The thread carried him the way the Star Compass had carried him from Blue Star to Tianyuan Star, not through the space between origin and destination but through the connection between them, the transit not a traversal but a following of what was already continuous.
The Middle Domain ceased to be the relevant context.
What replaced it arrived not gradually but as a quality change, the same way the Middle Domain had arrived when he stepped through the Ninth Gate, immediately and totally and without the moment between.
He stood in a space he had no prior framework for.
