Lin Mei crawled closer, wrapping her arms around the group of girls. They held onto each other tightly, seeking warmth as they faced the terrifying and vast expanse of the universe. The young men could only sit in silence at their respective positions. Li Wei hugged his knees tightly to his chest. Zhao Lin stared blankly at his trembling palms.
Han Dong leaned the back of his head against the crystal floor, closing his eyes tightly to escape reality. Chu Xinghe sat quietly, watching the giant galaxies out there race past. The golden light from the cosmic filaments illuminated the terrified faces of his friends. They had truly been separated far from the human world.
The sobbing of Xin Yan and Yun Hai gradually subsided as time went by. The human brain has a maximum limit for processing pressure and terror. Once that limit is exceeded, the body's system automatically forces consciousness to shut down as a form of self-protection so that sanity does not shatter completely.
Fang Hua fell into a deep sleep with her head resting in Lin Mei's lap, who had also closed her eyes while folding her arms over her knees. Xin Yan and Yun Hai slept huddled together on the crystal floor. Li Wei snored softly in a curled position, trying to gather the remaining warmth in the air. Zhao Lin fell unconscious due to mental exhaustion, his face still bearing traces of panic with his mouth slightly agape.
Inside the giant bronze cauldron, only two people remained awake, fighting off sleep. Chu Xinghe sat with his back straight, his eyes constantly watching the expanse of galactic light from the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall as it raced past the transparent wall. Han Dong sat leaning against the boundary of dense air about two meters to Xinghe's right, his hands twirling an empty vacuum water bottle.
"How long are you going to keep staring out there?" Han Dong asked very softly, intentionally hushed so as not to wake the others.
Chu Xinghe turned slowly toward Han Dong. "I'm just making sure our speed hasn't changed. As long as those galaxies are still streaks of light, we're still moving."
Han Dong let out a long sigh and placed the empty bottle on the crystal floor. He looked at his own palms, dirty with dust and dried blood. "We just graduated high school, Xinghe. Yesterday morning, I was still thinking about how I could pass the national athletic team selection next month. My coach said my running speed already met the minimum qualification standards."
Han Dong smiled bitterly, mocking his own plans. "My parents had been saving for years to rent an apartment in the capital if I made it. They bragged about me to all the neighbors. And now I'm ten billion light-years from home, trapped inside an antique pulled by dragons. All those plans vanished in a single night."
Chu Xinghe listened to Han Dong's story in silence. He could see the wreckage of hope in the athletic youth's eyes.
"What about you, Xinghe?" Han Dong asked again, this time turning his sitting position to face Xinghe directly. "You were the smartest kid in our year. Your grades were perfect in history and ancient literature. If we hadn't gone to Zhao Lin's nightclub and hadn't boarded this furnace, what was your plan for tomorrow morning?"
Chu Xinghe lowered his gaze, staring at the numberless carvings on the bronze watch in his hand. "I planned to buy a flight ticket abroad."
"A graduation vacation?"
"No," Xinghe replied shortly. "My uncle and aunt live there. They had already processed all my registration documents to enter the same university in the city where they live. They even bought a small house for me. The plan was for me to move my grandfather's entire library there next month using sea cargo."
Han Dong furrowed his brow, sensing something unusual about the plan. "Your grandfather's book collection is massive. The international cargo costs to move that many books must be incredibly expensive. Why were you so insistent on bringing them? You could have sold them to a museum or an antique collector in Guangzhou."
Chu Xinghe shook his head firmly. "Those books aren't merchandise. Those books are the only key I have to finding my grandfather's whereabouts."
"Finding him?" Han Dong tilted his head. "Everyone at school knows your grandfather disappeared two years ago in the mountains. The police closed the case and declared him dead in a hiking accident. You still think he's alive?"
"The police declared him dead because they couldn't find a body and they needed a reason to close the report file," Chu Xinghe said flatly. "My grandfather never went hiking to enjoy the scenery. He always went to places that had historical anomalies. Two years ago, before he left, he spent weeks in his library reading texts from the era before the Qin Dynasty."
Chu Xinghe looked directly into Han Dong's eyes. "I planned to use the allowance from my uncle and aunt to hire a private investigator or an independent expedition team. I wanted to track all the coordinates my grandfather marked in his books. I don't believe he died a pathetic death slipping into a ravine."
Han Dong fell silent hearing that confession. He realized that behind Chu Xinghe's calm and indifferent attitude at school, the youth harbored an obsessive search.
"You saw everything that happened today," Xinghe continued. "The nine giant corpses, this flying furnace, the shattered blue planet, and those cosmic monsters. The fact that my grandfather had a watch that could respond to this object proves that he knew about the other side of our world. He didn't die on Earth, Dong. I'm sure he found a way to step out."
"Step out to where?" Han Dong asked, confused. "To the place of those giant monsters? That place is hell."
"I don't know exactly where," Xinghe replied. He rested his head on his knees. "There were many things in his books that I used to consider as the nonsense of an old man going senile. Now I'm starting to realize that I was the one too stupid to understand his language."
Chu Xinghe took a deep breath, the scent of mountain jasmine filling his lungs. "My grandfather often quoted Laozi's Daodejing. He always talked about the concept of the Dao."
"The Dao?" Han Dong tried to recall his school lessons. "You mean the philosophy about the way of the universe? The concept of the balance of flowing water and all those theories of passive governance?"
"Yes, that's the common understanding taught in modern schools," Xinghe said. "Schools teach us that the Dao is just a metaphor. A literary trope to teach humans to live in harmony with nature and not be greedy. I thought the same thing back then."
Xinghe stared at the crystal disc in the center of the room. "But my grandfather didn't read it as a metaphor. He read those texts literally. He once told me that the Dao is not a concept of thought, but a form of absolute matter. A real law of energy that governs the entire foundation of this cosmos."
Han Dong scratched his head, though it didn't itch. His athletic logic had difficulty digesting such abstract explanations. "How do you mean absolute matter? Like atomic energy or gravity?"
"Greater than that," Xinghe tried to find a proper comparison. "My grandfather said that heaven and earth have essence, and humans can absorb that essence if they know how to unlock the keys within their bodies. Back when I heard him talk like that, I felt very confused and a bit uncomfortable."
Chu Xinghe smiled bitterly, mocking his past ignorance. "Just imagine, an old man sitting in a dark library, saying that ancient humans could fly through the clouds and split mountains because they drank energy from the stars. I thought then that he watched too many cheap wuxia television dramas. I argued with him, saying that science had proven the human body only consists of carbon, water, and cells."
Han Dong listened seriously this time. The experience of seeing monsters crushing planets with tentacles made Han Dong very open to any kind of crazy theory.
"So what does the Dao and Laozi have to do with all this?" Han Dong asked, pointing around the bronze cauldron room.
"The connection lies in the disappearance of Laozi," Xinghe adjusted his sitting position. "In historical records, Laozi went to the west riding a green ox and vanished without a trace at the Hangu Pass after leaving his book. My grandfather believed that Laozi did not die. He believed Laozi successfully broke the laws of the universe, absorbed that absolute matter energy, and his physical form changed. He didn't die; he shifted dimensions."
Han Dong swallowed hard. "Just like your grandfather?"
"I don't know if my grandfather managed to reach that stage, but he was looking for it," Xinghe answered. "Or not at all. Everything feels confusing; I don't know what to believe is right or wrong."
Han Dong remained silent for a long time. He looked down at his own body. He was an athlete who trained his muscles and physique every day on Earth. Yet in the face of the harshness of space, his muscular body was nothing more than a piece of fragile flesh that could be destroyed just by a change in air pressure. Their conversation was abruptly interrupted.
The view outside the transparent glass wall changed drastically in a single blink of an eye. The giant galaxies of the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, which were previously dazzling, suddenly distorted. Their light bent extremely, pulled toward a single central point located exactly in the flight path of the nine animal corpses pulling the cauldron.
Chu Xinghe immediately stood upright. Han Dong jumped up with a tense face. Before them, in the middle of that vacuum, a massive pitch-black vortex opened wide. The vortex emitted no light at all and instead swallowed all the light of the stars and galaxies around it. Its edge was surrounded by a ring of cosmic dust spinning at a frantic speed.
"Xinghe," Han Dong took a step back, his voice trembling violently. "That's a black hole. We are heading straight into a black hole!"
Panic immediately gripped Han Dong's chest. His basic knowledge of astronomy told him that no object in the universe could survive the gravitational pull of a black hole. Their physical forms would be stretched like long noodles until they were destroyed at a fundamental level before they even reached the center.
Chu Xinghe clenched his fists tightly. He prepared to receive a massive shock that would shatter this bronze cauldron into pieces. He looked at his friends who were still sound asleep on the floor, feeling grateful at least they wouldn't have to see this terrifying end. The five black dragons and four phoenixes did not slow their pace at all.
They flapped their dead wings and bodies, gliding straight through the ring of cosmic dust and into the mouth of the pitch-black vortex. Chu Xinghe and Han Dong closed their eyes tightly, waiting for the pain of gravity tearing their bodies apart. They counted down in their heads, but when they reached past fifteen, there was still no shock.
Chu Xinghe opened his eyes slowly. He was still standing on the crystal platform intact. Han Dong was also still standing in his place with wide eyes and his mouth agape. The bronze cauldron glided through the black vortex smoothly, as if they were just passing through a calm water gate. Suddenly, a metallic shifting sound rang out from the platform floor.
Chu Xinghe and Han Dong simultaneously looked down. The crystal disc in the center of the room was spinning at a dizzying speed. The soft green glow of the spring flower symbol faded quickly. The disc stopped spinning and locked onto the second symbol. An image of a sun with sharp angles emitted an incredibly bright golden-orange light.
The scent of mountain jasmine vanished without a trace. In its place, the air inside the cauldron changed drastically. An incredibly comfortable warmth instantly enveloped the entire room. It was like pure warmth, much like the embrace of the morning sun at the height of summer. Lin Mei, who was sleeping while clutching her knees, unconsciously relaxed her body and straightened her legs because she felt comfortable. Li Wei, who had been huddled tightly, now lay on his back with a peaceful face.
"It's summer," Chu Xinghe murmured. He looked at the sun's light from the disc. "This furnace is changing its journey phase."
Han Dong pointed toward the transparent glass wall of the cauldron with a trembling hand. "Xinghe, look outside. Where are we now?"
Chu Xinghe shifted his gaze from the seasonal disc toward the outside of the cauldron wall. The view outside had changed completely, erasing all the rules of astronomy known to man. The vacuum filled with stars and galaxies had disappeared. There was no more outer space. They were now racing inside a giant tunnel that had no end. The walls of the tunnel were formed from transparent, pure energy.
The size of the tunnel was so immense, providing more than enough space for the nine giant animal corpses and the bronze cauldron to fly freely in its center without obstruction. Outside the energy walls of the tunnel, there was no black starry sky. Instead, there was a dark sea churning very fiercely. The sea appeared to be composed of dark grey and black waves that kept rolling, creating giant waves that crashed into one another incessantly.