Chapter 1 The Gate of Sluun

The Gate of Sluun—originally a unique star system comprising numerous stellar systems and a nebula constantly forming new stars, it served as a gravitational springboard for traversing from the outer universe to the Founding Star. The pale purple nebula now before Hao Ren was merely a part of the Gate of Sluun, but precisely the most iconic and crucial part: the star-forming cloud.

Surrounding this gas cloud once lay the territories personally managed by the Creator Goddess’s guardians, the abodes of the Guardian Giants, the laboratories where the Goddess experimented with special species, and the deity’s court and palace. The planet called "Sluun" once served as the first barrier of this sacred ground, overlooking the entire star system and courtyard from the edge of the star-forming cloud, and was a pilgrimage site for the few mortal races fortunate enough to directly contact the Goddess.

During the Godslayer War, this barrier was the first divine realm to fall, but according to Mu Lu, fierce battles continued here even after its fall. The Traitor's armies densely covered every space of the Gate of Sluun at that time, yet the surviving guardians fiercely resisted in the few fortresses and strongholds of the fortress planet, attempting to turn back and support their mother. This heroic battle lasted until the very end, until the entire Gate of Sluun and the Founding Star were banished to the dark domain. Since no one could observe the situation inside the dark domain, no one knew the fate of those guardians who held out until the final moment. Mu Lu also did not know what happened to the Gate of Sluun after it fell into the dark domain, which led to its current state.

Now, its space is distorted, its time flow is disordered, and the entire nebula is in a strange state of contradiction. The order of the universe seems to have vanished here, and the solemn aura of the sacred gate of the past is no longer visible.

The Petrified Turtle Rock Platform stopped at the boundary where time distortion occurred. Nolan constantly used instruments to test the situation ahead and roughly determined the range and extent of the time distortion. The closer to Sluun, the more severe the distortion, and on that planet, the passage of time had slowed to almost a standstill.

"According to rough calculations, in the area with the most severe time distortion, which is the surface of the planet Sluun, one hour is roughly equivalent to one thousand years outside," Nolan said with amazement. "And this situation seems to have been going on for a long time, probably ever since the space here became distorted."

Izhaks crossed his arms and looked intently at the starry sky in the holographic projection. The wonder of the universe made him regain some of his exploration enthusiasm from back then: "This is the power of the universe… It's hard to believe what kind of force could warp time like this."

Hao Ren, however, had been silent ever since hearing about the time distortion, because a huge idea was surging in his mind and gradually taking shape. After thinking for several minutes, he suddenly knocked on the console and said with a hint of excitement, "Do you know what this means?"

Lily thought for a moment: "So we can wait there until Detective Conan finishes?"

Hao Ren slapped the husky on the head: "It means that the Godslayer War on that planet just ended ten hours ago! It means that the Traitor's army just left that place ten hours ago! Some things might not even have left yet!!"

The scene suddenly fell silent. Even Elizabeth couldn't help but look stunned, and after a long while, she squeezed out a sentence: "...So exciting!"

"Can we go over there?" Hao Ren stared at the data terminal, which was pretending to be dead on the console (pretending to be dead to prevent anyone from prying it off), "I mean, while offsetting the time delay effect."

He felt that this was a rare opportunity, and it was necessary to go to Sluun to see what the situation was like, but the time delay was a fatal problem, especially with an astonishing delay scale of one hour equaling ten thousand years—this meant that by the time he sneezed there and came back, humans on Earth would have almost colonized Mars. Since he had never encountered this kind of field before, Hao Ren felt that this was a rather tricky problem.

But the data terminal's answer was surprisingly relaxed: "Of course it's fine, we can eliminate the phenomenon of time warp, but it's a one-time and irreversible process—just use the ship's own void engine."

"Eliminate time warp?" Hao Ren was stunned. "What's the principle?"

"The Celestial System is immune to all negative states caused by the disorder of cosmic rules, and their creations also partially possess this ability. The fundamental reason is contact with the 'void' after jumping out of the world," the data terminal explained this complex issue. "Do you know the concept of the world?"

Hao Ren was stunned and began to rummage through the textbooks in his memory: "A closed and self-consistent mathematical model within a certain range of time and space? A set of information that can describe itself and has all the data needed to prove itself. They perform internal calculations and loops under the constraints of a series of mathematical laws, forming a large formula that is constantly self-deducing. Externally, it manifests as various activities of the universe. This system is called the 'world'."

"There are some inaccuracies, but that's basically the idea," the data terminal flashed twice, indicating that Hao Ren was right. "The world is a self-consistent model, and the void is the original chaos outside these models. Contacting the void means that you jump out of the world—jump out of all the shackles of the world, including its worldview and physical laws. What is time in essence? Whatever it is, it's only something that can take effect within the scope of this worldview. Once something that doesn't belong to the worldview appears, it will be immediately destroyed and then reset."

Hao Ren suddenly understood: "So if we set the ship to the state of void navigation and then crash into it directly..."

"We can be immune to any form of time warp, but this process will also destroy the warped structure here. After the void engine is turned off, the time around Sluun will resume flowing at a normal speed—this 'normal speed' is synchronized with the surrounding universe."

Lily stared at Hao Ren and the data terminal discussing these almost metaphysical things. Even though she was a top student dog, she encountered something outside her knowledge base at this time, so she could only ask vaguely, "Will this work?"

"Simple and crude, quite effective," the data terminal said confidently. "Let the time flow here have a power outage and restart, anyway, the time dilation effect here is not caused by black holes or anything like that, it's just a disorder of order. This kind of 'soft fault' is easy to solve."

Hao Ren nodded and gave instructions to Nolan: "Turn on the void engine, we'll crash into it, wait for the data terminal signal to stop pushing at any time."

The method provided by the data terminal was simple and effective, but quite crude. It was to cause a spatiotemporal restart within a certain range by injecting "foreign objects" into the timeline. In essence, it was close to shock therapy. After the void engine was turned on in the main universe, it would cause great pressure on the world. Therefore, it was necessary to stop pushing in time before it turned the entire space into 0s and 1s.

The Petrified Turtle Rock Platform responded quickly. The armor belt in the middle of the ship opened a series of grids shining with blue light like blinds. The void engine was activated. These blue grids quickly became illusory and placed the entire ship at a critical point where it was about to jump out of the worldview of this universe.

Strictly speaking, the ship was no longer something that the order of this universe could recognize at this moment, but it forcibly stayed here, finally triggering a series of chain collapses: the distortion points of the nebula began to oscillate, the surrounding light quickly dimmed as if swallowed by something, and even those solid stars and planets were slowly losing their texture in the shaking, looking as if they were about to become two-dimensional paper cutouts.

The ship began to advance towards Sluun.

Hao Ren nervously watched the spatial anomalies around the ship, muttering instructions: "Nolan, drive slower, drive slower, reduce the engine power... Put it in first gear, gently step on the clutch, just move a little, don't give it gas, don't give it gas! Okay, just like that, slowly move forward, watch the tachometer..."

Nolan finally couldn't bear it anymore: "Shut up!"

The image of the planet Sluun became increasingly faint. It was about to become a large string of meaningless 0s and 1s due to the conflict of worldviews, but just as it was about to disappear due to the influence of the void engine, the data terminal finally ordered: "Stop pushing!"

Nolan slammed on the brakes... Well, there were no brakes, in short, she immediately cut off the power supply to the void engine, and then the Petrified Turtle Rock Platform, which was about to fall into the void realm from this universe, stopped dangerously at the edge of the world, and then slowly shook and recovered its entity like a TV screen with a bad signal.

Sluun and the surrounding starry sky also recovered, and the light became stable again. Although the spatial distortion was not resolved, the time in this place had begun to flow—at a normal speed.

The Petrified Turtle Rock Platform slowly arrived above Sluun. On this planet, the last battle of the Godslayer War had just ended ten hours ago.