Beyond the Bloodline

Chapter 442: Fish Out of Water

The Dead Lifeform Olivia had captured was gradually crumbling into dust and grey fog.

Both Olivia and Richard recognised that grey fog as pseudo-nonexistence, so neither of them was surprised by its presence.

What shocked them was the fact that the dead lifeform was decomposing right in front of their eyes.

"But it’s not dead...?" Olivia muttered, confusion in her voice.

She had made sure not to kill any of them. She had only been using minute amounts of cosmic energy through mental magic to keep them unconscious, far from enough to kill something capable of surviving supernovae without a scratch.

"So just... what?"

Olivia immediately snapped her fingers, opened the containment tube, and reached out to grab the giant.

However, the instant her fingers touched the giant’s arm, its grey skin cracked and crumbled into dust before her eyes, faint traces of grey fog seeping out.

She frowned and pulled her hand back before reaching out again to another part of its body, pressing her palm against its chest. When it didn’t crack and crumble like its arm did, she shifted her hand toward its shoulder to grab it there, but as she moved her hand toward its shoulder, cracks began spreading across its chest along the path her fingers had traced, and she quickly pulled her hand back in shock.

"The heck?"

Seeing this reaction, Richard muttered, "You’re killing it."

"What the hell do you mean, I’m killing it?" Olivia immediately snapped.

"Calm down and think about this for a moment, Olivia," Richard responded. "These dead lifeforms are born from pseudo-nonexistence.

Pseudo-nonexistence itself isn’t true nothingness, and it can be resisted by overwhelming existence. We’ve gone over this analogy before. It’s like painting black ink over a white canvas until the white canvas turns completely black, except in this case, the black ink is existence overwriting pseudo-nonexistence."

"We’ve figured that out ages ago. Why are you bringing it up now?" Olivia asked with a frown.

"Because it looks like the cosmic energy coating your hand as you try to touch it is overwhelming the pseudo-nonexistence it’s made from, which is why its body is crumbling and dissipating into grey fog."

Olivia immediately shook her head in response to Richard’s deduction.

"That doesn’t make any sense, Richard. How does that explain how the others mysteriously vanished?

Let’s assume for a moment that they all decomposed like this one right in front of us. Then why? I didn’t touch any of those ones.

And besides, if we’re talking about cosmic energy causing them to decompose by overwriting their pseudo-existence with overwhelming existence, then they should’ve all died before I even brought them here.

I mean, I used far greater amounts of cosmic energy when capturing them and bringing them here, and after that, I haven’t touched any of the ones that vanished.

The most I did was use cosmic energy to keep them unconscious so they don’t rampage—?"

Olivia stopped midway, her eyes widening slightly as she came to a realisation.

"Was I actually killing them? I mean, I was using cosmic energy on them, but it was a trace amount that’s too weak to kill them..."

She trailed off into silence again, shaking her head as she realised this was conflicting with her earlier findings.

After all, these dead lifeforms had been fighting in space, a place filled with dense concentrations of cosmic energy, far higher than what was present in this research lab.

Olivia had deliberately lowered the ambient cosmic energy levels for their experiments, and she had only been using small amounts of cosmic energy through mental magic, so that conclusion still didn’t make sense to her.

The woman blinked and pressed her fingers to her temple as she slowly floated down to the ground.

"I’m confused and contradicting myself," she muttered.

However, Richard immediately spoke up to challenge that. "No, Olivia, I don’t think you are. In fact, you might actually be onto something."

Hearing this, Olivia looked up at Richard and asked, "Onto what?"

Richard turned to face her and asked in return, "Remember what I said about them originating from a region of the universe with destabilised rules and broken-down universal laws?"

When Olivia nodded silently, he continued his explanation.

"Let’s think about it like this: We were born in a part of the universe with properly functioning cosmic rules and universal law frameworks governed by Concepts.

But what happens if normal existences like us enter the Dead Zone? Depending on your Existence Realm and physical durability, you might be fine for the first few days. But after a while, you’d have to start protecting yourself with your energy, since the pseudo-nonexistence within the Dead Zone would begin to feed off your existence, trying to break down the universal law energy you possess, the powers of your Law Authorities.

If you stay too long, you become corrupted by the Dead Zone, you lose power, and you can potentially die.

Why wouldn’t the opposite be the case for existences of the Dead Zone leaving their corrupted framework and entering our stable framework?"

Olivia took a few seconds to consider Richard’s words, then nodded lightly as she understood exactly what he was implying.

"Thinking about it, it’s kinda obvious," Richard continued. "I know this is the same kind of assumption I was making earlier, but now we’ve got live proof in front of us.

When normal existences enter the Dead Zone and stay too long, they’re eventually overwhelmed by the pseudo-nonexistence. So if Dead Zone existences come out of it and stay too long in the normal part of the universe, doesn’t it make sense that they’d be overwhelmed by the stable existence surrounding their pseudo-nonexistence bodies, since they’re born from an environment with unstable laws?"

"So you’re saying it’s simply a biological failure?" Olivia asked with a raised brow.

"Yes. They’re not stable entities in structured environments, just as normal existences are unstable entities in unstructured environments like the Dead Zone. The dead lifeforms are environment-dependent existences, and these ones you’ve captured," Richard said, gesturing to the containment tubes around them before continuing, "They’re like fish out of water.

If their existences are continuously sustained by the ambient conditions of the Dead Zone, then outside of it, their existence wouldn’t hold permanently, so they start to revert, breaking down into pure pseudo-nonexistence, the grey fog."

When he finished speaking, Olivia ran her fingers through her hair in silence, then began muttering under her breath.

"True, if their existences are tied to a corrupted law structure and broken Conceptual stability, then removing them from that environment doesn’t just weaken them, it removes the supporting framework that keeps them coherently assembled."

Looking up at Richard with wide eyes, she shouted, "That’s why they were retreating! Those perfectly timed retreats weren’t because they were done attacking, but because they couldn’t spend too long outside the Dead Zone."

She looked at the giant dead lifeform breaking down before their eyes and added, "This is their biggest weakness in this war. They have to leave the environment that suits them best and enter a potentially hostile environment just to attack us."

"Sounds like something we can use against them," Richard suggested.

Olivia responded instantly in agreement.

"It doesn’t just sound like it. It IS something we can use against them, and something we WILL use against them."

With a faint smile, she muttered, "They won’t be retreating on their own terms anymore."