"Living until the next era, huh..."
Seraphine's thoughts shifted. "Does this mean he intends to, and can, endure countless eons alongside the singularity, witnessing the final end of all things, and eventually reaching a newly birthed universe? He seems so certain. Could he have experienced this before?"
In an instant, she fell into deep contemplation.
"If the universe has more than one era, then which era am I currently in?"
Everything has a lifespan and an ultimate end. Life, planets, stars, neutron stars, galaxies, even the smallest subatomic particles are the same.
Naturally, the universe itself likely has a finite existence. After an unknown number of billions of years, it too will reach the end of its life and vanish.
Seraphine considered that if Cosmic Eras were understood in the common sense, they would be like the legendary cycles of reincarnation, where a mortal lives, dies, their soul returns to the underworld, and then they are reborn into a new life.
The universe might similarly perish, only for a new universe to be birthed upon its remains.
Or perhaps the big bang that created this vast cosmos over 13 billion years ago wasn't the true starting point of space-time and all things, but merely the transition point from one era to another. It's possible the universe has already undergone this transition many times.
Each time it crosses that threshold, a universe is born in a magnificent big bang, where all matter, energy, and the four fundamental forces emerge. They then converge and evolve, driving the infinite cosmos and all creation toward the end of time, until they step into the next transition once more.
This transition might manifest as the big rip, the big chill, or the big crunch.
In short, it is the moment when everything ends.
Seraphine wasn't particularly shocked by the possibility of the universe undergoing cycles of rebirth.
Or rather, she had long suspected it but lacked true confirmation.
In fact, back before she had even left the Solar System, she had already discovered many strange and inexplicable astronomical data through her observations.
These strange data points were prevalent in various celestial redshift phenomena and within the cosmic microwave background radiation.
For instance, the CMB was covered with mottled traces left behind by the evaporation of black holes, marks commonly referred to as [Hawking Points].
Generally, black holes aren't always all-consuming. They can release energy into the universe through Hawking Radiation. As this energy is released, the black hole's mass drops steadily. Once it reaches an infinitesimal scale, the black hole vanishes in a violent burst of gamma rays.
Under normal conditions, the magnitude of this energy radiation is minute. A black hole with the mass of Earth would take roughly a trillion years to evaporate completely.
However, many scholars from Earth and the various Milky Way civilizations, including Seraphine herself, believed that billions of years from now, when the universe's temperature is low enough and matter is sufficiently sparse, Hawking Radiation might accelerate significantly.
Near the end of its life, a black hole could potentially explode on a massive scale, releasing a tremendous amount of energy.
The electromagnetic signatures left by such explosions could persist for an incredibly long time, long enough to survive into the next Cosmic Era, appearing as vast, glowing traces in that new universe's CMB.
These are the Hawking Points.
While still on Earth, Seraphine had already discovered dozens of these Hawking Points through deep-space observations. Most of them formed extremely regular geometric shapes: triangles, squares, diamonds, and circles.
After breaking through the Oort Cloud and venturing into the interstellar space of the Milky Way, she discovered hundreds, even thousands more.
Without exception, they were all regular geometric shapes.
If Seraphine's suspicions and deductions were correct, these shapes were ghosts from the previous Cosmic Era, direct evidence that the universe truly possessed a past life.
Furthermore, Seraphine had always harbored doubts regarding the Big Bang theory. According to her observations, the temperature and density of this universe were far too uniform, thoroughly and perfectly balanced.
While researching and constructing a thought model of the entire universe's birth, Seraphine realized that one had to assume the universe underwent N-number of inflationary bursts after the Big Bang, or some creative event, always under the premise of dark energy, to perfectly level the temperature and density across cosmic space.
According to her estimates, the value of N was staggering, at least five digits. And that was a conservative guess. A more extreme calculation might push it to nine digits or beyond.
Thus, Seraphine concluded: if this universe truly cycles through a process of inflation, some form of destruction, and then inflation again, then the number of such reincarnations ranges from tens of thousands to hundreds of millions.
At most, there is no upper limit.
Countless lines of thought raced through Seraphine's mind in a heartbeat.
Just then, the slightly delayed phantom Tu spoke up, stuttering in confusion:
"You... what nonsense were you just spouting? The experiment you want to perform is to destroy the Singularity?! How is that even possible?!"
"Haha."
Seraphine smiled and didn't answer directly, instead asking, "The Source-Information you mentioned, you're referring to Root Spirituality, right?"
"Root Spirituality..."
Despite never having heard the term, the phantom Tu instantly grasped its meaning. It was as if the cosmic giant wasn't just speaking words, but manifesting a self-evident cosmic truth.
"Yes, Root Spirituality," the phantom Tu replied coldly. "So, how do you plan to destroy the Singularity and then erase Tu's Spirituality?"
"Tsk, tsk," Seraphine shook her head. "A fake is a fake after all. Still a bit dry. Your responses and reactions are as stiff and tasteless as a program."
At this, she recalled the faint white light that had flickered for an instant just before Tu's Spirituality plunged into the event horizon. That was clearly the radiant glow manifested when Spirituality had reached a semi-materialized state.
In other words, that powerful God of Hunger named Tu had unexpectedly reached a level equivalent to the fourth stage of the Cosmic Dawn: [Immortal Embryo Solidifies Thought, Severing Emotion and Severing Self].
"No, that radiance looked quite muddy and superficial. While not exactly crumbling, its foundation was extremely loose and crude, and its quality was rough and brittle."
Seraphine's thoughts shifted. "It's as if it was a low-grade product achieved through some rapid, artificial means."
Even so, this was the first intelligent life she had encountered, besides herself, that possessed semi-materialized Spirituality.
"Is this just a unique case, or is the entire God of Hunger race like this?"
HUMMM!
Space-time rippled.
Under Seraphine's will, the other Gods of Hunger, who had been drifting away in a daze, were instantly pulled back, coming to a halt before her.
As her spiritual scan swept over them, Seraphine realized her previous assumption was slightly off. Among these Gods of Hunger, only one other, a shut-in type wearing glasses and a t-shirt featuring an anime character, possessed semi-materialized Spirituality.
The others did not.
"And it's Ayanami Rei..."
Seraphine evaluated the microscopic, frozen Genarkrail before her, letting out a leisurely chuckle. "And the one in the hoodie earlier. How strange. Why do they all carry elements of old Earth culture? Even their appearances are purely those of old Earth humans."
As pieces of information connected, a suspicion began to take root in her mind.
Lost in thought, Seraphine glanced at the cold, phantom Tu and said indifferently:
"I'll give you one... Spirituality."
HUMMM!
The Authority of Change activated.
In a flicker, a true, tangible Spirituality manifested out of thin air in the void. With a faint glow, it sank into the phantom Tu's informational body.
This was true Spirituality, not some hollow imitation.
The god-tier Spirituality granted by the Authority of Change was so versatile that it could literally 'conjure' the Spirituality Seraphine had painstakingly gathered when she devoured the Milky Way's inhabitants.
The moment the phantom Tu received the Root Spirituality, he was transformed from a clay statue into a living being.
Subjectivity, creativity, imagination, complex thought processes, talent, sparks of inspiration, and a full spectrum of emotions, joy, anxiety, sorrow, anger, shock, fear, and hatred, surged from deep within his consciousness, filling his entire form.
Instantly, he shed his mechanical state and became vibrant. The phantom Tu had become the Real Tu. Although, in comparison to the original, he was effectively a second Tu.
"You..."
Feeling the vitality in his body and consciousness, along with an intensely clear self-awareness, the second Tu trembled in shock. "You... you can actually create Source-Information?!"
In that moment of staggering shock, he suddenly felt that this entity... truly might be capable of erasing a black hole's Singularity. Because this Source-Information, the most fundamental essence of an intelligent being, something that should be beyond manipulation or erasure, had been created out of nothing by this cosmic giant.
"Impossible... how can this be?! It's impossible!!"
Seraphine gave a passing glance to the second Tu, who was muttering to himself as his worldview crumbled, and then turned her attention back to the supermassive black hole before her.
For mortals, without a high-temperature, glowing accretion disk, a black hole is nearly impossible to perceive with the naked eye.
This is because the true nature of a black hole, the Singularity, is shrouded by the event horizon. Outside this horizon, an object might be shredded by tidal forces, but that's about it.
Once something falls past the horizon, however, there is no escape.
Not even for light.
The event horizon, or the Schwarzschild radius, is the boundary where events occur, also known as the 'dead line.'
Outside the horizon, events unfold continuously.
Inside, events cease to exist, or at least lose all meaning.
The interior is effectively a different 'world' that cannot be understood or described using the physical rules of reality.
Theories suggest that if one could survive crossing the event horizon, all the information of past time and the entire evolutionary history of the universe would appear before them.
The Singularity's immense gravity has completely warped space-time, twisting its entire structure into a one-way loop. It's not just space; even time is twisted into a dead-end road leading directly to the Singularity.
In the past, Seraphine had shattered many event horizons using Multi-dimensional Severing, exposing Naked Singularities.
Some were scattered across the vast galaxies; others were stored within 4D and 5D unit cells.
But she had never truly studied a black hole like this.
Or rather, Seraphine had never attempted to venture inside the horizon to personally touch the Singularity.
Now, she wanted to try.
To see if the Singularity deep within the horizon could harm her.
To see if she could destroy it.
In the boundless void, Seraphine looked down at the silent, hovering black hole, six trillion kilometers in diameter, resting in her palm.
"Let me see what your interior... really looks like."
BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ!
With a thought, the Light of Infinity hovering at the edge of the supermassive black hole's horizon converged and condensed, twisting into a pillar that suddenly plunged inside.
HUMMM!
In an instant, Seraphine's perspective split into two distinct realms.
One was the dark expanse outside the event horizon, teeming with high-energy particles and cosmic rays.
The other was the interior of the horizon, an indescribable void of absolute darkness and absolute silence.
Within this lightless quiet, which felt far more vast than the physical dimensions of the black hole itself, her Light of Infinity plummeted toward the Singularity at a breakneck speed.
The event horizon could not sever the information transmission of the Light of Infinity, nor could it block Seraphine's 5D perception.
As for why the interior was so pitch-black?
It was simple: every ray of light and every bit of radiation capable of forming an image was falling toward the Singularity at the deepest point of the horizon. Inside, all matter and energy move in a single direction, with the Singularity as the final destination. No light ever radiates outward.
Furthermore, the disparity in time between the inside and outside of the horizon reached an unimaginable scale. A single second inside might equate to hundreds of trillions of years passing in the outside world.
If anyone else attempted to experience Seraphine's current perspective, where normal time and time slowed down by a factor of quintillions existed simultaneously, their mind would instantly shatter, and their soul would fade into nothingness.
But for Seraphine, who possessed a heart of inverse-entropy and had survived the bombardment of billions of virtual timelines, this was a walk in the park.
"..."
In that absolute darkness and silence, the Light of Infinity fell with extreme velocity.
During the descent, Seraphine's unrestrained 5D perception ignored the single-direction space-time structure created by the Singularity.
She looked "back" toward the horizon's exit. Because the Light of Infinity moved vastly faster than any passive matter or energy falling alongside it, Seraphine, as she drew closer to the Singularity, witnessed a high-speed, compressed playback of every piece of cosmic matter this supermassive black hole had ever swallowed.
Standing deep within the horizon, in a mere second, she saw endless nebulae, comets, planets, stars, red giants, white dwarfs, neutron stars, and other black holes converging and slamming into the horizon at inconceivable speeds.
Beyond these terrifying images, Seraphine even 'saw' the cosmic space outside the horizon shifting with frenzied, violent speed.
"..."
Time flowed on.
After traversing layers of chaotic, mystical imagery, Seraphine's Light of Infinity finally made contact with that object of infinite density and infinitesimal volume, the black hole Singularity.
In mathematics, a Singularity is also known as an Undefined Point, or a Non-definable Point.
The moment her perception touched that Non-definable Point, Seraphine's terrifying sensory power, which transcended cosmic rules via the Light of Infinity, suddenly 'saw' an explosion of light outside the event horizon.
It was as if every ray of light ever produced in the universe from its inception had converged at this single point to display its full glory.
But this curtain of light, containing the secrets of the cosmos, flashed for only a fraction of a second before the outside world plunged into an absolute darkness indistinguishable from the interior of the horizon.
"..."
No information, no matter, no energy; everything was void.
Within the closed-loop space-time region near the Singularity, there was only a darkness and silence so dense it felt frozen.
During this journey, Seraphine was surprised to find that the interior structure of this black hole was far more complex than she had imagined. Perhaps not every black hole in the universe was like this.
But this was a galaxy-class supermassive black hole, one that had once been deeply entangled with the Realm of Phantasm, a scale of mass rare even in the entire cosmos.
Its event horizon surprisingly had more than one layer.
The first layer was the outer horizon, directly adjacent to the material space of the universe, also known as the infinite redshift surface.
At this horizon's surface, an ocean of information lay stagnant, vast and boundless. Because the space-time structure within this layer wasn't a hard single-direction construct, falling into it didn't guarantee 100% entrapment.
Under the majestic force of time, energy had accumulated and layered within this outer region. This area could also be called the Ergosphere.
Passing through this thick Ergosphere leads to the inner event horizon, the true point of no return. Within this vast, empty void, aside from idealistic powers like the Light of Infinity that transcend all cosmic phenomena, everything that falls into this layer can only, and must, advance toward the Singularity.
There is no turning back.
It is like an ultimate purpose; whether in time or space, there is no second direction for anything that falls.
Crossing these two massive horizons brings one to the region where Seraphine now stands: the Undefined Domain created by the Singularity.
In this region, the spatial attributes of interconnectivity and equality between points have vanished entirely. Every spatial point that could be defined as a coordinate is being twisted and dragged to the extreme by the Singularity. Consequently, the spatial warping here has reached a terrifying level, acting like the universe's ultimate vortex.
Even the flow of time has been warped from a linear path into a closed-loop distortion. Theoretically, anything existing here is tragically trapped, looping forever along a Mobius-strip timeline where the past and an even more distant past are joined end-to-end, with no hope of escape. Trapped forever in the past, unable to reach the present or the future.
Since no one had likely ever reached this region, Seraphine defined it as the [Forbidden Domain].
The domain of taboos.
"The Singularity..."
Seraphine's form, condensed from the Light of Infinity, stood silently looking at that infinitesimal point a hundred meters away, an object of infinite density and near-invisible volume, like a seed of a particle.
She could clearly feel that this volumeless Singularity contained the mass of nearly an entire galaxy, and the space-time curvature surrounding it approached infinity.
If three-dimensional space were likened to an infinitely vast and flat sheet of fabric, the Singularity had pressed down on and stretched that fabric beyond all imagination.
Indeed, it was merely stretched, not torn.
Even at this intensity, the Singularity had not ripped the fabric of three-dimensional space. It was more like an infinitesimal yet infinitely long bottle tucked into a fold of that 3D fabric.
Even more fascinatingly, after a sweeping scan with the Light of Infinity, Seraphine was surprised to find that this Singularity wasn't just a point. It was a counter-intuitive, topologically-based closed-loop ring surface, rather than a geometric one.
Effectively, this Singularity could also be called a Ring Singularity.
"Both a point and a ring, with no volume or size... how interesting."
After a brief moment of admiration, Seraphine immediately began her experiment to destroy the Singularity.
Actually, long ago, she had considered several ways to completely destroy a black hole, or more specifically, a Singularity.
Following the most basic logic, destroying a Singularity would require unleashing an effect that wouldn't be consumed by it, but instead could thoroughly disrupt it. This effect could be time, space, or some unknown power transcending all logical rules, like the Authority of Change.
Seraphine believed that both birth and disappearance were forms of change, so the Authority of Change should possess the power to directly erase a Singularity from existence.
After all, she had already used the Authority of Change for even stranger experiments.
However, research by directly cheating wasn't very interesting. Seraphine wanted to physically detonate the Singularity.
If she were to handle the Singularity through the dimension of time, the method would involve vastly accelerating the flow of time within its spatial region. This would force the Hawking radiation efficiency to increase, causing its mass to evaporate at high speed.
After a sufficient amount of time, the target Singularity would naturally vanish.
But Seraphine found this method a bit clumsy.
Even with time accelerated by a factor of trillions, a Singularity of this mass would likely still take billions of years to evaporate completely. It was too slow, lacked flair, and didn't fit her aesthetic.
"So there's only one way left."
Seraphine channeled her Light of Infinity, suddenly enveloping the Singularity. "Spatial fragmentation."
Even a Singularity as powerful as a black hole requires physical space to inhabit. Where no space exists, no object can exist, Singularities included. Therefore, if she completely destroyed the patch of 3D space occupied by the Singularity, it would inevitably cease to exist.
Unlike the descriptions in old Earth fantasy novels, where one could shatter space with a few continent-crushing punches and kicks, the 3D space of this universe wasn't that fragile.
In mathematical terms, tearing, cutting, or shattering space can be seen as creating a state of discontinuity in space. Thus, Seraphine only needed to thoroughly break the continuity of a specific region of space to achieve spatial fragmentation.
But first, she had to dismantle the surrounding space-time structures, including the event horizon.
...
Outside the horizon...
SWOOSH!
Seraphine's gargantuan, cosmic giant form, her surface covered in thousands of pitch-black abyssal maws, suddenly erupted with trillions of layers of multi-dimensional cutting edges, enveloping the massive black hole.
Dimensional blades, formed from high-frequency shifts between 3D, 4D, and 5D unit cells, descended like countless god-slaying knives. In an instant, they carved through and shredded the supermassive black hole's double horizons, the Ergosphere, and the deeper Forbidden Domain like peeling an apple.
Amidst the ripples of space-time, that infinitely small Singularity, which had pulled the curvature of reality into itself, was suddenly exposed to the vast cosmos.
Nearby, the second Tu, who had barely managed to recover from his shock, stared blankly at his shattered black hole body. His worldview crumbled once again.
"What just happened?! How did my massive black hole just... explode?!"
While in his daze, he suddenly felt a series of terrifyingly violent space-time vibrations emanating from the void where his black hole body had once stood.
The second Tu was all too familiar with these vibrations. Was that not... the disturbance of 3D space-time caused by the Singularity deep within his true body?
He was stunned!
"...No horizon covering it... a Naked Singularity?!"
He gaped at the ripples in 3D space-time in the distance, saying in disbelief, "How could the universe... allow such a thing to happen?! A Naked Singularity shouldn't be possible!!"
"Allow?"
The colossal Seraphine looked down at the second Tu and said calmly, "Since when did I need the universe's permission to act?"
Ignoring the completely stunned second Tu, the divine light within Seraphine's Eye of Transcendence exploded. She pushed her sensory precision to its maximum, enveloping the tiny patch of 3D space that carried the Singularity.
"What... what are you trying to do?!" the second Tu asked blankly.
"What am I doing?" Seraphine laughed. "Blowing up the Singularity, of course."
HUMMM!
In her 'vision,' that microscopic realm instantly expanded and magnified trillions of times. Crossing multiple levels of microscopic scales, she entered the yoctometer-level domain, a world billions of times smaller than an atomic nucleus.
In this deep, mysterious realm, everything was hollow, vast, and grand. One couldn't even use the word 'darkness' to describe it, for 'color' had lost all meaning. Yet, it wasn't empty; it was incredibly crowded.
The area was packed with an infinite number of "Flat/Non-flat" and "Curved/Non-curved" space-time topological cross-sections.
Behind these space-time cross-sections, in every passing instant, flowed the Dirac Sea, an ocean of zero-point energy with a density so colossal it was terrifying. Amidst its rising tides, countless electrons and positrons appeared in pairs, only to annihilate each other instantly.
Seraphine felt that the entire 3D space-time of this universe, formed by the layering of these infinite topological cross-sections, was effectively floating in and submerged within this boundless Dirac Sea.
The topological cross-sections 'drifting' in this 'ocean' weren't static; some were in motion, darting like living fish, while others were as stationary as reefs. The infinitesimal black hole Singularity was currently 'resting' atop one of these stationary space-time topological cross-sections.
What Seraphine needed to do now was completely destroy this microscopic patch of space-time, which was sextillions of times smaller than an atom.
But achieving this was no easy feat. To do so, she first had to expel all the zero-point energy contained within the quantum fields of that spatial region, dropping it from a 'false' vacuum state to a 'true' vacuum state.
In other words: artificial vacuum decay.
This was difficult.
The zero-point energy contained within the tiny space occupied by a single proton is comparable to all the matter and energy in the entire observable universe combined.
To put it in terms a mortal could understand: to drop one cubic meter of false vacuum into a true vacuum, you would have to take all 10^82 atoms in the observable universe, turn them into million-ton-yield hydrogen bombs, and detonate them simultaneously within that one cubic meter of space.
Although Seraphine's target was far smaller than any macro-object, even the microscopic space-time cross-section occupied by this Singularity contained vacuum energy equivalent to the total energy released by the 100% evaporation of all matter in ten Milky Way galaxies.
Not just the mass, but the total energy converted from that mass.
The two concepts are vastly different.
Therefore, if Seraphine wanted to purge all the vacuum energy from this tiny patch of space-time to trigger vacuum decay, she had to exert an immense amount of power.
SWOOSH!
Inside Seraphine's colossal cosmic body, the mass-energy of 6.66 million Milky Way galaxies surged, creating violent ripples in space-time.
HUMMM!
Channeling it through the Light of Infinity.
In an instant, she 'poured' nearly 10% of her physical power, the mass-energy of 666,000 Milky Way galaxies, into that microscopic region of space-time, trillions of times smaller than any elementary particle.
BOOM!
In a flash, that microscopic realm, tiny yet "vast," vibrated wildly. Tidal waves of energy surged through it, instantly blasting the billions upon billions of fleeting electrons and positrons deep into the distance.
BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ!
The infinitesimal space-time continued to shake. The energy density of the quantum vacuum magnetic field within it dropped sharply, becoming thinner and thinner.
But she wasn't done.
Seraphine continuously increased the magnitude of her power "infusion," striving to drop that tiny patch of space-time into an even lower energy state.
20%, 30%, 40%, 50%...
Strands of Light of Infinity continuously channeled this majestic, boundless force. When the "infusion" reached 75%, the space-time cross-section, vibrating at a terrifying frequency with an energy density that had reached near-zero, finally reached a state of "true" vacuum, devoid of all energy.
At this point, vacuum decay was triggered.
In that very instant, the divine light in Seraphine's Eye of Transcendence flashed brilliantly. She condensed 100% of her Physical Strength and Soul power into an ultimate, microscopic point. Carried by the surging Light of Infinity, she struck with absolute intensity at that ultra-microscopic true vacuum region containing the black hole Singularity.
BOOM!!!
Simultaneously, the vast false vacuum areas surrounding this microscopic true vacuum ignited in a chain reaction. They underwent a phase transition, instantly turning into true vacuum, and began roaring outward into the false vacuum of the universe at the speed of light.
It was as if a new Big Bang had occurred.
In just one-third of a second, this tiny bubble of true vacuum expanded to a diameter of 100,000 kilometers, a bubble of true vacuum, its edges erupting with terrifying tides of light and heat.
Because the total energy of a true vacuum bubble is directly proportional to its volume, the energy density within this massive bubble's surface area became even more terrifying as it expanded. In the first second, the true vacuum bubble reached a diameter of 300,000 kilometers; by the second, it had reached 600,000 kilometers.
Facing this rapidly expanding, terrifying void, all matter and space-time structures were instantly reduced to ash. They were converted through phase transition into a true vacuum state, ruthlessly swallowed by the massive bubble.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
A million kilometers away, the second Tu stared at the expanding bubble in the distance. Trembling, he moaned, "vacuum decay? You! You monster! You... you actually triggered vacuum decay?! ARGHHHH!!!"
Amidst his disbelieving, shrill wails, the true vacuum bubble, now the size of a giant star, abruptly swallowed him, instantly shredding and vaporizing him into nothingness.
The second Tu was annihilated.
Inside the massive true vacuum bubble, where all physical constants and space-time structures had been twisted beyond recognition, the microscopic space-time cross-section, which carried Tu's soul and the fused black hole Singularity, shattered completely under Seraphine's terrifying strike.
CRACK!
The 3D space-time suddenly "split."
Both Tu and the Singularity were utterly destroyed, body and soul.
At that moment, Seraphine witnessed true... nothingness.