Silent Ark

Chapter 16: Taking on a Critical Mission

"The five on the left—the five I deduced—are smooth manifolds. There are no breaks or wrinkles. Each point has a well-defined tangent space. In the language of physics—their information structure is complete. There is no loss or compression."

"Two completely different topological structures. Two completely different types of higher-dimensional existence."

Yao Chong closed his notebook.

They are not from the same batch.

Chen Dunli remained silent for ten seconds.

ten seconds.

In this world where the flow of time is a bit off, it might be equivalent to thirteen seconds or eight seconds for someone else, or some other random number.

"Have you sorted them?" he asked.

"Yes. But it's not a classification I made using human concepts." Yao Chong's voice was calm, as if he were reading a lab report. "It's their own mathematical structure that forced a classification."

Yao Chong opened his notebook and pointed to the picture on the right.

"These seven on the right—non-smooth manifolds—can be precisely mapped to seven known concepts in terms of their topological characteristics. It's not because I chose these seven concepts to fit them—it's because their mathematical structure contains these seven concepts. It's like solving an equation, and the roots you get happen to be seven specific numbers—not chosen by you, but determined by the equation."

Which seven?

Yao Chong took a deep breath.

A bitter almond and rusty taste surged in the depths of his consciousness.

Pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, gluttony, lust.

No one laughed in the meeting room.

This in itself is a fact worth recording—in a room with seventy-three top scientists, someone uttered seven terms from medieval theology as classification labels for physical observations, and no one laughed.

Because everyone saw something in those seven seconds of whale fall—something that made the reaction of "laughter" inappropriate.

"Continue," Chen Dunli said.

"The seven nonsmooth manifolds can each be precisely described by a single eigenfunction. The arrogant eigenfunction is a self-mapping—f(x) = x. It points only to itself and rejects any external input. Mathematically, this means that its information boundary is completely closed—no information can enter and no information can leave."

"The characteristic function of jealousy is a difference operator—Δf=f(other)-f(self). It does not produce any original information, but only calculates the gap between 'self' and 'other', and then tries to eliminate that gap—not by elevating oneself, but by lowering the other."

"The characteristic function of the rage is a deletion operator—∇×F=∞. The curl is infinite, which means that the field lines are infinitely concentrated at a certain point—a pure, directionless singularity that is only responsible for eliminating differences."

"The characteristic function of laziness is a damping term—e^(-λt), λ→∞. The decay coefficients of all dynamic processes tend to infinity. It is not stillness—it is 'the speed at which it tends to stillness is infinitely fast.' It consumes all motion to an undetectable level within a second."

"The characteristic function of greed is a convergence operator—∇·F<0, with negative divergence everywhere. All field lines converge inward, never outward. It's an information black hole that only takes in and never gives out."

"The characteristic function of gluttony is a convolution—f*g. It does not selectively absorb, but convolves all input signals with itself, 'muddling' all external information into its own structure, losing all boundaries and discriminative power."

"The characteristic function of lust is a tensor product—f⊗g. It does not 'connect' two systems—a connection preserves at least two endpoints. The tensor product merges two systems into a larger system, eliminating the original two. It forces a fusion. It eliminates individuality."

After Yao Chong finished reciting the seven names, he paused for a moment, noticing that the bitter almond and rusty smell had intensified.

"The same applies to the five on the left—smooth manifolds. Their eigenfunctions also map precisely to the five concepts."

"Benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness."

A deeper silence.

"The characteristic function of Ren is a scalar field—φ, which is positive everywhere and decays outward everywhere but never becomes zero. It is a diffuse, non-directional field that is only responsible for 'connection'. It does not choose the objects of connection—just as gravity does not choose the mass that is attracted—it simply makes the act of 'connection' itself a physical reality."

"The characteristic function of 'meaning' is a hyperplane segmentation—H(x)=0. A plane that is precisely cut in high-dimensional space. Information on one side of the plane is preserved, while the other side is truncated. It is not a fuzzy boundary—it is an absolute boundary, like a knife cut. 'Suitable' is on one side of the knife, and 'unsuitable' is on the other side."

"The characteristic function of ritual is a fiber bundle—a geometric structure that is locally trivial but globally potentially non-trivial. Each local part appears simple, ordered, and predictable—but from a global perspective, these parts are intricately bound together, forming a whole that cannot be easily disassembled. Atomic orbitals are fiber bundles. The DNA double helix is ​​a fiber bundle. Legal systems are fiber bundles. The essence of all 'patterns' and 'norms' is a fiber bundle."

"The characteristic function of intelligence is a projection operator—P²=P. It does only one thing: extract the 'real parts' from the information and discard the 'false parts'. And it is idempotent—doing it once yields the same result as doing it ten thousand times. Pure filtering. It doesn't generate new information, it only removes noise."

"The characteristic function of the letter is a delta function—δ(x-x₀). It is zero at infinity, infinite at a certain point, and its integral is 1. An absolute fixed point. An absolute anchor. It drives a nail into the ocean of probability and says, 'Here, nothing changes.'"

Yao Chong finished speaking.

He closed the notebook again.

"Twelve higher-dimensional existences. Seven are non-smooth—damaged, broken, and with singularities. Five are smooth—complete, continuous, and without singularities."

"These are not moral concepts invented by humans. They are fundamental laws on a cosmic scale. Over thousands of years of history, human civilization has vaguely perceived the projection of these higher-dimensional beings into our space through intuition, religion, and philosophy—and then named them 'sin' and 'virtue'."

"We thought the seven deadly sins were human weaknesses. They are not."

"The seven deadly sins are the seven wounds of the universe."

"We thought the Five Constant Virtues were humanity's ideal. No."

"The Five Constants are like five patches on the universe."

Liu Pan took over the conversation.

He walked over and stood next to Yao Chong. The two of them were positioned in an asymmetrical way—Yao Chong was sitting and holding the laptop, while Liu Pan was standing, like a tree and a shadow leaning against it.

"Yao Chong gave you the mathematical model he deduced, and I brought the physical object for you to experience."

He took something out of his pocket and placed it on the table.

It was a stone, gray, ordinary, the kind of stone you see everywhere by the roadside, about the size of an egg.