Chapter 722: Time Flows, Things Change

Chapter 722: Chapter 441: Time Flows, Things Change

The moment of biological consciousness extraction, Su Mo felt the world around him collapse instantly, as if he was falling into an endless void, his body torn by a powerful force.

The boundaries of reality gradually disappeared, and the void filled with strange light. These were not ordinary rays, but composed of countless elementary particles, rotating around him in an incredible manner.

The surrounding scenes constantly shifted, sometimes dazzling colors, sometimes deep darkness; the passage of time no longer held meaning, and the concept of space became vague, both transforming into observable vectors twisting before his eyes.

Past, present, and future seemed to merge into one.

Su Mo’s consciousness gradually lost itself in this chaotic space, darkness spread wantonly in his vision, speckled noise swayed before his eyes like snowflakes.

Suddenly, he heard singing from an unknown source, ethereal and gentle.

“The years quietly pass, past events scatter like smoke.”

“Time washes away memories, nothing will be erased.”

“This is the promise you gave me.”

“No matter the wind, frost, rain, or snow, the changes of the seas and fields.”

“You will eventually return to my side.”

…

Su Mo opened his eyes, it was dawn, sunlight filtered through the window, casting soft light patterns on the hospital bed.

A woman was sitting by the bed, gently humming a melody, her silver hair cascading over her shoulders like a waterfall, the tips shimmering in the sunlight, her amber eyes slightly narrowed, deep and tender.

She gently hummed while softly stroking Su Mo’s hand, just as she had yesterday, and for thousands of days and nights past, soothing her longing in this way.

As her hand stroked, without any warning, it was grasped back into his palm.

Qi Ling suddenly froze like a statue, her dazed gaze shifted over.

Su Mo looked at the silver-haired woman beside him, lifting his hand to her cheek, decades of pent-up emotions released in this moment, transforming into indescribable affection in his eyes.

“Ling, I’ve returned.”

At this moment, time seemed to stand still, with only the two of them left in the world.

After being dumbfounded, Qi Ling’s lips trembled slightly, then revealed a gentle smile, warm as the spring sun, melting the confusion that had lingered in her heart.

“Welcome home, my love.”

There was no passionate embrace.

There were no tears of joy.

No excited reactions whatsoever.

Nothing to be excited about.

From the moment they parted, Qi Ling had always believed, no matter how long it took, be it months, years, or even a lifetime, Su Mo would definitely come back for her.

Now it was just that what she had always believed in had finally happened.

Su Mo surveyed the hospital room, noticing that he was lying on a complex medical bed, connected to numerous life support devices, suggesting he had been there for more than a day or two.

He softly asked, “How long has it been?”

Qi Ling gently placed her hand on Su Mo’s face, tenderly caressing him, “It’s been 7 years, now it’s the 7th year of the New Era.”

Su Mo couldn’t help but murmur, “So long…”

This consciousness fusion operation was not about inputting merely “game data” into his brain.

That would be like The Matrix, where consciousness remains in a virtual plane, the body still exists in the real world, and everything is false.

Such a return held no meaning.

What he wanted to return to was never a fabricated world.

As Dr. Chen said, from a material perspective, the Dawn Realm was a segment of consciousness signals that had appeared in his brain.

The reality universe humans live in might also be some consciousness signals of high-dimensional beings.

And the Dawn Realm, objectively speaking, belongs to a truly existing low-dimensional universe, a time fragment from a world line of that universe that Su Mo once experienced.

The significance of “Dawn: Return” lies in this fact—it’s not a virtual world generated by a predetermined program, but a massive chaotic system generated by endless computational power of artificial intelligence.

From the moment it was born, this chaotic system existed in the microcosm as a real universe.

Su Mo had previously engaged in Future’s research, knowing the speed of light, Planck’s constant, Newton’s gravitational constant, electron charge, and other physical constants of the Dawn Realm, using quantum computers to reversely reconstruct the initial state and evolution process of that universe.

If one were to mention its difference from the real universe, it would be its digital form and lower dimensions.

Su Mo utilized technology to completely abandon his physical body, extract biological consciousness to transform into a digital life, eventually merging into this low-dimensional universe.

Every player of “Dawn: Return” is, in fact, experiencing different world lines of this low-dimensional universe.

Su Mo restored through super-memory the very world line segment he fell into years ago in this vast universe.

He had once lost it.

Now he found it again and merged with it.

A slight surprise was he previously set the time breakpoint at the moment of kissing farewell with Qi Ling, expecting to wake right at that node.

But actually, the process of merging into the lower dimension was somewhat uncontrollable, not instantaneous, resulting in a gap of 7 years, manifested as him being in a coma for 7 years.

Su Mo looked at his own hands, jokingly saying, “Whoops, woke up to become an uncle.”

Qi Ling chuckled, “It’s fine, I’ve turned 28 too, growing old with you together.”