After leaving the world of all NPCs

"I always feel that your 'love' is very meaningful... and you!"

She pointed sharply at Ruan Mei, who still looked indifferent, as if discussing the taste of lunch. "New here! Don't you find it strange?! This kind of thing doesn't make sense no matter how you think about it, does it?"

Ruan Mei picked up another piece of pastry, this time dipping it into more of the white sauce. She calmly met Kiana's questioning gaze, her tone unwavering, "I've created many lives. Although most of them develop a strange attachment to their creator, that's all."

She put the sauce-covered pastry into her mouth, and a bit of tempting pure white stained her lips.

"I don't have much feeling for these creations..."

"It's just creating a new life with my dear. A new specimen to observe."

Ruan Mei swallowed the food and refocused her gaze on Ye Zuochen's face. Her eyes were so pure as if she was locking onto an ideal experimental collaborator.

"Look," Ye Zuochen pursed his lips at Qiana, "Her moral level is on the same level as Mobius."

Kiana's eyes moved back and forth between Ye Zuochen's playful face and Ruan Mei's calm face several times.

"I don't care about you guys! Anyway, I will never give birth to a child for you. No, it's not that I won't give birth to a child for you, but I can only give birth to a child for you, but I can't..."

As she spoke, Kiana became confused by herself.

"Alright, Chongchong." Ye Zuochen interrupted Kiana's nonsense. "I'm interested again. I'm in the mood again. Now lie down on the ground and I'll satisfy you."

Kiana angrily said, "You bastard! Who do you think I am?! Can I come when you summon me and go away when you dismiss me?"

"Then you should stand up straight." Ye Zuochen couldn't help but cover his face.

Kiana had already turned around, with her back to Ye Zuochen and Ruan Mei.

Ruan Mei just put the last bit of pastry with thick white sauce into her mouth, chewed it slowly, and it slid gently across her throat.

"Honey, I think we can get down to business."

Ye Zuochen asked, "What do you want to ask?"

Ruan Mei said calmly, "Miss Wei Erwei can't explain it outside, so I can only ask her here. Why is she being hunted by Kakamu?"

Ye Zuochen explained: "Because the model of the universe you created is actually a symbiotic model."

"That is... the universe will continue to be born and destroyed over and over again."

"The tree of imaginary numbers is constantly repeating the process of reincarnation."

"The shadow of the Imaginary Tree and the shadow of the Imaginary Tree of the Past and Future overlap, forming the 'Quantum Sea'."

"There is no concept of time in the Quantum Ocean, so some beings can sneak through the Quantum Ocean to other Imaginary Trees... In other words, other cosmic eras."

"Until your era, 'Nothingness' was born. It negated all subsequent eras."

"'Destruction' set a fire, evaporating the quantum sea, preventing the life forms of other imaginary trees from reaching your imaginary tree."

"On Earth, there is still a cup of residual 'water'."

"Maybe there are other places too, but this one in the solar system is very interesting."

Ruan Mei listened quietly, picked up another piece of pastry, dipped it in the sauce again, and chewed silently. When Ye Zuochen's last syllable fell, she swallowed the last bit of food into her throat.

"Okay, I almost understand." Ruan Mei nodded slightly, and the tassels of her shawl swayed with it. "Then, I hope my dear, can do me a small favor."

Ye Zuochen raised his eyebrows slightly, "You say."

Ruan Mei leaned forward slightly, approaching Ye Zuochen: "I need to witness your power and the gods of your universe."

Ye Zuochen nodded slightly: "Okay, but according to the rules of the [NPC World], you need to pay the price."

Ruan Mei gently walked over to Kiana and placed the plate of sauce in front of her. She stroked Kiana's hair as if urging a small animal to eat. "I'm happy to pay a small price. After I log off, I will invite Black Tower to come here, and I will help you increase the number of people here as much as possible. What do you think?"

Ye Zuochen: “…”

Although I was happy to do so, I always felt that Ruan Mei was a little strange.

Human nature seems to exist, but also seems not to exist.

Ye Zuochen confirmed, "Is it really okay for you to push your friend into the fire pit like this?"

Kiana complained, "You actually call yourself a 'fire pit'. You should have some self-awareness... Also, move a little, this is a bit uncomfortable."

Ruan Mei stood up, sat down casually, and took out her pipa. "She and I both understand that at the frontier of knowledge, every step forward comes at a huge price. These prices are really insignificant."

The next moment, the sound of piano rang out.

152 Black Tower: Is it really me who has to pay the price?

Collapse of the universe.

Black Tower Space Station.

Deep in the space station, a laboratory operates quietly.

Outside the huge transparent porthole, the azure star occupied almost the entire field of vision.

The stars rotate slowly and eternally, silently pushing the boundary between light and shadow across the metal skeleton of the space station.

The inner wall is covered with a deep velvety light-absorbing material, which blocks most of the cold light from external stars.

Soft light flows out from the imperceptible gaps and evenly fills the space.

Beneath the pure and cold atmosphere unique to the sterile space lies the slightly sweet scent of flowers and the freshness of life's first blossoms.

Ruan Mei leaned against a velvet couch, like a lady walking out of an ink painting.

She had just opened her eyes, her green pupils reflecting the light of the azure stars outside. There was no trace of the haziness of just waking up, only the clarity of seeing through everything.

In the center of the laboratory, Heita sat on a staff suspended in mid-air, with a small magic hat firmly placed on her fluffy brown hair. The purple lily adorning the side of the hat brim swayed gently with her slight movements.

Wearing an outfit full of magical girl fantasy.

A short skirt embellished with strange runes and patterns, a delicate collar around the neck, and black stockings wrapped around the legs.

Several translucent floating light screens unfolded in front of her, with countless complex data streams and star map models pouring down like waterfalls.

"You're back?" Heita's voice was clear, with a hint of legitimate curiosity. "Have you figured out what that noisy Masked Fool was talking about, the 'outer universe,' and why Kakamu was hunting him down once?"

Ruan Mei did not reply, nor did she look towards the black tower.

She just closed her eyes slightly, and the corners of her lips seemed to relax, forming an arc that was difficult to interpret, as if she was savoring the secret sweet aroma of wine, or listening to a melody that only she could perceive.

In Heita's eyes, that expression was not one of fatigue, but more like a brief indulgence after tasting a delicate dessert.

The Black Tower's gaze briefly shifted from the waterfall-like data stream and swept across a nearby biological monitoring screen that was flashing extremely frequently.

A series of numerical values ​​related to dopamine and endorphins were jumping abnormally actively, presenting a strange peak curve.

Heita frowned slightly, as if he was faced with a difficult formula that he couldn't immediately come to a conclusion with.

"Your dopamine secretion is a bit strange. The pattern doesn't fit any known physiological or mental stimulation model... Are you in heat?"

Ruan Mei's eyelashes trembled slightly, and she slowly raised her eyes. Her voice was cold and clear: "Humans don't have a truly stable biological estrus period. Rather, the complex mechanisms that drive them keep them almost always in a state of potential impulse preparation. Always ready."

Heita's small nose wrinkled slightly, and he raised a finger and subconsciously curled the ends of his fluffy hair.

"Okay, let me put it another way. Are you...feeling aroused?"

The purple eyes were surprisingly bright, locked tightly on Ruan Mei's face, not missing any subtle muscle changes.

Ruan Mei's fingertips curled ever so slightly as she rested her hands on the velvet couch. "I cannot deny that just now, some superfluous emotions, difficult to precisely calculate, indeed surged within the ocean of my consciousness."

"But they are merely a necessary medium to achieve the ultimate goal. A price that must be paid."

Heita asked with great interest, "Paying a price is naturally for the sake of reaping greater rewards. So, now you can tell me..."

Her voice stopped abruptly.

A high-precision life energy field monitoring light screen suspended in front of her displayed fantastic data. The complex energy waveform was violently distorted, outlining a unique frequency spectrum that had never been seen before.

The black tower locked onto the active spectral core, and a dull blank expression appeared on the delicate and small face.

"Wait... this energy fluctuation... this structure... and this strong life resonance characteristic..."

She turned her head suddenly and stared at Ruan Mei's lower abdomen.

"This graph, these parameters, Ruan Mei, are you pregnant?!"

Ruan Mei didn't even raise an eyebrow when she heard this earth-shattering conclusion.

"Yes, a life-form cultivation program is indeed underway within my body. This is an integral part of the entire experimental process."

"..."

The only sound in the laboratory was the faint sound of the data stream frantically refreshing on the floating light screen.

The black tower seemed to be hit hard by an invisible hammer.

The fluffy brown hair under the magic hat seemed to have forgotten to shake.

For the first time in her long life, she felt countless uncontrollable thoughts exploding in her mind. These thoughts were like abstract lines that could not form a logically coherent picture.

why?

How could her best friend, who was at the same pinnacle of wisdom as her, be infected by the strange laws of the unknown universe just by going out?

Or did she use some knowledge that she did not yet understand to accomplish the virgin birth?

Which law of physics does this violate?

What is the deep principle behind it?

Which madman in the history of science has a similar record?

Am I still on the Azure Star?

Countless huge question marks were like out-of-control spaceships, running rampant in her brain, which rarely made mistakes, triggering a chain reaction of explosions at the mental level.

The Black Tower fell into a state of complete blankness, like an inhabitant of a tropical planet seeing snowflakes falling for the first time.

——Black Tower.

The 83rd seat in the "Genius Club", the messenger of "Intelligence", and the founder of the simulated universe.

Scholars usually only need one great achievement to be remembered in history, but Black Tower's great achievements are everywhere and too numerous to mention.

So she naturally won the attention of Bo Shi Zun and became a member of the genius club.

This transcendental being who firmly believed that "science has no boundaries, and the Black Tower has no boundaries" actually fell into a complete logical deadlock because of a physiological phenomenon of "pregnancy".

Ruan Mei seemed unconcerned about her best friend's rare downtime. Her slender fingers unconsciously stroked the silky cheongsam fabric on her knees, and her gaze was cast towards the slowly rotating azure stars outside the porthole.

"Heita, have you ever thought about a question?"

"Why is it that in this universe that we know, no matter how bizarre and varied its life forms are, its ultimate, or most accepted, higher form always tends towards human form?"

"Even the Star Gods retain more or less human-like outlines?"

She did not wait for the Black Tower's response, but continued with her grand and disturbing questioning:

"Cripple used light-years as a unit to forge a massive barrier within the void to isolate the calamity, carefully enveloping the worlds that still held a spark of life, isolating them from the outside."

"What a grand, mechanical, cold cosmic project this should be?"

"However, the way He carried out this great cosmic undertaking was like a blacksmith, using a human-shaped hand to tightly grasp the giant hammer that symbolizes power."

"One by one, tirelessly forging billions of stars, melting them into a wall."

Ruan Mei paused for a moment, looking at the black tower that had escaped from the chaos. "Isn't this the most inefficient method? A single thought, a single energy fluctuation, could achieve the same effect. Why is he so obsessed with the 'human form' and the 'forging'?"

Heita took a deep breath, and with the inherent confidence of a genius and a hint of dissatisfaction at having his downtime interrupted, "Isn't this simple?"

"The logic is crystal clear! Before they transcended individual life forms and became Star Gods, didn't those Star Gods themselves also originate from some planet, from some carbon-based, or other low-level life form?"

"The entire universe is filled with humanoid life forms."

"Since they were once 'humans', then when they exercise their great powers, they subconsciously retain the imprint of their original form, just like retaining the gesture habits when operating a precision instrument. What's so strange about that?"

"efficiency?"

"For beings like them, time itself is meaningless! 'Habits' and 'self-awareness' are probably prioritized far above your so-called optimal solution."

The purple lily under the magic hat swayed slightly as she spoke in a slightly excited tone.

Ruan Mei listened quietly to Heita's argument, without any expression of being convinced or refuted. She just said slowly, "Maybe."

"However, based on some...unconventional experimental data and observations, I now have a completely new hypothesis."