This time I chose Paladin.

Chapter 169 Strange Stars: What Was It Like in the Past

"This is Hao Yao, this is Lin Feng, this is Chang Xia, this is Li Shujing..."

Ping Xingdou introduced the astronomers one by one. They tried to greet Nie Weiyang and his companion with smiles, but they all looked pale and could hardly smile.

This is not only because of the shortage of resources, but also because they have hardly ever left since the building, called the Planetarium, was built.

Behind the wooden door of the planetarium hangs a rough calendar, with increasingly illegible 'X's all the way up to March 27th.

"It's been half a year since I came to the new world," Ping Xingdou murmured. He stared at the calendar, his gaze somewhat vacant.

He turned to Hao Yao and asked, "When was the last time I went down the mountain?"

"When the blood moon rises, Curator," Hao Yao said, "how could you forget again?"

Nie Weiyang glanced at Hao Yao, a young man wearing glasses with fins growing from his joints and soft connecting parts covered with tiny scales.

His sclera was black, while his iris had a peculiar grayish-blue tint. This suggests that his lineage prototype lived in a dark environment for a long time, but was occasionally exposed to light, and needed a black sclera to protect his vision during visual transitions.

Nie Weiyang has seen many people like this. Most of them wear glasses because this kind of bloodline not only does not help their vision, but also makes their eyes, which have been repaired by the system, lose vision again.

“Oh, the blood moon is rising,” Ping Xingdou muttered, “the blood moon…”

"What's wrong with the Blood Moon?" Yi Jian chimed in like an automatic cheerleader. He put his hands in his pockets and scanned the surroundings of the wooden house.

The space inside is much larger than it appears from the outside, because the wooden house is just an entrance hall. You have to walk a few steps inside to discover that it is actually a hollow building.

The building is nestled into the mountainside and is four stories high. They were actually on the top floor, and the rest of the building had to be looked down at.

The building materials here are gray cement and gray-white stone slabs. A vertical grid wall facing the entrance is decorated with gold-painted stars, making it seem like a building that only exists in memories or fantasies, from a bygone era.

“Blood Moon,” Ping Xingdou repeated the name, “what do you think Blood Moon is?”

"...A satellite of a planet?" Yi Jian tried to answer.

“That’s not entirely wrong, but,” Ping Xingdou said slowly, “the Blood Moon is an artificial satellite.”

"Huh?!" Yi Jian exclaimed in surprise, "How is this possible..."

Ping Xingdou chuckled and led them down a staircase that extended upwards from the edge.

"Why is it impossible? The fact that so many buildings suddenly appeared on this planet after the blood moon rose shows that the technological level of the previous civilization was at a level that we could only imagine."

"Even if the Blood Moon is an artificial satellite, what's so surprising? The real surprises are yet to come."

Ping Xingdou stood in front of the vertical screen, looking up at the large and small golden stars.

"On the day I arrived in the new world, most people in the Eastern Hemisphere were asleep, but I was stargazing. When I was teleported, I didn't realize what was happening and almost thought I had finally died from staying up all night. I just watched the stars shift and the constellations turn. I felt dizzy and uncomfortable for a long time, but it was the most beautiful and terrifying scene I had ever seen in my life."

"—That's how the starry sky is, its ever-changing nature is both awe-inspiring and captivating... But we haven't seen the proper starry sky for six months now, do you understand?"

He pointed to the seven largest stars on the curtain wall.

“The Big Dipper,” he said. “The starry sky that all the astronomers here recreated from memory, we all signed our names below, more than a hundred of us, but now, we only have sixty-four of us left.”

When it came to the starry sky, Ping Xingdou's language system seemed to be suddenly activated. He launched into a long and rambling discourse on the beauty and terror of the starry sky, using language that left the audience somewhat bewildered.

Nie Weiyang didn't speak, so Yi Jian waited a while before asking, "What does 'not seeing the correct starry sky' mean?"

Ping Xingdou turned around and stared into his eyes.

“There is no Big Dipper in our sky now,” he said. “Not only is there no Big Dipper, but there isn’t a single star we recognize in this sky. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn? The Twenty-Four Mansions? None of them. We can only see illogical points of light when we look through a telescope…”

Yi Jian was truly stunned.

"You really don't know? I heard that people like you are often out on missions. How do you all navigate at night?" Ping Xingdou asked, somewhat puzzled.

“Uh…” Yi Jian replied, “We can’t tell directions. Brother Nie doesn’t want us to travel at night.”

Ping Xingdou: "..."

Ping Xingdou's gaze shifted and landed on Nie Weiyang. He seemed to be deep in thought: "You discovered long ago that the stars are wrong?"

"Hmm." Nie Weiyang nodded slightly.

"Few people pay attention to the stars anymore."

“I spend a lot of time away from crowds, and that's how this habit came about,” Nie Weiyang said calmly. “Stars are an important reference point for humanity…”

“It’s not just humans,” Ping Xingdou added, “but animals too.”

“I’m not just talking about reference directions,” Nie Weiyang said. “Light and stars are the history books of the universe. Aren’t they? Light records information, which is why space can be measured and time can exist.”

Ping Xingdou's eyes lit up, and he clapped his hands: "It seems you have some basic knowledge of the universe. That's good, but it's not very useful now."

Nie Weiyang raised his eyebrows.

The music in his headphones was still playing, but the strange, soulful melody had disappeared.

Its presence is not constant; it only occasionally resonates within Ping Xingdou's mind. As soon as Ping Xingdou begins to think rationally, it naturally dissipates.

Ping Xingdou had been complaining in his heart about his life over the past few months, which was normal; he rarely heard anyone not to have such thoughts. But unlike others, Ping Xingdou's complaints weren't about his environment or conditions, but rather: the starry sky.

This person's thoughts, hobbies, and life all revolve around this same theme.

"The entire starry sky of this planet... is very strange."

“I don’t know what’s going on on this planet, but for life on Earth, celestial bodies are important references for determining location, time, seasons, and other natural conditions. Not long after we arrived, we tried to draw a star map, but we failed, and we triggered… ‘instinctive ignorance’,” Ping Xingdou said. “Instinctive ignorance? What’s that?” Yi Jian pressed, though he also had a guess: “You mean, the phenomenon of knowledge overload…?”

"Knowledge overweight? What an unpleasant phrase," Ping Xingdou scoffed. "Yes, knowledge overweight..."

"Fine, I'll still call it instinctive ignorance. I finally came up with this term, how can I not use it?"

"Instinctive ignorance"—Nie Weiyang remembered this term. In the previous game, it was the scientific name for the body's self-preservation behavior after knowledge overload. He had always found the term precise and interesting, but he really didn't know that this name was actually given by Ping Xingdou.

Perhaps in the last playthrough, this was the last trace that Ping Xingdou's life left for people.

"At the time, we didn't realize how serious things were, but gradually we discovered that something was very wrong with the starry sky."

"We can't find any familiar stars, or perhaps they are just appearing from another angle or in another form, but this is terrifying. If all of this is true, we may be in the original observable universe, at least tens of billions of light-years away from our home."

As Ping Xingdou spoke, he led everyone through the curtain wall to a red curtain.

This is a beautiful piece of red cloth, its color bright and pure, like blood, red flowers, or a plain flag.

"But if that happens... we should see some quasars that are surprisingly large. On a cosmic scale, they are just a grain of sand, but to us, they would be overwhelming. Perhaps from the moment they hit the ground, some of us will go crazy."

"Now, we are divided into several factions. Lin Feng believes we are in a place so far away from the observable universe that it is immeasurable..."

The young man named Lin Feng nodded confidently; he certainly seemed like the kind of person who would make such a radical guess.

Changxia believes that we are simply located in another corner of the observable universe, and everything unfamiliar stems from a new perspective. If we could have better observation methods and measure the spectrum of stars, all our doubts would be resolved.

Chang Xia was a mature and elegant woman; she pushed up her glasses.

Unlike Hao Yao, she wore farsighted glasses.

"Li Shujing believes that we should first observe the stars from different locations on the planet before we can make any conjectures. In an unfamiliar world, all guesses based on our existing knowledge cannot be placed before practice and observation."

Li Shujing was an ordinary-looking young man. He was dressed in clean outdoor clothes and looked like a pragmatist.

Yi Jian's expression turned serious. He realized that he was delving into things that ordinary people might never know in their entire lives—some information would cause panic if it were exposed, and was destined to remain a secret.

"So, what's your guess?" Yi Jian asked. "How do you see all of this?"

"Me?" Ping Xingdou smiled, revealing somewhat yellowed teeth.

"I believe this starry sky is fake, it's wrong!"

His views were more radical than the previous three combined, multiplied by three. He grabbed the red cloth, and as it fluttered in the wind, he ripped it open, the wooden rings and rods rubbing together, producing a sharp, swift sound.

"As Mr. Nie said, light and stars are the history book of the universe. I believe that our understanding of the stars determines the direction of our culture and life."

"Now we walk on a new and cruel land, looking up at the sky on this familiar yet strange planet—"

"And we so-called astronomers, trying our best to interpret the starry sky and the past it carries, only to find that it's all a complete mess! It wouldn't be wrong to say that astronomy no longer exists—under such an illusion, all our past astronomical knowledge is just adding to our suffering!"

A space larger, higher, and wider than the space outside the curtain wall unfolded before everyone's eyes. It was a dark space in which thousands of stars were suspended by silk threads, and the light attached to them shimmered, making the interior look like a galaxy.

Each of these threads corresponds to a point on the ceiling, and the star trails formed by the light are intertwined with them. Astronomers can use their skills to move their positions at any time if they wish.

Beneath the twinkling stars, the ground was covered with stone slabs and stone chips. Several astronomers sat in this beautiful yet chaotic scene, holding stone slabs and using hammers and chisels—the common side tools of science and engineering scholars—to carve something on them.

Ping Xingdou: "..."

Ping Xingdou suddenly broke down in anger: "Didn't I tell you to clean up..."

"You don't even wash your hair yourself, yet you criticize us." The scholar sitting on the ground complained, not even looking up, just clanging and banging on rocks. At first glance, one might mistake them for geologists: "Tsk, yesterday's stargazing results were exactly the same as the day before..."

Ping Xingdou raised his hand as if to scratch his head, but after glancing at Nie Weiyang and the other man, he restrained himself with all his might.

“As you can see, we’ve been trying to map the night sky,” he said. “But as you’ve also heard—the night sky hasn’t moved. Any star that was there six months ago will be there six months from now. That’s why I suspect this is an illusion, and why I can be the curator, and why these people don’t refute my guess.”

“Judging from the appearance of the starry sky alone, we cannot determine the time, nor can we determine our relative position in this universe.” Ping Xingdou shook his finger. “There must be some kind of obstacle above the planet, and we must find a way to break through it as soon as possible.”

Before Yi Jian could say anything, Nie Weiyang suddenly spoke up: "Not for now."

Ping Xingdou was stunned for a moment: "...Huh?"

“I said, not for now,” Nie Weiyang said.

He looked up, gazing at the fake sky on the ceiling.

“We can’t break through it now; on the contrary, we have to strengthen it, strengthen it as much as possible,” he said. “But let’s stop saying that astronomy is dead. Astronomy will always exist, just like mathematics, literature, art… they will always exist.”

“Those artists have all gone off to lay bricks and fight now…” one of the astronomers sitting on the ground muttered. “Astronomy, like geography, is about the past. But stars can’t be eaten or drunk. In this era, we’ll only be eliminated.”

“It’s only temporary,” Nie Weiyang replied. “Spiritual enjoyment is one of the most basic human needs, and sooner or later it will return to the place where people need it.”

The astronomer, holding the stone slab, looked up. She gazed at Nie Weiyang thoughtfully: "How long will that take? And how can you be so sure that in the new world, society will develop the same way as before? The stars aren't what they used to be."

“But the person is still the same as before,” Nie Weiyang said.

He crouched down and looked the female astronomer in the eye.

"Long time no see, old classmate," he said. "I heard you studied astronomy in college, but I never expected to see you here."

Under Yi Jian's disbelieving gaze and Ping Xingdou's shocked look, he tilted his head slightly, sensing the dark aura seeping into the walls around him.

"Also, after listening to you talk about the stars all the way here, I have a question—" he asked knowingly, "what problem did you need people to deal with?"

(End of this chapter)