Chapter 86: The Spiritual Monarch Appears
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: Karai
After the “Dark Incident” that rendered both Imperial fleets completely powerless came to a temporary end, the investigation and repair work began immediately. The power and network outage lasted less than a minute, and the brief interruption of the gravity and oxygen supply systems did not cause serious consequences. Just like the previous meteorite strike on Earth’s human relics, no casualties were reported.
However, the sudden power outage and reboot burned out parts of the energy transmission lines and relays, and the network system generated various abnormal garbage data. Additionally, the rupture of the force field caused surface damage to the ship from asteroid impacts.
Every time Lin Xu passed through Section C, he saw engineers and scientists hastily gulping down nutrient solutions and fast food. Although they were in a rush, their spirits weren’t too bad. Heinrich had not disclosed the possibility of an advanced alien civilization observing humanity, so they weren’t burdened with the shadow of an unknown threat.
Lin Xu requested a backup recording from Heinrich. The group had considered touching the metal recorder again to see if it would react. However, such an experiment could not be risked on the Victoria. Zhou Pingbo had suggested landing on Saturn’s surface, far from the Abyss Fleet and the Elam Fleet in low Earth orbit. The experimenter would wear a spacesuit devoid of electronic components and, after the transport vehicle moved away, would attempt to touch the metal box. Heinrich, after consideration, vetoed this plan.
The previous meteorite came from the Kuiper belt, thirty astronomical units away from the sun. The Spiritual Monarch’s ability to manipulate gravity there indicated His surveillance and control already covered the entire Solar System. Saturn would not escape His notice. If these two incidents represented anger and warning from the Spiritual Monarch civilization, they couldn’t risk provoking a third time. No one knew if the next event might be catastrophic.
With no planets in the Solar System allowing humans to survive without electronic technology, Lin Xu could only analyze the backup recording.
Returning to his room, Blackie and Snowy followed at his feet. As soon as Lin Xu sat down, the two rabbit-cats eagerly jumped onto his lap, burrowing into his arms and mewling softly. Animals’ senses were sharper than humans’, and the night of the dark incident, Lin Xu had found them huddled in a corner, trembling and licking each other, seemingly terrified. Over the next few days, their fear didn’t diminish, constantly seeking safety in Lin Xu’s arms. Every night, when Heinrich tried to remove them from Lin Xu’s embrace, the rabbit-cats would scramble onto the bed, nestling between Heinrich and Lin Xu before they dared to sleep. If Heinrich threw them out, their cries were so pitiful that even Ruth would intervene, asking Marshal Chu to stop tormenting his mate’s pets.
With one hand holding Blackie and Snowy and the other starting the recording, Lin Xu began documenting the contents. The first sentence stunned him.
“My dear friend…”
Could the recording be sentient? Lin Xu instinctively held his breath, the pen in his hand hovering mid-air.
“I don’t know if you can understand this, but please listen.”
Lin Xu temporarily relaxed. This was a message, not a conversation.
“My name is Karayan Shandora Betton. I don’t know what kind of life or existence you are, but if you use language, please call me Karayan…”
There was a section of missing audio. In the original backup, Heinrich hadn’t removed the static noise.
During the minute and thirty-seven seconds of noise, Lin Xu recorded all of Karayan’s self-introductions.
“…croissants and hot chocolate for breakfast…an espresso…champagne or red wine in the evening…”
In the intermittent noise, Lin Xu identified several words, relying on his knowledge of English, Italian, basic Latin, and French roots. Was Karayan still introducing himself? Lin Xu’s petting hand slowed in his confusion. Snowy pawed at his clothes, prompting him to resume stroking the rabbit-cat, which purred contentedly.
“My favorite music is ‘The Cathedral’…though I’m not religious…”
Another two or three minutes of noise mixed with Karayan’s self-introduction. Lin Xu pressed his temples, the tense atmosphere completely broken by Karayan’s cheerful chatter.
“…I’ve seen the islands of stars! There,
the gates of heaven wild open to sailors:
‘Do you sleep in this bottomless night?’
But I no longer cry! Morning is so sad,
the whole sun is bitter, the whole moon bad.
The spice of love makes me drunk,
Ah, may my keel break! May I be buried in the sea!”
…
Reciting poetry now?
Lin Xu replayed Karayan’s poetry five times before capturing all the clear segments.
He continued listening.
“…I used to be human. If you understand me, you probably were human too. I miss the stories from when I was human, but that doesn’t mean I want to go back…
“I told them I wanted to explore alone. They said I was the only one so determined, so they let me go. But now, I’m stuck in the gravity field of a stable binary system with no fuel, trapped for years.“
“There are so many stars in the universe emitting beautiful flashes, but more darkness than stars. After a few years, I got bored and decided to sleep. Before sleeping, I set up this message. If you hear it and understand, please help me.”
“If it’s convenient, take me to your star system to see the sights. If not, toss me towards the sun. I’ll travel through the Solar System over a few hundred years. The Ye waves and Yan particles will send my location, and they will pick me up.”
“I regret not being able to talk to you personally, but I wish you well, my dear stranger friend…”
A warm, wet sensation suddenly touched Lin Xu’s cheek. Snowy had placed a paw on his shoulder, licking his cheek. Lin Xu petted its warm rabbit ears, finishing the last word on the page.
Karayan sounded friendly and cheerful, with no intention of harm. Yet, by an odd twist of fate, they had retrieved Karayan’s “container” from the safe, a mere astronomical unit from the sun.
Karayan was asleep, but he mentioned Ye waves and Yan particles would automatically transmit his location, and “they” would retrieve him. Who were “they”? Where was home? What were Ye waves and Yan particles?
So many questions. Lin Xu could deduce that “they” had come to take Karayan home and, whether intentionally or not, caused most of the equipment in both fleets to malfunction. Yet, humans could neither see “them” nor Karayan.
Karayan claimed he was once human, implying “they” were too. The container bore the Eastern District Base insignia, suggesting the beings were likely the base’s survivors. Leaving behind “I think, therefore I am” when retrieving Karayan hinted at their presence.
If the survivors possessed the ability to come and go unseen, could the mastermind still be the Spiritual Monarch? Perhaps the Spiritual Monarch had aided the survivors, much like He had the Ark Fleet and the mermaids, before departing.
However, the nuclear remnants of the old base indicated strained relations between the survivors and the Ark Fleet. Whether the mastermind was the Spiritual Monarch or the survivors, there was no guarantee they harbored no hostility towards the Imperial humans in the Solar System.
“Meow—” Snowy yelped as Lin Xu’s grip tightened momentarily, feeling the pain.
***
Lin Xu handed the translation to Heinrich and shared his speculations. Ika and Zhou Pingbo listened intently. When Lin Xu mentioned the two unknown waves and particles, Ika tilted his head and asked, “Could ‘Ye’ come from the notebook owner’s surname?”
Surname? Ye, Ye waves… Ye’s waves, Yan particles… Yan’s particles!
Lin Xu’s understanding of physics was at a popular science level and he rarely encountered physics terms named in Chinese, so it took Ika’s prompt for him to make the connection.
“There are some formulas in the notebook that don’t align with any known codes but seem to mathematically describe some kind of wave,” Ika continued.
Based on the known information, these waves and particles were likely groundbreaking discoveries by Ye Shanshan and Yan Yuan, so advanced that even Imperial technology three thousand years later couldn’t detect them, nor trace Karayan or the survivors’ presence.
Ika, having made some headway with Ye’s waves through the notebook’s content, suggested Zhou Pingbo’s theoretical physics skills could help by organizing Yan Yuan’s notes. Zhou Pingbo passed the organized notes to Ika, who then input them into the computer, utilizing all available computational resources of the Abyss Fleet to analyze the potential existence of Yan’s particles.
In the meantime, the Solar System remained calm.
While ground expedition members, unaffected by the Dark Incident, continued their work enthusiastically, Heinrich received a reply from the Imperial command. The highest military committee of the Empire, citing the unknown threat, requested the expedition to shorten their mission and return to the Einstein Galaxy as soon as possible, leaving only communication satellites and reconnaissance robots to guard Earth. The reply included the Emperor’s handwritten signature and seal.
Upon hearing this, Kalt sneered, “They’ve been scared out of their wits.”
Heinrich gave him a glance but said nothing. The recall order was issued to all departments, citing unstable cosmic conditions. The expedition team responded that they needed five days to gather all personnel, but Heinrich insisted on reducing it to three.
Ika accelerated the analysis of Ye Shanshan and Yan Yuan’s notes, with clues gradually becoming clearer through his rapid thought process. The connections drawn by the Monarch’s instructions, Ye’s waves, Yan’s particles, and the phrase “I think, therefore I am” all pointed toward one direction—consciousness uploading.
Ye’s waves and Yan’s particles were likely consciousness carriers, though Ika couldn’t yet fully confirm their functions. The Victoria lacked a large particle collider to test the actual form of Yan’s particles. This was akin to a black box theory; with the Monarch’s words as assurance, Ika could operate the black box even without knowing its internal mechanisms.
However, the Low-Whisper Church did not attribute everything to mystical doctrines. They ultimately sought to explain the truth of the Monarch’s revelations, making it open and accessible. Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth.
Ika cleared his desk of all clutter, took a deep, shaky breath, and picked up the hastily made connector. It had two parts: a headpiece with magnetic discs and a probe that pierced the spine.
Without a connection chamber or preservation fluid, Ika first donned the headpiece, then climbed onto the desk and lay down, handing the probe to the programmed mechanical arm.
“Beep—beep—” The mechanical arm activated, its reflective needle approaching Ika’s lower back. The sharp object pierced into him, eliciting a scream from Ika, but in the next moment, as the program fully initiated, his consciousness plunged into darkness, pain and all other sensations vanishing.
—
Ika found himself in a wondrous world.
“Found” was perhaps not the right word—awareness was not dependent on human senses, but Ika, still thinking within the framework of sensory perception, continued to conceptualize and describe his surroundings in this way.
Golden waves flickered in the space-time continuum, ripples spreading outward. Ika’s nebulous consciousness instinctively moved towards the center of the ripples.
Not truly running, but somehow he stumbled to the ripple’s trigger point. Looking up, the soft white light at the ripple’s center dispelled the blur before his eyes, revealing a clearer scene.
A figure stood at the ripple’s center. Tall, elegant, clad in a flowing white robe that cascaded to the ground, the golden ripples emanated from the robe’s edges. Long, beautiful black hair reached down the figure’s back.
Ika followed the hair up to the person’s face, eyes widening. “…Your Eminence?”
The figure’s gaze settled on Ika, and in a gentle voice, said, “You don’t need to call me that. Humans refer to me as the Spiritual Monarch.”
The face of the Spiritual Monarch was almost identical to Lin Xu’s, with the only difference being the soft smile that Lin Xu rarely displayed. The smile carried a hint of surprise at Ika’s sudden appearance but did not diminish the Monarch’s divinity. His gray eyes seemed to contain all the world’s truth and wisdom.
“Your Eminence!” Ika couldn’t help but approach Him. The Spiritual Monarch raised a hand, placing a finger to His lips, signaling for silence.
Ika immediately closed his mouth, looking around to discern the need for quiet. It was then he realized where he was—Room 004, Lin Xu’s quarters.
The Spiritual Monarch stood before him, while Dr. Lin lay on the bed, asleep, with Marshal Chu’s arms around him. Lin Xu, serene in slumber, had the two rabbit-cats nestled between him and Heinrich, backs arched and trembling, growling low in the direction of the Spiritual Monarch and Ika. Wait, besides the rabbit-cats, what were those intertwined black-and-white things…
Ika noticed the uncovered fish tail and dragon tail, his eyes widening like an owl in the dark. From behind him, the Spiritual Monarch asked, “Have you seen enough?”
—
Author’s Note:
The poem excerpt is from Rimbaud’s “The Drunken Boat.”
Spiritual Monarch: Well, let me see what kind of lousy man you’ve found.
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