Chapter 114 The Boundary

“That should be the boundary.”

The shijie terminal pointed to the image returned from the external monitor, her tone carrying a hint of surprise.

Hao Ren stared dumbfounded at the image from outside the ship, and after a long while, he let out a sigh: "...It's truly a rude awakening."

The Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace was gliding smoothly through a silent and bizarre expanse of space, its speed already reduced to the low speed of cruising within the atmosphere. The boundary of this world appeared around the ship, its appearance like the starry sky sketched by children in their dreams: strange, simple, and straightforward.

Countless celestial bodies flashed past outside the ship, small and multicolored.

Hao Ren and the shijie terminal came to the observation platform on the upper part of the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace, personally experiencing the border of this false world. He saw groups of light clusters floating in space, the light clusters adorned with exquisite patterns or halos. Stars less than a meter in diameter and gas planets the size of eggs flew around him like projections in a holographic planetarium. They moved in precise orbits, shining, their life and death flickering. Some bullet-like planets flew towards them, weightless and without strength, shattering and dissipating in sparks upon contact with the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace's hull, like a disturbed television screen. Hao Ren reached out and plunged his hand into a dazzling “star,” feeling a slight heat and a tingling sensation like an electric shock. The star was disturbed, and in a burst of shaking, it disappeared silently.

"This is the border of the world," the terminal said, standing among the stars, her golden hair reflecting the hazy starlight, "a holographic projection of the universe... and so small, it's like a model."

"Because it's very close to Zhom," Hao Ren said, looking down at a dim blue dot faintly shimmering below the Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace, that was Zhom, still within sight, "At this distance, simulating the starry sky only requires creating this layer of image. As long as no one flies a spaceship to this place... no one will discover that the starry sky above their heads is fabricated."

"What if someone does discover it?"

"The world is reset every certain period of time, because it cannot allow humanity to develop excessively high technology, or even allow humanity to develop technology in peace... but this world's simulation program must follow the principle of 'reality,' and must not allow the world's development to appear incongruous, so the only way it prevents humans from entering space is to constantly restart the entire map," Hao Ren believed he had grasped the key to the problem, but there was still a crucial answer he could not grasp, "But if you want to restart the map, you can do it in any way. Only Nolan retains her memories of reincarnation, and the other humans are refreshed without any awareness. What's the point of the doomsday war?"

In the first few thousand years of this world, every reincarnation was a peaceful, idyllic world, where humans enjoyed a peaceful and prosperous age in reincarnation and never discovered anything wrong with their world. But in the last few dozen reincarnations, the world began to head towards doomsday – each time ending in war. Hao Ren felt that this made no sense at all. If the only goal was to trap the humans here in a virtual world, a peaceful, slow, and stagnant age of prosperity would be even more suitable than a world of war. So, what was the significance of those world war scripts?

"Even with my brain, I can come up with a lot of more suitable script maps. If it restarts to the feudal era, a single map can even be used for thousands of years without worrying about humans rushing out of Earth," Hao Ren frowned slightly and shook his head, "So the meaning of this world's existence is not to trap humans. Preventing humans from discovering the secrets of the starry sky should just be a protective measure... I guess this place should be a shelter."

"Why don't we go a little further towards the border?" The shijie terminal suggested, "There's still a road ahead, this virtual space seems quite large."

"I'm worried it will cause data overflow," Hao Ren hesitated, "If this world is simulated by a computer program, forcibly exploring the border may lead to logic errors."

The shijie terminal thought for a while: "Based on this unit's experience, such a complex system must have a disaster buffer module. If we forcibly rush out of the border, we will most likely be directly bounced back. And even if the data overflows, as long as we retreat in time, it should be fine: such a strong virtual program shouldn't be without a bug-fixing function, right?"

Hao Ren thought it over and finally decided to try the shijie terminal's suggestion. To be honest, he was also quite curious about the scenery at the end of the border.

The Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace began to accelerate slowly again, and this time the advance was more cautious than before. Hao Ren and the terminal stayed on the upper observation platform, controlling the ship's advance remotely. Around the two of them, the small celestial bodies floating in the universe became denser and denser, and their shapes became more bizarre. Since they were quite far from Zhom, it was difficult to observe their details with telescopes from the surface, so these celestial bodies all showed a tendency towards being crudely made. Many stars were simply flat, glowing stickers, their round sides eternally facing Zhom.

Further ahead, even the galaxies became flat stickers, with dynamic images floating on them.

Finally, the ship stopped without warning, without inertia, without vibration, as if it had been paused, abruptly frozen in space. Hao Ren noticed that the front of the ship had lost its color, appearing as an ugly gray-white, like a three-dimensional model without textures. And at the end of his vision was an endless darkness, with no more starry sky or textures.

"This is the ultimate border of this world," the terminal observed the scenery at the end of the horizon, "an area without definition or rendering. And it seems that this 'universe' has not collapsed because we reached the border. The previous worries were unnecessary."

"We're here, but the controller behind the world still hasn't shown up," Hao Ren came to the end of the observation platform, looking around at the surrounding scenery. The "universe" was divided in two before his eyes, one half being an endless dark backdrop, and the other half being densely packed with glowing celestial bodies. But at the end of the world, he didn't hear the voice of the creator of this virtual world, "Hey! Is anyone there?! We're here! The end of the world! Aren't you going to come out and say something?!"

The terminal glanced at him: "Do you think anyone will be able to hear you? There's no air outside the platform."

"Do you think the controller of a virtual world needs ears to hear the sounds in the program?"

The terminal raised another question: "Then does a controller really exist in this virtual world?"

Hao Ren's eyebrows jumped: "You mean..."

"Perhaps it's all automatic," the terminal shook her head, "Or perhaps there used to be a controller, but... wait!"

Hao Ren immediately became nervous: "What's wrong?"

"This unit just received a signal from the probe drone swarm!" The terminal covered her forehead, concentrating on listening to the sounds from the information link, "It's a direct connection signal... very weak and distorted... but it is indeed a direct connection signal. A part of this unit's sensing function seems to have recovered!"

"Recovered?" Hao Ren widened his eyes and looked at the surrounding starry sky, "Could it be because we're at the 'border'?"

"Probably... probably this is the closest to the real world, so we can slightly break through something like a firewall and contact the outside world," the terminal said quickly, "Or maybe the background program of this world has weakened its control in this area, and the shielding has disappeared... damn it, the signal is still too weak, this unit can't hear clearly."

Hao Ren made a decisive decision: "Don't waste bandwidth, can you transmit navigation information? Just transmit navigation information!"

"This unit will try!"

"You better hurry," Hao Ren said, looking towards the most densely packed area of stars. He noticed that those celestial bodies were flashing rapidly, a phenomenon that hadn't occurred before. Clearly, something unexpected was happening, "This place seems a bit off... I'm afraid the background program of this world has finally decided to do something!"

The terminal shouted loudly: "This unit is working hard, working hard!"

Time passed second by second. Almost all the "stars" in the universe began to flash frantically, and celestial bodies were constantly disappearing. With the naked eye, large patches of dark areas appeared in Hao Ren's vision. A lightning-like thought suddenly popped into his mind: collapse.

This world was collapsing!

"It's transmitted!" The data terminal shouted, "Although only a part was transmitted..."

"Then get out of here quickly!!"