Once Yang Heng pulled the doors apart and we entered, there was grass and plants beyond the threshold of the ripped open doorway. He waved his hand and I could feel the metal floor beneath me shake slightly but that was it. “What do you see?” he asked me. “Grass, trees, but it is very dark,” I replied, and he frowned. “Is it an illusion?” “I am not sure,” I could hear a touch of concern in Yang Heng’s voice. The only other time he had seemed off kilter when he forced me to take him along when we first met. He looked back behind us and waved his hand again. The floor shook once more. He was probably using a technique to sense his surroundings. “I can still sense the hovercraft, and I am using its position relative to ours to work out exactly where we are. But I have lost track of whatever is at the center of this place.” “You think we are being moved about,” I replied. “It is testing us and using the hovercraft to give me confidence in our position, while it slowly hid itself. We enter into that grassy area beyond this doorway we will likely be trapped until we are slowly worn down. It can’t beat us directly, so it looks to slowly sap our strength and turn our minds.” “A wide area attack?” I suggested. “I would be too weak afterwards and the damage would be limited. No, it wants us to think we are winning while always staying one step ahead.” I really hoped he had an answer, since I couldn’t get out of this situation myself. As we continued to stand around while Yang Heng thought about the situation, I heard a shout. “Help!” I turned to see a young human child rushing out of the darkness. I didn’t hesitate, but brought up my gun and targeted the individual. Yang Heng turned to look at me as the child like figure disappeared after I fired. He reached out and lightly tapped me on the head once more. “That is a lot of diffuse energy. We need to be ready for anything,” he replied. “Well, not like there is much I can do, except head towards it.” Several days passed by and the energy readings had grown larger. There was nothing I had gained from the seekers that informed me, what was coming up in front of us. After moving around a large outcropping of gas, I saw a massive dark gray wall. “What is that?” I asked. The entire things was moving in a slightly different direction compared to us with gases and chunks of matter being pulled into the gray wall. “Replicators,” Yang Heng said slowly. “Replicators?” I asked. “Don’t get close. We need to find a way around, since they are expanding in our direction,” he replied. “They seem very slow,” I replied. “These ones are, since they are consuming everything. Probably based on technology. For as many as there are, the energy is too diffuse. Probably nodes linking the machines togeather across a large distance, using energy,” he replied. “Are they expanding in a sphere?” I asked. I couldn’t even begin to think how big such a sphere would be. “Your eyes are deceiving you. I would say we should get closer so you could look, but that would be too dangerous. These replicators could have stealth units. Or they could surge. I would call it a wave. You can see how portions of them are thinner compared to other portions if you look at your sensors. In time, the wall will break apart due to other things out here. This area has a decently high concentration of matter, so they will surge forward.” “And anything that can’t defend themselves?” I asked. “If you are slow, you are dead. The Ek are a perfect example of this. It is also why a lot of different groups linger on the fringes of the territory claimed by the Forever City. It is safer, since these things will be destroyed if they don’t change their course.” “Could that be an opportunity to get back to the Forever City?” I asked. “If we could find it. Everything shifts. Tell me why the replicators would have trouble with that?” “Communication. Eventually there would just be too much to handle,” I explained after thinking on the question for a moment. “Exactly. Once so much territory is claimed, it becomes harder to process everything. Computational carrying capacity, or CCC, is term.” “But couldn’t you design a super computer? Golems? Something?” I asked. “Some civilizations do. But eventually they all collapse under the eventual CCC or energy limitations. If you spread out energy, you can handle all fronts at once. If you concentrate it all into a single being or a small group, you can only defend so much. Optimizing both of these, is the challenge of many civilizations that look to exist long term,” Yang Heng explained. We departed from the area. Another dead end, or in this case a wall consuming everything in its path. “What about something like that trap we ran into? Would it survive?” I asked. “Depends if it can weather the storm. Once you get a enough power, fights become a lot riskier.” “Because of the sheer number of techniques and ways another being can drag you down if they think they are going to lose. Maybe a strategy that has spread out due divination?” I asked back. “Possibly. The threats out there are many.” “A shame, there isn’t a trade hub or something.” “Oh there is,” Yang Heng replied with a grin. “Because the layer is infinite, if can exist, it will exist,” I replied, knowing what he was getting at. “Don’t despair. Eventually we will find something. It may take a while, but I have hope.” “Well, I am planning to try and circle around these replicators. It might take a while, but anything that survived on the inside might be useful, or helpful,” I replied. “Possibly. Or we could run into something that made those replicators. It is by far a very efficient harvesting strategy.” After that Yang Heng went back into hibernation. Even if a civilization did develop or end up here, they had to be strong enough to survive. What a complete and utter nightmare. I had really been sent out here to die without creating a mess. We continued to travel and just how the empty spaces were, I lost track of the replicators as they disappeared from the sensor. A couple weeks after that I ran into the sight of massive vortex of gas being pulled into a specific point. Yang Heng didn’t wake up, so it clearly wasn’t important or dangerous. After looking at the phenomenon for a couple of minutes I moved on. While it was an amazing sight, I had become resistant to such things. When everything you saw was amazing, they lost their shock value over time. Yang Heng looked at such things, but didn’t seem to care. While it would be easy to get annoyed with him, he was incredibly patient with me and all the questions I had asked. While I had thought his mentality questionable along with his character, he kept being proved right over and over. There was no need for him to deceive me either. He was the nicest senior I had ever met. One suspicion on why he kept me around was to steer the hover craft. It didn’t need constant attention, but it did need attention so we didn’t run into swirling vortexes and other phenomena. Not everything had an energy signature that could be picked up on. It must have been nice, just sleep until something important comes up, chat a bit, and then go back to sleep until the next interesting thing happened. If I didn’t know about cultivator culture and how work averse cultivators were, then I might have questioned the entire situation. But that was one constant, if cultivators could get what they wanted without exerting themselves, they were more than happy to wait around forever. And now I just realized where the name Forever City might have come from. Sure it was around for a long time, but it could also refer to waiting around for forever. Content to let things come to them. Sure individual cultivators might go out and travel, but I would guess they were in the minority. It would be all too easy to die, get lost, while the city cultivators were content to inch forward. I was far to weak to wonder about the divide before and this wasn’t the kind of question I was going to bother my senior traveling companion with. But it was amusing to think about such things to help pass the time. Rural versus city cultivators. I would be the lucky scholarship student who got into the best school. My application was my cultivation and according to Yang Heng I had passed. Using any other method controlling energy was impossible going forward. A big reason why getting past the first bottleneck was important. Before that point, it might have been possible to use another system. It would be difficult, costly, but not impossible. Now I was a cultivator. I had no complaints about that. The next point of interest were a number of rocks that were almost see through, creating a haze effect. I made sure to avoid them by flying in another direction. It wasn’t like it made any difference in my mind. Either I was headed towards something or away from it. Picking a direction was more like guesswork than anything else. That was why I had hoped to use the edge of the replicators as a guide, but I had completely lost them. Just having to take passages through the gas that put me out of range according to my sensors. How much was it things shifting around, was something I wasn’t sure of. Yang Heng didn’t have any numbers for encounter rates. When he left the Heavenly Alliance previously, it was to clear out the surrounding area, and defeat some enemies, and that was how he ended up stranded, and eventually picked up by the Ek. He had knowledge, but the specific details about encounter rates, and long distance transversal were not things he had knowledge about. He couldn’t build a superior hovercraft unfortunately. My knowledge of arrays and formations was better than his knowledge. While he could sense energy better and work things out quicker than me, his practical knowledge of such things was equal or less than my own. Which meant we had to keep traveling and hoping something showed up there was no other option. We then ran across a dark red cylindrical pillar, that had to be a hundred times larger than the towers of the Forever City stretching across one of the tunnels. “Yang Heng, wake up, there is something,” I said out loud. This might be a natural thing, but it looked unnatural. After a little while, he got out of his slumber and looked over my shoulder at the object in front of us. “I can’t see either end. And it looks like it might be something,” I replied. “Most like a remnant of some technology, drifting here. It has no energy that I can sense, and nothing living.” “Maybe get close and take a look?” I asked. “I am slightly curious as well,” he answered which meant he had no objections. Traveling was incredibly boring. And while I didn’t linger at locations, if there was a chance to investigate something I wanted to take the opportunity, rather than continuing on. It wasn’t like leaving sooner would get us to someplace useful quicker. Our only hope was to find something useful that we could use. The hovercraft came in close, and I could see the surface more clearly. It was pitted and worn slightly. There were also very feint seams all over the massive red cylinder. “How far does it go?” I asked. “Fairly far. Odd. But let us follow it to wherever it might end up. That way.” Yang Heng pointed to one side and I began following the cylinder until it reached a gas cloud. “Go in. I will be checking for any dangers nearby.” I nodded and entered the gas cloud. I could see far enough through it that the red cylinder was still there. We passed into an open space, gas cloud, more open space, over and over. After two days of traveling, we still had not found the end or anything else of interest. “Keep following it?” I asked at the end of the second day. Yang Heng was more hesitant this time. “Such a structure is not a remnant. I was wrong, I am not sure what it is. That normally means it is a bad idea to mess with such a thing, since it probably belongs to another super-organization,” he replied. “High risk, high reward,” I replied.