Chapter 824: The mortal's 'god'

After that, the worms took over the planet and the civilization of their 'God'.

They were able to develop rapidly and quickly understand their situation.

They possessed unique advantages: long lifespans and dormancy periods, decent physical strength, a natural ability to survive in harsh environments, and adaptability to resource-rich areas. They could even obtain enough energy simply by isotope decay.

Their deep-space vessels didn't even need to consider protection or sealing, as the worms could survive in outer space anyway. Their only weakness was probably their slow metabolism due to not needing to breathe.

A slow metabolism meant slower movement; they couldn't act as swiftly and quickly as oxygen-breathing life forms, instead being very sluggish.

However, this wasn't necessarily bad. This slowness allowed them more time to traverse the Void Realm when their speed was insufficient.

There was just one problem: because they were too slow, their development speed might be severely limited.

However, this problem was resolved after they absorbed the remnants of their 'God' after His decline.

The previous civilization had left behind its seeds but failed to wait for its own race to sprout from them. Instead, the worms nurtured by one of their probes fully accepted everything they had left behind.

The worms advanced by leaps and bounds.

They traveled between star systems, modified their bodies to greatly accelerate their thought processes through aerobic respiration, began uploading their consciousness into machines, gained the ability to manipulate matter between star systems, became 'Star-Forging Gods', could easily achieve universal immortality, and could single-handedly destroy planetary civilizations.

They could easily stir up gravitational points in nebulae, create stellar cores, and then fuse them into stars.

They spread throughout the galaxy until the end of the Universe, when the last black holes were about to evaporate and dissipate, and everything seemed to fall into heat death.

Baal's mind recalled the magnificent history of his civilization.

And now, before his eyes, was the backdrop of all that magnificence: the Universe he was familiar with, those large-scale structures, those galaxies, the endless planets, and the civilizations born within them.

As Baal said, if this scenery wasn't a dream, then it could only be something a God would see.

When Baal raised his hand to touch, he found that he had no physical body.

"An energy body?" Baal thought, "So, the world one sees after death, the world of the Gods, is it in energy form?"

He was quite accustomed to acting as an energy body, as he had long mastered the ability to shuttle between different bodies.

For ordinary races, the problem after energy transformation was that they couldn't feel their organs and thus couldn't use their functions. For example, speaking is actually the result of the combined efforts of the mouth, tongue, lungs, muscles, and vocal cords. Without these, young people who had just transformed from physical bodies into energy bodies wouldn't know how to speak.

They could only try to make sounds, even hum, exhale, or try to contract certain muscles to utter what they wanted to say, but they couldn't actually do that, because they no longer had organs and muscles.

At such a time, one must explore the essence of sound, which is "vibration." As long as an energy body simulates vibration, it can naturally produce sound, without being constrained by vocal cords and breath.

Baal skillfully manipulated the energy body, vibrating to produce sound.

But, there was no sound.

Huh? Was he not an energy body?

Only then did he realize that his illusory body, though having the same form as matter, was composed entirely differently.

If it were a being from the world below, they would immediately recognize that he was in a 'Spirit Soul' state, but Baal did not recognize it.

But he wasn't terrified; instead, he was somewhat curious. What exactly was this situation? Had he truly arrived at the afterlife's heaven, or was all of this a hallucination before death?

But at this moment, a voice came: "If you want to speak, you can just think it."

The voice had a completely different rhythm, a different way of speaking, strange vowels—it wasn't any language Baal was familiar with, yet strangely, Baal found... he understood it.

"You are?" At this moment, his thoughts also produced a sound.

It was merely a thought, yet the words truly emerged. He heard his own voice, unmistakably his voice, and the words he spoke were remarkably clear.

There was no vibration, yet he heard a sound.

How strange.

But Baal did not panic. As a thoughtful engineer, he had always been known for his excellent and calm mind.

So, he asked, "Is this the afterlife? Are you a God? Do Gods truly exist in this world?"

However, the voice replied, "This is not any place you know. This world does indeed have Gods, but Gods are not as you imagine them to be."

This answer made Baal slightly embarrassed, but he felt that this question was of the unmissable type in his current situation, so he said, "Then, though I don't know who you are, please forgive me for asking a foolish question: Are you the 'God' you speak of?"

The sudden voice did not suppress its emotions to maintain a perfectly mysterious tone, which made it sound a bit more human.

He was clearly somewhat interested in Baal's question. He said, "How interesting, someone always asks me this question. Of course, the phrasing varies, but I'm sorry, I cannot give you an answer you can understand. I can only say, you may call me whatever you wish, for no matter what honorific you bestow upon me, within the limits of your imagination, there is no honorific I cannot bear."

"Oh... no honorific you cannot bear, so you even created the Universe?" Baal was intrigued; he seemed unafraid of the voice.

"What if I said yes?" the voice replied.

Baal was not intimidated by such an answer. He continued, "Then what am I? If you created the Universe, then I should also be created by you. What form am I in now?"

The voice was unexpectedly patient. It answered Baal very frankly: "Your existence is easy to explain. You are a 'Spirit Soul.' In fact, you don't need to worry about any problems you might have. Your current composition perfectly mimics the structure of your brain, even down to the most minute details. This means your thoughts, memories, and personality have not changed. For you, you are no different from before."

"So, every living being is like this?" Baal asked.

"Not necessarily. Although everyone has a Spirit Soul, only a small portion can be elevated, just like you are now, given the opportunity to converse with me," the voice replied.

Baal said, "Then you only chose a very small number of people? Why did you choose me?"

"You were chosen because of your exceptional thinking ability," the voice replied. "You are a smart person who has realized the possible truth of the Universe, so I chose you. Of course, not just you."

"It seems I am very important to you," Baal said.

The voice replied, "No, you as an individual are not important to me, but 'you all' are very important to me."

"Meaning, you didn't just choose one existence like me. So, which one am I? And what is your purpose? Oh, you said you are a God, do you have any proof?" Baal was somewhat unconvinced.

Baal took pride in himself; he was unwilling to accept such a subordinate position, so he chose to challenge the other party.

"You are the last one in this Universe," the voice said.

This answer satisfied Baal's pride.

However, he immediately witnessed an even more terrifying scene.

He found himself seeing his own Universe, that tiny Universe that could be held in one hand.

It was so vast, billions of light-years across, yet at this moment it was fragile, shattered by a mere touch from the other party, like a bubble, gone with a 'pop.'

The countless living beings that had been in that Universe were annihilated.

At this moment, Baal watched in horror as the former galaxy, those large-scale galactic structures that resembled a neural fiber network, began to stir.

That was a hypothesis he had in his lifetime: the "Galactic Intelligence Theory."

Essentially, it proposed that the fibrous networks in the Universe, connected by gravity, were so similar in structure to nerves that these networks themselves might possess intelligence, only their reaction speed was too slow.

It turned out, this hypothesis was true.

These large-scale galactic structures truly possessed their own intelligence; it was just that his civilization was unable to communicate with them.

These large-scale galactic structures became active, exuding terrifying power, rushing out of the slowly decaying Universe. The tiny figures were roughly the size of a grain of sand, but within that tiny Universe, their sand-sized bodies were composed of tens of thousands of galaxies.

Presumably, this tiny figure had already become the overlord of the Universe. He could easily extinguish the stars of the Universe, and with a wave of his hand, he could crush an entire galaxy into a pile of debris.

But at this moment, this galactic powerhouse, capable of dominating the Universe, was in a panic. He looked at the great existence before him. He didn't know what kind of being he was facing, but one of the opponent's fists could fill his entire Universe!

The tiny figure made gibberish sounds, perhaps their language.

Strangely, Baal found that he understood this language. He could hear the tiny figure desperately screaming, "What are you?! Why are you destroying my Universe?"

Then he saw the strange five-fingered appendage below move, reaching out to grasp the tiny figure with two appendages. The tiny figure immediately used some profound ability to try to break free, but it was useless. His lifelong cultivation, his eons of experience, were crushed to death by those two fingers.

The mysterious voice from before also spoke at this moment: "To you, I am not a person; I am a God, the Lord of Creation, and this is not destruction, this is Rebirth."

The voice spoke thus, tossing the corpse of the former Universe-dominating powerhouse into the basin behind it. There, already lay forty to fifty similar corpses.

Baal was utterly terrified; he could barely describe what he was seeing.

The Universe was destroyed, although that Universe was indeed on the brink of destruction, as even the black holes were almost completely evaporated. Yet, he had never imagined the end of the Universe would be like this.

But, after the destruction, the corpses of these large-scale galaxies were re-molded together.

And so—a Big Bang occurred.

A brand new Universe was born.

This Universe was so young, so beautiful. Nebulae spewed colorful fountains like geysers, countless stars were lit, and light and heat filled the entire Universe, unlike the dying old age before.

Baal was too stunned to speak.

He now believed that the being before him might indeed be a God.

Besides 'God,' what other word could describe such an existence?

"So... God, why did you choose me?" Baal put aside his pride, humbly facing the voice before him.

"You are serving your purpose—you will think," the voice said.

"What?" Baal was somewhat puzzled.

"Just like now, you will 'think.' As I just said, you are a smart person."

"Meaning, you need me to help you 'think'? Great God, you should be far wiser than me. Can my wisdom possibly compare to yours? How can my thoughts help you?" Baal couldn't understand.

The voice replied, "I do not know, as you have seen, I am not omniscient."

"Then how do I need to think?" Baal asked.

"That is for you to think about," the voice replied.

"Thinking without a purpose... Then how long do I need to think?" Baal pressed on.

Baal seemed to have realized something: the other party needed him to think, and without setting a goal, just to keep thinking indefinitely.

So why engage in aimless thinking?

Could it be that the other party simply believed that thought and exploration themselves possessed considerable value? Did He not believe that thinking required other purposes?

Baal couldn't help but let his thoughts wander.

The voice seemed to see through Baal's actions. He was very pleased: "You see, that's it, you're doing very well. When you start thinking, that's what I want you to do."

Baal shivered.

He realized a terrifying future: the being before him wanted to drain all his thoughts and inspirations, and when he could no longer 'think,' that would be the moment of his destruction.

"Are you only talking to me?" Baal tried to keep his tone calm: "How long do I have to think?"

"Of course not, I am simultaneously communicating with many beings like you. As for the duration of your thinking..."

"I think the answer should be 'forever.'"