"At that time, I was also on that starship, but not as a passenger, rather through some electronic devices."

"Lindong" began to speak.

With her explanation, Ethan understood the relationship between Super Little Lindong and its original form, and the stone hanging in his heart finally settled.

He was facing an artificial intelligence with a thought pattern identical to its original form. Super Little Lindong pointed out that the guy outside, who appeared silly and occasionally turned into a cat and stopped thinking, was actually the original form, a side effect of the Omega Blocker—making someone dumb.

There were many such super AIs. Besides Super Little Lindong, the company had ten or so Super AI Lindongs that kept her research projects and work in perfect order during her "adventurous journey."

"On another note."

Super Little Lindong shrugged, "The saying that love makes people dumb is really not wrong. Once the blocker's effect wears off, if I knew what I looked like now, I'd have to find a hole to crawl into."

This tone made Ethan feel peculiar, clearly in the first person, yet it sounded like describing someone else.

"Back to that warp space travel, I wasn't the only one to witness it, it was among the most focused projects of the Holy City Council, and every named expert was present, meaning at least over ninety percent of the upper echelons of the Holy City witnessed your masterpiece firsthand."

"My masterpiece?"

Ethan suspected this would be a very serious charge.

"'Lights out', causing chaos within the starship, and driving every survivor mad."

"Little Dark did that."

Ethan immediately shifted the blame completely, while Super Little Lindong just looked at him meaningfully, and continued, "The captain thought that a monster beyond human comprehension existed in the black hole, but in reality, it was the other people's firepower that killed them, and no monster had ever boarded that starship."

"This version differs from what I've heard, but I prefer this version."

This meant Little Dark could also be innocent, "And what about the starship? How did it crash?"

"Because among the experts present at that time, there was an idiot."

Super Little Lindong rolled her eyes and said, "He thought perhaps the Holy City could use the energy core of that starship to extract energy from the black hole, oh, the kind of white big light ball you're familiar with."

"You mean the God of Truth?"

"Wrong, the one you met in the Mirror Empire was the only individual that completed the ascension simulation, the others are just highly intelligent energy cores." She paused, "Anyway, that idiot convinced more than half of the council members to undertake the extraction operation without knowledge of energy, in terms you can understand, the core would extract the energy into its body, then stabilize it through suppression, purification, etc., and return the samples to the Holy City after exploration."

"But the core exploded."

Ethan recalled the "Black Lotus" that had plummeted back to the surface, essentially a relatively intact piece of wreckage left after the starship core exploded.

"Yes, it exploded, and dozens of experts present enjoyed the starship exploding into fireworks together, while some council members wished to swallow that expert alive, but you should thank him, because if it weren't for his 'genius suggestion', perhaps a few eras ago, the Holy City might have broken in and sailed the starship over your heads—from a theoretical standpoint, even if everyone on the starship died, as long as the energy core remained, this Ghost Ship could eventually pass through the black hole."

A moment later, Super Little Lindong added, "So that idiot was later imprisoned for treason and crimes against humanity, with enough suspicion from the council that he had been brainwashed by the Old Gods."

"Why did the exploration stop afterwards?"

"Because the navigation coordinates failed, the Believer who provided the coordinates to the City of Truth died… or perhaps it's my narration that led you to believe that things happened within one day, but actually, the time flow inside the black hole is extremely unusual. After 'lights out', the survivors persisted on the starship for three days, while it took us seven years and three months to observe the starship's collapse."

This time was sufficient for that idiot to convince half the council members, during which she omitted the boring process of holding meetings and casting votes, "For the rulers of the Holy City, time and space are also unknown domains."

"I see."

Ethan believed this to be the truest version of the story, that he and Little Dark were innocent.

Look, even Super Little Lindong said so, a grand expert like her, how could she deceive ordinary folks like them?

The starship's downfall was entirely because an expert proposed an idiotic suggestion, and he received a fitting judgment.

"If what you're worried about is the accusation of guilt..."

Super Little Lindong thought Ethan's thought processes were very odd, just like her.

People often said the same about her before.

"From a time perspective, it couldn't possibly hold, because at that time, you and Little Dark didn't exist." She spoke with the council's assertive tone, "Your research began three months after the starship's collapse, I handled the formalities and officially submitted the project to the council." 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

The story finally advanced to its most core part.

A story about a fool wanting to talk to a black hole.

"The reason started in the few observations before the starship's crash, I discovered an interesting phenomenon, those driven mad survivors had hallucinations and spoke in unintelligible languages, a typical symptom of having one's mind infiltrated by the Old Gods, what's called 'cognitive distortion syndrome' on our side, their next step would be bodily mutation, transforming into other species, for this reason, many experts now believe black holes are also mutations of the Old Gods."