Chapter 23 — The Astrologer's Deduction

Late at night, the frantically whirring mechanical cutting and high-frequency welding sounds gradually subsided.

At the top of an abandoned high-voltage iron tower at the highest point of the Embers Camp, the biting night wind howled, mixed with faint sulfur dust and high-altitude ionized air currents. This was the temporary astrolabe observation deck built by the astrologer and medic, Lyra, with her own hands. Several flat, high-purity lenses scavenged from the observation cabins of Deadzone ships were precisely embedded in the rusted iron frame, pointing far out into the cold, pitch-black night sky of the blind spot.

Looking down from this extreme height, the entire Embers Camp looked like a giant scrap iron beast sleeping in the depths of a massive Deadzone crater. Welding electromagnetic sparks flickered weakly in the darkness like embers. The freshly welded carburized lead plates on the outer layer of the corrugated iron defense line refracted a bone-chilling metallic luster under the pale moonlight.

Elias sat alone on a scrap iron armor crate at the edge of the tower deck, holding a coarse cotton cloth, meticulously and intently wiping that heavy industrial cutting knife with its serrated edge. That crude industrial cutting knife was picked up from a scrap heap, covered in dents and microscopic cracks, but polished by his palm, the blade's edge drew biting, ruthlessly cold gleams in the pale purple night.

The night wind ruffled his black hair, revealing a pair of cold, profound eyes. Beneath his tactical shirt on his back, the purple bruises and agonizing scars left by high-energy radiation collisions during the day faintly showed through. Every time he swung his arm to wipe the blade, agonizing pain spread along his muscle fibers like needle pricks, but he didn't even furrow his brow, as if the physical pain had long since become the food for his will.

"Drink some, it's a warm tea brewed with dried algae and purified water, it's good for the berserk meridians in your body."

A light footstep approached. Lyra walked over, handing Elias a handcrafted iron cup with a bit of rust and a thermal coating. Steam curled up from the iron cup, emitting a unique, herbal scent.

The girl sat down beside him. During the noisy day, she was always lively, energetic, and quick-lipped, but in the late-night wind at this moment, the girl showed a rare quietness and gentleness. The dark silver rune powder that clung to her fingertips year-round emitted a faint, mysterious halo in the pale moonlight. Her large, bright eyes, shining like stars, reflected Elias's cold, hard profile, her gaze filled with concern.

"Thanks." Elias took the iron cup and took a small sip.

The slightly bitter herbal taste flowed down his esophagus, bringing a faint warmth that dispelled the numbness and freezing cold brought by the agony in his back. It also slightly soothed his nerves, tightly strung from continuous, high-intensity labor.

"Elias... come here, I want to show you something."

Lyra turned around, carefully taking out the heirloom "Orbit-breaking Astrolabe" she treasured from her cloth bag—a relic from the Old Era.

It was an ancient astrological instrument only the size of a compass, its outer shell cast from high-density bronze alloy, embedded with dozens of rings of independently rotating fine gears and high-purity mercury lenses. The surfaces of the gears were engraved with the most precise mathematical polarization formulas of Old Era microscopic runology; even after centuries of weathering, they still flickered with a faint blue luster under the moonlight.

As Lyra sprinkled a pinch of optical powder shimmering with silver-blue light onto the mercury mirror, the mercury on the disk instantly flowed like a living creature, projecting a complex miniature of the deep-space astrolabe above in the void!

"In the highest laws of the LinBoo Astrolabe, all living creatures between heaven and earth—whether they are mortals on the low-dimensional wasteland, divine envoys patrolling the star zones, or the Ten Great Planetary Gods sitting high in the Inner Cabinet—have a fixed, unmoving fate-calculation track on the Sanctum's ledgers."

Lyra's tone was unprecedentedly serious. Her slender fingers traced the holographic mercury mirror, tapping out intricate golden streaks of light:

"Look here, this is Caleb's track, entangled with the tragic disaster and endless knots of death from when his mother planet was leveled ten years ago; this is mine, winding, fragile, and faint. Look at the zenith of the sky—those are the golden calculation tracks of the Ten Great Planetary Gods and the Twelve Zodiac Lords, intertwining into a massive web of laws locking everything in place. In the Divine Court's highest algorithms, the suffering, the encounters, and even the exact day a person will starve to death on the wasteland, were firmly pinned onto the macro-ledgers of the 6th House and the Sanctum the moment they were born. Even heavenly divine envoys descending to cleanse a blind spot is a predetermined pattern calculated in advance within the astrolabe's probability models."

Elias stared at the complex, freezing golden web on the mercury disk, saying nothing. That giant web was like an invisible, macroscopic prison, treating the billions of living beings in the entire universe as computational pawns devoid of dignity. The boy's palms tightened slightly, his knuckles turning white from the force.

"But... you're different, Elias."

Lyra's voice carried a trace of irrepressible trembling and pride. She gently placed her trembling finger squarely in the center of the astrolabe.

Hum—!

A piercing, high-frequency resonance suddenly erupted from the mercury mirror! All the flowing mercury on the disk acted as if it had hit an invisible black hole in an instant, splashing and pouring backward rapidly in all directions!

In the center of the vast, intricate golden astrolabe calculation tracks that locked down all living things like an inescapable net, there shockingly appeared a patch of absolute pitch-black, a physical blank void devoid of any laws!

There were no golden fate-calculation tracks, no chains of causality calculated by the heavens. Even the most fundamental gravitational constants and high-dimensional laws of the astrolabe would weirdly warp, snap, and melt away as they approached that pitch-black blankness! In the holographic image, all the golden light calculation tracks turned entirely into shattered zero-dimensional scattered light the moment they touched Elias's Fate House! That blankness stood independent of all rules in the world, exuding a domineering, solitary aura capable of severing all things.

"Do you see it clearly?"

Lyra looked up, her dark, bright eyes filled with unprecedented shock and unspeakable awe. "Your life track... is completely detached from the LinBoo Astrolabe's calculation tracks! No god can calculate your next step, no heavenly law can predetermine your final end!"

"In the surviving secret scrolls of the Old Era, an existence like this—capable of directly severing the law of causality and wandering outside the astrolabe's ledgers—is called..."

Lyra took a deep breath, lowered her voice, and spat out that taboo term, every word heavy:

"[Anomaly]!"

Elias stared at that patch of absolute blankness representing himself on the mercury mirror, his five fingers pressing tightly onto the hilt of his knife. He thought of his dead sister Aira; he thought of the Tartarus main continent evaporated to ash.

"An Anomaly, huh..." Elias's voice was as low as iron. "What exactly does this mean?"

"It means... you are the only living 'flaw' on this dead-silent astrolabe!"

Lyra looked up, her eyes slightly red in the night wind, her small canine tooth gently biting her lower lip. "Jupiter, the God of Wood, locked the fate of the entire universe with order; Astra, the God of Light, numbed the masses with hypocritical mercy; Umbra, the God of Darkness, prunes mortals with destruction... Everyone is waiting to die in the chess game they've set up. Only you, Elias—your battle knife can pierce right through their abacus! Every step you take is rewriting the causality of this world!"

But immediately after, a profound, gentle heartache flashed through the girl's eyes.

She reached out those somewhat slender fingers, gently stroking Elias's tense arm. Through the thin tactical shirt, her fingertips touched the stiff scars on the boy's back caused by the backlash of high-dimensional negative energy.

Becoming an Anomaly meant thoroughly severing all dependencies and avenues of retreat. He was destined to walk alone on the edge of the darkest, most dangerous cliff, bearing the blood feud of an entire planet and the life-and-death survival of over two hundred mortals. This kind of weight shouldn't belong to a mortal boy barely in his teens.

"It's too bitter, Elias..."

Lyra's voice lowered, her long eyelashes casting a cold shadow in the pale moonlight. Tears flickered at the corners of her eyes, and her tone carried undisguised, girlish adoration and heartache: "If possible... I really wish you were just an ordinary mortal boy, that you didn't have to carry something so terrifying. If you're tired, you can lean on me and rest for a bit anytime... I will always be behind you, holding my instruments to hold the line for you."

The deep affection, devotion, and unreserved concern flowing from the depths of the girl's eyes were like a clear spring, pouring into Elias's freezing, dead-silent heart.

But deep within the boy, that emotion and softness had absolutely nothing to do with romantic love between a man and a woman.

Elias was very clear on his own heart—he looked at this lively, passionate astrologer girl before him just as he looked at his sister Aira, who died in the Tartarus cataclysm. He poured and transferred all the protection, favoritism, and guilt he failed to give his sister entirely onto Lyra. In his eyes, Lyra was the sister he absolutely had to protect behind him.

Elias's gaze softened completely. Like a steady, magnanimous older brother, he gently reached out and rubbed Lyra's somewhat messy, short hair, his movements carrying endless generosity and protection:

"Silly girl, what silly things are you saying. If I don't carry it, everyone on this wasteland can only wait to die. With me here, as your older brother, I will definitely bring you all out safely."

The boy's tone was low and steady, solid as a mountain. "Besides... I have no way back anymore."

Hearing the boy's tone—carrying heavy longing and brotherly care—Lyra's eyes grew slightly hot. Though the girl could feel the sisterly gentleness that occasionally flashed in Elias's eyes, she still sniffled happily. She pulled a warm ointment carrying a herbal scent from her pocket and carefully applied it to the radiation wounds on Elias's back. The soft touch of her fingertips brought a cooling pleasure, relaxing the boy's tense nerves. The two leaned quietly against each other in the night wind, the moonlight stretching their shadows very, very long.

Deep in the shadow of a scrap iron statue not far from the tower.

"Vespera," wearing a rough cloth dress, stood quietly in the dark. Her slender, thin figure almost blended into the pitch-black night.

With the sharpness of her high-dimensional divine consciousness, every deduction Lyra made on the tower, even the microscopic flow and polarization of the mercury particles inside that "Orbit-breaking Astrolabe," was reflected with incomparable clarity in her mind.

"An Anomaly capable of severing the law of causality..." Umbra silently chanted this term in her heart, coldly.

As one of the co-creators and supreme masters of the Sanctum's order, she knew the terror of an Anomaly better than any mortal in the lower realms. In the long eras of the past, the Divine Court's Inner Cabinet of Planetary Gods had exhausted their power to obliterate several accidentally sprouted Anomaly factors, because these factors were the only destructive threats capable of rewriting the "Sanctum's Ledgers" and high-dimensional rules on a physical level.

And now, the boy named Elias before her was not just a perfect Anomaly, but the "karmic buffer" she had personally nailed down.

"The emotions and bonds of mortals can provide endless mental anchor points for an Anomaly..." Umbra slowly lowered her head, looking at her slender, fair fingertips.

There, the physical heat left by Elias tightly gripping her palm late that night seemed to still be faintly, yet truly, pulsing.

High above, the God of Darkness silently watched the mortal boy and girl sitting together on the tower, a tremendously deep, high-dimensional dark gleam flashing in her eyes. She brushed off the wasteland dust clinging to the hem of her clothes. For the first time, the dead silence deep within her high-dimensional divine core was broken by this mortal spark in the dead corner.

"An Anomaly breaking causality... and the astrologer escorting him..." Umbra scoffed coldly in her heart, her deep, pitch-black eyes reflecting the pale stars filling the sky. "Jupiter locked down the universe for hundreds of millions of eras with his ruling calculation tracks, thinking he could rest easy. But he would absolutely never imagine that down in this low-dimensional garbage dump, a mortal boy he viewed as waste material is holding the key to prying open the entire universe's astrolabe order, stepping bit by bit into the very center of the gods' chess game in this dead corner of the night!"

The night wind howled, and the high-dimensional lenses at the top of the iron tower emitted a faint whimper in the gale. Yet atop the deck, the boy's battle knife and the girl's astrolabe had already intertwined their most profound vows in this long, dark night.