I’m Trapped in a Cube - Chapter 139

“If you won’t tell me your name, I’ll just call you Cube,” said Martin. Seeing that Mo Ling didn’t answer, he didn’t mind, withdrew his hand, squatted down, and grabbed a handful of sand.

He rubbed the sand in his palm for a while, muttering to himself, “All the sand grains look exactly the same.”

Mo Ling’s gaze followed his, falling on the beach. Each grain of sand was not only identical in size, shape, and color, but even the wear and water stains were exactly the same.

Copy-paste again.

“Your ability is pretty impressive, you actually managed to break through his shell,” Martin exclaimed.

“Where is this?” Mo Ling looked around, asking in confusion.

“This is the world of sound, the place where the Core’s true body exists,” said Martin, standing up and letting the sand slowly fall from his hand. “All these things are made from sound.”

“Look at those coconut trees, they’re all exactly the same,” Martin pointed to the coconut trees from earlier.

Mo Ling looked in that direction. Though the coconut trees faced different ways, each one was identical, and even the coconuts were exactly the same.

He targeted a coconut and used teleportation to pull it into the Cube.

The moment the coconut was separated, the coconut tree suddenly blurred, as if it couldn’t maintain stability, began to shake violently, and then suddenly exploded.

A strange syllable spread across the beach with the explosion.

It was as if someone was chanting a word.

“Luruyi, that means coconut tree,” Martin explained.

Mo Ling didn’t stop, but threw the whole coconut he’d separated from the Cube back out. Sure enough, as soon as the coconut appeared, it also exploded, but this time a completely different syllable sounded.

“That means coconut,” Martin explained again.

“When the coconut tree was created, the whole thing was made with the coconut tree’s syllable, and you actually managed to separate the coconut’s syllable by itself?”

Martin was quite shocked; this seemed very hard for him to understand.

But soon, he 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 whole, including the coconut, leaves, trunk…”

“So when you separated the coconut, the tree couldn’t maintain its integrity and dissolved.”

“In this whole creation process, there was never a separate ‘coconut’ syllable.”

“So, your teleportation ability actually created a ‘coconut’ syllable out of nothing.”

“You really need to study your ability, figure out how it determines things, that’s important,” Martin advised. “Maybe your ability can touch the essence of the world.”

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

“I’ll definitely get you out of here, whether it’s this place or the Black Tower, trust me.”

Martin’s sudden change of attitude left Mo Ling a little confused.

“But he didn’t seem hostile?”

“I’ll take you to find the Core, follow me,” Martin suddenly got motivated.

“That guy doesn’t lie, he’s told me everything, don’t worry, come with me and let’s kill him.”

At this moment, Martin was completely different from before, full of fighting spirit. He called for Mo Ling and headed toward the depths of the island.

After hesitating a moment, Mo Ling decided to follow.

No matter what Martin’s goal was, at least he couldn’t just sit here and wait to die.

Entering the island’s depths, everything seemed more vibrant, all kinds of plants thriving, but on closer inspection, there were still many strange things.

All plants of the same kind were exactly the same-every single one was copy-paste. Though many species were mixed together and hard to spot at a glance, the pattern was there.

And in this island jungle, there was no sound at all-utter silence.

“No animals?” Mo Ling thought maybe it was because there were no animals, since he heard no birds or insects.

But when he let his vision penetrate under the plants, he still found many kinds of small animals, and some identical birds perched on branches.

But when they flapped their wings, it became obvious, their movements were like a video, all the birds moving in perfect unison, their wingbeats tracing the exact same path.

This meant they all took off at the same angle, and some birds flew straight into branches, then got stuck, flapping against the branch.

Many birds were like this, stuck in the canopy somewhere. The lucky ones would slide off and fly into the sky, the unlucky ones just stayed stuck, flapping until the motion finished, then dropped down to grab the branch again.

The further they walked, the more stuck animals there were in the forest-not just birds, but some large animals, stuck between rocks, endlessly walking in place.

“These creatures are created in a shoddy way, they’re like game models, only able to do action one, action two, action three… endlessly repeating. If someone controls them, it’s fine, but if not, this happens,” Martin said, watching the animals.

“They don’t have intelligence?” Mo Ling asked.

“Would you expect something made from simple sound to have independent intelligence?”

Martin stepped forward, summoned a small knife, and slashed at a stuck deer. The deer suddenly collapsed as if triggered, died instantly, and then turned into a strange syllable that drifted away on the wind.

“That’s its death animation,” Martin explained oddly. “Didn’t even bother with a decay animation, so lazy.”

They kept walking. When they reached a pond, Mo Ling had a sudden idea and used teleportation on it.

After a void appeared in the pond, it started to ripple, then the whole pond vanished instantly.

“I thought it was made of ‘water,’ but turns out it was created with ‘pond’,” Mo Ling said, a bit helpless.

Martin was delighted. “Looks like you’ve figured out this world, it’s a really shoddy world, the foundation is too big, you could even say there’s no foundation at all.”

“Foundation?” Mo Ling noticed a strange term.

“Yes, foundation,” Martin explained. “It’s the most basic component of the whole world.”

“Isn’t the foundation of this world sound?” Mo Ling was confused.

“No, sound makes up this world, but it isn’t the foundation.”

Martin began to explain.

You can use lots of things to make a world, sound, light, flesh, even spaghetti, anything you can imagine. Sound is actually one of the better ones.

But when creating a world, you have to use these things to make a ‘basic unit’ first. That’s what’s called a ‘foundation.’ The foundation must be indestructible, and then you use the foundation to make everything else.

“For example, use sound to make foundation blocks, then use those blocks to make objects. That way, when an object is destroyed, it doesn’t break down into sound, but into other objects made from the foundation.”

“Creating a world is like building a castle out of blocks. The right way is to use sound to make the blocks, then use the blocks to build the castle, not to build the castle directly from sound.”

“That’s why I said this world is shoddy.”

Martin picked up a clod of earth, crushed it in his hand, and when he opened his palm again, there was nothing but emptiness.

“In our world, scientists call the foundation by another name, can you guess what it is?”

Mo Ling thought for a moment and answered, “Elementary particle?”

“That’s right.”