Those who face the wall, but are in the Nascent Soul stage.

Chapter 473 Musical Decision Making (5k)

The Edge World is a divisive force within the Singer Civilization.

The 'Singer' civilization originated from the mother world and created a large number of peripheral worlds around it. However, the excessively narrow territory eventually led to a "chain of suspicion" between the mother world and one of the peripheral worlds. During a routine "abandonment" by the mother world, the Dark Forest was formed, and war finally broke out.

In fact, the 'Singer' civilization has its own name, which is the 'Mother World' civilization. Just as humans call themselves Earth civilization, the Singers also call themselves the 'Mother World' civilization.

Civilizations always have an element of egocentrism.

"Mother" is always the first concept that civilization can recognize.

The mother world civilization developed from physical civilization, but at this time, the mother world was not primarily based on physical civilization.

With the establishment of the Tower of Meaning (a computer center cluster in a certain dimension), the "mother world" began to consider sending itself into the virtual world to further complete its own evolution and leap in civilization.

This evolution and leap is everything that the Singer civilization pursues. Just as laws are written on stone towers, the "Tower of Meaning" records the pursuits and values ​​of a civilization. At the top of the Singer civilization's tower is survival.

Under the guidance of the "Eternal Song," the Singer Civilization successfully transitioned to the "Tower of Meaning," with most individuals transforming into virtual life forms—a prerequisite for becoming a two-dimensional civilization.

After this three-dimensional ocean dries up, the Tower of Meaning will fall from three dimensions into two dimensions and transform enough two-dimensional life forms to re-infuse the stored consciousness into them.

In this way, a two-dimensional singer civilization was formed.

However, some individuals will survive in the real world and will not enter the Tower of Meaning.

For example, the elders, and the new, young singers.

They also need to perform tasks that are highly interactive in reality, such as personally launching Dark Forest attacks or fighting against the edge world, doing things that the Tower of Meaning cannot do.

In contrast, the edge world is entirely composed of original life forms.

Therefore, the Edge World launched frequent counterattacks and logical battles against the highly unified thinking of the Mother World, causing the Mother World, which initially held an absolute advantage based on collective wisdom, to begin to falter. The weaknesses of the Mother World, the Tower of Meaning, and the Song of Eternity often involve fundamental contradictions and therefore cannot be resolved in a short period of time. The Edge World effectively exploited these weaknesses, and coupled with the technological explosion of the Edge World, forced the Mother World to formulate a more thorough two-dimensional tactic.

The war between the Mother World and the Edge World has lasted for far too long, long enough to be ten million time particles ago (fifty million years ago).

After realizing that conventional warfare was no longer a viable path to ultimate victory, the rulers of civilization [Eternal Song] began preparations for "total two-dimensionalization," which involved sending themselves and all the three-dimensional universes they could reach into a two-dimensional universe to eliminate all enemies who could not survive in a two-dimensional universe.

The Singers' Tower of Meaning determines that after being modified, they are able to continue to survive after entering the two-dimensional universe, while their enemies, the "Ringworld," may not be able to.

At least the mother world has confirmed many times that although the edge world has surpassed the mother world in military strength, it still has not acquired dimensional computer technology.

Therefore, once the great dimensional reduction begins, if the peripheral world cannot transform into a two-dimensional civilization in time, it will inevitably perish under the wave of two-dimensionality.

As for the microcosm...

Sorry, I've never heard of it.

For the Singer civilization, even with the digitization of its civilization, the struggle for resources remains paramount. Leaving aside the material resources inherent in the development and expansion of civilization, from a purely security perspective, a data-based civilization would require a large number of physical weapons to prevent the destruction of its data carriers. Furthermore, even if it relinquished resource plunder, it still couldn't be certain of other civilizations' "judgments," and other civilizations couldn't guarantee that this powerful data entity wouldn't suddenly attack them one day. This is another kind of chain of suspicion, one that even a powerful world like the Mother World cannot escape. This is also why the war between the Mother World and the peripheral worlds cannot be stopped.

Either one side will be completely destroyed, or the other side will be completely transformed into a two-dimensional civilization.

Only under these two circumstances can this Dark Forest War come to an end.

But today.

The Dark Forest War was abruptly ended.

With the fringe world destroyed, the condition for "one side being destroyed" has been met.

The mother world, which won the Dark Forest War, was not happy; instead, it was gripped by extreme terror.

The process of discovering the destruction of the Edge World was not complicated. A mother world fleet carrying a large number of two-dimensional foil weapons bypassed the 'Singing Branch' (Orion Arm) at a distance, entered the heart of the Edge World, and then fired two-dimensional foils at about 4600 'points'.

4600 two-dimensional foils began to expand at different locations, confining a certain plane in the heart of the Edge World. However, the Mother World fleet was soon ambushed by scattered Edge World guerrilla ships. In defeating these scattered Edge World guerrilla ships, the Mother World fleet was also prepared to be destroyed.

Based on past experience, after the guerrilla warships in the edge world are destroyed, the main force of the edge fleet, which is wrapped in the four-dimensional fragments, will take advantage of the four-dimensional fragments' ten times the speed of light to quickly reach the battlefield and destroy the mother world's fleet with their slightly better technology.

The Mother World Fleet does not have the ability to generate four-dimensional fragments. Although the Mother World Fleet can rely on the five-dimensional "Quiet Garden" to quickly deploy to a certain coordinate point from the fifth spatial dimension [Axis].

But this can only be a one-way, one-time transmission.

Once captured by the edge world fleet, which can generate four-dimensional fragments to envelop itself, the mother world fleet has almost no chance of escape.

But something unexpected happened.

This mother world fleet waited and waited, but the main force of the edge world fleet never came to encircle and annihilate it... This is very strange.

After completely depleting all the two-dimensional foils, they decided to delve into the heart of the Edge World to investigate the truth, and ultimately discovered the remains of 120,000 Edge World warships, forming a neutron star warship, in the original seventh quadrant space region of the Edge World.

These remains continue to release gamma-ray bursts, eroding the lurking mother world fleet.

The Motherworld Fleet stared in utter terror at the massive "ship's graveyard" and the plasma lamp.

Soon, with the deployment of "Jingting" at multiple points, eight "ship graveyards" were quickly found near the edge world, along with the corpse of the edge world "mothership" that had brought countless troubles to the Singer civilization.

The mothership seemed to have suffered some kind of torture, 'illuminated' until only its skeleton remained, like a giant planet forged from white bones.

That was all there was to the Edge World; apart from a small spirit lamp, there was nothing else left at the scene.

As for the microcosm, it had already collapsed and disappeared, but it was not discovered by the fleet of the mother world.

After the mother world confirms that the edge world has been destroyed.

Only a few words remain to describe the "Song of Eternity".

Like a bird startled by the mere twang of a bow, seeing enemies in every bush and tree, the sound of wind and the cry of cranes...

As the supreme ruler of civilization, the Eternal Song pondered for a very, very long time…

Ultimately, it decided to exercise an ancient, musical decision-making process, addressing all individuals within the entire civilization, to ultimately determine the course of civilization.

...

The Singer civilization originated beyond three dimensions. Its earliest life form was a terrestrial creature, and due to specific natural environments, these creatures preferred to use sound to express their meaning and emotions. Therefore, the Singer civilization is a civilization that communicates and expresses itself through music.

Because expressing meaning through music is a lengthy and imprecise process, the technology of early singer civilizations developed very slowly.

Towards the end of the primitive period, the Singer civilization adopted a completely new language system, which greatly shortened the rhythm and speed of musical communication, determined the precise meaning of some notes, and the improvement of the language system enabled the Singer civilization to enter the technological age.

Because the Singer civilization uses musical language, its group decision-making has always been carried out in a unique way, similar to a large chorus.

When a collective decision needs to be made, all participants—in the case of a citizens' assembly, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands—sing together in a square. Each person expresses their meaning through their singing.

After the singing continued for several hours, all the chaotic notes gradually began to unify, some opinions became the mainstream, and people began to follow that voice.

When the final decision is made by the entire nation, tens of thousands of people will simultaneously begin chanting the same melody.

This decision-making process is similar to tens of thousands of neurons making a decision in the brain. The first computer of the Singer civilization was developed based on a similar principle. Computers developed based on this principle were multi-core and multi-threaded from the very beginning.

With the continuous advancement of machinery, the Singer civilization possessed extremely powerful computing capabilities. Moreover, such computers were largely creative; therefore, the Singer civilization's central calculator had been constantly growing and expanding since its inception. Even after hundreds of millions of time particles had passed, the first neural unit (the song) still existed at the center of that ancient machine, which was still in use. Although those ancient units had essentially contributed nothing more, they were squeezed into the center by later neurons and could no longer be removed.

With the advancement of technology, this central computer was given a new name.

The Tower of Meaning.

The essence of the singer's civilization.

During a highly developed period of civilization, the Tower of Meaning had grown to the size of a planet and was carefully preserved within a five-dimensional universe fragment within the four-dimensional universe fragment of the Singer's World.

It means "quiet courtyard", which is a quiet courtyard for singing.

The fact that the mother civilization discovered this fragment of the five-dimensional universe is a miracle in the entire history of the universe.

When the ocean of the four-dimensional universe was about to dry up, the remnants of the five-dimensional universe could still be found in the puddles of the four-dimensional universe. This almost impossible thing actually happened, because the puddles of the five-dimensional universe were once covered by five-dimensional slow fog, so they evaporated very slowly, miraculously delaying the arrival of the three-dimensional universe ocean after the ocean of the four-dimensional universe dried up.

And they just happened to encounter a mother world civilization with a highly advanced level of technology.

The Mother World stabilized the five-dimensional fragment picked up from the roadside and used it as the core of the Mother World, also inserting the Tower of Meaning into it.

The fragments of the fifth-dimensional universe enabled the 'Tower of Meaning' to achieve a leap forward, becoming a cross-dimensional computer. The existence of both helped the Singer civilization achieve rapid development.

The mother world, which grew up relying on this advanced computing, quickly took control of the end of its Orion Arm and expanded its reach to other surrounding star systems—if it weren't for the rim world issue, everything should have had a happy ending.

Now, with the perishing of the fringe world, the mother civilization must make a choice.

...

67 light-years away in the solar system, the anxious singer finally received another message from the elder.

The elders invited young singers to participate in "musical decision-making" using quantum entanglement.

Upon hearing about this ancient ceremony, the singer was surprised and hurriedly asked why.

The elder said that the current situation has become so dire that His Majesty of Eternal Song can no longer bear the responsibility for the rise and fall of civilization. The choice regarding the fate of the entire civilization must be made jointly by all of them.

Singer: "Elder, but using quantum entanglement to contact the mother world... this would let me know the location of the mother world, which does not comply with the principle of concealment."

Because of the lessons learned from the Edge World, all the cleanup ships or fleets that left the Mother World were completely unaware of its location, and the Silent Garden, where the Mother World is located, is itself moving randomly at a speed of a thousand times the standard speed of light.

Elder: "There are no more hidden principles. These words are meaningless. If that unknown civilization wants to destroy us, it can trace the history of your cleanup ship back to the mother world."

Upon hearing this, the singer murmured, "This is dangerous..."

Elder: "Yes, but that unknown civilization could discover us at any time, so halting the Black Forest attack is the first step, and then we need to make a final decision as soon as possible."

The young singer had many dangerous thoughts, but this time neither it nor the elder deleted them. On the contrary, the elder had even more dangerous thoughts…

...

Musical decisions are made in the central area of ​​the quiet courtyard.

The fourth dimension [edge] and the fifth dimension [axis] of the five-dimensional universe fragments have both shown a large number of dimensional curlings. These dimensional curlings have formed many spatial warping points and eventually linked to the three dimensions of [length], [width], and [height] in the outside world.

Millions of quantum entanglement threads were established, with the furthest quantum entanglement threads even two thousand light-years away. These were the cleanup ships of the Singer civilization.

The young singer thought there would be many singers doing his job, perhaps tens of thousands, but he never expected that the number would reach millions.

The elder explained, "There are just too many stars; there's nothing we can do about it."

Some of these singers are very young, just born, like young singers, while others are already very old, so old that even their immortal bodies show wrinkles of time.

But whether young or old, the singers were participating in this collective decision-making process for the entire community for the first time. The older singers sang mournful ballads, as if they had already glimpsed the future of civilization.

The entire Mother World, including all the singers responsible for cleaning up outside, and the tens of thousands of elders living in the Mother World, totaled 117 million.

This is the total number of races in the entire Singer civilization, excluding the Tower of Meaning.

Amidst the solitary sounds emanating from these quantum entangled threads, a grand chorus of millions began, with the song of eternity blending in like an ordinary chanter.

The grand chorus lasted for several Earth months before the chaotic sounds gradually found resonance. The overall decision of the civilization had become vaguely clear. The general direction was that the Singer civilization would cease all external activities, then select hundreds of stars as settlements, envelop them in a slow fog to form a dark domain, and then issue a safety declaration to the outside world.

These settlements are responsible for providing a living environment for the individual singers who are no longer able to return to Jingting.

The remaining singers, along with the Tower of Meaning, prematurely fell into two dimensions, and then launched a dimensional reduction attack on themselves, using the fall into two dimensions to escape the dark forest of the three-dimensional universe in order to pursue the continuation of civilization.

Among them, the young singer, having already left the mother world, could only choose a star system as their future settlement with a singer fleet more than 200 light-years away. They were then enveloped in the dark domain to form a safe haven before their remaining lives were over.

After all, the mother world can only be exited, not entered.

The young singers gradually came to understand their new mission during this grand chorus.

But there are still many other things to be finalized regarding the chorus.

However, just as the grand chorus of millions of people had not yet ended, a powerful spatial melody pierced through the fragments of the five-dimensional universe and reverberated in that tranquil place. The beautiful spatial music made all the singers pale in comparison.

Millions of chanters stopped, captivated by the music that permeated the garden.

“This is…” His Majesty of Eternal Song stood stunned in the center of the quiet courtyard, touching the music that was almost eternally beautiful to the Singer civilization, almost obsessed.

Silver Blue Aria

Within the music, I came to understand the name of this song.

The Eternal Song suddenly looked up and found that "Jingting," who was moving at a random speed of a thousand times the speed of light, had somehow moved to the front of an unprecedentedly rough death line... This death line was only four light-years away from Jingting, but it was precisely because Jingting passed by the end of this death line that she was able to hear the extremely beautiful music that was spreading near the death line.

Now, due to the distance of a thousand times the speed of light, this real music has come to an abrupt end.

It wants to hear more.

In a fleeting instant, the Eternal Song conjured up countless dangerous thoughts. Looking at the millions of people making musical decisions before it, it felt a deep sense of powerlessness. The beautiful music that had just been played had directly pierced the very essence of the Singer civilization's music, rendering their songs almost entirely unacceptable.

The Grand Elder approached the Eternal Song and respectfully asked, "Your Majesty, shall we continue with the Music Decision?"

The Eternal Song remained silent for a moment before giving its answer.

"Stop it. All decisions should be made according to the previous musical decisions, except for mine."

"Besides you?" the elder asked, puzzled.

The idea of ​​the Eternal Song flickered with an inexplicable light as it looked in the direction from which the music was coming.

“The decision has been made by the people, and I no longer need to bear any responsibility. I will go to pursue this music and prepare a ‘paper boat’ for myself. The rest, you can discuss through the song.”

(End of this chapter)