Chapter 95: Dark Forest (I)

Chapter 95: Dark Forest (I)

Picking up from the last chapter — after I woke, Silver Pearl gave me an enormous hug.

There was something in that embrace—the warmth of family, and the bold, generous feeling of friendship.

I had assumed that growing stronger would bring out something bolder in me, some new swagger. Instead, what I felt from Silver Pearl’s arms was tenderness, a lingering, wistful warmth.

It felt like home.

I understood where that feeling came from — Xuanze and Hanming, still inside me. And yet it belonged to me too, filtered through my own consciousness, my own way of feeling things.

Silver Pearl gazed at me with such depth of feeling that I felt, for a moment, as though I were staring into an endless ocean.

She was waiting for Hanming to come home.

I understood that longing.

Ever since I’d taken in cosmic energy, the world looked different to me. Silver Pearl clearly understood that change too—she could see a clear, penetrating brightness in my eyes. And her attitude toward me shifted along with it, from treating me as a mere messenger to pinning her hopes for Hanming on me.

I felt that shift clearly.

So I reached out and gently patted her translucent jade hand. Through consciousness, I told her not to worry — I would bring Miss Hanming home soon.

Silver Pearl told me stories of her closeness with Hanming, and shared what she knew of Xuanze’s and Hanming’s families. It turned out both sets of parents were scientists, and the two families had been friends for generations. Xuanze’s father served as a survey inspector on Cassiopeia HD Star, which was why Xuanze had been the one sent to survey the Blue Planet. HD Star’s technology was highly advanced; their interest in the Blue Planet was purely to understand its people.

Among all the life-bearing worlds in Cassiopeia, only HD Star’s humans bore a striking resemblance to the humans of the Blue Planet — which was exactly what had drawn HD Star’s attention in the first place.

Looking into Silver Pearl’s tender eyes, I told her I wanted to go to HD Star myself, to meet Xuanze’s and Hanming’s families in person.

Silver Pearl explained that HD Star had eight satellites, Bixian Star among them, forming what was called the first star-chain defense. And between that first star-chain and HD Star itself lay another, invisible shield — a defensive net woven from ionized matter. Without HD Star’s explicit authorization, breaking through was nearly impossible.

It was precisely because of that net that certain warlike creatures roaming interstellar space, along with Earth’s virtual humans who came here to explore, could never actually reach HD Star.

As for what I called the virtual Future World, Silver Pearl believed it was confined to Bixian Star — it could never reach the true HD Star. And yet HD Star’s own people could come here, to Bixian Star, to observe projections of humanity from twenty-one light-years away. Earth’s people had no idea this was even happening. Perhaps it was mission data Xuanze himself had funneled to HD Star through the Shadow Pavilion’s core supercomputer.

Silver Pearl looked at me and said,

“If you want to go to HD Star right now, I’m not sure your current strength is enough to break through the ionized defensive net. The traces of Xuanze and Hanming on you still aren’t enough proof that you are them. So you’d have to force your way through on your own strength alone. And even if you managed it, you’d trigger HD Star’s early-warning system, which would only cause unnecessary trouble. So here’s what I think — if you want to meet their families, I can send word for them to come here, to Bixian Star. You’d still get to see them that way.”

I nodded and said,

“That’s a good idea. Please, send word to their families. I imagine they’ve been longing for news of Xuanze and Hanming too.”

Silver Pearl promised to notify the families right away.

As for me, I found myself wondering whether I should go take a look at the Dark Forest first. Du Xiaoran was out there, after all, and it would give me a chance to test my new cosmic abilities in the field.

Silver Pearl thought it was a reasonable plan — the families would need time to arrive regardless.

I left one consciousness avatar behind in the Crystal Palace to wait. My main body simply followed my thought, and in an instant, I stood on the surface of Bixian Star.

I looked up and around, and the world before my eyes had already become something else entirely.

Before, when I looked at matter, I saw order, law, structure. Now, what I saw was energy — wave states, vibrational states. Before, the world in my mind had been Earth. Now, the world before my eyes was deep space, the cosmos itself.

I tilted my head back toward the depths of space. The ambient light no longer troubled my vision at all. I could still see the distant stars with total clarity — and yet the sky I saw now bore no resemblance to the one I remembered.

Anyone with a fear of densely packed small objects might have taken one look at this and fallen ill on the spot. Because the sky I saw now was a firmament built from countless points of light, numbered in quadrillions upon quadrillions, packed edge to edge — every single one blazing and perfectly sharp.

The constellations people traced from Earth were nothing, really—just a few slightly brighter star-frames scattered among all the rest.

Staring into that sky, I could even make out redshift. The stars themselves were in constant motion, the whole field of them drifting outward, expanding, receding. Matter I’d never been able to perceive before became visible the moment I shifted how I sensed things.

I could feel it now too — the vast, invisible dark matter, streaming through the depths of space at light speed or slower, in currents and clusters, diffusing, pressing together, colliding, merging, weaving past one another. Deep space, it turned out, was never empty at all.

I found myself back above that swamp. Countless little bubbles rose from the marsh below. Only three months had passed, and yet it felt like another lifetime entirely.

The moment the bubbles caught sight of me, they scattered with a collective whoosh. They already knew who I was, and since I’d killed some of them before, a flicker of guilt passed through me. Then again, those little bubbles had fed on plenty of humans who’d come here to train — so it wasn’t as if I’d been the only one doing the bullying.

Bixian Star was vast, roughly the size of Earth, it felt like. But I had no interest left in harvesting cosmic force of consciousness anymore. Compared to the cosmic energy I now carried, that force was barely a drizzle.

As for the Dark Forest, Silver Pearl told me it sat on Bixian Star — a primeval, undeveloped ecological zone, populated almost entirely by lower life forms, plant and animal alike. Visitors from HD Star, the more intelligent natives of Bixian Star, even the virtual humans who came exploring — almost none of them ever went there.

The only reason I wanted to check it out was that Du Xiaoran had an avatar hidden somewhere inside.

The Dark Forest stretched across Bixian Star’s southern continent — a genuine, sprawling primeval forest, essentially untouched, governed entirely by the law of the strong devouring the weak.

Those who came to the virtual world to train stayed away mostly because the opportunities there were scarce and the danger was high. I had no idea why Du Xiaoran would have chosen a place like this to plant an avatar.

The moment I strode boldly into the forest, the noise I made drew the attention of a flying tiger almost instantly. It let out a roar and lunged at me, wings beating hard. I simply raised a barrier around myself — I had no interest in killing it. No need for that.

The tiger, charging too recklessly, slammed straight into the barrier with a crack and dropped unconscious on the spot.

I kept walking. A few timid creatures watched me from a distance, too frightened to come any closer.

I leapt above the canopy and dropped straight down into the heart of the forest, cleared out a patch of open ground, and lit a bonfire there. I wanted Du Xiaoran to come find me.

Sure enough, two hours later, something that looked like an ordinary flying squirrel came bounding and leaping through the underbrush, heading straight for me.

The trouble was, seven or eight extremely strange figures were chasing right behind it.

Strictly speaking, whatever was chasing that squirrel wasn’t human at all — they were humanoid interstellar beastmen, clad in black armor, each with a short, rigid tail. They carried something resembling electronic laser weapons, firing shots as they pursued.

The squirrel moved with astonishing agility, but with seven or eight fully armed beastmen on its tail, it was in genuine danger.

I teleported in front of the group and disarmed them with ease. At the same moment, I drove my force of consciousness into their seas of consciousness and drained their force of consciousness.

The beastmen collapsed to the ground, limp. They might still live, technically, but they were now no different from any ordinary beast in this forest.

The bonfire kept burning. The squirrel darted straight to the fire, huddled beside it, and panted out,

“Oh man, finally. You almost got me killed.”

I said,

“Funny — I feel like I just saved you. How does that turn into me getting you killed?”

Du Xiaoran said,

“I was hiding perfectly fine until you showed up making all that racket and spooked these interstellar beastmen straight into activating their detection gear. That’s how they found me.”

I said,

“What exactly are you hiding in this massive forest for? And who are these interstellar beastmen anyway? What are they even doing here? Were you spying on them?”

Du Xiaoran said,

“Bingo. No prize for guessing right, though. Everyone thinks the Dark Forest is low-opportunity and high-risk — mostly because it’s crawling with lower animals with basically no force of consciousness. So nobody’s ever bothered developing this place. I’d had my eye on this place for a long time. What I didn’t expect was that these interstellar beastmen found it too — and started competing with me for resources. That’s why I’ve been keeping an eye on them.”

I said,

“What resources could possibly be in this dump worth taking the risk of hiding in these dark woods?”

Du Xiaoran said,

“There’s a mineral here you don’t know about — probably nobody on Bixian Star or HD Star knows about it either. Once refined, it makes gravity vanish entirely.”

I was so irritated I laughed.

“You’re a flying squirrel right now! Look at those little paws. How exactly are you planning to mine?”

Du Xiaoran said,

“I know that. That’s why I lured you out here. I want us to partner up — quietly mine this stuff. We wouldn’t even need much. Just enough to build a few flying saucers.”

The moment he said “flying saucers,” I went dead serious.

“Flying saucers? You’re telling me flying saucers are made from this refined mineral?”

Du Xiaoran said,

“Of course. I tested it myself. This stuff ignores gravity entirely. Extremely rare material — and rock hard too.”

I rubbed my chin and said,

“Sounds great, sure. But have you actually thought this through? Both of us are projections built from quantum-entanglement technology. The virtual Future World is nothing but a mirror-image world formed by entangled photon pairs — it’s not the real, physical world. If we gain cosmic force of consciousness or level up our skills, fine, no problem there — photon pairs move in sync, so our true bodies back in reality pick up the same gains automatically. But mining is different. This world is a mirror image. Intangible things like consciousness and skill can sync across, but minerals are physical, tangible objects. Those can’t sync into reality. So how exactly are you planning to mine it and get it out?”

Du Xiaoran’s head snapped toward me.

“The virtual Future World is a mirror image from entangled photon pairs? You — you already know that?”

I stared right back at him.

“Huh? It’s not strange that I know. What’s strange is how you know it.”

Du Xiaoran said quietly,

“So — how did you find out?”

I said,

“Why do you think I even came here in the first place? Don’t tell me you have no clue. Quit playing dumb. Fine, long story short — I met a beautiful woman. She told me.”

Du Xiaoran said,

“Yeah, right. Nobody gets that lucky.”

I condensed seven or eight consciousness avatars all at once and said,

“Believe me now?”

Du Xiaoran’s jaw dropped, and for a moment he couldn’t even speak.

“You — how did you get this strong?”

I grinned.

“You call this strong? Take a look at those trees, then.”

I let my will ripple outward, and the ring of trees around us folded like soft noodles, collapsing flat onto the ground.

Du Xiaoran’s voice cracked with alarm.

“You — did you ascend or something?”

I said,

“Call it whatever you want. Your turn now. How did you find out?”

Still rattled, Du Xiaoran said,

“It’s only been a few months. How did you change this fast?”

I said,

“Hey. I’m asking you something real here. Keep stalling and I’ll search your soul myself.”

Du Xiaoran said,

“You can search souls now too? Fine, fine, I’ll talk. The Myriad-Dimensional Brain told me.”