Stars See Me [Interstellar] | Chapter 282 | A Ten-Thousand-Year Vigil | Novela.app

The moment he was swept into the storm, Lei Ting’s eyes widened. He wanted to see clearly this instant where the very laws of the universe shifted; he wanted to see exactly what was happening. He saw death, he saw shockwaves, he saw the extinction of burning radiance, and he saw the fall of stars. That moment in time, when the disaster spread along dimensional concepts to affect the entire universe, suddenly fell into a state of stasis. Lei Ting watched it all in silence. He raised his hand and made a phantom grasp at the eternally burning ‘Eye’ in the distant starry sky—inexplicably, he recalled a moment from the far-flung future, when he, as one of the guardians of the Human Federation, had cast a mechanical eye toward the far side of the stars. In this moment, from the distant past and the remote future, the two merged into one in his sight, gazing at each other through his soul. He saw a miracle within it. A miracle of life, struggle, and pain. A miracle of civilizations and the beating hearts of people. The truth of the Great Catastrophe was finally clear—at some unknown point, blue crystals had begun to spread along with a mist from the end of a torn rift. Fine stardust flickered inside and outside the crystals, and interlocking chains threaded through them. Soon, this segment of time was frozen, and the marks of that freezing spread forward and backward, faster than light, faster than thought, and faster than time itself. The ‘Spirit Abyss’—the place where all spirits descend, the empty window of a shattered universe. When it formed, the shattered rules of the material realm tolerated a new chaos and assimilated its power. If the initial Big Bang was the first miracle belonging to ‘Creation,’ then the addition of ‘Supernatural Power’ was the second miracle belonging to ‘Change.’ Even without such a shift, all things visible today were born of this miracle in the ancient past. And in the distant future, they would surely perish amidst the embrace and erosion of this same miracle. Though the traces of the freeze soon dissipated and time resumed its normal flow, Lei Ting would likely never forget the images of that moment. *** A long time later, Lei Ting stumbled as he was spat out of the spacetime storm. The moment he emerged, he nearly collided with something, even brushing past a roaring fiery thruster. Simultaneously, he sensed tens of thousands of familiar life signals surrounding him in all directions. This prompted him to quickly disguise his appearance and stabilize himself, before soaring up from behind the starship he had nearly hit. When he looked up, a glowing blue ring of light, traversed by countless ships, met his eyes. It was ‘Changan.’ Had he returned to the 40th century? Lei Ting was stunned for a moment. But soon, his mental sensory perception told him otherwise: he had not returned to the 40th century, but to the end of the 39th. Moreover... In space, the tall, black-armored warrior moved forward gently, landing on the outer structure of the starship’s aft deck. Before him, the modular mini-cities floating on the ship’s surface were slowly submerging, retracting into the hull. On a distant plaza, thousands of young children stood or sat, relaxedly enjoying what was likely the first interstellar voyage of their lives. He saw himself. He saw his friends. He saw classmates—young people who had not yet died. He heard them laughing and marvelling, singing before the vastness of the universe and the majesty of human endeavor. At this time, they were still so young; they could still sing, and they still possessed pure joys and dislikes. They were still alive. The youths gathered in a circle, calmly accepting the gaze of anyone under the protection of the starship. They were the favored children of fortune, possessing both diligence and talent. In this year, and for the four years to follow, their pride and ideals would burn hotter than the sun. Amidst the light and wind radiated by the Stargate, Lei Ting remained stationary at the ship’s stern. He scanned those youths and the entire Stargate. For a moment, he seemed like a statue—until, between him and the people on the plaza, someone turned around. Soft golden hair brushed against his shoulders as the tall, lean, and elegant man met Lei Ting’s gaze. At the same time, deep within the remote architecture of the Stargate, in the ‘Wannian’ server center known to very few... ...A familiar figure lying within an old-fashioned life-support pod, with half his body ethereal and transparent, began to breathe with increasing weight. A moment later, beneath white hair streaked with rare strands of gold and submerged in transparent liquid, a pair of azure eyes opened, carrying a faint smile. That was an ‘Evenheiler.’ It was also ‘Wannian.’ “...” The Stargate, the plaza, the person before him. Lei Ting’s gaze lingered on them for a moment. He looked deeply at the golden-haired Evenheiler before him, his deep, dark eyes more complex than the world’s most profound formulas. But in the end, he raised his head and looked into the Stargate. A voice rang out in his mind: *“You’re here?”* A greeting both familiar and strange, coming from someone who would always be with him. No one knew what the other had to pay or endure for that single greeting, nor how he had become ‘Wannian,’ or how he had spent those tedious years watching this stretch of starry sky. But Lei Ting’s heart suddenly wrenched. “...I’m here,” Lei Ting replied. He responded even as he retreated into the void and flew toward the Stargate. He was like a young man carrying his sincere heart, responding to a lover’s teasing after being late for a date. A moment later, he added, “I didn’t expect you to be here.” “If I could be thought of so easily, I wouldn’t be here, would I?” Evenheiler chuckled softly. In this moment, the complex emotions in Lei Ting’s heart could not be described by any language. During his previous travels, he knew that Evenheiler was also crossing different times and spaces... occasionally, when he fought in that void, a glimmer of stardust might fly out from the spacetime turbulence to lend him a hand. But each time, that trace vanished in a flash. In less than a few breaths, Lei Ting landed beside his lover. Vaguely, he could hear a few laughs coming from the ‘Spirit Abyss’—fine, whether it was the ‘Recorder,’ the ‘Gazer,’ or the ‘Lover’ whose entire descent into madness he had witnessed in legends, they had clearly known all along! But Lei Ting couldn’t care about much else. He practically threw himself onto the life-support pod. Separated by the pod, he could clearly sense the other’s state: a ‘Limit Breaker,’ but extremely weak. ...Was it because he was injured again? What was with that ethereal, half-transparent state? Fortunately, this time, due to the presence of ‘The Unmoving,’ the other’s ‘Spirit Mind’ had not developed any cracks. Lei Ting took a deep breath to steady his mind; his post-human constitution nearly sucked all the oxygen out of this small space. Then, through the synthetic glass cover and the life-support solution, he met those eyes. “How long... have you been here?” he asked. “If you mean inside the Stargate... I’ve been here since it began construction,” Evenheiler said with a smile. “I know you visited that era, but I had already departed with the vanguard then... To be honest, I quite regret not leaving you a note. If you don’t mean that, but rather the time since I ‘returned to this universe’...” He paused, seeming a bit hesitant. “...I can only say it’s been longer than you imagine. Don’t make that face, Speaker Lei. You’re not a child anymore.” Lei Ting closed his eyes, not arguing, not even speaking. He simply leaned over the life-support pod, listening to a weak and occasionally erratic heartbeat across that distant yet short distance. His long, silver-black hair nearly blocked Evenheiler’s entire field of vision. Only a dull, hard thud could be heard—it was the sound of the vintage golden laurel crown with curled leaves on his head knocking against the glass. Evenheiler didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He extremely slowly raised that ethereal hand and, through the synthetic glass, gently touched the side of Lei Ting’s face. “Don’t panic... I’m just a bit weak because I exist in the same era as another ‘me’ simultaneously.” Evenheiler whispered softly. “And... I’m too old, Lei Ting.” Hearing this, Lei Ting gritted his teeth hard, struggling to restrain his emotional fluctuations. “...For a ‘Limit Breaker,’ a ‘Double S,’ what counts as ‘aging’?” “Fine. Since you want to know,” Evenheiler laughed. “Count back ten thousand years from the start of human civilization on Earth—that is when I returned here.” In the recent past, and also in the ancient past, he had fought his way out of different spacetimes, exhausting all his strength to return to this universe, his home. On that planet, he had watched the vast changes of the world alone, occasionally traveling to other star sectors to look around. He had walked like this for ten thousand years before waiting for the first ‘human’ to learn how to use tools and preserve fire. The word ‘civilization’ gained meaning from that moment. His own sense of existence only found its footing from that moment as well. “I have to admit, the reason I could remain celibate and clear-headed all these years wasn’t just because of you, but also because of... Earth,” Evenheiler murmured. “I can understand you now, Lei Ting... I can understand why you miss it. Even there, filth and darkness were never lacking.” Lei Ting remained silent, listening to his words. “In these years, I’ve figured out many things. I’m sure there are things you don’t know,” Evenheiler rambled on. “For example, the ‘Lover’—if that ‘Commist’ was selfishness born of extreme selflessness, then the existence of the ‘Lover’ is selflessness born of extreme selfishness. Hard to imagine, right? Even though He is mad, He is selfishly determined for all ‘humanity’ to be well. “Therefore, His shattering was no coincidence... He crushed Himself personally. According to His plan, one day He will die. At that time, His power will return to everyone, allowing people to become infinitely weakened versions of the ‘Lover,’ making humanity a complete superpowered race, where every human is like a dragon.” As he spoke, Evenheiler actually started to laugh. “I imagine a workaholic like you must be pondering how to stop Him, unsure whether it’s better to let humanity become a potential source of chaos or to leave such a completely mad superpowered entity like the ‘Lover’ in place, right?” he asked. “No,” Lei Ting answered. To Evenheiler’s slight shock and bewilderment, the young man raised his head and sat beside the horizontal life-support pod. Those deep, tranquil black eyes had lost all their previous turbulence, leaving only kindness and peace. At this moment, only his slightly disheveled long hair could prove that his emotional fluctuations had indeed existed just now. “I just... want to stay here for a while and think of nothing at all.” Lei Ting rested one hand on the synthetic glass cover. His mental power watched his former self and the phantom of the *Solaris* move away, responding to the ‘Principal’s’ chuckling greeting as he looked down at his own armored and gloved hand. “Of course, if I must say there’s one thought I can’t control,” he said, “it would probably be ‘I missed you very much.’” ***