Chapter 1011:The Garden of Intersecting Paths
The Great Deluge could be seen?
Lin Sanjiu stood still for a few seconds, subconsciously looking out of the porthole. From the endless darkness of the universe, a fleet of various-shaped spacecraft gradually emerged. The deep dark night sky near the planet was illuminated by the radiance of the fleet, creating layers of colorful halos. The halos intermingled and rippled, creating a beautiful and gentle scene that was hard to imagine would soon be followed by a bloody battle.
RH102 was a very small planet. If everything went according to plan, it wouldn't take the Night Wanderers more than an hour to land and discover the crashed Exodus. However, no matter how she looked, she couldn't see the so-called Great Deluge.
"What are you looking at?" Bohemia shouted impatiently from behind her.
"Where is the Great Deluge?"
Bohemia raised her chin, a hint of inexplicable pride in her tone, "You can't see it. Only I can."
What?
Lin Sanjiu turned her head, her gaze sweeping over the other people—they all wore confused expressions. Arianne, who knew nothing about the Great Deluge and was an outsider, huddled silently in the corner. Lyanna and Luther seemed to be waiting for Bohemia to explain further.
"Why?" Lin Sanjiu raised an eyebrow.
Bohemia came closer and glanced out of the porthole. "How long until they arrive?"
"The entire fleet will land. It'll take less than an hour," Lin Sanjiu recalled the descent process of the Night Wanderers, "But they might have already detected us on their radar. If they send people over to investigate... well, let's say within thirty minutes."
Bohemia hesitated for a moment. "That should be enough."
"What do you mean by 'enough'?"
Seemingly unable to make up her mind, Bohemia spoke hesitantly, "In less than thirty minutes... I can take you to see the Great Deluge."
"You can take me to see the Great Deluge? How?"
"Don't give me that look!" Bohemia had a hard time keeping a pleasant expression when facing Lin Sanjiu, "I'm just trying. I've never brought another person with me while practicing my Higher Consciousness before. Let's get this straight, I can't guarantee that someone as dull as you will be able to see it."
Lin Sanjiu was confused by her words, but one doubt became clearer in her mind: "What is the Great Deluge like? Why do you seem so nonchalant?"
"So, you don't know either?"
Before she could answer, Lyanna asked first. After listening silently for a while, she couldn't help but speak, "You guys are not on the same side as the Chicky brothers, so of course, you wouldn't share information."
Suddenly, a strange feeling arose in Lin Sanjiu's heart, as if something was stirring and roiling beneath the surface, ready to burst out at any moment. Somehow, Lyanna's other words popped into her mind—"The man you killed was the only pilot, wasn't he?"
What... does that mean?
But after pondering for a moment, she suppressed the thought and briefly explained, "Silvan told me that he believes the Great Deluge is the collapse of order after the material catastrophe of the apocalyptic world."
Perhaps that wasn't enough to make others understand what the Great Deluge truly was. It couldn't explain why Bohemia could "see" it. What did the collapse of order look like? How could it be seen with the naked eye?
However, when Lin Sanjiu voiced her confusion, Bohemia rolled her eyes and retorted, "When did I say that I 'saw' it with my 'naked eye'? Geez, you're so muddled. You'll see for yourself... Here, put this on your neck."
It wasn't the first time she had put on the strap like a dog leash.
Lin Sanjiu wrapped it around the bandage, intending to ask if Lyanna and Luther could also take a look, but the words got stuck in her throat. Bohemia seemed to have completely forgotten about them. Tightly securing the strap, she explained, "Don't worry, even after we enter the garden, you will still be able to perceive everything around you."
In that instant, Lin Sanjiu felt the power of Higher Consciousness like a warm stream of water flow through her skull, gently but undeniably submerging her brain, consciousness, and soul. Her own Higher Consciousness had long since been exhausted, and Mrs. Manas remained unable to reshape herself. However, this lack of obstruction allowed Bohemia's Higher Consciousness to smoothly guide her into the "Garden of Intersecting Paths."
She finally understood why Bohemia looked down on her method of Higher Consciousness training.
It was an incredibly strange feeling: she wasn't even sure if her eyes were closed, yet, as Bohemia had said, everything around her floated in her mind like an illusion. With just a slight tilt of her head, she could see it all. People and objects lost their vividness and sharpness, instead floating in a haze of pale, pink-tinted outlines, as if filtered through a soft lens.
Like one negative pressed onto another, on this "negative" formed by reality, there was another layer of world enveloping it.
Lin Sanjiu had never experienced anything like this before.
Her gaze could transcend the material aspects of windows and doors, rise from the realm of reality, and plunge into a vast, remote, profound deep space that held infinite possibilities. In this layer, she faintly sensed something indescribable and unseen, gently undulating beside her—like time, will, energy, and thoughts that had sublimated from the world, wandering and roaming on this level, detached from the fingertips of the mundane.
In the blink of an eye, she saw another scene. In the silent, pitch-black abyss, silently glided by large, crimson fish. They represented her and Bohemia, as well as all metaphysical entities... This feeling was like dreaming, or the hallucinations induced by LSD.
These feelings and experiences were often difficult to describe using language and logic.
"What... what is this place?" Lin Sanjiu murmured. She didn't hear her own voice and didn't know if her mouth was open. Bohemia—now merely an "existence" there, without form or substance—responded, "When I connect with the universe, I enter this place... I believe it is the 'Garden of Intersecting Paths.'"
Lin Sanjiu was completely captivated by this transcendent, strange, non-existent yet existent feeling. For a moment, she even forgot her purpose and just stared blankly at the silently gliding crimson fish in the dark abyss. Of course, this was a metaphor; she didn't actually see any fish.
"I really like it here," Bohemia softly said in a dreamy tone, "When I enter the garden, it's like a baby returning to the amniotic fluid. As long as I immerse myself, I can restore and enhance my Higher Consciousness."
"Where is the Great Deluge?"
"Look up."
Lin Sanjiu followed her words and raised her gaze.
At first, it seemed like there was nothing in the darkness. However, from the highest and farthest depths, the pitch-blackness seemed to peel off, gradually fading from the universe. It was like semi-solidified water ripples, with faint, indescribable colors rippling at the edges. The speed at which these "water ripples" peeled off wasn't fast, but they carried an unstoppable momentum—indeed, the name Great Deluge was fitting; it did remind her of a mountain flood.
"Where is it coming from? It's not water, and it's some intangible thing—what is it?" Lin Sanjiu became nervous. "Is it about to touch us?"
"I don't know what it is, but it seems to exist in a different dimension than us," Bohemia spoke seriously, a rare sight. "The garden is like a passage that opens a window for us to see the Great Deluge, but everything seen in the garden is intangible. So, in reality, it cannot touch us."
The Great Deluge appeared more like a wave of light pouring down from above, but its coverage area wasn't large. Lin Sanjiu felt slightly relieved and stared straight at it. She watched as the wave of light rippled and fell into the "Garden of Intersecting Paths," and then, the light penetrated the garden, immersing into the next layer of "negative"—the realm of reality.
"Huh?" Bohemia couldn't help but exclaim, "How could it pass through the garden?"
She stopped halfway through her sentence because both of them saw it at the same time—the light of the Great Deluge gradually engulfing the fleet of Night Wanderers' spacecraft.