Lower than the discrete wind layer is the stratostratous layer where the hanging garden is located, which is theoretically the highest point that can be reached by the land of this Taiji world. In the imagination of young people, only the land of Qiongqiu should be able to reach the ultra-high altitude tens of thousands of meters or even hundreds of thousands of meters away on this ground.

If it weren't for the natural ascension of the Hanging Land, even the most powerful birds would never be able to reach this remote green nether.

The temperature of the stratosphere is hot at the top and cold at the bottom compared with the ground, and the wind direction is stable, which is a good place for air navigation.

A few days later, the travelers' boats and water were floating out of the stratosphere, and by that time the sun had risen to a very high point, about to cross the top, and fall from the human perspective.

The young man guessed that it was because the sun and moon of Tai Chi were biased to one side of the world and did not coincide with the center of each section of the earth's surface.

The world wasn't a perfect sphere, he guessed it was a complex spheroid-like shape. The sun is not at the center of this ellipse, and the surface is by no means always stationary.

A little earlier, the Travelers returned to the vicinity of the Dead or Alive. At that time, the province of Qianren had become a wasteland after the change of land ascension, and while the people in the stone were leaving, it seemed that someone had deliberately arranged not to recover the dead or alive, and the travelers were happy to be simple.

While collecting materials and slightly repairing the surface of the Dead or Alive, Gu Chuan spent a lot of effort to retrieve Mengsheng.

Mengsheng was previously hit by the dragon battleship and was smashed into countless water fragments, which is equivalent to a person taking off several layers of skin, and removing his hands and feet, leaving only a small mass of the necessary volume of heterogeneous liquid that carries memories, but as long as there are these heterogeneous liquids, he can change the water and be reborn again.

Gu Chuan didn't know if the dream he had recovered was the original dream life...... Maybe it's not the same. But the connection forged in the netherworld is still there.

Wait until Mengsheng is a little older, and pick up the boat again. They decided to leave completely.

At that time, Gu Chuan was determined not to touch any more inches of the ground, and was determined to leap from the stratification to the last distance around the world. Zai Yan did not object, they first relied on the peculiarity of Qiongqiu to ascend into the stratosphere, and then marched to the Rizhao River in Gu Chuan's memory in the stratosphere.

There were not many clouds in the morning. But when the sun stepped into the heights, the stratostracal layer at noon had a vague amount of water vapor condensed in the firmament, causing the entire stratum to float in the sunlight with a vast number of raindrops, like a mist of water, and like a thin scattered cloud.

Looking down from the stratostratosphere, only some simple outlines of mountains and seas remain on the ground, and the specific details are not clear, but they are not shrunk into reflective lines or dots.

"If I'm not mistaken, the Isthma that Xun Shui said should be under us."

The young man looked at the rolling mountains below and thought.

The more purposeful explorer will surely go to a wider world than the one he will take. And he was not ready to stop at the Rixia Gorge, the supplies were sufficient, and the mighty wind was enough to send the Dream Jellyfish in the direction of the Rizhao River.

In this way, the Dead or Alive had the most peaceful days ever.

The happy, noisy life is over.

Only lions and young men were left in the boat.

Their daily lives have become dull and boring. The original invention of the board game has become the garbage in the box. And the cleaning that used to be done by everyone who was colored and smelly, and only one gear man was left. The silent water and the boat are like a wandering grave buried in the sky.

Gu Chuan almost didn't want to do anything, he just wanted to wait until the day he returned to Sunset City. The appearance of Sunset City, which he will see again in the future, is what he is most concerned about now. Now he is not afraid of the army of Sunset City. Psychic language has overwhelming power over the human system.

The strange creatures of the Netherworld, Dream Life and the Crystal of the Gear Man, Death or Life, are also his strong reliance.

Just thinking of Sunset City, he thinks of His Majesty, and he also thinks of Chuyun.

He quickly shook his head, forcing himself to stop thinking about Hatsuyun, and instead think about his childhood playmates, as well as his mother, and the adults in the neighborhood. The dead or alive chamber smelled of cold steel. But he fell into a trance, as if he smelled the fragrance of golden spikes.

He remembered the clear water at the edge of the village, the green climbing vines on the side of the wooden house, the glass windows, the afternoon when he first met a caravan from the city, and the world's earliest ice he had made.

Then he thought of a terrible question:

"Are they still there?"

He lowered his head, and in the closed room, he was alone in contemplation at the open window and the scorching sun and the bright world under the scorching sun.

Stay outside the door and listen to the voices inside. He's either repairing his body or documenting his discoveries. When he came back to his senses, he realized that the young man had not been out for several days.

This worries him.

He was about to knock on the door, and the door opened on its own.

There was a lot of chaos in the house.

"What's the matter?"

The boy stood by the door and said, iridescent scales spreading from his left hand to his neck. Jae-chan glanced at his palm. The palm of his hand, which was hidden with a stagger, showed a fibrotic, burn-like symptom. This kind of physical condition should not actually travel in isolation in the sky, it should be to find someone to explore the treatment together.

It's a pity that the war in Qiongqiu expelled them, and the young man was so focused on Sunset City that he didn't want to go to the Gorge to try again.

Zai Yi thought sadly in his heart, but on the surface he only said:

"I want to summarize your findings and pass them on to those who come after me."

Gu Chuanqiang cheered up and said with a smile:

"It's a good idea. I still have a lot of thoughts that I want to tell you. ”

Zaiyi's worries fell to the ground, and he found that the young man's mental state was acceptable, and he said:

"Then let's go to the Exterior Observation Room. My device is there, and I'm basically just perched there. ”

The young man nodded.

Zai Yan walked to the front and opened the door. The bright and clean external observation room was revealed in Gu Chuan's eyes. The interior was as clean as new, and they sat on either side of the table. Gu Chuan saw that there were many parts boxes:

"What is this for?"

Zai Yan said lightly:

"The wound left when I was repairing the well."

The young man nodded sneeringly, and resumed his conversation with the lion about what he had seen and heard, and what he had guessed. Zai Yi silently remembered on the side, occasionally raising a few doubts:

In other words, you think the world is in a slow rotation? In fact, if you spend a long enough time in a world where the sun sets, even if you don't move, even if you are just in the same place, if you spend enough time, you can see the sun set very close to the surface, and then the moon will rise from that side? ”

The young man sat on the side and said:

"Yes, time is changing, and it will speed up as the distance between the two spaces increases. This may be called the shrinkage effect. We spend a week still, in place, but if we move outward, it spends much longer than a week, and time expands in motion. ”

It's like the twin paradox that the earth talks about.

The hand that carries the stalk is no longer flexible after the change. The tools of the battle could only barely hold a needle and inscribe words on the glass book. After listening to the young man's words, the cogwheel man was stunned, and trembled for a while before asking:

"So, you deduce that the future of Sunset City is the world of our cogwheel people, and the distant future of our cogwheel world is the Netherworld and the Great Fire? And the future of the Netherworld and the Great Fire is, is, is...... The land of Qiongqiu? ”

Gu Chuan was silent, just nodded.

"But, for example, my people." "Although our range of activities only occupies a small part of the Great Wilderness. But we didn't perceive such a drastic time dilation! When the Cogwheel Man who headed for the mountains returned, its perception did not appear......"

Gu Chuan, who was looking out the window, turned his head and calmly said the phenomenon discovered by an ancient gear man:

"There's an error in the count of the Eternal Clock, isn't it? Perhaps, the error of the Eternal Bell is not due to the error of the Eternal Clock...... But is it because time is really moving faster? ”

As for the counting of the Cogwheel Man outside the Eternal Clock, the error is even more unreasonable.

Today's load is unexpectedly sluggish. He thought for a while before he asked in a trance:

"Isn't there no clue to this swelling?"

"First of all, I'm not sure if this time dilation really exists, and maybe it doesn't...... Just my guess. Gu Chuan left room to speak, "If it exists, I suspect it has something to do with the curvature of the land." ”

"...... curvature?"

That is, the degree of curvature of the land. The bends of the mountains are severe, and the bends of the netherworld, as indicated by the compass, are even more severe...... Conversely, the degree of curvature may not be noticeable on the banks of the Sunset River, the desertified wilderness, or the longitudinal overhanging gardens. ”

Gu Chuan saw that Zai Yi was still writing, he paused, and said:

"You don't have to believe me, I'm just thinking."

"It's okay, many ancient doctrines have been proven to be false imaginations." "But you can write it down as a reference for future generations." ”

After carving this, he asked:

"You're going back to your hometown, what do you think your hometown will be like now?"

Gu Chuan was silent, he turned his gaze sideways and looked out the window at infinity. The sun shines brightly on the water in the sky, and the distant blue sky seems to have drifting clouds.

What will that big water, that part of the people look like when he arrives?

He was terrified of the answer.

"There are many possibilities...... I do not know. ”

"You think time is a kind of bending...... "maybe bend in a circle, and everything will go back to its original place, like a circle...... Could it be that the riverside you saw when you went back was actually only spent in your 'physical time', and did not go through thousands of years? ”

The young man was stunned for a moment.

- But how much of my sensual time has been "spent"?

In this world, where there is no cycle of day and night, human beings can roughly confirm the time of nearly 100 years by relying on the aging of living organisms. Even though those who are tormented by life age faster and those who are loved by others are younger longer, the lifespan is based on the same measure and will never exceed a lifetime.

But he's different.

His time, like the first clouds, has lost its human dimension due to the influence of the flesh of immortality.

He was surrounded by Gear Man. The lifespan of the gear people determines their time, and it is not the time of the human system.

Wandering people, animals detached from the collective, will be forgotten by time.

Gu Chuan put aside these thoughts, gave a smile and said:

"That couldn't be better!"

The Gear Man simulated a human expression and nodded with the same smile:

"Thanks to you, the answer to the eighth question of the world has now been confirmed."

Jae-chan stood up and walked to the door. In the huge room, only the young man was left. This loneliness terrified him.

He stood up abruptly and said:

"Wait a minute! I still have ...... There are some thoughts about time that I would like to share. ”

Zai Yan turned his head and forced a smile:

"Good! What kind of ideas are you going to discuss? ”

The young man was a man who wanted to tell the many sources of his thoughts about time. The origin of these concepts naturally does not come from this life, but from the previous life.

The world of the previous life was not on the inside of a shell, but on the surface of a sphere of matter. And, the time is the same, people are connected, and many great learnings have taken root. The laws of time in the two worlds seem to be different, and they seem to be the same, which gives him a lot of metaphysical conjectures.

But when the words came to his lips, he didn't know what to say.

He hesitated for a moment:

"I'm thinking, I'm thinking...... Is the world only that big? The fact that I feel like I've seen the whole universe is a bit incredible. ”

Zai Yan leaned against the doorway, facing the young man on his side. He hugged his body and the glass book in his arms, and said:

"Maybe there's another world beyond that."

"What does that mean?"

"Once upon a time, there was a mentally ill cogwheel man, didn't he say that we were all from another world? I'll go to other worlds. After Zai Yan finished speaking, he saw that the young man did not speak, so he walked out silently.

The young man unconsciously sat back in his seat, thinking endlessly in the sun.

And the more he walked outside the door, the more he felt that he had a dull old state, as if he couldn't remember anything clearly, but many things seemed to be remembered very clearly. He shook his head, went to the reproduction room, and made dozens of copies of the glass book that recorded the Tai Chi world and time, and stored them in a box. Then he picked up the broom with his pliers and prepared to clean the young man's room. When he was cleaning, he thought he saw Chu Yun and Gu Chuan reading a book published by Gear Man. When he got out, he was about to respond to Mr. Dandan's ridicule, only to see the young man coming alone from the other side of the corridor.

When the young man entered the house, he called outside:

"Thank you, Zaiyi."

"Oh, no thanks, Kyo ......" Zaiyan, who was walking in the corridor, shook his head in a trance as he said halfway to the air in front of him, "Chuan." ”

For a long time, in the ship, only the carrier and the pinion machine were moving.

The pinion machine soon discovered the abnormality of the load. At that time, it accidentally knocked over the sewage bucket, and instead of blaming it, Zaiyi wiped it repeatedly as a new dirty place.

But no matter how much it was repaired and cleaned, the ship had been left with a wound that could not be remedied by one man alone. One day, while monitoring the outside world in the main observation room, he heard the sound of insects gnawing on metal. The metal was sturdy and gnawed, and the insects made a thin sound of flapping wings as they shifted. He followed the voice to an adjacent empty room. There were three chests in that room, and the remains of the cogwheel man who had experimented on himself were placed. He opened the box and saw black larvae crawling inside.

"It's the kind of worm that produces oil, it should be Qiongqiu and parasitic in the dream life when he was born, I don't know when it came in!"

He sounded the alarm.

Gu Chuan hurried over and asked:

"What's going on?"

He told the story. The young man's hanging heart was suddenly relaxed, and he said lazily:

"Two people can't handle it. When we get off the boat, I'll take you to live in my house, and I'll introduce you to my other friends. Let's all work together. ”

Zai Yan is sad in his heart, but the face of the Gear Man can be controlled by himself. He pretended to be calm and said:

"Okay, then I'll take care of it myself."

He began rummaging through the warehouse for suitable materials. Strangely, he should have written down everything in the manual during his travels, but when it was time to use it, he forgot it all and had to look for it again in the manual. It took him a long time to find the right lotion. This lotion does not do much harm to the human body, is soluble in water, and was specially used to regulate washing oil in the past.

He dialed out a solution with a concentration of about two percent of the lotion, and began to rinse every corner of the dead or alive number.

Sure enough, a large number of insect corpses floated on this heterogeneous water. The insects then dissolve into washing oil. Many bubbles bubble up from the washing oil that blends with the water. The bubbles glow in a rainbow of colors in the sun.

When Zai Yan heard the sound of popping bubbles behind him, he rebuked him solemnly:

"Zijin, Chuan, you all be serious, don't play anymore!"

As a result, the sound of popping bubbles still kept ringing.

He turned his head and saw that it was a manipulator and a pinion machine. The pinion machine was startled, and quickly hid in the black box at the base of the telescope with the manipulator, revealing only a small glass eye.

He stared behind him in a daze, turned his head in silence, and continued to scrub the floor, the boxes, the corners, and every corner that he rarely noticed. When the ship was finished, he began to wash the oil, distilling it according to the ancient method of the Gear Man, and storing it in four huge containers dedicated to washing oil on the Dead or Alive. At this time, he compared the scales, and suddenly realized that he hadn't used any washing oil in days.

"It's time."

He said calmly.

The cogwheel behind him heard an indistinct murmur and squeaked.

Unconsciously he said to the pinion machine:

"Assistant, follow me to the outside observation room."

The pinion machine saw him walking forward, but he didn't understand what he was saying, so he followed in a daze.

He pushed the toolbox he had used to refit himself into the outer observation room, and with great clarity in all the parts, he opened the black box at the bottom of the telescope, exposing the core of the newborn Cogwheel Man entwined with waterwheels and sails.

He turned his head and said to the pinion machine:

"Now do as I say."

But the pinion machine did not move for a long time, and in the face of the movement of the canopy and some murmurs of unwritten sentences, it asked suspiciously.

Zai Yi realized that his memory metal was erasing his speech instincts, or maybe his speech organs were damaged, in short, he couldn't speak. But the rest of the time, himself, and the new gear man of the telescope, should be able to understand by instinct.

The Gear Man has been passed down like this for generations.

A few days later, the afternoon sun shone brightly on the hull of the Death or Birth, and a few leisurely white clouds floated around the Death or Death, and the water of the dream was sparkling with light and dark.

The young man thought that he hadn't spoken to Zai Yan for a long time, so he opened the door and walked to the outside observation room. Along the way, he saw that the interior was completely new, and the windows were clean, which made people feel happy.

Surprised, he walked to the outside observation room and saw the back of the Gear Man.

He was about to say hello, but the gear man turned his head, revealing a square, simple head and a silly hello.

The young man was puzzled:

"Who are you?"

"I ...... I'm ......."

It pointed to the telescope with one hand, to itself with the other, and from time to time, to the horns that the young man hung on his head. There is a pure good feeling in the innocent eyes.

The young man understood, and asked in a dull voice, as if afraid:

"So, what about Zaiyi?"

The new Gear Man brought a clean, white-washed lion skin from one side.

He took it with trembling hands, and hurriedly opened the lion's skin, and saw a few lines of imprinted words engraved on the inside:

"I have never done anything in my life that is worthy of my teacher's teachings. Unlike Nine, I have neither remorse nor resentment towards my life as a cogwheel person. Anafinta said that there is a human world after death, and for some reason, I hope this is true...... If only the Gear Man had an afterlife, then in that world, the moonlight would surely shine on me, Kyokai, Zijin, and the rest of my companions, in a peaceful day of pursuit. ”

He clung to the hide, and let out a terrible howl in the heavy sunlight.