Silent Ark

Chapter 13: The Amber Era

Day 15, sixth hole.

Located in the Indian Ocean, in the waters near the Maldives.

This hole behaves differently from all the other holes.

All other holes are "repulsive"—the network of "benevolence" recedes around them, and those who approach them undergo irreversible mutations, but this hole is attractive.

The network of "benevolence" did not retreat around it.

Instead, the threads of the golden network became denser around it—not a normal connection, but an excessive, pathological, tangled connection.

These threads turn an eerie purplish-black at the point where they come into contact with the hole. Each thread is no longer just a point-to-point connection, but an attempt to connect all the points.

Hanging from a single thread are fragments of consciousness or physical objects, such as ten trees, twenty stones, fifty humans, and one hundred birds and beasts, all crumpled into a ball.

The awakened ones who approached this cave did not laugh, imitate, go berserk, slow down, or siphon off.

This time they "melted".

This is true in physics, and also at the boundaries of consciousness.

They are still alive, still conscious—but the distinction between "I" and "you" has disappeared.

They can sense each other's thoughts—not the telepathic kind of "I receive your thoughts," but rather "your thoughts become my thoughts, and my thoughts become your thoughts; now it's impossible to tell which is which."

In the final seconds before the fusion occurred, an awakened individual left a voice recording: "It is—kneading everything—together—not merging—merging requires two independent things—it is dissolving—the concept of 'independence' itself—I feel myself becoming—not someone else—becoming—'between'—not A nor B—the space between A and B—that space is expanding—A and B are shrinking—finally only space remains—nothing is in the space—only the space itself—like—like—"

The record ends here.

Because "she" no longer exists. What remains is a node—a uniform entity composed of fragments of consciousness from at least seven people, devoid of subjectivity, that only knows "connection."

CERN designation: Sovereign Body-μ.

Internal communication name: Lust, the web of entanglement.

The Investiture of the Gods archives include: The Web of Enmeshment (Lust and Desire)

Divinity: The law of blind attraction and compulsion. Beyond mere desire, it is a distorted force that attempts to forcibly bind and merge all independent existences into one, stripping individuals of their independence and free will.

Higher Dimension: An infinitely extending giant net composed of activated gravitational filaments and neural cables. Captured individuals of a civilization will lose their sense of self, becoming network nodes and immersing themselves in the eternal but empty pleasure of "connection".

Day sixteen, seventh hole.

It is located above the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean.

The last hole appeared.

Before it appeared, Yao Chong no longer needed anyone to tell him what would happen next.

The pattern is crystal clear: one per day, in sequence, each corresponding to one of humanity's oldest self-destructive tendencies.

But the way he performed on the seventh hole still surprised him.

Because it did nothing.

When the other six holes appear, they all have clear effects—pride solidifies, envy imitates, rage dismantles, sloth stagnates, greed siphons, and lust merges.

When the seventh hole appeared—nothing happened.

The network of "benevolence" has not retreated.

There was no acceleration, no change.

No one laughed, no one imitated, no one went berserk, no one slowed down, no one was siphoned, no one merged.

The seawater above the trench is still seawater. The fish are still fish. The jellyfish are still jellyfish. Everything is normal.

All instrument readings at the monitoring station were normal.

Even the hole itself—if you look at it with higher-dimensional perception—is different from the other six.

The other six holes each have a distinct "form"—pride is a perfect geometric shape, envy is a shifting shadow, wrath is a scarlet storm, sloth is absolute darkness, greed is a supermassive black hole, and lust is a tangled web.

The seventh hole – nothing there.

In vision and perception, it's not "invisible," it's that even the description "invisible" doesn't apply.

It wasn't there; it never was.

If you look at its location, you'll see a trench.

It's just a trench, exactly the same trench as when it had no holes.

But all the awakened ones—all those around the world who have activated their higher-dimensional perception—had the same intuition at the moment the seventh hole "appeared": nothing had happened.

It means that what happened was erased before it even "happened".

You cannot detect its effect, not because it has no effect—but because its effect makes detection itself impossible.

It is not something that "did something".

It is something that "makes the concept of 'something' invalid."

Just like when you say "This statement is false"—a self-referential paradox in logic—this statement can neither be judged as true nor false; it destroys the possibility of judgment itself.

The seventh hole is the physical embodiment of this thing.

A self-referential paradox, an entity that causes "description" to collapse.

The only evidence that it "is there" is that its non-existence is too perfect.

Too clean, too "empty".

Like a piece of glass that's been wiped too clean—so clean you can't see the glass itself, only what's behind it—and then you suddenly realize: if the glass were really gone, you should be able to feel the wind.

But you can't feel the wind.

Because the wind was also wiped away.

CERN designation: Sovereign entity-ν.

Internal communication name: Gluttony, Fusion Devourer.

In fact, Yao Chong believes this is not a very accurate description, because these phenomena are not actually being eaten, but for the sake of consistency: Gluttony - The Dissolver of Boundaries

Godhood: The embodiment of excess and unrestrained chaos. He dissolves all boundaries and forms, pursuing the ultimate sensory and existential experience until self and other, subject and object are completely confused. It is the ultimate process of self-indulgence leading to self-destruction.

Higher Dimension: A viscous, rainbow-colored ocean that is constantly churning and merging with countless substances, colors, sounds, and concepts. It is beautiful yet terrifying. Those who enter will lose all form and independent consciousness.

Seventeen days after the whale fall, at CERN underground.

Liu Pan laid out twelve printed pictures on the ground, representing the twelve new phenomena that had emerged.

Each picture is a sketch of an awakened being's perception—drawn by different people, with different styles and techniques, but depicting the same existence.

Five on the left and seven on the right.

Yao Chong squatted down and watched.

He didn't close his eyes—these were drawings arranged on paper, not higher-dimensional perception.

But after looking at it for three seconds, he realized something was wrong.