Chapter 819 Reality and Causality
But... it is limited to the light cone.
Yes, even with such observation methods, what can be detected is only the things within the light cone, because you can receive "light", which means that everything is still within the speed of light.
The light cone is not broken, and everything that can be observed is just the "observable universe", not the real universe itself.
The observable universe is the area where light cannot escape. For example, for the life in Guixu, the entire Guixu is their "observable universe", because when it exceeds the event horizon of Guixu, light cannot escape. Everything they can observe and interfere with will be strongly repelled in front of the event horizon, and they cannot see, interfere, or even imagine it.
Although the universe itself is isotropic, they have no way to verify this. Even if they calculate the curvature of space-time on a large scale, it is difficult to really perceive it.
Although the distance of tens of billions of light years is unimaginably large for these civilizations, it is still just the tip of the iceberg of the universe, and the universe is still expanding at an incredible speed, far beyond the speed of light, as if it is in a stage of inflation all the time.
The so-called inflation is the expansion of the singularity without volume at the beginning of the universe, from the size of a proton to the size of a galaxy in an instant.
In less than 10^-33 seconds, the universe expanded by 2^100 times, and it did not stop, but continued to expand. Now it is unknown how many billions of years have passed.
The space brought by the eternal inflation constitutes the "existence" in the current universe. It is conceivable how vast the universe is, and if you only observe the "observable universe" at such a small distance, it is really hard to say that it is a great supernatural power.
Of course...
This is the case for the entire universe, but for ordinary people, the observable universe is already a terrifying size.
But Li Qi is far from an ordinary person.
Facing Zhong Minglou's observation, Li Qi quietly distorted the speed of light.
Changing the speed of light is already a piece of cake for the fifth-grade people. They often use this to speed up their journey, but this time Li Qi did the opposite.
Li Qi suppressed the speed of light to three meters per hour, that is, within such a small circle around.
In other words, the observable universe also became smaller and became a sphere around. The law of cause and effect was limited to three meters. At the same time, it was not only light that slowed down, but also everything.
If the speed of light slows down, then electricity and magnetism will also slow down, the force of material propagation will also slow down, and even the transmission of gravitational waves will slow down.
This is the suppression of the limit of the heavenly way. All matter, cause and effect, energy, and force will be limited to this limit, so that even the composition of matter itself will undergo huge changes.
For Zhong Minglou, he felt that everything in front of him turned black.
The entire observable universe has shrunk to such a small circle around. Although it is still expanding, in Zhong Minglou's eyes, he feels an unprecedented oppression.
For him, the observable universe has not actually become smaller.
Because, after the speed of light is reduced, the material that makes up his body will inevitably become slower, and his thinking and consciousness will also slow down, so the time and difficulty of processing information will not change.
So, as far as his body sense is concerned, nothing has changed.
This is a manifestation of his inability to break through the law of causality. He cannot exceed the speed of light and cannot break through the limit of the way of heaven, so what he can perceive naturally must be limited.
This is also what Li Qi wants to show him, and it is also Li Qi's way to try to persuade Zhong Minglou.
Zhong Minglou still has a grudge against the war. To be honest, although the two are good friends, he must have some concerns about Li Qi who provoked the war himself and the war faction behind him.
This is not a personal grudge, but a simple "different way".
Yes, even if they are both witches, it is still possible to have "different ways". For example, now Zhong Minglou is not worried about personal grudges with Li Qi, but because he is worried that if his help makes the war more intense, what should he do? And if it affects his teacher, and even other creatures, including countless lives in the ordinary world, what should he do?
Is his friendship with Li Qi comparable to the sacrifice of these lives?
You know, even in the fifth-grade battlefield, every war has tens of billions of casualties. The scale of this war is really too large. In Zhong Minglou's eyes, all these casualties, their "feelings" are actually similar to his own.
He is still sad because of Miss Lan's death, then... how do those people whose civilizations have collapsed, the world they know is completely destroyed, and their relatives and friends died in the war feel?
Li Qi's way is very clear. His attitude towards these people is "let them go". As long as it does not affect the "balance of the overall situation", then Li Qi actually doesn't care much about them. Li Qi is neither good nor evil. This is also a faction with more people among the witches and wizards. It can be said that quite a number of witches and wizards have this attitude.
They regard themselves as part of nature and regard the changes of nature as normal. As long as nature itself is still balanced, the damage to individuals is actually not important.
In simpler terms, they value "the people" but not "a certain people".
They care about the whole, but not the joys and sorrows of individuals. They believe that the joys and sorrows of individuals should be the responsibility of the individuals themselves. Li Qi is responsible for his own affairs, and the passers-by of the ninth rank should also be responsible for their own affairs.
In this way, the balance of the whole is controlled, and as for the individual, it is "should be so".
But Zhong Minglou does not think so. Although they have no disagreement on the core ideas of "Witch Dao" and can still be regarded as fellow practitioners, their attitudes towards individuals are different.
Zhong Minglou obviously thinks that the strong should be responsible for the weak. This responsibility is not unlimited, but it should be "what the strong do, don't let others bear it".
For example, war is obviously caused by the strong, and the strong should be fully responsible, but in fact, the strong fight each other, and it looks lively, but the mortality rate is much lower than that of the weak.
For this situation, some witches, including Li Qi, believe that the weak should be responsible for their own safety.
But there are also many witches who hold another view. Wushu like Zhong Minglou believes that because they are the ones who provoked the war, they have the reason and responsibility to bear the sacrifice of these weak people, rather than just leaving with a sentence "naturally so".
But all these arguments must be based on a premise.
That is... death is serious, destruction is real, and everything experienced is certain.
But is it really so?
This made Zhong Minglou fall into deep thought.
Around him, because of his thinking, coupled with the slowing of the speed of light and the shrinking of the observable universe, the condensed starlight of the universe appeared on him.
He was like floating on the sea, and the sea surface was calm and waveless. The time was just a dark and quiet night. The starlight and the Milky Way were clearly reflected on the sea surface, making his body look like it was hanging in the starry sky.
At the same time, a golden sun rose behind him. That was the beginning of his Tao rhyme. This so-called "sun" was the manifestation of his Tao rhyme, which could reflect everything in the observable universe.
The Dao rhyme reflects the mysterious patterns of the observable universe, tumbling in the starlight, which seems extremely strange.
But Zhong Minglou didn't care about all this.
In fact, he was thinking about what Li Qi said. At the same time, he also felt the special situation brought about by the shortening of the observable universe due to the extreme change of the Heavenly Dao.
Zhong Minglou thought in his mind-if death is just a game, and everything experienced is a fantasy, then arguing about such things is meaningless. In this case, war is just a kind of game, a building block that can be overturned and restarted at any time.
Imagine a mortal who spent his whole life on the battlefield to establish merits, conquer countless worlds, and finally achieved immortality. He spent tens of thousands of years to become the leader of hundreds of millions of armies, and even became the master of the world.
At this time, he suddenly discovered the truth of "reality". How should he think?
Everything he experienced was fake. His battles, his legends, and his life's merits were just dreams that could be easily erased by an unrecognizable great existence. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a game.
Can he not collapse? Can he not doubt his own existence?
Just like the little Taoist priest, who was as firm in his heart as he was, after realizing his illusion, he couldn't help himself and almost fell into the illusion trap.
How many people can admit their illusion, admit that they suddenly appeared in the last second, admit that history is fake, and this world is also fake?
Most people will just think it's "bullshit".
They firmly believe in their "memories" and "experiences", and think that they know without a doubt that this world is solid and can carry them.
But in fact, this world is not.
The solid foundation of this world is the "existence of causality".
This is a world built on the law of causality, and the premise of the law of causality is that the world is real; it is precisely because we think that the world is real that we think that the law of causality is the real law of the real world.
All the appearances of our world are interdependent in a regular connection, and this connection is determined by nature. No appearance can exist independently and freely. The existence of each appearance has its sufficient reasons. As long as there is a cause, there will be a corresponding result. The changes of all things have reasons. The law of causality dominates the movement and changes of all objects in the real world, and it is the law of sufficient reason for change.
The object of the law of causality is the object of the real world. To be precise, it corresponds to the object of the real world: change.
All changes in the real world have causes, such as mountains and rivers, the sun, the moon, the stars, tables and benches. All their changes follow the law of causality, that is, as long as the cause appears, the result will definitely follow.
Correspondingly, as long as the result appears, there must be a corresponding cause.
Things will not appear out of thin air, nor will they disappear out of thin air.
One of the important manifestations is the "speed of light".
A person will die only if he is born first, and a tree will grow only if it is planted first. This is the manifestation of the law of causality and the limit of the speed of light.
Objects with speeds greater than the speed of light will directly destroy the causal relationship. If calculated at superluminal speed, the time coordinate difference will be less than zero, and a negative number will appear.
To give a simple example, if a person plants a tree, then when the tree grows at superluminal speed, because the connection between speed and time is deep, there will be a clock slowing effect, which will cause the tree to grow up when the seed is not actually planted.
The result has appeared, but the cause has not appeared.
In order to satisfy the law of causality, whether it is the speed between reference frames or the speed of the object relative to the reference frame, it cannot be greater than the speed of light, otherwise the causal relationship will be destroyed.
This is the limit of the way of heaven, and it is also the cage that binds all things that do not have reality.
If you do not have reality, you rely on the law of causality to exist. There must be a "cause" for your birth. If you do not have this "cause", you will disappear.
This is also the implementation principle of the "existence erasure" technique. As long as you erase the reason for your existence, such as killing your parents before you are born, the foundation of your existence will disappear, and you will die.
When you have preliminary reality and reach the fourth level, you can exist independently without relying on anything other than yourself, and break the speed of light and the law of causality. At this time, your existence depends only on yourself, and you are your own "cause".
At this time, you will find out how fragile the materials in the real world that exist based on cause and effect are.
At the same time, these materials themselves are nothing more than things that can be wiped out with a wave of the hand.
But it is not that extreme.
A book can indeed be burned directly.
But being able to burn it does not mean that you can write this book, even though you have the ability to create any book, just like people have the ability to create any book, but it does not mean that people can really write a good book.
Therefore, the real world... or in other words, all the things created and written by Haotian are still very important to the existence with reality, at least they do not have the ability to copy such a wonderful world.
However, not burning it and starting over does not mean that they do not want to modify the plot of this book, just like readers who want to grab the pen from the author's hand and change what they think is wrong.
This book should not have this plot, it can be changed to be better, so I will change it.
Then is this act of changing it a higher level of manifestation of the war in front of us?
In Zhong Minglou's thinking organ, countless information is gathered to outline a real picture of war for him.