Yin Shen felt himself flying out of his own body, slowly drifting towards the sky.
He overlooked the buildings, the city, and the continent.
Even...
Overlooking the Earth.
He flew higher and higher, drifting along the orbit, only to suddenly witness rapid changes occurring on Earth.
In the blink of an eye, cities vanished, and even the traces of humanity disappeared.
Continental plates shifted, and green vegetation gradually covered shifted to encompass everything.
Yin Shen immediately understood what had happened.
"Time is accelerating, the instant I perceive now could be tens of thousands or millions of years."
"I wonder if it's flowing forward or backward. If it's flowing forward, does that mean humanity has already gone extinct?"
His gaze turned towards the universe, and he was then pulled by an invisible force or rather, cast into the vast expanse of the universe, disappearing from Earth.
Eternal silence enveloped him.
He witnessed the birth and extinction of countless stars, the rapid collapse of galaxies.
He had never imagined such a magnificent spectacle, so extraordinary that it could change one's beliefs, making him feel how laughable his own life and pursuits were, and even experiencing a sense of dread for his mundane existence.
Does our ephemeral life truly hold any meaning?
The birth of life, the origin of civilization, the grandeur of technology, are they truly as great as humanity proclaims?
The entirety of a human life, even the history of the race called human beings, and even the entire Earth.
At this moment, Yin Shen could only use a phrase he once heard to describe it.
"We are but dust!"
The race and civilization called humanity were like a faint ray of light that suddenly appeared in a corner of the universe.
Fleeting, devoid of any meaning.
No attention, no care, incapable of changing anything.
Our origin, our birth, our effort to shine brightly as we can, and ultimately, our irreversible passing.
Disappearing into the insignificance of that corner of the universe, vanishing in a blink of an eye for the cosmos.
Yin Shen's soul was shaken. Being able to witness such a wondrous sight, his dim and fleeting life seemed to finally have a glimmer of light.
He transformed into a beam of light, heading towards the depths of the universe.
Time flowed backward, in a way that transcended time and dimensions, heading towards the origin of everything.
It was as if, at the source of time, a powerful gravity was pulling him towards the beginning of all that was.
Finally...
The stars faded, and the universe unified.
Everything disappeared without a trace.
"Where am I?" Yin Shen asked himself.
In this place, even darkness didn't exist, and Yin Shen felt like he had disappeared himself, with only a consciousness remaining dormant in an endless emptiness.
It was a place without space, without time, without anything.
He could only answer himself because he might be the first life form to arrive here, the sole existence in this place.
"Have I been cast beyond the universe? Or have I entered an unknowable dimension?"
He couldn't shout, he couldn't perceive any existence.
Suddenly, fear arose in his heart, and his friend's words echoed in his ears.
"That place could be another universe, the source of time, or an unimaginable unknown dimension."
"Nothing may exist there, like a prison, where your soul would be trapped for ten million years, one hundred million years."
"Until..."
"Eternity."
In an instant, he was overwhelmed with terror and unease.
But just as this thought arose, he suddenly saw a light shining before him.
He heard the sound of the sea and the tides, and the sound alone felt incredibly clear and warm.
He even felt bubbles floating up beside him.
Rustle, splash, gurgle.
This sound moved him.
Before his eyes appeared the ocean, the sea floor covered with pebbles.
He saw a tiny, three-leaf-shaped creature crawling towards the distance in the gravel, and a noodle-like worm entangled in the seawater, swimming upwards.
There were the trilobites named Eldredgeia, and small, barely noticeable unknown worms.
Once again, he remembered the words of his friend and realized what had happened.
"Anchor!"
"My anchor point on Earth has appeared, allowing me to observe the Earth."
"They are my eyes, my anchor and coordinates in the vast ocean."
He didn't expect that the trilobite fossil given to him by his friend would re-anchor him to Earth, pulling him out of a seemingly eternal darkness and the bottomless abyss.
However, it's estimated that his friend also didn't anticipate that within that fossil, there was not only a trilobite but also a worm from a distant era.
He reached out to grab the creature called Eldredgeia.
He broke free from the cage and returned to the universe once again.
His consciousness was drawn into the Earth, from that place beyond the universe, transcending time.
The knowledge pulled him back.
Anchored at a time node in the vast universe, anchored to an inconspicuous planet in a remote starry region.
This was a shallow sea, with sunlight shining down from above.
The seabed was filled with various ancient algae and fern-like plants. Large patches of underwater plants swayed gently with the waves, resembling tulips.
There were also sponge-like creatures resembling cacti, sharp pointed spines extending from their outer walls.
Tongue shells were embedded in the sand, and he even saw clusters of trilobites crawling on the gravel.
Step by step, Yin Shen walked along the seabed, feeling lost and bewildered, sensing the abnormality of this place.
This should be Earth, but it couldn't possibly be the Earth he was familiar with.
He finally emerged from the shallow sea and stood on the land.
Barren ground, a continent devoid of any living beings.
Yin Shen looked at the Earth from millions of years ago, gazing at the clear sky and the sun, with himself as the sole existence called a human.
"What is this?"
"The primordial Earth?"
He stood on the shore, but the sea behind him surged with enormous waves, erupting with a loud roar.
"Boom~"
With Yin Shen's appearance, the worm itself underwent a mutation.
It devoured the sand, devoured the seaweed, absorbed the ocean's moisture, and in the blink of an eye, swelled into a colossal beast dozens of meters tall.
Both plants and organisms became part of it, fused with its body.
A Gigantic shell grew on its back, spikes sprouted from its body jutting out of the skin from within, and eerie tentacles extended from the shell.
Flesh split open with gaping crevices, and grotesque green eyeballs opened from within, gazing in all directions.
This was a terrifying abomination, an invincible overlord in terms of size in this era.
However, as Yin Shen's gaze fell upon it, the colossal beast lay prostrated on the ground, motionless, as if it had lost all sense of self.
Then, a trilobite, continuously growing larger, slowly crawled out of the shallow sea.
As it emerged from the water, it also underwent transformations.
It grew a human-like torso, limbs, and a head.
It transformed into a humanoid creature covered in black exoskeleton, with a bone helmet bearing the trilobite pattern securely wrapped around its head.
This creature walked step by step onto the shore, looking longingly at Yin Shen standing there, and eventually reached him.
Yin Shen could sense its emotions as he touched the bone helmet on its head with his fingertips.
Listening to the oldest life on this Earth, uttering the first language of this planet, the first byte.
"God!"