While players across the universe were eager to learn how 'Bai Ye' became a lord, Ye Bai herself was equally curious about why no player had achieved this status before.
The Seed of Genesis had a usage limit of twenty-four hours. After causing such an unexpected commotion, Ye Bai didn't rush to claim territory. Instead, she temporarily exited the Boundless Realm and entered her personal space on the Stellar Network.
This space was currently empty, resembling the sleek, white, high-tech environments often seen in sci-fi movies.
Previously, Ye Bai had been in a hurry to dive into the Boundless Realm to explore its mysteries and hadn't spent much time studying this space. Now, as she willed it, the space quickly transformed into a room strikingly similar to her old study—an operation akin to changing her computer's desktop wallpaper.
"Is this the virtual universe...?"
During her three years in the lab, Ye Bai had learned some basic information about the Stellar Network from Aurora.
The Stellar Network was nothing like the internet Ye Bai was familiar with. Calling it a "virtual universe" wasn't just a metaphor; it was a conceptual definition.
It was an "ocean" formed by the activities of a unique, post-natural lifeform known as the 'Floating Specters.' This lifeform could be roughly understood as semi-mechanical ascended beings, digital lifeforms, or cyber ghosts...
According to Aurora, the emergence of the Floating Specters dated back tens of millions of years, before the Stellar Alliance was established, during the Dark Forest Era of the universe. At that time, the most powerful civilization had attempted to transcend the limitations of flesh-and-blood lifeforms to achieve true immortality.
This ascension was neither a complete success nor a total failure.
That civilization became a lifeform incomprehensible to the physical universe. They had indeed transcended the material dimension but failed to reach the theoretical state of success, which would have allowed them to exert advanced influence over the real universe. They seemed to have attained immortality, existing in the fourth dimension of the universe, but their only impact on the three-dimensional universe was a simple "flicker"—a data fluctuation from 0 to 1.
The establishment of the Stellar Alliance was a result of two other powerful civilizations studying the Floating Specters' data and creating the Stellar Network interface, enabling real-time communication across the universe and thus ending the Dark Forest Era.
All real-time data streams on the Stellar Network were essentially the tides of the Floating Specters' activities. There were no servers, no AI mainframes, making it impossible for any major power to monitor or hack into the network, not even the two most powerful cosmic civilizations—the Rui Lan Empire and the Kain Federation.
The only requirement was the energy needed to upgrade the interface, which was why registering on the Stellar Network cost 10,000 star credits.
As for the games on the Stellar Network... they were like "islands" or "reefs" that emerged on this ocean.
Not long after the Stellar Network appeared, intelligent lifeforms discovered that any individual could choose to upload their consciousness and transform into a Floating Specter at any time.
As a result, many intelligent lifeforms chose to undergo this transformation when they reached the end of their natural lifespans. To this day, the Stellar Network remains the largest "cosmic cemetery," which is where the concept of "cyber ghosts" originated. Ye Bai couldn't help but think of a dark joke: when she was nearing the end of her life, she could transform into a Floating Specter, and Aurora, who could live for at least six hundred years, could offer her digital incense.
At the same time, as numerous interstellar civilizations converted into Floating Specters, games began to appear one after another on the Stellar Network.
These games, with their diverse forms, are widely understood in the universe as manifestations of collective subconsciousness. The activities of those who had transformed into Floating Specters and those who hadn't underwent a peculiar qualitative change on the Stellar Network, creating unique virtual digital worlds. Every intelligent lifeform on the Stellar Network could explore and play in these worlds.
This was why none of the games on the Stellar Network had developers or publishers.
It was also why Ye Bai's first reaction upon discovering that the Boundless Realm had become a Stellar Network game was to dive in and explore its contents rather than investigate who had created it.
...
It didn't take Ye Bai long to adapt to using the Stellar Network, as it was all controlled by consciousness and wasn't much different from using a personal terminal.
After Ye Bai posed her "question," a flood of information quickly appeared. Since she had added a "reliability" requirement, the results were all verified materials, ensuring their authenticity.
Among the information were some publicly disclosed materials from the civilizations that had first entered the Boundless Realm. The earliest records dated back three years, but most of the information was from recent months, after the Boundless Realm's ability to enhance mental strength became widely known across the universe. Not only had countless new players joined, but scholars had also begun to study the game's content in depth.
When interstellar players entered the game, they encountered the same login interface as Ye Bai.
Although there were no instructions, many Stellar Network games were similar in this regard, and the character models were based on a common carbon-based lifeform Type IV.
Then came the issue of logging in.
Other Stellar Network games didn't have a "login" concept; entering the game automatically completed the registration process. So, when interstellar players saw the closed stone door, their first instinct was to treat it as a game background obstacle that needed to be overcome to progress.
The Boundless Realm, however, allowed for full environmental destruction, including the initial login interface.
Thus, upon finding the stone door tightly shut, players began to employ various methods to force it open: using fists and feet to violently break it, using nearby rubble to smash it, or using a lighting pillar to pry it open from the middle... and so on.
Players who entered the game this way, aside from differences in attributes based on their character models during customization, had their personal status listed as "drifters" rather than Ye Bai's "divine-blooded."
Reading this, Ye Bai finally understood and couldn't help but facepalm—
Due to the unique nature of Stellar Network games, interstellar players had used unconventional methods to enter the game, resulting in guest accounts rather than regular player accounts.
Guest accounts were designed to capture players who were too lazy to register, offering only limited game content. Their status was uniformly that of "drifters," looked down upon by NPCs. If they wanted to become respected "divine-blooded," they would need to... well, register a proper account.
However, as Ye Bai continued to think, she felt something was off. With so many interstellar players and the Boundless Realm's reputation for enhancing mental strength, how could no one have discovered the correct login method?
Then Ye Bai came across the next piece of information.
Indeed, not all players had resorted to brute force. Some had studied the patterns on the stone door and successfully triggered the correct "login cutscene."
At this point, the players' approach took another turn.
The appearance of the prompts for "Identity" and "Key" led interstellar players, who were accustomed to games that didn't require logins, to assume this was a puzzle that, if solved correctly, would grant additional in-game rewards.
This gave rise to the "deciphering faction," who focused on finding the "answers" to these two questions by analyzing environmental clues.
However, after inputting a wide variety of answers, the deciphering faction discovered that no matter what they entered, the door would open. Compared to the players who had forced their way in, the only difference was in the attributes of their character models during customization. Their personal status remained unchanged.
Well, that was anticlimactic.
The deciphering faction disbanded, and the method of simply opening the door without effort became the mainstream approach among interstellar players. After all, with the Boundless Realm's ability to enhance mental strength now widely known, the entire universe was caught up in a competitive frenzy. Not moving forward meant falling behind, so why waste time on a path that yielded no results?
Only a small minority, driven by personal determination or research goals set by their affiliated organizations, continued to persist in deciphering the prompts, believing that success would bring greater rewards. They were jokingly referred to as the "persistent deciphering faction"...
Reading this, Ye Bai furrowed her brow.
"This is the normal login method, so why are they still getting guest accounts? Input, deciphering..."
Suddenly, a flash of insight struck her. She realized the difference!
It was the language logic!
In the unforgettable moments of Ye Bai's life, one scene stood out vividly: the moment she was unearthed from Antarctica.
At that moment, Ye Bai, who had just awakened, saw a strikingly beautiful and delicate-looking new human female.
“@%#&￥*…”
The other party spoke a series of words she couldn’t understand, with a tone so complex that Ye Bai felt she couldn’t even mimic it if she tried. Seeing the confusion in Ye Bai’s eyes, the woman seemed to remember something and took out a silver object that looked like a watch battery. Despite Ye Bai’s terrified and paralyzed state, the woman pressed it against her neck.
Later, Ye Bai learned that it was a personal terminal. Upon contact with her skin, it dissolved into nanobots, which entered through her pores and connected to her nerves. The process was completely painless.
Only then did Ye Bai understand what the woman was saying.
“Hello, ancient human. I am TI8697, a staff member of the Blue Star Council. You are currently 10,245 years ahead of your time. From now on, Blue Star will become a public planet of the Stellar Alliance…”
“…Finally, would you be willing to sell the Antarctic property rights beneath you to us?”
The real world isn’t like online novels, where the entire universe speaks Chinese.
At its core, language is an information carrier. As civilizations develop, their information carriers inevitably grow more complex, capable of conveying greater amounts of information.
Even the people of Blue Star, tens of thousands of years later, have seen a dramatic evolution in their linguistic logic systems. This is even more true for the countless intelligent lifeforms and civilizations across the universe, many of which don’t even communicate through vocal cords or written text. Each intelligent species has its own foundational linguistic logic.
In this era, the use of mental energy has made cross-species communication seamless.
Under normal circumstances, biological communication involves converting information in the brain into expressive forms like speech or writing through linguistic logic. But with personal terminals, the input of brain information can directly transform into mental signals, transmitted to the other party’s personal terminal and understood instantly.
However, the foundational linguistic logic of different intelligent lifeforms remains unchanged, which is why this issue manifested during the login process of *The Myriad Realms*.
From Ye Bai’s successful case, it seemed… the system could only accept linguistic logic inputs from Blue Star 10,000 years ago to complete registration.
Meanwhile, the information input by interstellar players using their own linguistic logic all turned into unrecognizable ‘gibberish,’ resulting in their accounts being classified as guest accounts.
Thinking of this, Ye Bai took a deep breath.
The ‘Deciphering Faction’ wasn’t wrong. If one knew the correct answer, they could receive an ‘extra reward’—a key to properly enter *The Myriad Realms*.
This key was something no one in the entire universe knew about, except for Ye Bai.
“Thump, thump, thump…”
Ye Bai instinctively reached out to calm her racing heart.
What she felt now wasn’t a sense of superiority over the entire universe, but a chilling realization.
A commoner is blameless, but possessing a treasure invites trouble.
