Chapter 416 - 413: The End of Hostility

Chapter 416: Chapter 413: The End of Hostility

"Do you understand? Even the sun can be destroyed. It will collide with another star."

"Of course," Mo Ling replied, suppressing the shock he felt.

"You’re taking this very well. It seems I don’t need to hide anything from you. Next, I will show you... the ultimate end of hostility."

Immediately after, Mo Ling felt a firm grip on his hand. The sun before him vanished in an instant, and he found himself once again following that thread, zipping endlessly through the cosmos.

As countless stars flashed past, a distant galaxy drew closer and closer.

Finally, they stopped before a star more than ten times the size of the sun.

"This is the star that will destroy the sun," Balloon explained. "But this still isn’t the end."

The scorching fireball radiated terrifying heat. Countless threads of hostility were also wrapped around this massive star. It burned with abandon, yet it could not escape being ensnared by those threads.

As the fireball rotated, the threads only wrapped tighter.

The hostility remained.

"Let’s go." Balloon pulled Mo Ling past the star, and they flew off into the distance again, following a single thread.

"Next, we’re going to see the thing that destroys this star, right?" Mo Ling guessed.

"You guessed right," Balloon said with satisfaction, pulling Mo Ling along as they zipped through space once more.

Belts of stars streaked past as Balloon brought Mo Ling to the center of a brilliant star cluster.

However, amidst the kaleidoscopic stars, there was an incredibly eerie, spherical, distorted void.

"What is this?" Mo Ling asked, baffled.

The hostility emanating from the void filled him with a fear he had never known.

Threads of hostility burst from the void like strands of hair, connecting to some unknown, distant place.

"This is a black hole. Do you feel it? The hostility capable of destroying everything."

"This is a black hole?" Mo Ling had thought black holes were just pitch-black voids. But surrounding the emptiness before him were countless twisted refractions of light, like the warped and eerie iridescent sheen on a soap bubble.

"Yes. Beautiful, isn’t it?"

"No, I’m just scared. Its hostility is too powerful," Mo Ling said honestly.

"But even something this terrifying will be destroyed one day." Balloon’s voice was tinged with melancholy, as if it were lamenting the black hole’s fate.

"But I can’t find the thread..."

Mo Ling desperately searched for the hostility that would destroy the black hole, but after a long search, he could only find the hostility emanating from the black hole itself.

"You can’t see it from here. Come with me." Balloon pulled Mo Ling along again.

This time, they flew toward the black hole.

They sank into the iridescent, bubble-like membrane, and Mo Ling witnessed a scene that left him utterly astounded:

The images on the membrane slowly expanded, their distortions smoothing out until they became dazzling planets, which were then flung into the distant cosmos by the spinning black hole.

It was as if a painting on paper had been transformed into a three-dimensional object.

"What is this?" Mo Ling asked, shocked. "Why is the black hole creating planets?"

"No, it’s devouring them," Balloon replied.

"We’re seeing images from the past. Light cannot escape, so it’s all trapped here. As we go deeper, the scenes we witness will regress further and further into the past."

Sure enough, just as Balloon had said, the closer they got to the black hole’s core, the more images on its membrane of light were flung out.

The black hole was like a planet-making machine, churning out an entire, vast supercluster.

However, Mo Ling knew that this supercluster no longer existed.

Long, long ago, it had been completely devoured by the black hole. What they were seeing now was merely its afterglow—light trapped within the event horizon.

Kaleidoscopic streams of light flashed all around as Mo Ling witnessed the universe’s vibrant past. Watching countless stars spew forth, he drew closer and closer to the black hole’s core...

Finally, he arrived in a desolate void.

"Do you see it?"

In the empty expanse of the cosmos, Balloon’s voice echoed once more.

"I see it."

Mo Ling stared blankly ahead.

It was a tangled mass of threads, so fine they occupied no three-dimensional space. Yet there they were, crisscrossing and interweaving, forming a pitch-black tangle.

The tangle had no beginning and no end. Its origin and destination were unknown. It simply looped back on itself, an eternal cycle.

"Is this hostility, too? Why is it like this?"

In his journey across the cosmos, Mo Ling had seen all sorts of threads of hostility. But no matter how they varied, they always had a source and a destination—one end connected to another.

Hostility must have a beginning and an end. It is a tangible vector.

And yet, this tangle before him had no beginning and no end. It was without basis.

Balloon didn’t answer for a long time. It seemed to share Mo Ling’s confusion.

"This is the source of my confusion."

"You see, all hostility in existence has a source. Magma is cooled by the ocean, the ocean is evaporated by the sun, the sun is destroyed by another star, and that star is devoured by a black hole. That is the law of this world."

"Because of hostility, life is a food chain—the weak are prey for the strong. Herbivores feel hostility toward plants, carnivores toward flesh, and scavengers toward carrion. As long as something exists in this world, it cannot escape the web woven from hostility."

"Hostility entwines everything. The threads of the world follow a set of rules, interconnecting all things. Though the threads may seem chaotic, everything has its ’origin’ and its ’end.’"

"But why... why is there something with no beginning and no end?"

The tangle of threads floated silently in the barren void, surrounded by nothing.

Neither of them spoke. They just silently watched the tangle of threads.

Mo Ling finally understood why Balloon had brought him here, chasing hostility all this way.

This tangle of threads had been tormenting Balloon. It had no one to confide in, no way to describe what it had seen.

Because no one could see the "threads of hostility."

It could only wait in solitude, lost in endless confusion, forever unable to find an answer.

It had pondered the meaning of its species’ existence and the source of its power. It had studied hostility relentlessly, but none of it could resolve the confusion in its heart.

Instead, it only grew more distant from its own kind, becoming ever more lonely.

The tangle of threads remained etched in its mind, an obstacle it could never overcome.

"I even began to wonder if the threads I see are just a delusion. That the threads of hostility don’t exist at all, and that I’m just a special individual... or rather, a sick one..."

"Thankfully, you can see them too. That means it’s not just a hallucination, at least. And my confusion has meaning."

Balloon said with immense relief.

In the barren cosmos, it was no longer alone.