Chapter Thirty-Five: Existential Paradox… and the Sacrifice of Certainty
Zhou Fan stood before the inverted pyramid, the silver winds caressing his robe, which now glowed with defensive computational symbols. The old man in tattered robes, the guardian of the tomb, watched Zhou Fan with a gaze mixing pity and challenge. His bone rosary clattered, sounding like the faltering steps of fate.
"Master Counselor," the old man croaked, "all who entered this place before you tried to use it with the power of sword or spirit—and failed. You attempt to use it with the power of the 'mind.' Yet you do not realize that this pyramid is built from 'raw consciousness' that predates numbers. To open the gate, you must offer a sacrifice your logic cannot accept: you must relinquish the 'predetermined outcome.'"
Zhou Fan's nebula-colored eyes gleamed. "Abandoning the predetermined outcome means accepting randomness, and accepting randomness means collapsing the system I built. You ask me to destroy the foundation of my existence to enter a place meant to grant me power."
"Exactly," the old man smiled. "The door only opens to those who dare to fall without knowing where their feet will touch."
The Guardian's Challenge: The 'Lost Probability' Matrix
The old man raised his rosary, and suddenly, the silver sands around them erupted into a moving maze of mirrors and shadows. These mirrors did not reflect images—they reflected the decisions Zhou Fan had never made.
In one mirror, Zhou Fan saw himself as a failed cultivator in Tian Long, living a simple life with Ling Er without discovering the Lost Ledger. In another, he saw himself as a tyrannical emperor crushing everyone with his sword rather than his mind.
"These are the 'neglected data,'" Zhou Fan whispered, feeling immense pressure on his cognitive processor. "You are trying to drown my system with 'dead probabilities.'"
"They are not dead, Zhou Fan," shouted the old man. "They are as real as your current existence! To pass, you must choose one of these endings as your reality and abandon your current self!"
This was the sacrifice. Entering the tomb required Zhou Fan to erase his identity as the holder of the Lost Ledger and become a new version of himself, effectively committing suicide of his current consciousness.
Zhou Fan's Maneuver: Surpassing Logic with Logic
Instead of yielding or collapsing, Zhou Fan sat cross-legged in mid-air. He closed his eyes, and the Lost Ledger churned wildly, emitting intertwined electronic and spiritual screams.
"Analyzing paradox… Probability one: 33%… Probability two: 33%… Probability three: 33%…"
"Ling Er," Zhou Fan called calmly amid the storm, "give me your hand."
Ling Er grasped his hand and felt a massive flow of information coursing through her body. It was not mere energy—it was the entirety of Zhou Fan's memory.
"What are you doing?" she screamed in terror.
"I'm performing a 'backup,'" Zhou Fan said, a mysterious smile appearing on his face. "The guardian wants me to abandon my certainty. Fine. I will divide my consciousness into a million fragments and scatter them across the sands of this continent. I will be completely 'random' for a single moment."
"This is madness! You won't be able to return!" the guardian shouted, watching Zhou Fan's body begin to disintegrate into tiny cubes of light.
"In mathematics, old man," Zhou Fan's voice faded, "there's something called the Butterfly Effect. Even at the extremes of randomness, there's a hidden pattern. I will disappear as a 'being' and manifest as an 'environment.'"
Zhou Fan exploded—not dead, but transformed into an informational cloud enveloping the entire inverted pyramid. At that moment, since "Zhou Fan" no longer existed as a defined input, the tomb's gate lost its defensive purpose. The great doors opened automatically.
Rebirth Inside the Tomb
Inside the pyramid, where gravity worked sideways and the walls were made of 'frozen time,' the cubes of light slowly coalesced again. Zhou Fan's body reformed, but his hair was now pure white as snow, and his eyes had become the color of absolute void.
He fell to his feet, gasping. He had succeeded in tricking the tomb's rules through temporary logical self-destruction and reconstruction.
"I… did it," Zhou Fan whispered, looking at his hands flickering like a glitch in the image. "I've lost part of my 'stability,' but I've gained the ability to exist in multiple probabilities simultaneously."
The guardian, appearing behind them in the tomb, bowed with genuine respect this time. "You have 'hacked' fate. No one has ever entered here by destroying and reconstructing themselves simultaneously. You are not a cultivator… you are a 'deliberate anomaly' in the fabric of the universe."
"Where is the ledger?" Zhou Fan asked coldly, ignoring the praise.
The guardian pointed to a platform at the center of the hall, where a book floated made of frozen light. It had no cover, only magical circles revolving around one another.
This was the missing part: The Existential Logarithms: Volume Three.
As Zhou Fan approached the ledger, his mind received data that made everything he had learned before seem like child's play. The volume did not discuss energy or matter, but how to build universes from zero.
However, with this knowledge came a bloody red warning in Zhou Fan's vision:
[Warning: Opening Volume Three has sent an alert to the Great Designers. Time remaining before the 'Cosmic Eradication Squad' arrives: 100 days.]
Zhou Fan turned to Ling Er, his gaze sharp as a blade. "The hourglass has begun counting down. We have a hundred days to turn this planet into a 'weapon'… or we will be completely erased from cosmic memory."