They traveled through time at the same time, but the villainous scientist

Chapter 496 The Truth About the Cycle of Reincarnation

As the images flowed across the crystal globe, Zhang Qi became a witness to this planet's billions of years of solitary journey.

The scroll of history continues to unfold.

The spark of wisdom ignited in the eyes of ape-men, and tribes, city-states, empires... human civilization left a deep imprint on the surface of the planet.

The pyramids stand tall on the banks of the Nile, the Great Wall winds like a dragon, and the brilliance of the Renaissance illuminates the dark Middle Ages.

Everything follows a grand rhythm: birth, destruction, war, and peace.
Until... the flow of the images suddenly accelerated, and the wheels of history rolled into the twentieth century.

"boom!"

The soft golden light on the crystal globe was instantly tainted by the blinding crimson and ominous darkness.

The once smooth flow of memories became fragmented, filled with screams and wails.

It is no longer about the rise and fall of empires on a macro scale, but about countless individual and extreme sufferings.

The young soldier coughed up bloody lungs in the muddy trench, his eyes filled not with hatred for the enemy, but with an infinite longing for the wheat fields of his hometown.

Beneath the city ruins, a mother tightly embraces her already cold infant, silently praying for a miracle that has never existed.

Inside the gas chamber, countless hands reached for the sealed iron door, their fingernails scratching out desperate, bloody marks.

Two unprecedented and immense wills, like two enraged primordial beasts, began to tear at the very root of the world.

One force is the purest will to survive that bursts forth from tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions, of lives on the brink of death.

The other force, however, is the opposing, cold and ruthless killing intent.

It also originates from humans, from those fingers that pull the trigger, the determination that presses the bomb button, and the pens that sign the extermination order.

Is this the point of contention?

Zhang Qi suddenly realized, "This must be the reason why the Grim Reaper was born in this world."

During world wars, many lives that should have died were temporarily spared due to a strong will to survive, while in contrast, there were tens of millions of killing intentions that "must be carried out".

The clash between these two wills caused a mutation in the world.

It created a completely new mechanism.

A mechanism for balancing life and death that exists purely to "correct mistakes".

"This is so weird."

Zhang Qi held onto the base of the instrument, trying to calm his agitated mind.

Based on his past experience, the composition of a world can usually be divided into two levels.

One is Gaia, which is the will of the objective world itself. It constitutes the objective material world, defines physical constants, and maintains the stability of the rules of the universe.

The other is Alaya, which is the collective unconscious of all intelligent life forms, and it in turn affects the material world.

If Gaia and Alaya are clearly distinct and do not interfere with each other, then the world will be in a state of 'no magic', and the laws of physics will be supreme.

If the two intersect, and Alaya's thoughts can reach Gaia's realm, then energies such as spirit particles, chakra, and primordial energy—energys that exist between matter and spirit—will be born and eventually be mastered by intelligent life, granting them all sorts of incredible abilities.

In the other worlds where he exists, no matter how peculiar the power system may be, Gaia's will always holds absolute dominance.

Rules are rules, and stability trumps everything.

This is why, despite possessing extensive knowledge of other worlds, he can only selectively reproduce it, because many systems simply cannot be established under the underlying rules of this 'main world'.

That's why he's always found it strange how 'Infinite Space' could be compatible with so many, even contradictory, power systems.

Now... he seems to know the reason.

"You mean... the Reincarnation World is an anthropomorphic universe?" Upon hearing Zhang Qi's discovery, Chu Xuan pushed up his glasses, a hint of excitement appearing on his face.

"Yes."

Zhang Qi nodded heavily. If this guess were confirmed, it would overturn all their understanding of the entire cycle of reincarnation.

"This is probably why the vast majority of the mission worlds we experience originate from human entertainment works such as movies, animations, and novels."

To prove his point, he stretched out his finger and swiped it across the interface of the [Pseudo-Gaia Model].

The images inside the crystal globe changed again.

That turbulent nebula, a record of history, rapidly contracted inward, stretching the viewpoint infinitely far away.

They saw the Earth, the Moon, and the eight planets in the solar system.

However, when the perspective attempts to penetrate the Kuiper Belt and continue exploring outwards, it encounters an invisible wall.

That was not darkness, nor emptiness, but a pure "nothingness".

It's as if the entire universe's canvas has been abruptly cut off here.

The solar system is like a model meticulously crafted in a glass case, suspended alone above an undefinable "background".

"The actual extent of this world only includes the solar system..." Zhang
"Is it because the story is set only on Earth?"

Chu Xuan immediately realized what was happening, and for the first time, his voice carried a hint of barely suppressed surprise.

The size of a world is actually determined by a "script".

"Yes."

Zhang Qi's expression was extremely solemn.
"My guess is that, on the scale of the entire more multiverse, there once existed a unified, true Gaia will."

It is the foundation of all things and the rule of the objective world.

However, for some reason... perhaps due to a war between some unimaginably powerful beings, this unified Gaia will was destroyed, or suppressed to its extreme.

“The old gods are dead and their thrones are empty.

Thus, the vast collective unconscious of humanity—the most active and expansive intelligent race in the universe at that time—filled this vacuum.

Reality has lost its objective 'anchor' and has begun to tilt towards subjective 'imagination'.

The stories, fantasies, and legends created by humankind—those things that resonate most widely in the spiritual world—begin to in turn influence, shape, and define reality.

We live in a universe built from human storybooks.

"This is why, in the memories of 'Gaia' in this world, 99% are related to humans."

Because its essence is an aggregation of human will.

Chu Xuan remained silent.

His rapidly working brain was frantically processing this entirely new worldview model, and based on it, re-analyzing everything they had experienced.

All the irrationality and contradictions seem to make sense under the premise of an "anthropic universe".

"If that's the case, then is the essence of the Supreme God...?"

Zhang Qi's gaze met his, and both of them saw the same answer in each other's eyes.

"A man-made, multi-dimensional Gaia..."

(End of this chapter)