight world belonging to the Gray Realm head-on. Tens of thousands of years of human civilization collapsed instantly, like a super vortex appearing in the long river of history, swallowing all traces of human existence... The Embers of Civilization you see now are the hole left by [Y-012] when it pierced through the candlelight world, and also the place where the final legacy of this world’s civilization is buried."

The young man paused and added,

"After [Y-012] pierced through the Gray Realm, it grazed the sky above the world where the human domain is located. Although it didn't hit your candlelight world directly, its special force field still caused an impact on your world.

Your civilization began to regress, and because the barrier between you and the Gray Realm was pierced by the Red Star, creatures from the Gray Realm would also invade your world through the constantly expanding hole."

As the young man finished speaking, Chen Ling’s mouth hung slightly open, his mind completely shaken.

He never expected that the young man before him would solve the mysteries that had plagued the human domain to this day with just a few simple sentences... The origin of the Red Star, the appearance of the Gray Realm, and even the regression of civilization itself were all answered with the appearance of the "meteor shower" and "[Y-012]".

Chen Ling took a long while to digest everything the young man said. He then seemed to remember something and asked immediately:

"That meteor that grazed Earth... [Y-012], will it come back?"

"Theoretically, the trajectory of a meteor is irreversible." The young man looked at Chen Ling with a complex expression. "But [Y-012] is an exception... or rather, your world is an exception.

It is coming back soon."

……

……

One more chapter, will update later.