Chapter Forty-Three: Knowledge Is Power

Chapter Forty-Three: Knowledge Is Power

When Queen Kaisa saw what Yunyang was doing, she merely frowned slightly and said, “By doing this, you are interfering with the developmental trajectory of another civilization.”

“I’m just repaying the kindness these Edenians showed me when they rescued me,” Yunyang replied, unconcerned. His conscience wouldn’t let him stand by while his benefactors were in trouble.

He raised his hand several more times, destroying the warships that posed the greatest threat to the escort fleet. With their main opponents eliminated, the battle was decisively won in favor of the escorts.

Kaisa made no move to stop Yunyang’s subsequent actions; she simply watched in silence, never once intervening.

Yunyang had no idea what she was thinking; he merely assumed she was adhering to her own principles of justice.

Watching the pirate fleet’s main ships being obliterated one after another by mysterious attacks, the warriors of the escort fleet were overjoyed and struck back with renewed vigor.

Half an hour later, with no main ships left to provide firepower, half of the remaining pirates scattered in panic and were no longer a threat.

After the skirmish ended, the commander aboard the flagship realized who their mysterious savior was and took care of the immediate aftermath. He then led several high-ranking officers in grand procession to the cabin where Yunyang was staying. Upon entering, he was momentarily stunned.

Half of the cabin wall had been blasted away, so that the outside was plainly visible, but the breach was covered by a faint, glowing light.

This glow was the energy loop of a wormhole, functioning in the same way angels used algorithms to walk through the air—except Yunyang used it to seal the rupture.

Faced with this miraculous sight, these staunchly materialist Edenians were left deeply conflicted—could there truly be gods in the world?

They simply could not comprehend how this was possible. There was no equipment, no device—just a wall of light covering the gap.

It was the captain who first recovered, and with utmost respect said to the two, “Honored deities, we thank you deeply for your help. On behalf of the entire crew…”

He went on at length, expressing his gratitude. Yunyang wanted to interrupt at first, but seeing Kaisa smiling, he decided to listen. The speech lasted a full five minutes without pause.

For the next two days, the crew provided the two with every possible comfort—what seemed to Yunyang unbearably luxurious, but to Kaisa, unbearably crude.

Every day, Yunyang was served a mountain of ready-made meals—still, in his view, excessive decadence.

To Kaisa, eating such things was an insult to her status as the Queen of the Gods. But now, with her body merely that of a second-generation super-soldier—actually weaker than Yunyang, who was something of a generation two-and-a-half—she could do little else.

Though Kaisa’s current physical strength was less than Yunyang’s, her knowledge put his to shame a hundred times over. These days, Yunyang was constantly learning from her.

In Kaisa’s opinion, Yunyang’s fighting style amounted to little more than brute force and stabbing people with a pointy stick.

Since they needed to return to Earth, Kaisa mainly taught him knowledge of the quantum realm. Yunyang found it dizzying, but thanks to his super-soldier brain, he managed to understand some of it.

The greatest benefit of this knowledge was that teleportation could now reach much farther. As long as one knew the relative coordinates and had sufficient energy, one could travel any distance.

In the past, he could only teleport after pinpointing his location, and even then, on a cosmic scale, the distances covered were negligible.

One day, as Yunyang was still digesting Kaisa’s explanations, she suddenly announced that she had finished extracting all the information from the Edenian civilization—they could leave.

The Edenians, it turned out, were survivors of nuclear devastation. They had immigrated to the planet Eden from their original world, which was remarkably similar to Yunyang’s Earth—over a hundred countries, four world wars, the first three much like Earth’s World Wars I and II.

To ensure national survival, they launched arms races. By the third world war, nuclear weapons had proliferated—no fewer than twelve countries possessed them.

Nuclear deterrence brought three centuries of peace, during which space technology advanced, until the first nation to develop a curvature engine did so.

This nation, having built the curvature engine, provoked envy from the other nuclear powers. After discovering the planet Eden, the fourth world war broke out.

Initially, the intent was simply to deter others from seizing the curvature engine technology, but unexpectedly, the nuclear powers united to attack.

Their country nearly perished; at the last moment, a nuclear missile was launched.

Disaster followed disaster. The psychological restraint that had held nuclear nations back snapped, and a full-scale nuclear war erupted.

The results were predictable: massive use of nuclear weapons, compounded by man-made and natural disasters, reduced the population to less than one percent. The planet became uninhabitable, and survivors were forced to migrate to Eden and start anew.

The New Edenians, equipped with the curvature engine, became the ultimate victors and unified the planet’s remaining population.

Hearing Kaisa recount the history of ancient Eden made Yunyang worry for the future of his own Earth. But he soon let it go—he had crossed worlds, after all, so why dwell on it?

After some internal reassurance, Yunyang resolved to begin his return to Earth. He could now teleport 10,000 light-years in a single jump.

But this would exhaust his energy completely, even with the assistance of the Destiny Lever authority and the energy-saving knowledge Kaisa had imparted.

Resolute, he informed the fleet commander, politely declining the invitation to visit Eden.

Consulting Kaisa’s model of the known universe, he saw that Eden lay at the very edge of Angelic Civilization’s known cosmos—even more remote than Earth itself.

Yunyang and Kaisa would have to reach the territory actually controlled by the Angelic Civilization, where they could use a macro-worm bridge to return to the Angel Nebula.

But the distance was truly daunting: the Angelic Civilization’s territory spanned forty million light-years—a sphere with a radius of twenty million light-years centered on the Angel Nebula.

The presence of macro-worm bridges meant one could travel rapidly within these regions, which defined the boundaries of effective control. Therefore, Yunyang would need to teleport at least twenty-five million light-years before he could access a macro-worm bridge back to Earth.

It sounded almost hopeless—Yunyang nearly abandoned the idea. After all, this Earth wasn’t his original world, and to a traveler between realities like him, one place was much like another. Earth was only marginally more special.

But then he thought of Rose, the girl who had found Pan Zhen to save him, who had rescued him twice, who was still waiting for him. He had a reason to return. Rose, wait for me—about half a year, I promise I’ll be back!

Two thousand five hundred teleports awaited him; Yunyang thought that if this were a video game, his proficiency would soon be maxed out.

Thanks to the Destiny Lever authority of the Quantum Mastery Gene Engine and the knowledge of energy extraction, Yunyang could now recover energy much faster.

So he and Kaisa no longer had to worry about running out of energy. As long as there was a star nearby, and with the help of the Destiny Lever, they could fully recharge in about an hour.

This, too, was thanks to Kaisa. Without her teachings, Yunyang could only passively absorb stellar energy.

Now, however, he could actively absorb energy, and his control over the gene engine was much more fluid—it was no longer simply relying on built-in permissions.

Once he had locked in the coordinates, Kaisa entered the virtual space, where Xiao Yi was pestering her for lessons. For Xiao Yi, learning was much simpler than for Yunyang—she simply recorded everything without worrying about application. That was exactly what Yunyang had asked of her, since Kaisa, as queen, could not teach him forever.

Yunyang secured Xiao Yi at his side, set the coordinates, and began teleporting. Under the captain’s watchful gaze, his figure gradually faded and disappeared.

He emerged in an unnamed star system, immediately caught by the gravity of the local sun, which carried him along on its endless journey.

Surprised to find himself floating in open space, Yunyang quickly set up a wormhole array at his feet, sat down, activated the second-tier Destiny Lever authority, and began to recover energy.

At that moment, Kaisa appeared beside Yunyang, which vexed Xiao Yi in the virtual space—Kaisa had just begun teaching her.

“Child, what kind of black technology is your gene engine? To teleport ten thousand light-years without a macro-worm bridge is simply inconceivable,” Kaisa asked in amazement.

Though it was theoretically possible, seeing it accomplished in reality left her astonished.

“You probably understand the principles better than I do—why ask me?” Yunyang replied, giving her a look as though she were being silly.

“Ouch!” he yelped, as Kaisa flicked him on the forehead.

“That look offends me, child.”

Annoyed but helpless, Yunyang turned away. The authority of her status still intimidated him.

Seeing his sullen expression, a faint smile appeared on Kaisa’s lips, and she spoke softly, “I still don’t know how your second-tier authority achieves this. You’ve practically broken the law of energy conservation—a mere trickle of energy, and you can teleport ten thousand light-years.”

“It does feel that way. With the right knowledge, energy consumption drops significantly. It sounds scientific, but in practice, it’s completely unscientific!”

Yunyang truly felt it was unscientific—the reduction in energy use was too drastic. Previously, he could barely teleport a small distance—couldn’t even leave a planet. And now, ten thousand light-years, all due to the difference in knowledge.