Otaku Translation: The Epoch of Anomalies V2C5

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Chapter 5: Pseudocolor Map of in Region D508 on July 21

“Who knows what’s inside,” whispered. “I’ll open my eyes first. If everything looks fine, I’ll tell you when to open yours.”

Li Xingyuan could see more than —perhaps even more clearly.

The doors were normal.

They glowed, but their essence couldn’t be easily defined. They seemed like hallucinations confined to Li Xingyuan’s mind, unaffected by the slowing of light.

It was ironic. In this chaotic world, they were the only things offering him real-time "truth."

"Mm."

Su Xiao nodded. Li Xingyuan saw the keyhole on her forehead wobble slightly before her actual head came into focus.

The scene was eerie, as if Li Xingyuan had foreseen some abstract future. But with so many strange things happening, this hardly registered.

Li Xingyuan pushed open the door to the main control room.

A wasn’t a traditional optical telescope as most people imagined.

Unlike the massive, famous "" in the southwest, ’s radio telescope was an array of smaller telescopes spread across the mountain. These "eyes" used to combine signals, simulating a virtual telescope as large as the distance between the farthest units, greatly enhancing image resolution.

This array had been newly constructed just before the disaster struck. Though not famous, it was highly effective.

These details were explained by Su Xiao.

Perhaps she really was a professor, afflicted with a teacher’s habit of imparting knowledge.

Regardless, the signals collected by the array of small radio telescopes were ultimately transmitted to this very room—the brain of the Luo Jin Mountain radio telescope array.

And now, that brain had shut down.

When Li Xingyuan and Su Xiao entered the main control room, no one was there. The scientists were gone—whether that was good or bad news remained unclear. But the main screen was still lit, displaying a peculiar image.

There it was—a single image. Yet as Li Xingyuan dragged Su Xiao into the control room, amidst the distorted, grotesque, torn-apart visuals resembling postmodern art, the image remained stable, unmoving.

It was a strange, enormous, slow-moving —rhythmic, almost alive. Was it a newly discovered galaxy? No, it didn’t quite fit. It looked like a fingerprint, or perhaps an eye.

It was watching. Li Xingyuan could feel it. Perhaps from hundreds or thousands of light-years away, it gazed at them. The massive composed of countless stars, with a pupil-like center—it watched, observing them.

Almost instantly, upon realizing it was looking, Li Xingyuan’s consciousness disintegrated. The distance between every atom in his body seemed to stretch infinitely. It observed him—not with intent, perhaps unaware of its own gaze, much like how humans might overlook certain details their eyes perceive. Yet it saw the light.

Li Xingyuan’s consciousness returned.

He felt as though he had died—for minutes, perhaps—but that was subjective. Here, time was unreliable due to the slowed light.

He turned to look at Su Xiao, but it took nearly a minute for her face to appear in his vision. Light moved too slowly here, especially near that gaze, bending sharply.

“What happened?” He heard Su Xiao’s voice, though her lips hadn’t moved. Her tone was impatient. “What did you see?”

“Don’t open your eyes,” Li Xingyuan said urgently. “I’ll tell you what I saw.”

He described the image to her. After listening, Su Xiao murmured softly: “.”

“What?”

“What you saw is a pseudocolor map,” Su Xiao explained. “Humans can’t see waves, Li Xingyuan. A radio telescope collects radio waves reflected by celestial bodies in space. These waves are then converted into weak electronic signals by receivers. These signals undergo millions of times amplification before being sent to the central computer, recording intensity, frequency, direction of origin. The images are processed with colors to make them visible to the human eye—these are pseudocolor maps. The real universe isn’t beautiful—at least not in ways visible to the naked eye. We evolved to live on planets, not to comprehend the cosmos.”

“You said you saw a specific pattern, right? Like an eye?” Su Xiao paused, her next words hesitant. “Is it symmetrical? Are its edges smooth? You said it was rhythmic—does it repeat in a regular pattern?”

“It’s not ‘like’ an eye,” Li Xingyuan said, annoyed by her interpretation. Still, he spent a few seconds recalibrating his vision and observing again. “It’s spiral-shaped, but yes, I think it’s symmetrical. Its edges—mostly smooth. Rhythm… yes, correct. There’s a rule, like DNA. Not double helix, but there’s definitely some kind of regularity.”

“That’s impossible,” Su Xiao declared, though excitement lurked beneath her voice. “Do you know what this means? That’s a picture of something in the universe! The scale of that image could be—do you understand what a symmetrical, smooth, rhythmic, non-single-asteroid-level pseudocolor map implies? Let me check the computer logs. Read them to me.”

Li Xingyuan dragged Su Xiao forward. The gaze still lingered, but the dissociation didn’t recur. He approached the console’s computer. It was password-protected, but passwords were abstract locks to him.

Li Xingyuan reached out, lightly touching the case. It surrendered its secrets to him.

A file was running on the main computer—the image, the completed pseudocolor map. Li Xingyuan read the file name aloud: “Pseudocolor Map of Cosmic Microwave Noise in Region D508 on July 21.”

He heard Su Xiao’s breath catch.

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