To answer your simple question with a simple answer (“What is real?”): whatever we would consider to be real cannot be something which comes and goes; that excludes anything which is a form, either substantial (e.g., the universe) or insubstantial (a thought). All forms have a beginning, somewhere in time or space, and an ending: they come and they go.

What can be depended upon to not come and go is that which has never been created; that which we cannot say has ever had a beginning. Therefore, it would not be any thing or form.  

Time and space, in which anything comes and goes, would have no relationship to this which is form-less.

As contrasted to every other thing, this would be no thing—which the scriptures call nothing, or nothingness (ness meaning “the condition of”).

As no thing, it is empty of being. Thus, this condition is also called emptiness.

However, once you understand this, we can no longer say that the ultimate reality is emptiness. Emptiness would have to be empty of any conditions, such as “real”, or “not real”.

So instead we would say: the ultimate condition is emptiness, which is neither real nor unreal.

Not being either real or unreal, it has had no beginning, and does not come and go.