Silent Ark

Chapter 30: The Return Journey

Ultimately, the group chose not to respond to the unknown signal, but they also did not sit idly by. After discussion, Stark decided to risk restarting the Eye of the Abyss once again.

After a burst of white noise, everyone fell into a coma.

When Yao Chong woke up, his first feeling was heaviness.

It's not a psychological burden.

It's physical.

His body was about 15 percent heavier than he remembered, though this was only known afterward—his muscle density had increased, his bones had become harder, and even the viscosity of his blood had changed.

He could feel these changes, as if he had been given a new body.

The second feeling was quiet.

For the first dozen or so nights, his vision was corrupted, causing him to constantly see two layers of reality superimposed on each other—the real fortress and the mirrored mimicry.

The visual noise was like a radio that could never be turned off, constantly playing a mixed signal from two channels.

The radio is off now.

He opened his eyes. The fortress ceiling. Pipes, cracks, water stains. Normal, rough, one-layered reality.

He blinked. It was still one floor.

The vision of pollution has disappeared.

"Zichong." Liu Pan's voice came from the side.

Yao Chong turned his head.

Liu Pan sat on the cot, also looking at him.

His eyes were no longer in a state where he could "hear whispers".

The visual connection has also disappeared.

"you also--"

"Hmm." Liu Pan flexed his fingers.

The joints made a crisp cracking sound, sharper than a normal person's, like metal clashing.

"That's all. But there's something else."

He clenched his fist.

The metal frame of the cot deformed in his palm.

It doesn't bend slowly—it snaps with a "bang," like squeezing aluminum foil.

"I've gotten stronger." Liu Pan looked at his deformed fist and said calmly, as if he were saying that the weather was nice today.

Yao Chong tried to stand up.

He thought he needed to hold onto something—the high-pressure exertion of those days had kept his body on the verge of collapse, and it took him a few seconds to adjust each time he stood up.

But this time he stood up directly.

It was so fast that even he was startled.

My body feels lighter.

It's not weight loss—it's an increase in muscle power output.

The same action requires less effort and can be completed faster.

"Where are Shen Ruozhi and the others?" Yao Chong asked.

"They're all outside. Assess the situation with Stark."

Yao Chong walked towards the door.

As he walked down the corridor, he inadvertently closed his eyes for a moment.

He stopped.

It is not darkness.

When he closed his eyes, he didn't see darkness.

It is the sky.

A vast, boundless, gray-white sky.

There was no sun, no clouds, and no stars.

There was only one uniform gray-white color, like the static on an old television screen.

And in that gray-white expanse, something was suspended.

Huge.

Moving slowly.

One is something without a fixed shape, which should be arrogance, and there is also the golden net representing benevolence and several other metaphysical forms.

They resemble clouds, but they are not clouds—clouds have edges, these do not.

They resemble jellyfish, but they are not jellyfish—jellyfish have a structure, while these do not.

They are more like clumps of translucent material, constantly being kneaded, with light flowing inside—

Yao Chong suddenly opened his eyes.

corridor.

Pipelines.

crack.

Water stains.

Normal reality.

He closed his eyes.

A gray sky.

Something that floats.

Open your eyes.

corridor.

Close your eyes.

sky.

"Zichong?" Liu Pan noticed his unusual behavior.

"Close your eyes and look; it feels even clearer than when a whale fell."

Liu Pan glanced at him, then closed his eyes.

He opened his eyes three seconds later.

His expression changed.

"You saw it too?"

"I saw it."

"In the sky."

"In the sky."

They stared at each other for two seconds.

"They've always been there," Yao Chong said. Not a question.

"In the heavens, above everyone's heads, under the laws of physics—"

"On the skin," Liu Pan replied.

They stood in the corridor, one with eyes closed and the other with eyes open, taking turns looking at the two worlds.

A normal, crude, one-dimensional reality.

A gray, empty reality with something enormous suspended in the sky.

"Those twelve sovereign entities," Yao Chong said.

In the control room, Shen Ruozhi and Stark were looking at the data panel.

"The restoration of physical laws is not 'repair,'" Shen Ruozhi said, "it's 'rebound.' Like a spring that has been compressed and then released—the structure is still there, but the elasticity has been damaged."

"Specific manifestations?" Yao Chong walked in.

"The fine-structure constant has shifted by 0.003%." Shen Ruozhi retrieved the data. "The speed of light hasn't changed, the gravitational constant hasn't changed, but the fine-structure constant—the one that determines the strength of the electromagnetic interaction—has shifted."

What does 0.003% mean?

"This means the electromagnetic force inside the atom is 0.003% weaker than before. The impact is negligible—your phone still works, and the sun is still shining. But this shift is unidirectional. It won't come back on its own."

"My skin has become thinner," Liu Pan said.

Shen Ruozhi glanced at him. "Your description is very accurate."

"It's not a description, it's a feeling," Liu Pan said. "Can you feel it? The air, when you breathe. Don't you feel the air is better than before—"

"Thin," Shen Ruozhi said, "Yes, I feel that way too, but it's probably just psychological."

"No," Yao Chong said, "I felt it too."

Stark remained silent.

He was looking at another set of data—real-time information from a global monitoring network, which included several data points that Yao Chong and Liu Pan had previously highlighted.

"It's not just CERN," he finally began. "Over the past ten days or so, seventeen locations worldwide have reported similar micro-shifts in physical constants. The distribution is irregular—Antarctica, the Sahara, the Mariana Trench, the Brazilian rainforest. But there's one thing in common: all the shifts are accelerating."

"accelerate?"

"The rate of shift is increasing. 0.003% is the average. The point at Antarctica has already reached 0.011%."

silence.

"This means the 'skin' of the laws of physics is thinning," Stark said. "Not uniformly thinning. It's thinning in certain places first. And then, to a certain extent—"

"Stripped away," Yao Chong replied.

"Yes, like skin being torn open, and then the laws of physics in that area break down. The strong nuclear force disappears, the electromagnetic force weakens, gravity reverses—what you experienced inside before the Eye of the Abyss closed."

"A global whale fall," Liu Pan said.

"Yes, but not all at once. It happens little by little, like—"

"Like a contagious disease," Shen Ruozhi said.

Stark glanced at her.

No denial.

The discussion lasted for two hours.

The conclusion is simple: it's no longer safe to stay underground.

It's not because the underground is unsafe—quite the opposite, after more than ten days of testing, CERN's underground facilities should be one of the most physically stable areas on Earth, even though the water stains outside have dried up.

However, "most stable" does not equal "safe".

If a global collapse of the laws of physics were to actually happen, hiding underground would only postpone the time of death.

"We need to get back to Earth," Yao Chong said. "We need to connect with research institutions in various countries, share data, and find solutions."

"Deal with what?" Rajev asked. "The laws of physics are collapsing. How can you 'deal with' it?"

"I don't know, but I do know one thing—" Yao Chong looked at Liu Pan, "something we can see with our eyes closed. Those twelve sovereign entities, they've always been in the sky. If we want to figure out what's happening, we need to know what they're doing."

"And to figure out what it's doing, we need more eyes," Liu Pan said. "More people who can see it with their eyes closed, like the awakened individuals in the reports we collected earlier."

"Currently, only the two of us at CERN can do this," Yao Chong said. "But we're not the only two in the world. In some parts of the world, there are people who have closed their eyes and seen a gray sky."

"How do you plan to find it?"

"I don't know. But the first step is to get back to the ground."

Stark remained silent for a long time.

"CERN will activate its emergency relocation protocol," he concluded. "All researchers and equipment will be moved to an alternative facility within 48 hours. The location is an underground bunker 60 kilometers north of Geneva."

"Are you going with CERN?" Rajeev asked.

"I'm one of the heads of CERN, and that bunker contains the computing equipment I need."

Rajeev nodded. "I'll contact the Indian consulate. If the research institutions in New Delhi are still operational—"

"I'm going back to London," Elena said. Her voice was calmer, but her eyes were still vacant. "I need to take care of some things."

No one asked what it was about.

Shen Ruozhi looked at Yao Chong.

"I'll go back to China with you," she said.

Are you sure?

"During your months at CERN, I did more data analysis than anyone else," Shen Ruozhi said. "If China wants to deal with this, they need this data. And I'm the only one who has complete access to it."

She paused for a moment.

"Furthermore, my cousin is in China. She works for... an organization that handles these kinds of incidents. Through her, we might be able to access official responses much faster than starting from scratch."

Yao Chong did not press for details about "what organization".

"That's settled then," he said. "Forty-eight hours from now, we'll each go our separate ways."