Chapter 171: The Prospect of Pan-dimension

Lin Lei stayed in the new Forbidden Domain of the World Tree, Lenna. Every day, apart from communicating with Lenna, he sat quietly in the Forbidden Domain, silently analyzing the structure of the Four Space-time Dimensions.

Originally, an action like shutting himself away to work alone would not have led to any achievements, but Lin Lei was different, because the Dimensional Element of the Dark Saint still remained in his Will, and he also had the System’s database.

He only needed to compare and verify them one by one.

Time flowed rapidly in this nearly silent Forbidden Domain. The knowledge of the Four Space-time Dimensions was as vast as a misty sea, almost endless, which greatly exceeded Lin Lei’s expectations.

In the first hundred years, Lin Lei had not been able to distinguish the differences between the three spatial dimensions. In his view, apart from their positional relationships with each other, these three dimensions had no extra distinguishable features.

That is to say, as long as Lin Lei changed his perspective, these three spatial dimensions were completely interchangeable, and no abnormality would occur at all.

But the problem arose. Both Lenna and the Dimensional Element of the Dark Saint showed that these three dimensions were independent, distinguishable existences, and each one was irreplaceable and unswappable!

This irreplaceability represented that this Four-dimensional Universe, above its macroscopic spatial structure, possessed anisotropy, rather than the isotropy Lin Lei had always believed in.

Before this, Lin Lei had always viewed the Four-dimensional Universe as a thick soup, with various Star Systems like particles in the soup, distributed evenly within, and extending endlessly in an almost infinite structure.

But the various data Lin Lei now mastered, without exception, were refuting Lin Lei’s erroneous cognition.

This anisotropy represented that the Universe was bounded, and it was not a pure sphere either. It might be a cone, a ring, or any irregular shape was possible, such as a saddle shape.

If cosmic space were infinite, then the isotropy and anisotropy in every direction would have no meaning at all. This conclusion, which completely contradicted his experience, drove Lin Lei crazy.

In fact, this kind of contradiction had always permeated the entire history of human cognition of the Universe. For example, Aristotle consistently believed that motion required force to maintain, that a vacuum did not exist, and that white light was the purest light, while any colored light was impure.

Things that could be directly observed with the naked eye could easily be accepted and firmly believed by people, because they conformed to people’s life experiences.

But now, just as Galileo refuted Aristotle’s views on the motion of objects, the three-dimensional spatial elements of the Dark Saint were also refuting Lin Lei’s experiences one by one, making him feel somewhat at a loss.

Because, apart from logical rationality, Lin Lei could find no sense of identification with these bizarre cognitions; in the world he lived in, he could find no corresponding phenomena.

Regarding some things, knowing is knowing, and not knowing is not knowing. Even if Lin Lei forcibly accepted the Dark Saint’s theory, it would not have the slightest effect on him, because this was simply not his own thing! Forcing it in would only cause indigestion and bring no benefit whatsoever.

Lin Lei fell into a dead end of cognition, while Lenna watched from the side but could not help, because this process had to be experienced. Until later, when Lin Lei’s Will strength increased and he observed a deeper level of the Universe, these doubts would naturally unravel.

It was not until a hundred years later that Lin Lei’s Will grew to a limit. He crossed a bottleneck, and he immediately felt that the entire Universe appeared different in his eyes.

The Universe was still the same Universe, but it displayed more things. Just like complex numbers in mathematics, the Universe now had an additional imaginary part in Lin Lei’s eyes!

Just this imaginary part alone could turn many impossibilities into possibilities, and turn misunderstanding into understanding, because Lin Lei had observed it!

In this grand Universe, Lin Lei deduced its shape for the first time: a bounded yet boundless ring!

This ring was different from ordinary cognition, because setting off from any direction, a traveler would return to his original starting point; thus, relative to this traveler, the path he walked was a ring.

This showed that the Universe was bounded. As for the concept of being boundless, for that traveler, he could indeed never touch the edge of the Universe.

At this moment, the three dimensions of space immediately became vivid in Lin Lei’s eyes, and almost at the same time, Lin Lei comprehended the meaning of their existence.

This obstacle that had stuck Lin Lei for a hundred years was crossed by him in a single morning.

Almost simultaneously, Lin Lei’s Will merged with the Dimensional Element of the Dark Saint, and the strength of his Will underwent an explosive expansion. Around him, the free floating energy became somewhat restless, seeming to hesitate, unsure whether to submit to Lin Lei’s Will or continue to be controlled by that powerful Will in the distance.

Around Lin Lei, the Forbidden Domain started to become unstable, and the material structures within became much more fragile.

Lenna was not surprised but delighted. This showed that Lin Lei was only one step away from becoming a Pan-dimensional Creature!

As long as he comprehended the Time Dimension, Lin Lei’s authority in the Universe would be elevated, achieving true great freedom.

However, the Time Dimension was cold and ruthless, extending from the beginning of the Universe to its destruction, crossing from the first spatial dimension to the seventh energy dimension. It was omnipresent and all-encompassing.

As long as one could truly understand it, one would discover the deepest mysteries of this Universe, and thus unveil the most mysterious veil of the Universe.

In the Time Dimension of the Dark Saint, just the first Time Law mentioned at the beginning, or more accurately, an empirical rule, made Lin Lei dumbfounded.

The simple expression of this Law was: the finer the scale of time is divided, the less the total amount of information observed in the entire Universe!

What did this mean? The things extended from this were enough to overturn all of Lin Lei’s past worldviews!

But upon deep thought, Lin Lei could not help but be horrified. This damn empirical rule was actually so reasonable! If the total amount of cosmic information were to be expressed, at least one instrument would be needed to measure it.

Then any instrument had limits on its time scale. The total amount of information it measured certainly still had some things that were repeatedly deduced within a subtle time scale that it could not distinguish.

Assuming the limit of human time cognition was 0.1 seconds, then as long as an object changed its state tens of millions of times within that 0.1 seconds, humans would only discover that this world was actually so rich and colorful, but would not realize that the essence of this colorful world was merely one object with multiple forms.

Just like when Lenna once derived hundreds of millions of phantoms from Lin Lei’s body, in Lin Lei’s eyes, these phantoms were countless, but their essence was just Lin Lei’s body, only one.

From this perspective, the total amount of information in the Universe observed by Lenna and Lin Lei differed by a very, very large amount.

So, what would the world look like at the time scale of the Pan-dimension, which is 10 to the power of negative fifty seconds?

The specific description Lenna gave was: “Very empty, very quiet, and very dark. Gravity was faint, and the undulations of the energy sea were almost non-existent. There was almost no uncertainty in the Universe.”

…Lin Lei could hardly imagine this kind of world. His current limit of time perception was restricted by the Planck constant. Because he had only comprehended the three dimensions of space, he could feel the smallest unit of space to be ten to the power of negative thirty-five meters.

Therefore, his time scale could only sense ten to the power of negative forty-three seconds, which was exactly the time required for light in a vacuum to travel this minimum distance. Anything beyond that was the domain of Deities for Lin Lei.

In a word, Lin Lei was still a mortal now. Although he was infinitely close to a Deity, this proximity was a difficult barrier to cross.

There was no comparability between Lin Lei and Lenna in terms of strength. No matter how many Lin Leis came, they could not defeat Lenna, because the opponent could launch attacks from an even more subtle time scale!

Then, according to the Law proposed by the Dark Saint, in the infinite subtlety of time, would information decrease infinitely, and finally would all things return to one, returning to the essence of the Universe?

No one was clear about this question, and no one could answer it. Lenna could only remain silent for a while, and finally sighed: “Lin Lei, drilling into the dead end on some things is of no use, it will only make you feel pain.”

This infinite concept could only be imagined and could not be experienced at all, which meant a kind of unknown.

Perhaps, as Lenna said, there really existed a supreme Will that sealed the mysteries of the Universe within this infinite domain, existing as an unknown to mortals.

This was the true domain of God. Intelligent beings, including Pan-dimensional Creatures, could imagine and guess, but could never verify its correctness.

Just like Schrödinger’s cat, without opening that sealed black box, one would never know whether the cat was dead or alive!