Silent Ark

Chapter 10: The Amber Era

"You mean...?"

"What I mean is that Mencius was right. Compassion is indeed inherent in everyone. But he got it wrong—it's not that human nature is inherently good, but rather that goodness is already there in the beginning, and the human heart is simply placed within the sphere of influence of goodness. It's not that people possess benevolence, but that benevolence possesses people."

"Therefore, benevolence is not a noble human quality, but rather an external, metaphysical one..."

"A physical field. A force that permeates the universe and causes information to flow from high-density regions. The love, compassion, and altruism we feel are essentially projections of this field onto the human nervous system at certain frequencies. Just as gravity can be interpreted from another perspective, it is not merely a property of an object itself, but a projection of its mass. In the cosmic environment, low-mass objects are pulled into circular motion by the gravity of high-mass objects, just as the Earth revolves around the sun."

Yao Chong rolled up the empty compressed biscuit packaging bag tightly, almost into a miniature cylinder.

This is his habit when thinking—to find something that requires relatively precise control for his hands, allowing the sense of order in his hands to help his brain maintain a sense of order.

"If benevolence is some kind of unknown physical field," Yao Chong said, "then I speculate that benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness, which are also of this kind, are similar physical fields. How then can we detect other metaphysical things?"

Liu Pan did not answer immediately.

He turned the display screen toward Yao Chong. While Yao Chong was calculating the concept of "water stains," he was also busy. On the screen was the data he had compiled over the past few days—perceptions reported by "awakeners" around the world, arranged in chronological order.

"Look," Liu Pan pointed to the screen.

The first thing to appear was naturally the golden net called "Ren" (仁), which was unanimously numbered α by everyone.

On the fifth day, someone reported seeing a second entity.

The description is highly consistent with the previous "Ren": a huge figure with an indistinct face, suspended above the net.

After it appeared, it did nothing else—it simply "was there."

But when it's "there," the flow of information online changes—some connections are strengthened, and some are broken.

No one can understand the standards for strengthening and cutting off, but everyone has a strong intuition that it is about "making judgments".

When Yao Chong and Liu Pan classified it according to the format of "benevolence", they came up with its name: The Arbiter, Celestial Balance.

Godhood: The embodiment of cosmic cause and effect and distributive justice. He ensures that the flow of energy, resources, and opportunity conforms to a profound "fitness." Civilizations that prosper through diligence and justice, and face adjustments due to plunder and injustice, are all manifestations of His laws.

Higher Dimension: A colossal figure holding an invisible scale, whose eyes can simultaneously see the cause and effect of all actions. One side of the scale is order, and the other side is chaos.

On the seventh day, the third being appeared.

Witnesses described the net as beginning to take on a certain structure.

The golden net was no longer a uniform diffusion, but instead showed patterns, nodes, and layers—like threads being woven into a certain pattern.

The patterns are constantly changing, but the way they change is not random—it follows certain rules and specific "grammar".

Some people have tried to document this grammar and found that it simultaneously matches the base pairing rules of DNA, the space group symmetry of crystals, and the core syntactic structure of human language.

Following the pattern, Yao Chong compiled it as: The Weaver of Codes.

Godhood: The architect of the universe's structure and the forms of civilized society. From the spirals of galaxies and the orbits of atoms to the languages, laws, and rituals of civilizations, all "patterns" and "norms" contain His code. He prevents existence from sliding into pure chaos.

Higher-dimensional form: an existence that is constantly weaving multidimensional threads, which are physical laws, social contracts, and cultural genes, together weaving the texture of reality.

On the eighth day, the fourth anomaly was discovered.

Some nodes of the network became unusually bright, like lighthouses shining on isolated islands.

These lighthouses do not send out messages, but rather receive them—all the information flowing through them is “analyzed,” “filtered,” and “classified.”

Awakened individuals from various countries who approach the beacon have reported experiencing a similar, intense sense of "understanding"—not that they directly gain some knowledge or understand something specific after getting close, but rather that the act of "understanding" itself is deepened.

Just like a sudden increase in the concentration of oxygen in the air, this situation can be used for medical purposes but cannot be prolonged because oxygen can also cause poisoning. You don't "know more," but rather "know more efficiently." Your mind seems clear all of a sudden, but if you are exposed for too long, you may experience memory damage, or in severe cases, you may even become a vegetable or suffer brain death.

Yao Chong referred to it in his records as: The Omniscient Discerner.

Divinity: A lighthouse and filter in the ocean of cosmic information. It is pure understanding and insight itself, helping civilization distinguish between truth and illusion, wisdom and knowledge. Every crucial "epiphany" and "scientific revolution" in civilization may be touching upon its projection.

Higher dimensional form: a sphere composed of countless rotating crystal prisms, each facet reflecting the truths of different dimensions of the universe, and capable of refracting and dispelling falsehoods and fallacies.

The ninth day, the fifth.

Description: All that had previously appeared—the Web, the Arbiter, the Weaver, the All-Seeer—froze simultaneously on the ninth day. Not that they stopped moving—but that their mode of movement changed from "flowing" to "locked."

The web no longer grows new connections, the adjudicator no longer changes its judgment, the weaver no longer updates the pattern, and the spectator no longer rotates.

Everything was frozen in its current state, as if someone had pressed a "save" button, as if time had been frozen for a frame.

But behind all these solidified existences—behind them, in a place invisible to anyone but known to everyone—there is a monument.

It has no shape, no material, no color; it does not emit light, does not absorb light, and does not affect any physical quantities.

It is similar to "in" and "meaning", but they are not the same.

But its "being" has a certain quality: it is unshakable.

It's not that it's "hard to shake".

The concept of "wavering" does not apply to it.

Just as you can't "shake" a mathematical theorem in a specific case.

The conventional 1+1=2 remains unchanged, and 0 cannot be a divisor because it is not an object "there"—it is the structure of logic itself.

This monument is one of those things.

It is not a physical entity.

It is the embodiment of the constraint itself.

Without it, the net will fall apart.

The adjudicator may make a wrong judgment.

The weaver will weave meaningless gibberish.

A spectator will filter information into nothingness.

It is their foundation.

It is the physical embodiment of the promise that "the laws remain unchanged".