Chapter Thirty-Four

The dream began to dissolve as soon as the prismatic crystal shattered, and her vision abruptly became clear, for nothing else remained in this space. All that appeared ahead was a faint, indistinct rectangle—no, it was a door.

Everything within the darkness had been smashed to pieces and vanished, leaving the space utterly empty except for that solitary door. In Xiaoya Xian’s hand, her pendant suddenly flared with blue light. She was close; the door ahead must surely be the exit! Eagerly, she rushed forward, and to her surprise, the door swung open on its own—

Before her appeared numerous large floating objects, each exuding a pale white glow that illuminated the surrounding darkness.

The luminous floating forms revealed themselves to be strange letters and Arabic numerals. To her astonishment, the world beyond the door was a bizarre visual realm, filled with drifting numbers, Greek letters, and English characters. Though Xiaoya Xian could not decipher the logic behind these cryptic symbols, she surmised they must be some kind of mathematical formula.

Dazzled and awestruck, she wondered how such things could exist. What place was this? Wasn’t this supposed to be the exit from the nightmare realm?

Before she could think further, her foot missed its mark and she plunged several yards downward—

Luckily, she reacted quickly and managed to grasp the end of a letter, barely saving herself from falling into the abyss below—a void whose depths she dared not imagine. With considerable effort, she hauled herself onto the surface of the letter, which proved just broad enough to support her weight. Only after regaining her balance did she realize that numbers and letters floated all around her, adrift in endless darkness stretching far beyond sight. If she wished to move forward, she would have to cross from one letter to the next. Fortunately, the gaps between them were not too wide; she could step across in a single stride. Still, she would need to be careful, as if traversing a path of stepping stones or a narrow bridge.

She had thought the door would be the exit, but this space was just as strange—there was no solid ground, only infinite void. She could walk only by treading on the letters and numbers; to miss them was to plummet into the abyss. Once again, she found herself confronted with a puzzle and had no choice but to call for Aiwen—

Her consciousness in its particle state was activated once more, connecting her to Aiwen’s mind.

“This is the ‘Wave Function Space,’” Aiwen immediately sensed what she saw and explained.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Xiaoya Xian was bewildered again.

“All these letters and numbers you see are laid out in accordance with wave function equations, but they’re floating here in disorder.”

“None of that makes any sense to me.”

“These wave functions each present a different state of a particle—they’re probability formulas, because the particle is in a superposition state at this moment.”

“Super… what? Super-dish? Super… what?”

“It’s even possible to build a space with this kind of logic. This realm, created by the collision of two systems, is truly unique—pure quantum theory!” Aiwen muttered to herself, but Xiaoya Xian understood none of it.

“Instead of mumbling to yourself, why not tell me how to find the exit?”

“To reach the exit, you must first pass through this ‘Wave Function Space.’”

“I thought that last door was room 1307,” Xiaoya Xian protested.

“It wasn’t. This is a boundary point between the ‘H Code’ and my ‘Elephant Crossing Space’—a place beyond either my or Hollen’s control, a strange realm born from the intersection of two different systems,” Aiwen explained.

“Why do all these bizarre spaces keep appearing, one after another?” She felt exhausted, as if she were trapped in an endless series of game levels. She had opened countless doors, never finding the final one, and always a new space awaited beyond. There seemed no end to it…

“I didn’t expect any of these oddities myself. Who’d have thought this space would present itself as a visual field of wave functions?”

In this lightless void, only the faintly glowing wave function characters offered the barest illumination; everything else was shrouded in utter darkness. Then, suddenly—

A mysterious light emerged from above, far larger than any of the letters or numbers. The thing seemed to be stirring, causing the light to pulse and flicker—like a searchlight scanning the gloom…

Curious, Xiaoya Xian glanced upward and nearly died of fright. What was moving was an enormous eyelid; at the very top of the space, the giant object revealed itself to be a single, monstrous eye—not a pair, but just one.

She had seen gigantic celestial bodies in dreams before, terrifying in their immensity. But this was a vast eye, infinitely more unnerving. Its gaze swept slowly across the void, making her skin crawl. Unlike a human eye, its iris resembled a swirling, multicolored nebula, very much like the famed “Eye of God”—NGC 7293, the Helix Nebula in Aquarius. In that moment, she thought, the eye was almost beautiful.

The giant eye appeared to be observing everything in the space. As it watched, the letters and numbers began to collapse, or perhaps ‘collapse’ was not the right word—perhaps they simply vanished… and all this happened within a second (or less), at a speed no human sense could register. It was as if they disappeared like ghosts!

“Ai, what’s happening?” Xiaoya Xian exclaimed, as more than half the letters and numbers vanished before her eyes.

“I see! The eye represents observation. When a particle is observed, its superposition collapses into a single, definite state! That’s what this space is trying to show!” Aiwen muttered, her insight dawning.

“What are you getting at? All I know is that now there are far fewer letters and numbers for me to step on.”

“You’re right. If that giant eye takes another look, the letters and numbers will become even scarcer—so widely separated that you’d be unable to walk at all.”

“What’s the principle behind this? What exactly is a ‘wave function’? What’s a ‘superposition’? Why do the letters and numbers collapse?” Xiaoya Xian bombarded Aiwen with questions, leaving her momentarily speechless.

“They’re all strange principles from quantum theory, and not easy to explain quickly. All you need to know is that the eye above is observing the exact position and velocity of the particles. You can think of the letters and numbers as possible states of those particles. Once observed, they ‘decohere’—some say they collapse, shrink, or cancel each other out. ‘Superposition’ means they had multiple states, but once the giant eye observes them, only one possible state remains. For you, since you need these letters and numbers to cross, the fewer there are, the harder it becomes to move forward.”

“I didn’t understand the first part, but the second part makes sense.”

“That’s good enough—understanding the end is enough!”

Xiaoya Xian was still standing on one of the letters, grateful it hadn’t vanished with the giant eye’s gaze. “So what am I supposed to do now? Will the eye open again at any moment?”

“You’re right—it will open soon to observe again. I need to find a way to block its gaze!” Aiwen pondered how to shield the giant eye.

Xiaoya Xian felt lost, unable to tell east from west. “Even if the letters and numbers are still there, I don’t know which way to go. Which direction is right?”

“Don’t you remember the pendant? Follow the blue light,” Aiwen reminded her.

“Oh, right—I almost forgot.” She still held Aiwen’s necklace in her hand.

“I’ll try to create a spatial shielding wall to block the eye, but time is short.” With that, Aiwen’s consciousness quickly used quantum computation to construct a temporary coded wall. But the entangled state of quantum particles was highly unstable; the shield wouldn’t last long.

“How long can it hold?”

“Hard to say… maybe only about eighty seconds.”

“Eighty seconds? How am I supposed to get through?” On solid ground, Xiaoya Xian might have been a sprinting champion, but here she was leaping across a field of floating blocks…

“It might not even last eighty seconds. You’ll have to be quick!”

“Damn it, I’ve never trained for this kind of bridge-crossing or block-hopping!”

“Xiaoya, the shield will be ready in ten seconds. There’s no time to think—just go for it.”

“So soon? I’m not ready…” Before she could finish, Aiwen’s particle consciousness prompted her:

“The shielding wall is up! I’ll give you a precise heading—fifteen degrees to your left, in a straight line, that’s the direction of room 1307.”

“All right, here goes nothing!” Without hesitation, Xiaoya Xian leaped onto a ‘psi’ (ψ), grateful that it lay flat enough to step on. She then sprang to the letter ‘tau’ (τ), then to the number ‘6’ and the letter ‘pi’ (π). On ‘theta’ (θ), she nearly slipped and fell! All these letters and numbers formed a set of wave function formulas—beyond her comprehension, but she knew she was racing against time, against the giant eye. If she didn’t cross before the wave function collapsed, she would be lost. The blue light of the pendant grew brighter, and she finally saw a small, unremarkable door ahead. Ignoring everything else, she dashed forward, leaping from one steady letter to the next. In the blink of an eye, the eighty seconds were almost up, and the giant eye seemed ready to open again! She was still five or six meters from the door—

Clenching her eyes shut, she leapt with all her strength. At the last possible instant, the door burst open, and she managed to hook her fingers over the doorframe just as the giant eye’s gaze returned. Instantly, all the letters and numbers vanished! The collapse Aiwen had described happened in a fraction of a second.

Hanging by her hands from the doorframe, her strength nearly spent, Xiaoya Xian realized that if she couldn’t pull herself through, she would fall into the abyss. There were no more letters or numbers left to support her. At the very moment she began to lose her grip, a pair of hands seized hers, pulling her up and into the doorway with a forceful tug. It was Aiwen!