The Path Toward Heaven

Jing Jiu understood why General Li wanted him to come here.

These scenes he read in the materials were totally different from them being seen with his own eyes; they were more truthful and realistic when being seen.

He kept on walking forward. The footsteps and the voice of explaining echoed in the quiet and vast passage again.

The two army officers were quite familiar with the base and the surroundings. The other person was a researcher, who knew more about the Sea of Dark Matter.

“The research center can only observe, survey and calculate them directly so far. That black dust and powder are still a part of our physical world according to our analysis. And yet, they were modified by a certain force at the micro-particle level. Since the laws of physics are fuzzy under super-micro particle conditions, all we can do is uncover some of the rules.”

“Our knowledge of the existence of dark matter is merely based on the mathematic calculations; they are impossible to be captured and collected. Yet, what we can determine is that they don’t have any still mass.”

“The so-called infection is not the invasion of the neuro system, nor is the modification, something that is hard for us to understand.”

“The distant ancient civilization had soon determined that such infection was irreversible, so they opted to quarantine themselves.”

“To thwart the invasion of the Sea of Dark Matter, we must cut off its source; in other words, we have to wipe out the cracks in sub-dimensional space. The super-computing center of the Federation can surveil parts of star regions in real-time, and these parts of the star region are basically racing with time. Unfortunately, those cracks are produced soundlessly, and sometimes they can infect planets.”

“The colonized planets and mining planets have few in this galaxy. Judging by the rate of infections, we can conclude that the Sea of Dark Matter…is more prevalent than we imagined before, and has possibly encircled this galaxy.”

…

…

The two officers halted their steps before a floor-to-ceiling window and said, “Outside is the central district of the city.”

Jing Jiu and Hua Xi came before the window and looked out. They didn’t see any high-rise buildings, but the black forests and bushes.

Some streets were vaguely visible on the other side of the black forest. Many cracks could be seen on the streets, from which some black smoke and fog rose up.

A gust of wind blew over from nowhere and dispersed the black smoke and fog, but they didn’t disappear, merely scattering in all directions.

Countless black particles dropped down from the tree branches. The wild grass by the streets swayed gently in the wind as if they would come alive, yet appeared to be deathlike at the same time.

Those particles in the smoke and fog were the spore-like things Jing Jiu spotted after the spacecraft entered the atmosphere.

The professors at the research center believed that those black spores should be the cells that had been infected by the dark matter.

All the lifeforms on this planet that had been infected died, at least those on the surface of the ground.

Those spores were not vigorous enough to infect other things, but they still looked formidable.

It was true that all of those infected by the Sea of Dark Matter were lifeforms; to put it more precisely, they were the biological lives.

If a planet had no lifeform, the Sea of Dark Matter couldn’t bring any change to the planet even after swallowing it.

Without the lifeforms, the expansion of the Sea of Dark Matter would slow down, the speed of which was much slower than that of galaxies separating from one another.

In other words, the Sea of Dark Matter could at most affect the space of this galaxy; it couldn’t pose any threat to the vast universe.

Likewise, a nail can’t, in fact, destroy the Empire from across the prairie.

However, humans are not the universe itself, but life itself.

The sea of stars became the abyss wherever the Sea of Dark Matter passed through, and the lives were terminated, and the human world became a hell.

The heavenly demons of the outside world that invaded the Stargate Base were small in number, but they had caused a lot of casualties for this very reason.

The city outside the window was hell.

The city was quarantined by an invisible shield on the other side of the black smoke and fog, which still preserved its original condition more than one hundred thousand years ago.

Though the distant ancient civilization was much more advanced than the Federation of the Milky Way, their ideas were similar.

It was evident that the leaders at the time wanted to preserve this hell as a research lab where the humans could find the strategies and methods to eradicate the Sea of Dark Matter.

…

…

There were a great many corpses on the streets, in the buildings, and in the passages of space tunnels.

They were the corpses of ash trees, roses, cockroaches, mice, dogs, cats, and humans.

The developmental level of the distant ancient civilization was beyond imagination, given that they could have preserved such an ugly world in such a perfect condition.

“The energy for the protective shield can last for tens of thousand years. After the Federation studied this protective shield, many things related to shielding have been improved. The current protective shield for the latest battleships and the protection for many planets have stemmed from this. Of course, we still can’t manufacture them up to their standard yet.”

An officer turned on a light screen for Jing Jiu. He said while clicking a tiny black speck on the screen, “A life will lose sensibility completely after being infected, but it can keep its intelligence after its death. According to the materials we have collected about the distant ancient civilization and the suggestions given by contemporary scientists, we have classified these lifeforms in five major groups.”

The black speck on the screen was enlarged rapidly, turning into a small dark gray tree branch; it was unclear what lifeform it was.

“This is an insect called a bamboo worm, and it will have almost limitless life after being infected like all the other lifeforms. However, it doesn’t pose any threat to us. It’s only that the spores released by it have the further infection ability within standard half a minute after it is killed.” The officer thought Jing Jiu didn’t know anything about this and explained patiently, “We can kill off these things if we destroy the entire environment; but we’d better not employ such a method in the battlefield.”

Jing Jiu didn’t respond.

The officer continued, “The insect, after being infected, turns into a monster called Kai Scale; the infected animal is called Half Tail; the infected plant Gray Wood; the infected microorganism is harder to name, and it has a rather strange name, called Blood Thumb. As for the infected humans…they are called Preface.”

…

…

The black specks on the light screen were enlarged one after the other, showing their shapes.

They were the rumored monsters of the Sea of Dark Matter.

They were given by the distant ancient civilization and scientists a quaint name, monsters, though they were the tall and straight trees in the snow, the swaying flowers in the wind, the insects singing in the summer evening, the cats in people’s laps and dogs under people’s feet, or humans before they had been infected.

The 3-D anatomic diagram and detailed written instructions appeared on the screen along with those monsters, which were the research outcomes accumulated by the two civilizations and were very detailed. The instructions included those about how fast the monsters traveled, their attacking methods, their weaknesses and what was the swift, simple and effective way to destroy them.

Some of those monsters were like dust, some like animals, and some like zombies in movies and games.

Jing Jiu was familiar with the looks of these monsters. He had the same feeling when he met those heavenly demons of the outside world after his ascension.

It was obvious that those monsters in the snowland of Chaotian were the clones of these monsters, or copies of them. The only difference was that one was black and the other white.

It proved that that god was not omnipotent. The monsters of the Snowy Kingdom were apparently not as formidable as these monsters; most of all, they couldn’t infect others.

It was nonetheless different between the low-temperature chill and the absolute quietness.

Jing Jiu looked at the city outside the window. His eyes grew brighter, and his line of sight became sharper. He saw more and more corpses of “Blood Thumbs”, but failed to see the Sea of Dark Matter itself.

It was then that he thought of the mosquitoes in the Fiend Prison and Cold Cicada, and then he thought of the Snow Girl. It was unclear how many times he had thought of the Snow Girl.

…

…

The circular base occupied a large area. It was so large that there was a mountain in the middle of the base. This mountain was not high when it was compared to the few eerily tall mountains on the equator of this planet, but in an area close to the north pole this mountain was the highest. It was high enough to see the whole city when standing on its peak.

Standing on the cliff, Jing Jiu looked at the distant city in silence. His face shone on by the sunlight didn’t look as appealing as before; it was probably because an unpleasant expression was showing in his eyes and on his eyebrows.

As the zither music rang out, Shen Yunmai flew over and landed next to Jing Jiu.

“What weapon did the distant ancient civilization use back then?” asked Jing Jiu.

It was indeed extraordinary that the weapon could kill off all the monsters and lifeforms on the surface of the ground in a short time and meanwhile seal off the cracks in the sub-dimensional space.

The weapons in the Federation of the Milky Way, be it the neutron bomb or the super EM bomb, couldn’t achieve such a feat.

“It’s said that it was a weapon of a permanent star level. The materials the Science Academy has found contain no clues about it.”

Looking at the city in the dim light, Shen Yunmai continued, “Unfortunately, a civilization, no matter how advanced it is, will enter the grave sooner or later.”

“Let’s go have a look,” suggested Jing Jiu.

Jing Jiu leaped up from the edge of the cliff, turned into a sword light and passed through the protective shield of the circular base, heading toward the city in the distance.

The alarm sounded in the circular base, followed by countless surprised cries…

Nobody could ensure his safety.

What if he was infected by the black energy?