The Universe in the Portrait

Introduction to the work: When the Deep Space Gazing Network captured an abnormal star map tens of billions of light-years away, the scholars of the Star Sea Federation had not yet realized that what they saw was not a natural celestial body - it was an entire cosmic structure of stars, arranged into a portrait of an unknown civilization on a macro scale, and each star was an unshakable "pixel." In order to protect this eternal work, the rules of space around the portrait have been permanently rewritten: gravity and strong force stop here, and only electromagnetic waves penetrate the boundary. No matter whether the internal stars are destroyed or displaced, they can be restored instantly. Even if the microscopic particles are broken into protons and neutrons, they will reunite according to a specific time trajectory. This is an independent universe that is dimensionally locked, and contains the seeds of the ultimate truth of the universe. As the news spread, large cosmic civilizations that could control the rules of the shallow universe swarmed in. They competed for observation rights around the portrait and sent an advance team to sneak in, only to find that the painting was a one-way cage - only electromagnetic waves could transmit information. What shocked them even more was when they learned that the universe was accelerating towards heat death, and the energy of the portrait universe seemed to never be exhausted. Civilizations extracted energy to maintain their own existence, and they had to listen to the truth in it.