Chapter 689: Civilization's Destruction

Xu Zhi sat in his study, chin in hand, wondering why Medusa's tactics seemed so familiar. He suddenly realized and burst out laughing.

"Isn't this just like my past self?" he mused.

He was quite direct, unable to resist a self-deprecating remark: "Ahem, considering this situation, could it be that the Insecta Matriarch back then was also the weakest Helen Luthia in the vast multiverse? And at the moment she convened the supreme cosmic council, she was forcibly rescued by countless Insecta Matriarchs from parallel universes?" The thought sent shivers down his spine.

Xu Zhi suddenly found it very interesting, as if everything was guided by an unseen destiny. Could the world truly be a series of cycles? Who knows? But he found the speculation quite intriguing.

On a lush green grassland, amidst the pasture of a pastoral family, a poor, yurt-like grass hut stood. The wind swept across the land, stirring orderly waves of wheat. The sky, the earth, the wind, rain, thunder, and lightning—all felt tangible, showing no hint of artificiality.

"Is this your power?" a shepherd boy asked, holding a black beetle the size of a washbasin in a daze. He gazed intently at the neat and intricate crop circles in the distance.

Soon, over a month had passed. Within the internal space, a magnificent pyramid of pure gold had risen, reflecting the opulent architectural style of the Abyssal Demon Insect race. It was filled with knowledge and ancient murals, chronicling the historical myths of an entire distant civilization.

"Are you going to die?" the shepherd boy whispered.

The beetle let out a faint whine. "Yes, I am dying. No matter how great an ancient cosmic being, how invincible a cosmic overlord, there will always be a day when they succumb to decay. In my final moments, what I can leave you is my shell, and my last civilization... this entire golden pyramid, and the history of our existence throughout the universe."

Inside the golden pyramid, adorned with golden sculptures, brilliant lights illuminated ancient patterned murals on the sloping walls. The Abyssal Insect race reproduced in vast numbers, giving rise to many branch species. The murals depicted the history of several main tribes, although most had evolved into humanoid aberrations. However, many still retained bizarre, hybrid forms with human bodies and animal heads.

Golden murals continuously appeared, depicting their slash-and-burn practices. As a super-civilization descending upon other universes, they were worshipped as ancient gods by primitive native worlds, standing high with human bodies and animal heads, receiving faith.

"Our civilization excelled at using golden weapons, so we often organized mining expeditions to various parallel universes with lower civilizations to extract gold," she explained, pointing to the murals. "Some native civilizations called us Nibiru, others Anunnaki, some Nephilim, and some even called us alchemists."

"Alchemy, gold mining... is gold really that useful?" the shepherd boy asked curiously.

"Gold's value is greater than you can imagine."

"If gold is so valuable, what about copper?" the shepherd boy could barely contain his curiosity.

"Smelting copper is a crude practice and strictly forbidden," she replied. "In our civilization's concept, it's something for which people are sentenced."

"What a strange civilization," the shepherd boy replied. Through his constant questioning, it became clear that even a glorious race spanning countless civilizations held peculiar societal views. From the boy's narrow perspective, this seemed incredibly grand and abstract, almost unimaginable. His world consisted of a few nearby rural towns, some wooden signposts, the pungent smell of cow and sheep dung, a few freckled village women selling goat's milk, and the strict, abusive landowning nobles who were always reluctant to pay more of their currency.

"You are truly great," the shepherd boy uttered, though he didn't grasp the specifics of their greatness. It was like a physicist discussing quantum collisions with a rural farmer.

"Great? Yet, to this day, despite our civilization's best efforts, all we've managed to leave in the cosmos are tiny footprints." Helen Luthia, as her life slowly approached its end and she steadily aged, used pure gold to create murals while recounting the splendors of her life to the boy.

She was merely the weakest Helen Luthia in one universe. It was she, the Abyssal Matriarch from a parallel universe, who had changed her own destiny. She no longer remembered which Helen Luthia had started it all. In short, the first Helen Luthia, upon traversing the multiverse, began helping her alternate selves in other universes to rise, struggle, and reach the pinnacle of their respective universes.

"So, eventually, every Helen Luthia in the multiverse became the Abyssal Matriarch of her universe?" the shepherd boy exclaimed, though he still found the concept of the multiverse difficult to grasp.

"Indeed," the beetle whispered. "You see, every Helen Luthia in every universe was an absolute powerhouse, endowed with immense talent. At the same time, they were absolutely hot-tempered, the kind of people who could never get along with themselves. Like repels like; they'd bicker with themselves all day."

But among countless multiverses, her personality was an exception. Her weak personality led to the other fiery Helen Luthia's being surprisingly kind to her, treating her like a beloved younger sister. And so, she was sent here.

Her eyes showed a hint of emotion as she said to the boy, "By the way, as a lower caste, you probably don't have a name, do you? How about... Magellan? That's a word from the Predator race. Magellan means 'infinite rebirth.' Their Predator King, Willidian, was once called 'Eternal Magellan' by all the Predators across the multiverse."

"Meaning: eternal, infinite rebirth?" The shepherd boy fell silent. He must have been a heroic figure! Like Helen Luthia, his name resonated through every parallel universe and countless powerful cosmic civilizations across multidimensional space-time. These two ancient, dimension-spanning races must have struck terror into countless civilizations of the crystal wall system in that era. They symbolized supremacy, and their wars ultimately destroyed the entire multiverse.

"In my last moments, let me quietly remain in this golden tower of a prehistoric civilization," she said. "After I die, my shell can aid your growth."

The boy pursed his lips and left.

Helen Luthia quietly gazed at the murals inside the pyramid, from their rise to glory, and finally, to their last war, and the appearance of a terrifying ancient being that destroyed the universe. The depiction of this being on the mural was very vague, for it was indescribable and unnameable. Furthermore, she had barely managed to survive by not directly looking at it.

"In the end, it was our irrationality that destroyed an entire era." Her consciousness grew increasingly hazy. In a trance, she seemed to see a Predator, the sworn enemy of her race, emerge from the pyramid. From their initial cosmic grievances, which spread throughout the multiverse, the accumulated hatred had all but crushed both sides. The generational racial animosity was too vast; even by their era, stopping it had become nearly impossible.

"What are you thinking about?"

Helen Luthia turned her head, her pupils slightly contracted. She stared incredulously at the faintly glowing, hazy shadow speaking to her. A shadow was speaking? It was merely a shadow, like a reflection, embedded on the ground without a physical form.

"You, what kind of being are you?!" The fact that it knew her meant it likely hadn't died in that great cosmic annihilation, or perhaps... it was one of those unnameable Outer Gods, an ancient cosmic Old One? An existence akin to that terrifying, ancient titan whose size could not be measured by the universe itself? Regardless of the reason, it surpassed her deepest shock and fear!

Two great races, transcending the mortal realm, had perished, unable to withstand the great cosmic collapse into oblivion. Yet, who knew that a mysterious, unknown entity had witnessed it all! And now, it had personally come here.

"What is your connection to that ancient demon god universe, which symbolizes the origin and destruction of the cosmos?" She suddenly lost the dead calm in her dimming eyes, speaking with sudden, intense excitement. Because she had personally witnessed that terrifying, blurry scene—a scene she had never told the boy about: It was a pair of vast, colossal hands. The entire multiverse in their palms, slowly squeezed inward, undergoing a cosmic 'Great Crunch'—the antithesis of the Big Bang! The entire universe seemed like a ball of paper, thickly crumpled into a ball by her hands, re-forming into a single point!

That sight was too terrifying! It was a vast power unimaginable to higher-dimensional beings; she believed no living creature in the entire universe could comprehend the concept of such an existence. Anti-matter universe? Primordial dark cosmic particles? It utterly shattered all her lifelong perceptions!

"Could it be that you, too, are an ancient being transcending the cosmos?" she nearly choked.

Xu Zhi did not respond. He silently watched her discomposure, her tension, collapse, despair, and helplessness. Even a former multiverse overlord, one of the great beings from the crystal wall system in his study's bookshelf, was not much different from an ordinary person in their final moments, overwhelmed by fear and dread of death. Although, as she suspected, he was an existence beyond the cosmos, even above Medusa; from a certain perspective, he was a super-high-dimensional being, two dimensions above it.

"What are you?"

"And what is this world?"

"Dimensions?"

"Are we merely pathetic low-dimensional creatures?" She kept asking, then suddenly roared loudly, "Speak!!!"

"Please! I beg you..." Her voice turned into a sob, filled with helplessness and heart-wrenching agony. "Give me an answer!!" Helen Luthia gazed at the hazy reflection, shakily extended the beetle's antennae, almost shedding tears, and cried out furiously, "We, our civilization! Our entire universe! What do they mean? What are we, truly?"

Xu Zhi remained silently speechless. A moment later, he looked up at the pyramid's ancient cosmic murals and smiled faintly, "I don't know what you truly mean, just as I don't know what I mean... The world is too vast, possessing infinite possibilities."

"You... you?! Powerful as you are, you don't know either?" Helen Luthia's voice trembled.

"No, I don't," Xu Zhi's expression remained calm; he wasn't truly overthinking it. He had come here simply out of curiosity about potentially similar experiences. As for whether this led to a 'matryoshka doll' speculation—that perhaps a terrifying, high-dimensional creator had similarly created Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way, and indeed the entire 13.7-billion-year-old universe we currently inhabit—was it important? In the real, vast cosmos, were there truly Twelfth, or even Thirteenth Tier, ancient eternal beings? Could they interfere with the laws of the entire material universe? Sitting on a supreme cosmic throne? Who knows? Xu Zhi didn't even know if there were realms beyond the Ninth Tier. He felt that the Tenth Tier likely existed, but the Eleventh? His current perspective was far from reaching that. Xu Zhi also didn't know what tier the original Insecta Matriarch had been. Was she truly killed by her enemies, or did something else cause her demise? Who knows? In any case, she was just wildly audacious.

In reality, humanity's fleeting civilization, indeed the Earth's entire brief civilization, is but a blink of an eye in comparison to the entire universe. As countless scientists have stated, we are like fish in a glass bottle. Perhaps even with our civilization's full development efforts, we may never grasp the true nature of the vast universe throughout our lives. Because the universe is simply too immense, too vast. That's why Xu Zhi was pursuing knowledge, currently building his sandbox to deduce the path to the Ninth Tier. The future was long, very long. He believed he would find the ultimate truth.

"You don't know either?!" Helen Luthia roared, her voice tearing, almost like a madwoman's. She shrieked, her face contorted with anger and pent-up emotion, but her voice gradually weakened.

"No, I don't," Xu Zhi lowered his head, and the shadow's hand seemed to caress the beetle's carapace. "But not knowing is the best part, isn't it? The world is too immense. It holds infinite possibilities and endless dazzling beauty. Perhaps that is what's truly worth aspiring to."

Helen Luthia suddenly fell silent. "The world... yes, it is too beautiful. It is worth pursuing." Her breath gradually weakened. Xu Zhi's shadow silently watched her, slowly becoming hazy. Everything became quiet.

After a while, the shepherd boy slowly walked in. He saw that the beetle had lost all signs of life, its gaze fixed intently on a distant mural. The mural depicted an ancient, blurry gorgon demon god engaged in war across the vast cosmos: in her left hand, a Big Bang, expanding universes like stars across the sky; in her right hand, a Great Crunch, compressing the entire universe into a ball within her palm.

"Dead... So it finally died?" The shepherd boy's legs buckled, and he knelt on the ground. Suddenly, his gaze followed hers to that mural. "I feel as though, before she died, she had no regrets."