Chapter 395: A Demon, A Human
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Y'zaks spoke about his past, but maybe because things happened too long ago, his memory seemed a little messed up. Nonetheless, he could still remember the strange old man's reaction when the demon guards captured him.
"He wasn't afraid of me, not even when I stood before him in my true form." The incredible feeling still lingered in his mind. "His robe was ignited by the flames on my body, but the old man just put the fire out with his bare hands. He then demanded for me to let him go so that he could continue his experiments—I've never seen anyone like him and it was interesting. Hence, I gave him two choices.
"I told him that because he was an interesting human and that I was thrilled, he earned my clemency and I'd give him two choices. One, I'd spare his life. He could leave but without taking anything with him because everything belonged to the demonic army. Two, I would allow him to continue his experiments but he would only have one year lifespan and after he would died and his soul belonged to me."
Suddenly Y'zaks made a macky face, or he could be rolling his eyes—his face always looked the same no matter what face he was making. "Now think back of it I feel ashamed of myself. But then I was still young and wanting to do the in thing—being cool and mean, scaring the humans, satisfying a wish, collecting soul and stuff like that so to make myself looked like a king. So I was thinking, normal human beings would have chosen to live but that old man surprised me once again."
"Let me guess: he chose to stay to continue his experiments?" Hao Ren had guessed that, it was a preditable story. But to Y'zaks back then it was something new. "By the way what was he doing with the experiments?"
"Studying the universe, things outside the bubble zones and stuff like that." Y'zaks nodded. "Back then I didn't understand a thing about it and just felt that the old man was interesting, mad, and having no fear of demons. So I let him continue his research. That old guy just said thank you before he turned around and back to his research lab continuing his research in the ruins of the kingdom. I was curious. So I followed him inside to see what he was up to.
"He then told me about his theory of bubble zone like he was teaching his student. He never treated me like a demon as he shoved a book in my hand before standing in front of his test bench and lecturing. He mentioned a very novel idea no scholar of any races had ever thought of; do you still remember I told you that the structure of the spatial dimension of my home town was different from the rest of the universe? Our entire universe is made up of many individual bubbles. These bubbles contain nothing like The Milky Way but mostly space from as small as a continent to as large as a star system. The old man called the structure 'bubbles' and divided them into different categorisations. He spent his entire life studying it and coming up this theory: the bubbles weren't the true face of the universe but just a distorted, abnormal star system. He discovered that the law of physics in the bubbles was unusual, so he theorised that the bubble zone wasn't formed naturally but byproduct of a distorted and shattered star system. He thought that the bubble zone was like a tiny oasis in the real universe—it was unstable and abnormal. And the real universe where billions of stars resided existed on the outside of the bubbles."
Y'zaks let out a sigh suddenly. "Just like the starry sky of your world."
Hao Ren thought for while and said, "...but this place has been shrouded in fog for a year, could you still see the stars?"
Y'zaks rolled his eyes and smacked on Hao Ren's shoulder. "So I guess Vivian was right; you always say the wrong thing at the wrong time!"
Hao Ren smiled embarrasingly. "Don't bother about me... you may continue."
"In our world, there's no starry sky like yours." Y'zaks gulped down the shaojiu and continued. "Looking up in the spatial pocket or bubble, all we see are planets, aurora, phantoms of the nearby dimensions, and sometimes a few stars if you're lucky but not a starry sky like here. We saw everything was normal. The old man was the only one thought that everything was abnormal. He figured out the theoritical size of the universe and found that it was amazingly huge as he frantically searched for the edge of bubble zone. He would be a scientific genius here but a lunatic in our world. Perhaps also the fact that he was born in a tiny human kingdom ruled by some dumbasses had further reinforced the notion that he was a lunatic. So that might be the reason why he was so down and out when I first met him. Any alchemist who failed to produce useful weaponry for the country or luxury products for the elites would be deemed a failure; the old man who only knew about stars and dimensions would certainly be excluded, or expelled if not for his father was an elite."
Y'zaks paused for a while. There was a wacky smile on his face. "Ironically, this 'outcast alchemist' who was discriminated by the human society had built a massive lab of his dream in the kingdom of the demons. Those advanced technologies which the human kingdom had failed to attain, the demons had made it."
When Hao Ren heard that, he could almost guess how things transpired then. "So your perspective of the world was broadened with the help of the lunatic scientist. You finally discovered that the space was man's true romance, so you planned for a grand unification of the world."
But the truth had proven that his thought was nothing more than a story, the reality was always less rosy than thought. Y'zaks shook his head and said, "In fact, no. I wasn't that farsighted back then. I was just like the others who had only one thing in mind: if bubble zone theory was true and if I could find where the edge of the bubble was, I would be able to expand my territory indefinitely. That was what I was thinking."
Hao Ren: "....."
"The difference between me and the others was that they didn't believe in the old man, and I did." Y'zaks grinned, making a face no one could tell the difference. "I was thinking that there might be no limit to how big the territory I could acquire outside of the bubble zone and to use that to show off my capability, so I decided to back the old man in his research project. I made him my chief scholar whose responsibility was to search for the edge of the bubble zone. My paradigm shift only happened several hundred years after that.
"The old man had proven that his research wasn't a pipedream. He had exhausted his life scaling the world and found the pattern that wove the bubbles together. He was inch from cracking the pattern that connected the bubbles to the outside world. With those semi-complete results, I had expanded my empire twice as fast as other demons and that further strengthened my belief in the theory of bubble zone and my resolve to breakthrough it. During the process, I began to discover the vastness of the universe, and also vanity of racial conflicts in the world—
"It was ironical that I was the one demon who kicked up the most wars but also the first one to realise the senselessness of the war.
"I had built an expedition team and followed exactly the teleporting guide the old man had come up with to find the edge of the world. I personally commanded the expedition team. Though the exploration hadn't been a success, we had gone farther and been to more places than anyone else. We had seen amazing places: storm that ravaged an entire planet, the gas bridge between the two stars in Gemini Constellation, the deadly space environment, and many others. My expedition team was flung out into space during a teleporting accident, half of my men died, my strongest general was captured by a neutron star and vanished into it. During the ten years of exploration, I had seen a great energy which I knew nothing about—a natural power that no races—not even demons—could resist. Those races which fight among themselves senselessly for the pathetic bubble zone would never understand the greatness and truth outside.
"During the expedition, I had made the old man into semi-demon so that he could live a little longer and help me decipher the secret of the universe. But his lifespan was coming to an end. He volunteered to join the expedition because he wanted to witness with his own eyes the things he had been calculating for all his life before he died.
"We didn't make it to the edge of the bubble zone, though. The day he decided to cut short the expedition and return home, he was exposed to a high dose of radiation and died shortly after that.
"He left me his last word: when you finally look back at where you come from after making it so far, you would realise that you were once a fool.
"Then I turned the expedition team around and returned home. The following year, I began my world unification war plan."