Silent Ark

Chapter 31: The Return Journey

Another ground entrance to CERN is in the middle of a field in Saint-Jennipuy, France.

It is an inconspicuous metal door, hidden in a grassy area enclosed by a wall.

From the outside, it looks like a backup exit for some agricultural facility.

Yao Chong last passed through this door four months ago.

At that time, there were two security guards, a dog, and a turnstile that required three card swipes at the entrance.

There's no one at the door right now.

The turnstile has lost power.

The dog is gone too.

The wall was still there, but it was covered with some kind of plant that Yao Chong didn't recognize—not vines, not moss.

Its color constantly switches between green and gray, the frequency of which is synchronized with Yao Chong's heartbeat.

"Don't touch that," Liu Pan said.

"I know."

He pushed open the metal door.

The world outside the door—Yao Chong stood at the doorway, taking five seconds to process what he saw.

The sky was a normal blue.

The grass is a normal green.

The outline of the Alps in the distance is clearly visible.

The air is filled with the scent of wind, grass, and earth.

Everything seems normal.

But he knew something was wrong.

Because his body was telling him something that his eyes couldn't see.

The air density is incorrect.

It's not "thinner" or "denser"—it's "uneven".

With each step, the feel of the air subtly changes.

It's like walking in a puddle of varying depths; in some places it's above your ankles, and in others it only reaches your toes.

"Did you feel it?" he asked Liu Pan.

"I felt it." Liu Pan clenched his fist. "It's like the 'thickness' of the air is changing. It changes every few steps."

Shen Ruozhi looked down at the testing device in her hand.

The data on the screen is fluctuating—real-time readings of the fine structure constant, which are slightly volatile with each step.

"The edge of the water stain," she said. "We're standing on the edge of the water stain."

Yao Chong looked into the distance.

From their position, the world appeared complete.

Sky, grassland, mountains, highway.

But if you look closely—very closely—you'll find that the colors in some places are not quite right.

On the highway in the distance, a truck is stopped in the middle of the road.

It's not the kind of stop where you break down—it's more like being put on pause.

The car's color was half a shade lighter than the surrounding environment, like a faded photograph embedded in a normal landscape.

Further away, at the edge of a grove of trees, the color of the treetops transitioned from green to gray, and then to an indescribable color—not white, not black, but "no color."

Like a pixel on a monitor that's broken.

"Those are dry areas," Shen Ruozhi said.

Her voice was flat, but her fingers gripped the detector tightly: "Outside the edge of the water stains, in an area where the laws of physics have been stripped away. Looking at the satellite images—"

She didn't finish speaking because Yao Chong had already closed his eyes.

A grayish-white sky.

Something that floats.

But it's different from underground.

Underground, the sovereign bodies you see with your eyes closed are evenly distributed—like clouds, omnipresent but not very dense.

On the ground, the distribution of sovereign entities is completely different.

Above the water-stained area—the area beneath their feet where the laws of physics still apply—the density of the sovereign body is very low.

The sparse, slowly floating shapes resemble plankton in the deep sea.

But beyond the water stains, the "dry" areas are densely packed with sovereign entities.

It's not "floating".

It means "fill".

Those shapeless things filled every inch of the dry area, like water filling a container.

They slowly writhed, overlapped, split, and rearranged there.

It has no direction, no purpose. It simply exists.

Like rotting.

It's like something slowly decomposing its last remains in a dead area.

Yao Chong opened his eyes.

Shortness of breath.

"Zichong?" Liu Pan handed him a bottle of water.

"The density of the sovereign body above the dry zone—" Yao Chong took the water, took a sip, "isn't 'a lot.' It's 'full.' Like water being poured into a glass. Where the laws of physics have been stripped away, the sovereign body has filled in."

"The law of physics applies to skin," Liu Pan said. "Once the skin is gone, what's underneath is exposed."

"Yes." Yao Chong looked at the strangely colored grove of trees in the distance. "That grove—the laws of physics no longer apply there. The trees are still there because—"

"Because the tree is a skeleton," Shen Ruozhi said. "After the laws of physics are stripped away, the material structure doesn't immediately disappear. It retains its final form, like a fossil. But no more physical processes occur—no photosynthesis, no water transport, no cell division. The tree is still the shape of a tree, but there's no longer a tree inside."

"Like a zebra," Liu Pan said.

Yao Chong glanced at him.

"I told Yao about this before, when we were at the whale fall," Liu Pan said softly. "After a lion bites a zebra's throat, the zebra struggles for a while, then stops. Its body is still there, warm, and intact, but the zebra is no longer inside."

silence.

"The water stains are shrinking," Shen Ruozhi said, looking at the monitoring equipment. "Compared to the data recorded by Professor Chen Dunli eight months ago, the radius of the water stains around CERN has shrunk by approximately four hundred meters."

"Four hundred meters." Yao Chong looked at the faded truck. It was parked on the highway about three hundred meters away. "That truck—it was still submerged in water eight months ago."

"Yes. It's on the edge now. In a few months, it will enter the dry zone."

"Then what?"

"Then it will turn into that forest, the color will fade, the physical processes will stop, and it will become a fossil shaped like a truck."

Yao Chong remained silent.

He looked at the truck.

The vehicle was red, with a white cargo container, and the tires were still round, while the windows remained intact.

From a distance, it looks like just a truck parked on the side of the road.

The driver may have gone to the restroom.

The engine may be malfunctioning.

But its color is fading.

"How many water stains are there in the world?" he asked.

"Seventeen have been confirmed so far," Shen Ruozhi said. "The distribution is irregular—Antarctica, the Sahara, the Mariana Trench, the Brazilian rainforest. But they have one thing in common."

"They're all shrinking."

"They're all shrinking. At different rates. The smallest one—Antarctica—at the current rate, will be completely dried up in about forty-seven days."

Forty-seven days.

Yao Chong looked at the grass beneath his feet.

A green, earthy-smelling meadow where the laws of physics still apply.

He is now standing in the water.

Standing in a shrinking, still damp puddle.

They are fish in a puddle.

The water stains are shrinking.

Geneva Airport is still operational.

However, flights have been reduced by 70%.

There was a long queue at the check-in counters—not of passengers, but of people trying to leave Europe.

Their expressions were uniform: exhaustion, fear, and a sense of bewilderment that said, "I don't know where to go, but I don't want to stay here."

The airport itself is still within the area affected by the water damage.

So everything seemed normal—the lights were on, luggage was moving on the conveyor belt, and flight information was being broadcast over the loudspeaker.

But Yao Chong noticed that outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the waiting hall, on the distant horizon, there was a very faint, almost invisible dividing line between the colors of the sky and the color of the sky.

One side of the dividing line is blue.

The other side is grayish-white.

The blue color is from water stains.

The grayish-white area is the dry area.

They stood on this side of the dividing line.

It's safe for now.

"The boarding gate is C23." Shen Ruozhi glanced at her phone.

The phone still works – the electromagnetic force hasn't been stripped away from the water stains.

They headed toward the boarding gate.