Chapter 844 – On Cosmic Three-Dimensionality

Returning to the book in her hands—Mo Lan looked down at 《On Cosmic Three-Dimensionality》.

Not long ago, the reconstruction of the mirror space had entered its final critical phase, and she vaguely sensed that her mental state had grown somewhat restless.

To prevent these emotional fluctuations from affecting the mirror space’s reconstruction, she decided to pause temporarily and turn to other matters to calm her mind.

It was during that period of adjustment that she read this book, transcribed from the bookshelves of Senior Traci in Starault Hall.

The contents expounded within simply opened her eyes wide—her entire worldview had been reshaped.

For a time, even the excitement and joy of the Starsea Ark nearing completion were replaced by the sheer awe inspired by this book’s contents, and her mental restlessness resolved itself.

Had the mirror space reconstruction not been at such a critical juncture, and had the book’s contents not truly required quiet, careful contemplation, she probably would not have been able to bear closing it at all.

Now, with the Ark complete and the voyage underway, she could finally settle down to study this book, and she immediately immersed herself in it.

The book’s core thesis was: “The universe is composed of three dimensions—space, time, and soul—intertwined together, constantly diverging and expanding as time flows onward.”

Put simply, the world she currently inhabited was merely the specific result of the “space” and “soul” dimensions interacting within the particular river of “time” she occupied.

Time itself continuously branched, spawning countless parallel or intersecting timelines.

And along each timeline, space and soul could develop in entirely different directions, evolving into myriad worlds of bizarre wonder and divergent fates, giving rise to myriad intelligent beings.

Back then, Earth’s world consciousness had told her that should she one day possess the power to save the world, it would guide her to find another version of itself on a different timeline.

Only after finishing this book did Mo Lan truly understand the real meaning behind those words.

Within the great river of time, a certain branching had given birth to Earth.

Initially, Earth’s trajectory existed on only a single timeline. But as the time dimension continued to diverge, each branching spawned a new timeline, and on each new timeline, an entirely new Earth appeared.

These Earths evolved independently along their respective trajectories.

When they absorbed sufficient energy through their interweaving with the soul dimension, they gave rise to intelligent life.

As intelligent life continued to evolve and civilization developed to a certain stage, world consciousness awakened, and Earth was thereby promoted to a tier-zero world.

Only by becoming a tier-zero world and possessing autonomous consciousness could a world draw energy from the void, helping the intelligent beings within it break through mortal limitations, step into the realm of the extraordinary, and in turn propel the entire world toward higher tiers.

However, if during this process the intelligent species on a planet went extinct, the world consciousness would dissipate, leaving behind nothing but a silent dead star adrift in the cosmos.

The Earth on Mo Lan’s original timeline had met precisely such an end.

But the Earths on other timelines did not necessarily share the same fate.

Time could not be reversed, yet time travel was still, in a way, possible by traveling through the branching parallel universes. Her specific Earth could never be saved, but time would endlessly branch, creating new possibilities. It was precisely for this reason that Earth’s world consciousness had told her it could send her to another timeline.

Her arrival would cause that timeline to branch once more, and on the newly born branch, she would have the chance to use her own power to guide Earth toward a different future.

However, traveling across time was far more difficult than traveling across space. It required not only extraordinarily powerful strength but was also constrained by a fundamental law: within the same world on the same timeline, two identical souls could not exist.

Fortunately, the Earth Mo Lan had originated from was merely a tier-zero world that had not yet produced extraordinary life, and she herself had been only an ordinary intelligent being at the time.

The souls of ordinary beings were like ungerminated seeds—they had not yet sprouted branches and could not propagate new selves across different dimensions of time and space.

Only when a being stepped into the realm of the extraordinary would the soul truly “germinate,” growing ever more branches, allowing the “self” to be born and grow on other timelines—becoming existences that were at once the same and yet different.

When a self on one timeline perished, its soul power would be distributed among the selves on other timelines. Only when every self across all timelines had completed their life’s journey would these scattered fragments of soul power reconverge, giving birth to a new life endowed with even greater talent.

Moreover, the soul dimension was deeply bound to the space dimension. A soul would only give rise to new “selves” within the same world across different timelines. Some worlds called this process reincarnation.

In other words, among the countless Earths, her soul had appeared on only one timeline’s Earth.

And on that timeline, Earth’s world consciousness had sent her soul away before its own demise. When her soul took root in the Valen world and was marked with Valen’s imprint, the versions of “her” that had once existed across Earth’s timelines all vanished as well.

Now, she could travel to the Earth on any timeline—the only difference being the level of power required.

As for precisely what level of strength one needed to safely cross timelines, the book did not specify, because Senior Traci herself had not yet reached that level.

The paradigm-shattering knowledge contained in 《On Cosmic Three-Dimensionality》 was not something Senior Traci had deduced from thin air. Rather, she had used the power of the Omniscient Book to converse directly with the consciousnesses of numerous worlds, collecting and compiling this crystallization of wisdom.

The breadth of the Omniscient Sorceress’s knowledge truly surpassed everyone’s imagination. Mo Lan estimated that even Explorers with higher Mana ranks than Senior Traci who had visited more otherworlds might not necessarily know the truth of the universe.

The Earth where she had been born was a tier-zero world that had never given rise to extraordinary intelligent life. The Valen world that had accepted her wandering soul and granted her new life had itself been an endangered world on the brink of intelligent species extinction during the Divine Descent Era.

Once she recognized this, Star Refinement became the one and only magic that Mo Lan was unwilling to touch from the bottom of her heart, with not the slightest desire to practice it.

Star Refinement was a special magic used by high-ranking Explorers to extract source power from tier-zero worlds and endangered worlds with weakened world consciousnesses, condensing it into Source Mana crystals.

It originated from an extraordinarily massive plane that advanced Mana ranks by smelting small living spaces and minor worlds. Its talent requirements for practitioners were not particularly stringent—the only catch was that the practice process demanded a continuous, massive investment of Mana crystals refined from world source power.

Even if plundering was easier than saving, Mo Lan had no intention of taking that shortcut.

She planned to treat the rescue of tier-zero and endangered worlds as rehearsals and training for her future mission to save Earth.

With that experience under her belt, when the day came that she could truly cross timelines and go to save Earth, she would not be caught off guard.