I'm Trapped in the Block

"If you don’t tell me your name, I’ll just call you Block, then?"

When Mo Ling didn’t answer, Martin didn’t seem to mind. He pulled his hand back and squatted down, grabbing a handful of sand.

He rubbed the sand between his palms for a long while before murmuring to himself, "All the grains of sand look exactly the same."

Mo Ling’s gaze followed Martin’s to the beach. Not only were the individual grains of sand identical in size, shape, and color, but even their wear patterns and water stains were indistinguishable.

’Copy and paste again.’

"Your ability is pretty impressive. You actually managed to break through its shell," Martin remarked with admiration.

"Where are we?" Mo Ling asked, looking around in confusion.

"The World of Sound. This is where the core entity exists." Martin stood up, letting the sand slowly trickle from his hand. "All of this stuff is made of sound."

"Look at those coconut trees. They all look exactly the same, too," Martin said, pointing at the trees from before.

Mo Ling followed his gesture. Although the coconut trees faced different directions, every single one was identical, right down to the coconuts themselves.

He targeted a coconut and used his teleportation to pull it into the Block’s interior.

The moment the coconut was stripped away, the tree it came from suddenly blurred, as if it couldn’t maintain its stability. It began to tremble violently, then abruptly exploded.

A strange syllable spread across the beach along with the explosion.

It sounded like someone reciting a word.

"’Luruyi.’ It means ’coconut tree’," Martin explained.

Mo Ling didn’t stop there. He tossed the whole coconut he had just stripped from the tree back out of the Block. Sure enough, the moment the coconut appeared, it also exploded instantly, but the syllable that emerged this time was completely different.

"That one means ’coconut’," Martin explained again.

"When this coconut tree was created, it must have been made using the ’coconut tree’ syllable as a whole. How were you able to strip out the ’coconut’ syllable by itself?"

Martin was stunned. This event seemed completely incomprehensible to him.

But he quickly explained the reason to Mo Ling.

In the World of Sound, everything is created from syllables. For example, saying "luruyi" creates a coconut tree. It’s a single whole, which includes the coconuts, leaves, branches, and so on.

That’s why when Mo Ling stripped away the coconut, the tree dissolved because it could no longer maintain its integrity as a whole.

In that entire creation process, there was no separate "coconut" syllable.

This meant Mo Ling’s teleportation ability had created a "coconut" syllable out of thin air.

"You need to study your ability carefully and understand the principles that govern it. That’s very important," Martin advised. "Perhaps your ability can touch the very essence of the world."

As he spoke, Martin’s tone grew more and more excited, and he grabbed Mo Ling’s hand.

"I will get you out of here. Both this place and the Black Tower. Trust me."

Martin’s sudden shift in attitude left Mo Ling a little confused.

’But it doesn’t seem like he has any ill intent, does he?’

"I’ll take you to the core. Follow me." Martin was suddenly full of motivation.

"That thing can’t lie. It told me everything. Don’t worry, just come with me and we’ll kill it."

The Martin of this moment was like a completely different person, filled with fighting spirit. He called out to Mo Ling and headed deeper into the island.

After a moment’s hesitation, Mo Ling decided to follow.

’Whatever Martin’s motives are, at least I can’t just sit here and wait to die.’

As they ventured deeper into the island, their surroundings seemed to become more vibrant and colorful. All sorts of plants grew with vigor, but a closer look revealed many strange things.

All plants of the same species were completely identical, each one a copy-paste of the last. Although it was hard to notice with so many different types jumbled together, the clues were there.

Moreover, there was no sound at all in the island jungle. It was utterly silent.

"Are there no animals?"

Mo Ling had assumed it was due to a lack of animals, since he couldn’t hear any birds chirping or insects buzzing.

But when his vision penetrated beneath the foliage, he spotted many kinds of small animals. A number of identical-looking birds were also perched on the branches.

However, they gave themselves away when they flapped their wings. The birds’ movements were like a recording on a loop; every bird moved in unison, the trajectory of their wings perfectly synchronized.

This also meant they all took off at the same angle. Some birds flew straight into branches, then continued to flap their wings while stuck against the wood, as if glitching.

Many birds were like this, getting stuck in parts of the canopy. The lucky ones would slip free and fly into the sky; the unlucky ones would remain stuck until their wing-flapping animation finished, at which point they would fall back down and grab onto a branch.

The farther they walked, the more stuck animals they saw in the forest. Not just birds, but also larger creatures, trapped between rocks and walking endlessly in place.

"The way these creatures were created is very shoddy. They’re like game models, only capable of Action One, Action Two, Action Three... over and over again. It’d be fine if someone were controlling them, but with no one in charge, this is what happens," Martin said, looking at the animals.

"Don’t they have intelligence?" Mo Ling asked.

"Can you expect an object simply formed from sound to have independent thought?"

Martin walked forward, summoned a small knife, and slashed at a stuck deer. The deer collapsed abruptly, as if some mechanism had been triggered. It died instantly, then dissolved into a strange syllable that scattered on the wind.

"That’s their death animation," Martin explained with a strange look. "They didn’t even program in a decomposition animation. Such shoddy work."

The two continued onward. When they came to a pool of water, Mo Ling had a sudden idea and activated his teleportation on it.

After a hole appeared in the pool, ripples spread across its surface, and then the entire pool vanished in an instant.

"I thought it was made of ’water,’ but it turns out it was created from ’pool’," Mo Ling said with a helpless sigh.

Martin, on the other hand, was delighted. "Looks like you’re already starting to understand this world. It’s an incredibly shoddy world. The cornerstones are too big. You could even say it has no cornerstones at all."

"Cornerstones?" Mo Ling picked up on the strange word.

"Yes, cornerstones," Martin explained. "The most fundamental components of the entire world."

"Aren’t the cornerstones of this world sound?" Mo Ling was very confused.

"No. Sound makes up this world, but it isn’t the cornerstone."

Martin began to lecture Mo Ling.

You can use many things to build a world—sound, light, flesh, even spaghetti. Anything you can think of, really. And sound is already one of the better options.

But when you create a world, you first have to use these materials to form a ’basic unit.’ That unit is what’s called a ’cornerstone.’ The cornerstone must be indestructible, and then you use the cornerstones to build everything else in the world.

"For example, you first use sound to form cornerstones, and then use the cornerstones to form objects. That way, when an object is destroyed, it doesn’t break down into sound, but shatters back into the cornerstones it was built from."

"Creating a world is like building a castle with blocks. The right way is to use sound to create the blocks, then use the blocks to build the castle—not use sound to create the castle directly."

"That’s why I said this world is so shoddy." 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Martin picked up another clump of dirt and crushed it in his hand. When he opened his palm again, he didn’t see crumbled soil, but an empty hand.

"In our world, scientists call the cornerstone by another name. Any guesses what it is?"

Mo Ling thought for a moment before answering, "Elementary particles?"

"Exactly."