The Cloud of Poems emitted a silvery radiance bright enough to cast shadows on the ground. It wasn’t that the Cloud itself was made to glow, apparently, but rather that cosmic rays would excite it into silver luminescence. Due to the uneven spatial distribution of the cosmic rays, glowing masses frequently rippled through the Cloud of Poems, their varicolored light rolling across the sky like luminescent whales diving through the Cloud. Rarely, with spikes in the cosmic radiation, the Cloud of Poems emitted dapples of light that made the Cloud look utterly unlike a cloud. Instead, the entire sky seemed to be the surface of a moonlit sea seen from below.

Earth and the Cloud did not move in sync, so sometimes Earth lay in the gaps between the spiral arms. Through the gap, one could see the night sky and the stars, and most thrillingly, a cross-sectional view of the Cloud of Poems. Immense structures resembling Earthly cumulonimbuses rose from the spiraling plane, shimmering with silvery light, morphing through magnificent forms that inspired the human imagination, as if they belonged to the dreamscape of some super-advanced consciousness.

Yi Yi tore his gaze from the Cloud of Poems and picked up a crystal chip off the ground. These chips were scattered around them, sparkling like shards of ice in winter. Yi Yi raised the chip against a sky thick with the Cloud of Poems. The chip was very thin, and half the size of his palm. It appeared transparent from the front, but if he tilted it slightly, he could see the bright light of the Cloud of Poems reflect off its surface in rainbow halos. This was a quantum memory chip. All the written information created in human history would take up less than a millionth of a percent of one chip. The Cloud of Poems was composed of 1040 of these storage devices, and contained all the results of the ultimate poem composition. It was manufactured using all the matter in the sun and its nine major planets, of course including the Devouring Empire.

“What a magnificent work of art!” Bigtooth sighed sincerely.

“Yes, it’s beautiful in its significance: a nebula fifteen billion kilometers across, encompassing every poem possible. It’s too spectacular!” Yi Yi said, gazing at the nebula. “Even I’m starting to worship technology.”

Li Bai gave a long sigh. He had been in a low mood all this time. “Ai, it seems like we’ve both come around to the other person’s viewpoint. I witnessed the limits of technology in art. I—” He began to sob. “I’ve failed….”

“How can you say that?” Yi Yi pointed at the Cloud of Poems overhead. “This holds all the possible poems, so of course it holds the poems that surpass Li Bai’s!”