191: Chapter 191 System Crash? The Highest Encryption Across Time and Space

The white-haired old man in the image coughed violently a few times, even coughing up a trace of black blood.

He lifted those turbid eyes, as if piercing through the screen, staring fixedly at Lin Mo.

"If you have received this recording... it means our plan succeeded."

"It also means... your timeline has reached the final turning point."

Lin Mo straightened his body, putting away his usual slacker attitude, his gaze becoming incomparably sharp.

"Who are you? Where did this recording come from? Why was it able to bypass the system's underlying defenses?" Lin Mo asked in a deep voice.

The old man in the image clearly could not hear Lin Mo; this was merely a one-way message spanning unknown time and space.

"You must be very curious about what exactly the system that grants you omnipotent power is."

The old man gave a bitter smile, that smile filled with endless sorrow.

"The Time Administration Bureau thinks it is a singularity that does not exist in the past or future."

"Beings from higher-dimensional space treat it as an unparseable mist."

"Actually, it is neither."

The old man struggled to move his body, aiming the camera outside the cabin.

It was a scene that made Lin Mo feel suffocated.

No stars, no light.

Only boundless, pure darkness.

That was not the darkness of cosmic space, but a kind of "void" where no matter, no energy, and not even the concept of space existed anymore.

"This is what our present looks like." The old man's voice echoed in the dead silence.

"This... is your future."

"To be precise, this is the cosmic endgame one billion years after the Earth calendar."

Lin Mo's pupils shrank sharply.

One billion years later?

The old man turned the camera back to himself.

"Who I am is not important; you can think of me as you, or as that 'human' from countless timeline branches who lived to the very end, and also failed the most miserably."

"We were once incomparably glorious. We spanned multi-dimensional space, conquered countless universes, and scattered the seeds of civilization across every galaxy within our sight."

"We thought we had become gods."

"But we were wrong. In the face of physical limits, we were still just bugs."

The old man gasped violently, as if every word he spoke was exhausting his last bit of vitality.

"There was no alien invasion, no dimensionality reduction attack from higher-dimensional beings."

"What killed us was the most irreversible law of the universe itself—"

"The Second Law of Thermodynamics, absolute entropy increase."

"The heat of the entire universe has been exhausted, all stars have extinguished, and all atoms have ceased motion."

"The universe is falling into an eternal 'heat death'."

Hearing this, Lin Mo's fists clenched subconsciously.

Heat death.

That was the most tragic death of the universe predicted by all physicists.

Without any explosions or clamor, it would only slowly freeze in endless cold and dead silence, where even the concept of time would lose its meaning due to the lack of motion.

"When we realized this, it was already too late."

Two lines of turbid tears flowed from the old man's eyes.

"We exhausted all inter-dimensional technology, trying to reverse entropy increase, but we all failed. Just like you cannot make spilled water flow back into the cup by itself."

"Finally, the Human Alliance made the most insane, yet most resolute decision."

The old man leaned close to the screen, his eyes erupting with final madness and resolution.

"We collected the very last bit of energy from the entire remaining universe and compressed it into a 'Causality Concept Sphere' that contained all the crystallized technology of humanity, as well as the infinite possibilities of the future derived from it."

"Then, we used the power of the final dimensional collapse to send it back to the past."

"Sent it to the most critical node in the entire causal chain of civilization—you, Lin Mo's hands."

"That so-called 'Everything Can Be Bought System' is not a system at all."

"It is the legacy of all humanity, the ultimate condensation of civilization for the next billion years!"

"The reason it can produce black technology far beyond the era, the reason it can ignore the laws..."

The old man gritted his teeth and said, word by word.

"That is because it is overdrawing the possibilities of the future! It is forcibly extracting the resources and technology that should have belonged to the future on our timeline into the present!"

This truth exploded in Lin Mo's mind like a megaton-class nuclear bomb.

He finally understood why the products provided by the system were always exactly one era ahead of current technology.

Why, with every purchase, the system required him to trade using "national destiny" and "causality that changes history."

The system was not selling things, but was using him to change the past, thereby generating more causal energy in the future to maintain this transmission channel spanning time and space!

"However, the price is heavy."

The old man's voice grew weaker and weaker, and the image began to flicker violently.

"Every time you change the past, you accelerate the collapse of the future. The more black technology you extract, the sooner the 'heat death' of the future will arrive."

"Our timeline has completely withered, and this one-way channel is about to break."

"The system is glitching because the energy from the future can no longer maintain its operation."

"Lin Mo... there is not much time left."

The old man stared fixedly at the camera, as if trying to brand the last bit of hope onto Lin Mo's soul.

"You cannot rely on the system anymore! That is drinking poison to quench thirst!"

"The real enemy is the ultimate law of the universe! It is that irreversible entropy increase!"

"You must, before the channel breaks... no, you must, before the cosmic heat death descends upon this current timeline..."

"Break the iron laws of physics! Lead civilization to break through the shackles of gods!"

"Go and create a... super-god-level civilization that can run like a perpetual motion machine without needing energy!"

"Otherwise, what awaits you is still this endless darkness."

"The countdown... has already begun..."

The old man's voice disappeared completely.

The image turned into static, then transformed into a red hourglass icon.

Above the hourglass, red grains of sand were trickling down at a constant speed.

Below, a glaring countdown was marked:

[Time remaining until absolute heat death descends upon this timeline: 10 years.]

Lin Mo stood there for a long time without speaking.

He had originally thought that after unifying the multiverse, he could quietly be a Hardware Store owner, eating barbecue and counting money every day.

As it turned out, future humanity had backhanded him with an apocalyptic countdown.

10 years.

For a civilization, this wasn't even enough time for a nap.

And he, within 10 years, had to oppose the ultimate physical laws of the entire universe? Oppose the fate of all matter heading toward death?

The backyard of the Hardware Store was deathly silent.

Suddenly, Lin Mo let out a long breath.

He raised his hand and smoothed back his already somewhat messy hair.

A corner of his mouth curled into an extremely arrogant, and also extremely dangerous, smile.

"Physical laws?"

Lin Mo took a wrench out of his pocket and tossed it in his hand.

"I run a Hardware Store; what I'm best at is taking things apart."

He turned his head to look at Wangcai, which had returned to normal but whose icon had turned red.

"Wangcai, notify Zhao Zhenhua, the cross-dimensional tourism plan is cancelled."

"Put all of humanity into the highest level of combat readiness."

"These ten years of peaceful days are over."

"Since this broken machine called the universe is about to be scrapped..."

Lin Mo's eyes flashed with a crazy light as he slammed the wrench hard onto the table.

"Then I'll take it apart completely before it crashes, and swap in a new engine!"