Electricity...?!

"Of course, it could also be something like 'spirit stones' from cultivation worlds?"

"Anyway, what normal cities are truly like, we sinners have no way of knowing. We can only imagine based on our own experiences..."

Song Jie spoke casually while skillfully mining with his giant fingernail.

Glancing towards Jiang Ye's direction, he saw Jiang Ye holding the fingernail in his right hand to mine the ice ore, while simultaneously pressing his left hand against the ice wall, as if lost in thought.

He frowned and reminded him again: "During our mining process, it's best not to touch these ice ores for extended periods, otherwise the physical discomfort will intensify."

"Even veteran players like me with Glyph Pattern Abilities can't withstand digging for two hours after using the sewing machine."

"And you being a newcomer, this process will likely be even more unbearable."

Song Jie was clearly well-intentioned.

When Jiang Ye snapped back to reality, he noticed that the veteran players indeed only used fingernails or tooth-like tools to strike the ice wall while mining, avoiding contact with the ice wall with other parts of their bodies.

So, he also withdrew his hand and imitated the veteran players' method of mining.

However, the thoughts in his mind did not cease.

He had just suddenly considered some commonalities and differences between electricity and light.

In essence, both are electromagnetic phenomena.

However, electricity requires a conductor for transmission, its speed approaching the speed of light, but slightly lower than light speed due to the conductor's influence.

Moreover, electricity propagating through a conductor decays due to resistance.

Light, on the other hand, does not need a conductor;it can propagate in a vacuum, and its speed is constant, the universe's maximum, insurmountable speed.

Judging solely from this, electricity is actually like a weakened version of light.

Or...

a kind of light sealed within a "conductor."

Conductor.

The conductor for electricity is generally called an electrical wire.

Therefore, what Song Jie just said might be mistaken...

If we really want to make an analogy—

What corresponds to this "ice ore" might not be electricity, but the "electrical wire."

That is, the "conductor" in which "electricity" exists.

And the unique energy contained within this special conductor is what corresponds to "electricity."

Speaking of which, the civilization from Jiang Ye's human background seemed destined to head towards reliance on electrical power.

He remembered in elementary school, their teacher advocated for environmental protection, warning them that many resources were non-renewable, like oil.

But by the time they entered high school, gasoline cars on the market seemed almost completely replaced by electric vehicles.

Electricity replacing other non-renewable energy sources seemed to have become an established law of world development.

So, if we truly correspond the "ice ore" in this mist world to the "conductor" that carries electrical power...

Then is this mist energy renewable or non-renewable?

If it's a renewable energy source, what is the principle behind its "renewal"?

Speaking of which, in the later era's mist, do these "icebergs" containing mineable ice ore still exist?

Probably... not mineable, right?

After all, according to Salvation's description, his "mist milk stones" were refined using large quantities of "mist gas."

That is to say, in the later era's mist, it might be impossible to mine this kind of "ice ore" anymore.

Meaning, the "icebergs" in the mist might disappear in the later era.

Speaking of these "icebergs"...

Being inside this iceberg mine, Jiang Ye experienced that ancient poem with particular depth—

You cannot see the true face of Mount Lu, only because you are standing on the mountain itself.

He was inside this iceberg mine, truly finding it difficult to imagine what the entire mist-covered iceberg should look like within the mist.

I wonder if it could rival Antarctic icebergs or glaciers?

And speaking of Antarctic icebergs...

Jiang Ye, a poor high school student, had certainly never seen Antarctic glaciers with his own eyes.

But he had used the Life Stone to access Zhou Qiming's memories.

Among those life memories, he had only focused on extracting memories related to the Doomsday Apartment.

But actually, besides memories related to the Doomsday Apartment...

Zhou Qiming, that rich second-generation, had personally traveled to Antarctica.

And during his travels, while gazing at the overwhelming glaciers of Antarctica, he had joked with his companions about a playful speculation—

"Look at those glaciers and icebergs of various shapes, don't they look like an unfinished, unmodeled area in a game world?"

"You think our so-called 'human forbidden zones' might just be these game areas, temporarily closed to human players?"

Such words were indeed just a gamer's joke.

Previously, when Jiang Ye synchronized these memories, he didn't take them to heart at all.

Yet now, because of the existence of the "mist iceberg," he recalled Antarctica from Zhou Qiming's perspective in his mind...

Repeatedly savoring that kind of pure world, all ice as far as the eye could see, complete silence...

It really did evoke an extremely special feeling.

Of course, thinking of the two segments of memories belonging to two people, Zhou Qiming, Jiang Ye naturally also thought of the existence of "Reincarnators."

Thus, the speculation that the later era's "mist" had no "icebergs" might not be accurate.

Perhaps in the later era's mist, icebergs were occupied by "Reincarnators," so Salvation couldn't mine them and could only refine them?

Speaking of which...

Jiang Ye had been curious before, what exactly were those Reincarnators who didn't participate in apartment conflicts, wandering long-term in the mist, actually doing?

What secrets existed within the mist that allowed them to survive within it long-term, showing no interest whatsoever in the apartment's development?

Besides that, another rather serious question suddenly flashed in his mind—

What about the Reincarnators of this era?

Were they also still wandering in the mist?

Or were they mixed within normal cities, disguised as Superior People?

And next, Li Ku's path to fulfilling his dream, the destruction of normal cities...

Would Reincarnators participate?

If we think even more finely...

The Reincarnators appearing in this era, were they Reincarnators from the normal timeline, or were there also Reincarnators who had time-traveled?

If Reincarnators had experienced reincarnation, then they must know the secret of time travel!

So wouldn't they participate in this journey through time?

Suddenly, Jiang Ye remembered a piece of information he already knew about Reincarnators—

Reincarnators do not participate in worldly affairs.

Jiang Ye had pondered this before;Reincarnators had experienced the entire cycle of the Doomsday Apartment.

From Day 1 to Day 11, and even the later stages of the Doomsday Apartment game...

They had probably experienced it all.

So, could it be that Reincarnators had long ago arrived at the theory of [History is Predestined]?

Originally, Jiang Ye didn't really believe in [History is Predestined].

But coincidentally, he had seen the future from Li Ku's memories!

Wasn't this proof of [History is Predestined]?

He had of course thought about "changing history," like directly killing Li Ku on the spot?

But according to many sci-fi movie plots...

Those actions insisting on "changing history" often end up facilitating history itself.

Perhaps if Jiang Ye killed Li Ku now, he'd think history had changed.

But who knows, someday later, a living Li Ku might reappear...

Fate is like this, elusive and often contrary to one's wishes.

So, if fate is truly predestined...

All cycles are merely repetitions.

Then, what is the meaning of reincarnation?

What meaning is there for those Reincarnators, repeatedly experiencing everything predestined by fate?

No...

Jiang Ye held Song Jie's giant fingernail, striking and cutting the uneven ice wall repeatedly, his mind echoing with cold sounds, his body feeling the chill seeping into his very being...

For a moment, he became completely still.

In his mind, numerous past conjectures surged forth instantly, combining...

Even the spread and expansion of the Forbidden Zone, and the bell before "time travel," seemed to replay in his mind at this moment.

He was so calm it was as if he were in the utterly silent Antarctic.

As if at this moment, the world was quiet, leaving only his heartbeat...

His heartbeat was slow and heavy.

This feeling was both familiar and strange.

The familiarity lay in—

It was as if...

He was once again being pulled by the Dice of Fate, spinning in the air like a fan.

The strangeness lay in—

In his daze, he felt a sense of detachment.

And this feeling of "being outside it all" made him feel as if he were motionless.

So, the original feeling of spinning wildly like a fan transformed into...

As if the world was revolving around him!

The mechanical mining motions, Jiang Ye did not stop.

Only a famous experiment suddenly appeared in his mind—

Schrödinger's cat.

A cat, poison, and a radioactive source are sealed together in a box.

The atom in the radioactive source is in a superposition state of decayed and not decayed.

Thus, Schrödinger concluded that the cat in the box is in a superposition state of alive and dead.

But the actual situation is, when we open the box, that Schrödinger's cat is destined to be in only one state, alive or dead.

That is to say...

The action of "opening the box to observe" causes the cat to be alive or dead.

And the term "opening the box to observe" is explained in academia as quantum state collapse.

Meaning the act of observation causes the wave function to collapse.

Jiang Ye had once read a foreign science fiction novel that attempted to use wave function collapse to explain the hypothesis of "time being illusory."

In this "time being illusory" hypothesis, past, future, and present all exist "simultaneously."

And the protagonist of this novel could freely travel through any "time" belonging to him.

The protagonist's life was like a movie already filmed.

He could randomly appear in any time segment, but only once per segment.

Regarding this already filmed "movie," the novel explained that from the beginning, every frame was in a quantum superposition state.

The process of the protagonist traveling through the movie was like opening one Schrödinger's cat box after another.

Because the protagonist's every journey was an intervention by an observer, determining how that frame of the movie should be presented.

And according to this sci-fi novel's explanation—

Human perception of time is essentially an illusion caused by wave function collapse in the macroscopic universe.

That is to say, assuming at a certain moment, within the entire world system, there is no change from unknown to definite...

Then this moment could be understood as "stillness" in time!

Quantum wave function collapse, or the change from unknown to known in the macroscopic world, creates our perception of "time passing."

So, suppose we construct a thought universe—

The appearance of this thought universe is like an infinite-order Rubik's cube.

It is composed of countless Schrödinger's cat boxes.

The initial state of the thought universe is that all infinite cat boxes are in a closed state.

Meaning everything is in an unknown state.

Then the development of this thought universe is the gradual "opening of boxes" from the initial state of 100% unknown.

Every box opening is a wave function collapse, meaning the unknown becomes definite.

And the order in which the observer opens the boxes is the "time" perceived by the observer.

In the real universe we perceive, the order of opening boxes follows specific laws.

Perhaps the law of causality, perhaps the law of entropy increase.

This law is irreversible, thus "time" also appears to flow in one direction.

We open each cat box along this irreversible law.

This creates our perception of time flowing from "past" to "future"...

So suppose in the thought universe, we delete this irreversible, fixed law.

The observer can randomly open the infinite number of cat boxes.

This forms what the protagonist in that novel Jiang Ye read achieved, traveling through his own life movie, fixing each frame of the movie from unknown to definite.

Suppose we use the thought universe just described to conceptualize the world of the Doomsday Apartment.

Then the progression of this world might be like this—

For easier understanding, shrink the infinite-order Rubik's cube representing the world to an 11-order Rubik's cube.

Each layer of the cube from bottom to top represents a "day" of the Doomsday Apartment.

Then the cat boxes constituting this cube might have started being opened from the 3rd layer.

Until the cat boxes of the 8th layer were about to be fully opened.

The order of opening suddenly jumped from the 8th layer to the 1st layer.

And this abrupt change in the order of opening is the principle behind "time travel."

Then on this basis...

Why can't we directly understand the perceived "first" opened 3rd layer of the Rubik's cube as Doomsday Apartment Day 1?

And then understand the "later" opened 1st layer of the Rubik's cube as Day 7 following Day 6?

The complete stillness in Jiang Ye's mind lay in the answer to this question.

A moment of sudden enlightenment made him realize—

So, the question itself contains the answer!

The question he initially sought was the answer to this final contemplation—

Why must Day 1 only be Day 1?

Even though in the perception of all observers, Day 1 occurred later than Day 8.

It can only be Day 1, and cannot be Day 7.

Because...

The entire arrangement of all the cat boxes already stacked in the Rubik's cube... is the framework of fate!

Parallel universes might truly exist.

But they cannot be a world without logic, unreasonable, or even formed out of thin air.

Just like Schrödinger's cat box, when you open it, you get a live cat or a dead cat;a dog cannot possibly jump out.

And this restricted possibility is fate!

Just as all cat boxes are arranged within the Rubik's cube, fate has its own framework.

This entire framework is unchangeable.

But fate also preserves the possibility of a live cat or a dead cat.

In Schrödinger's cat box, it's these two possibilities.

And in each cat box within the Rubik's cube universe, infinite possibilities are contained.

And this...

Perhaps this is... the meaning of reincarnation?

So, the meaning of reincarnation in the Doomsday Apartment is to fill the established framework of fate with all possibilities?

And based on Jiang Ye's speculation about the four-dimensional universe.

Then every filling of a new possibility within reincarnation...

Is an evolution of the three-dimensional universe towards the four-dimensional universe?