I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 891: The Investigation and the Astonishing Truth

At Alma’s words, the faces of the others changed in an instant.

The air around them seemed to have been frozen solid by that one low murmur.

Jie Ming’s heart gave a violent jolt as well when he heard the word.

A so-called singularity was a special point within some system at which the existing regularities, models or laws failed, and values became infinite or undefined.

The singularity was a cross-disciplinary concept, most commonly met with in physics or mathematics, though it was occasionally applied in technology as well.

The best-known singularity of all was probably the initial state before the explosion in the Big Bang concept of Jie Ming’s previous life; at that point, every known law would fail.

If a plane was a miracle of order and elements converging within the endless chaotic void, then a singularity was the other pole entirely, diametrically opposed to it.

“Impossible.” Ed’s first reaction was to deny it outright. “Most singularities have only ever appeared inside theoretical models. The one singularity that actually occurs is probably nothing but the center of a black hole. And even that requires the stable rules found inside a plane before it can form. In an environment like this one, the conditions for a singularity to be born simply do not exist!”

“Just so… And what is your evidence for taking it to be a singularity?” Tori asked as well.

“I did not say it was a complete singularity.” Alma drew a deep breath, a trace of fright showing through her half-lidded eyes. “But this thing absolutely possesses certain characteristics of one already, because I have seen the starting point of the fate lines here!”

At those words the other wizards, who had no grounding in fate-discipline knowledge, showed little reaction, but Jie Ming could not help opening his eyes wide in astonishment.

As someone who had likewise crossed the threshold of the Fate Law, Jie Ming understood very well the concept contained in that sentence of Alma’s.

Fate has neither beginning nor end. That was very nearly a law of fate-discipline knowledge in its own right.

Turned around, though, a singularity was by definition the special point at which every model, regularity and law failed, so seeing the starting point of the fate lines within one… did not seem to be beyond understanding after all.

Meanwhile, Alma explained to the others what the thing signified within fate-discipline knowledge.

When Alma had finished, Tori could not help swearing. “Is this damned thing really something we can handle?”

“Calm down.” Chloe raised a hand, signaling everyone not to lose their heads just yet.

She looked toward Alma. “You are certain this singularity is incomplete?”

Alma nodded. “I have seen the state of the singularity at the center of a black hole before. A normal singularity should have an end point to the fate lines as well as a starting point. Since there is only a starting point here, it means there is something wrong with the singularity itself.”

At that, the eyes of the other seventh-level wizards lit up one after another.

Had it been a complete singularity, and one producing effects on such a scale besides, they would have put as much distance between themselves and it as they possibly could.

But since it was incomplete… then there was room to work with.

A singularity was very dangerous, certainly, but correspondingly its research value was high enough to match!

Chloe nodded. “We observe from the outer region first, and build up a model of its outer layers before anything else. After that we judge our follow-up plan according to the situation. If it truly proves beyond handling, then we take the intelligence back, and naturally there are eighth-level great personages to make that judgment.”

The several seventh-level wizards nodded one after another.

Jie Ming had not joined in from the beginning, because he was staring fixedly at that mass of darkness with the True-False Void-Piercing Pupil driven to its utmost.

Deep within his pitch-black pupils, countless threads whirled madly, trying to resolve even the faintest lead out of that stretch of absolute darkness.

In the end, Jie Ming still gave up on finding the “starting point” in the tangled snarl of fate lines before him.

“Fair enough. My level in the Fate Law is still far too low. Better to study it honestly and by the book first.”

With the assignments handed down, every member of the investigation team dispersed once again to gather information.

…

…

Several days later, on the temporary floating platform.

Although Ed had inscribed layer upon layer of reinforcing runes without pause, the low tremors coming ceaselessly from the elements all around still set the platform’s defensive barrier rippling.

Fortunately Ed’s technique really was strong enough, and it held the raging elemental turbulence firmly outside.

At the center of the platform, the five of them gathered in a circle once more.

The four who had returned one after another shared out the information each had collected, while Ed fed it into a magical network terminal to be summarized.

“Taking together the data all of you collected, the conclusion is out.” Ed’s voice was low. “The core inside that shell is a collapsed singularity in a black-hole-like form. I believe we may call it an Elemental Black Hole.”

“An Elemental Black Hole?” Jie Ming’s gaze tightened slightly.

“Yes. Its nature is entirely different from a normal black hole’s, but structurally the two are extremely alike.”

Ed pointed at the fathomless nothingness at the model’s core on the light-screen, speaking quickly. “A conventional black hole is the product of a singularity of infinite mass and infinitesimal volume. It devours matter and warps spacetime by pure gravitation. But in the final analysis, the cornerstone that constitutes both matter and gravitation is the ‘earth element.’”

“Whereas this thing before us devours not only matter and energy, but the elements themselves! It is no exaggeration to say that it is forcibly draining the void of every cornerstone out of which all things are constituted!”

“So… this stretch of high-density elements we are standing on right now is in fact its ‘accretion disk’?” Tori stroked his chin, a flicker of horror crossing his eyes.

“Just so.” Chloe drew a deep breath and picked up the thread. “Except that the free elements of the endless void are simply too vast. The elemental currents surging in from every direction far exceed its absorption limit, and instead they wrap it layer upon layer, disguising it as a supergiant celestial body. That thing we saw earlier that looked like a core is its event horizon.”

She extended a finger and traced an arc through the void, pointing at the wholly pitch-black core in the distance.

“By my calculations, that event horizon is roughly half a light-year in diameter.”

“Equivalent to a black hole half a light-year across…” Jie Ming ground his teeth, and felt his gums ache.

A black hole with a horizon reaching half a light-year across: set in a material universe, how many observable universes’ worth of matter would it have to devour and compress before it could take shape?

In theory an eighth-level wizard could indeed manipulate a black hole with ease, and even create one.

But… every ability came down to “sheer scale.”

Should a forbidden existence on this scale ever slip out of control, Jie Ming did not think an ordinary eighth-level wizard could handle it.

Short of a ninth-level being who had spent a long time gathering power, he feared, no one could truly hold this thing down once it broke loose.

“Exactly as with an ordinary black hole, within the event horizon of an Elemental Black Hole there is likewise no element able to escape.” Ed’s face was severe. “And every power we wizards possess, our bodies and souls included, depends fundamentally on the four foundational elements. Which means that for us it is immeasurably more dangerous than a true black hole. Once you fall in, even existence at the conceptual level would be torn to shreds.”

“The one thing to be thankful for…” Tori gave a bitter laugh. “Is that its distortion of spacetime is not as violent as a physical black hole’s. Otherwise, at the standing of a few small fry like us, we would have been ground to powder by the spacetime tides the moment we came near.”

“But we have already reached our limit.” Alma’s eyes swept over the group. “The data on the Elemental Black Hole’s outer region is fully collected, but the interior remains an absolute blind spot. Any detection spell becomes its fodder the instant it draws close. We cannot use aggressive methods, since if we were to wake that not-yet-fully-formed singularity at the core…”

“Half a light-year across of extremely compressed elements would detonate in an instant.” Chloe rubbed her temples, one corner of her mouth pulling into a self-mocking curve. “The annihilation storm it produced could probably wipe the plane clusters belonging to a few dozen nearby factions off the star chart entirely, and do it in passing.”

For a time the platform fell into dead silence.

Faced with a cosmic-scale Wonder of a magnitude beyond comprehension, even a wizard’s power was as small as a mote of dust.

And yet, just as the oppressive atmosphere had all but congealed, a calm voice broke the silence.

“Perhaps I could give it a try.”

Four gazes fell on Jie Ming as one, in the same instant.

“Conventional means of detection fail because the energy and information projected across are devoured indiscriminately and can feed nothing back.” Ed looked toward Jie Ming. “That leaves essentially nothing but pure visual observation as an effective method of detection. But an Elemental Black Hole gives off no information of itself, so the information visual observation yields is extremely limited. And even if you had some better means of visual observation, you still could not investigate the specific conditions inside.”

“Set your mind at rest. I do have a better method of visual observation. As for how to observe the interior…”

Composedly, Jie Ming raised his right hand, index and middle fingers pressed together, and drew them once through the void.

Hiss…

A hair-fine streak of silver-white light flashed and was gone, as though an imperceptible ripple had been opened across the surface of a calm lake.

“This is a spatial-discipline spell of my own creation, 【Void String】.” Jie Ming watched the faint light annihilating at his fingertip, and explained. “Its mechanism uses the resonance strings of space itself to cut a section finer than the atomic scale through the bottom layer of the spatial framework.”

“Mechanically speaking, the move does not amount to tearing space apart. It merely causes an extremely slight change in the shape of a patch of space over one ten-millionth of a second. So long as I keep cutting the channel open at an extremely high frequency, and pair that with my eyes, I can ‘see’ what lies inside clearly in the instant it closes.”

“And the risk?” Chloe seized on the crux at once. “How sure are you, out of ten?”

“Ten out of ten is of course impossible. But I think the success rate is not low.” Jie Ming shook his head, one corner of his mouth curving up. “And the worst outcome is no more than dying once. I have a Substitute Death Doll in any case, so dying only costs me one Substitute Death Doll. Whereas if I succeed, what I come away with will be first-hand core data on the entire Wonder.”

“What a madman.” Alma shook her head, and yet on that habitually gloomy face there appeared a rare smile.

From what Jie Ming had said they could tell that the young man had absolutely arrived at the idea after cool deliberation.

That being so, there was no need to stop him.

“Do it.” Ed did not drag his feet in the slightest, and pressed his staff down hard. “But it will have to wait until we have passed the information here back to the Workshop, so they can prepare in advance for your failure.”

Tori nodded alongside him. “I will get a spacetime anchoring ready for you, to make sure you are not affected by the warped time and space here, and to guarantee the accuracy of the observations as far as it can be guaranteed!”

Jie Ming nodded with a smile. “Of course. My thanks.”

…

…

Some ten-odd minutes later.

Ed glanced at the reply on the terminal and nodded to Jie Ming beside him. “Wizard Noren has answered. The Workshop’s protective arrays have been raised to their highest setting, and preparations to withdraw are complete. The information concerning the Wonder has also been passed to several neighboring wizard factions. You may begin.”

“Understood.”

“Good luck.”

With that, Ed left by spatial teleportation, relying on coordinates he had left out in the wider void beforehand.

Once Ed was gone, Jie Ming stood alone before the black event horizon.

Dozens of defensive shields were layered over him now, and beneath his feet lay a spacetime anchor woven out of interlacing silver runes.

All of them were gifts the wizards had left him as they departed.

Although apart from the spacetime anchor the other enhancements were barely better than nothing, they were still a token of the group’s goodwill.

“Hoo…”

Jie Ming breathed out the stale air in his lungs, settled his state of mind, and his gaze turned cold and keen.

Rumble, rumble…

Accompanied by a violent shuddering of the surrounding space, Jie Ming’s original puppet body vanished, and in its place stood a colossal humanoid figure five hundred kilometers tall.

This was precisely Jie Ming’s true body, which had not appeared in the main world for a very long time. In order to bring his strength fully to bear, he had chosen to let the true body manifest.

“Fortunate that I never let up on comprehending the Mustard Seed Dao-Holding True Body Art all these years. Otherwise I would not even be able to bring the true body out at the critical moment.”

Jie Ming stretched his limbs for the first time in a long while, then turned his eyes back to the pitch-black region in the distance.

A vertical seam split open abruptly at his brow, and the 【True-False Void-Piercing Pupil】 quietly opened.

Deep within the pupil, silver radiance turned madly.

Immediately after, the Fate Subsystem came online in sync, plating the vertical pupil with a layer of golden luster.

“Void String.”

Jie Ming flicked his fingertip lightly.

The hair-fine silver gleam pierced the void in an instant, and on the utterly black event horizon before him there appeared a channel finer than an atom.

The Elemental Black Hole was the same in nature as an ordinary black hole: within the event horizon no element existed that could escape, which meant there was no determining the information inside through the feedback of light or of any other particle.

But it was not absolutely impossible to collect information.

In a certain sense, the trajectories along which elemental particles moved deeper in could themselves reveal a great deal.

And what Jie Ming meant to do was open an observation window with the Void String and record the information with the True-False Void-Piercing Pupil.

Boom!

A vast flood of information surged into his mind.

Jie Ming’s frame shuddered violently. The vertical eye at his brow filled with blood in an instant, and the golden light on his forehead swelled abruptly.

But he clenched his teeth hard, and the silver light at his fingertip trembled madly at a frequency of tens of thousands of times a second.

Under the True-False Void-Piercing Pupil’s high-speed analysis, a corner of the fog over the true scene inside the horizon was at last forcibly torn away.

Unlike the degenerate matter inside a real physical black hole, the interior of the Elemental Black Hole was a boundless “ocean” of elements, flowing like quicksilver.

And yet, the moment Jie Ming took in the first batch of information the Five Aggregates Rainbow Mirror fed back about that elemental ocean, his heart felt as though it had been seized in a savage grip, and the blood in his whole body all but ran backward.

Something was wrong!

Very badly wrong!

Those elemental torrents, which ought to have rushed along in disorder, were running to a logic of preposterous precision.

There was no doubt of it. Judged from the data, there was absolutely something wrong with the trajectories of the elemental ocean’s motion.

“This… is not a natural phenomenon…”

Jie Ming withdrew all of his mental energy, and the silver gleam at his fingertip shattered in an instant.

He staggered back several paces, the excessive expenditure of computational power and vigor leaving his face ashen, great beads of cold sweat running down along his jaw.

But Jie Ming had no attention to spare for his own condition at all.

He raised his head and gazed at the event horizon before him, his eyes filled with dread:

“This is… an artificial construct!”