Chapter 2307: A Hundred Million Years of Time, the Preciousness of Habitability

The edge of the Plane.

The territory residents who had originally been playing here had already been notified to return to the Territory; at this moment, only Xia Duo and Niya were here, and those small metal rods standing on the ground as markers seemed just as they had over half a month ago, without the slightest change.

The facts were indeed so; the rods themselves would not have any changes, what changed was the newly added distance between the rods and the Plane Barrier.

It was just that this distance was truly too short, completely impossible to discern with the naked eye; even through spell measurement, the distance revealed by a single rod was difficult to use as a reference in such micro-level calculations.

That was why multiple marker points were established along the edge of the Plane.

"How is it? What is the distance you measured on your side?" Xia Duo asked about the results on Niya's side while casting spells to detect.

"Either it's zero, or it's a very exaggerated number."

Niya gave two very extreme numbers; Xia Duo was stunned for a moment, then reacted and reminded her: "Increase the measurement precision, and also, do not touch the Plane Barrier, that will cause the measurement to produce a huge deviation."

Xia Duo's method was to first use a beam with an extremely small amplitude to approach the edge of the Plane; when it was on the verge of breaking but not yet broken, it indicated that it had reached the Plane Barrier, because due to the fluctuations, half was in normal space and half was within the Plane Barrier.

Then, measuring the shortest distance from the marker rod to the beam yielded the distance the Plane had expanded during this period.

Yet Niya's method was direct measurement, and the precision was limited, which resulted in two very extreme outcomes: either zero, or it became very large due to the interference of the Plane Barrier, clearly exceeding the visual result.

Under Xia Duo's reminder, Niya changed the measurement method, but her furrowed brows still did not relax; it looked like the result still had problems.

"What's wrong? Is there another problem?"

"No, I have already re-measured according to what you said, but the result measured is just too inconspicuous!"

"This is the truth!"

Xia Duo glanced at the dozens of marker rods on the line from the south to the north, "If the Plane's expansion could be clearly discerned by us, then after countless years, the Main Plane would have long since been larger than this. Tell me the result you measured."

"Mm."

Niya pondered for a moment, seemingly agreeing with Xia Duo's statement, then reported the result of her measurement, "0.0034, 0.0032, 0.0041, 0.0035..."

According to the weights and measures standardized by Xia Duo within the Tower of Time, the unit after these numbers was centimeters, which is one-hundredth of a meter.

Niya's measurement data was not much different from what Xia Duo measured; they were all in the same order of magnitude, roughly between 0.003 centimeters and 0.005 centimeters, which was very difficult to distinguish with the naked eye.

And if it followed this expansion speed, this barren plain at the edge of the Plane alone might require at least hundreds of millions of years, not to mention that this was only a part of the Main Plane.

In other words, the Main Plane was in all likelihood an "old" plane of several hundred million to several billion years old; of course, this time was calculated according to human scales, and if calculated according to the Plane's own scale, the current Main Plane might even be in its prime.

Regarding such a result, Xia Duo felt he was relatively in agreement.

Previously, he had done quite a few Plane experiments, such as elemental infection; wanting to change the essence of a Semi-plane, through the method of elemental infection, would take at least hundreds or thousands of years to see results.

Now that he understood the true existence time of the Main Plane was at least calculated in hundreds of millions of years, this was not exaggerated at all.

The lifespan of a mere Semi-plane could outlast countless humans, and wanting to transform it also started at the drop of a hat with centuries or millennia; it seemed that whenever anything was related to a Plane, the time scale naturally expanded countless times over.

At this moment, Xia Duo realized even more profoundly the preciousness of a Habitable Plane.

A plane needs to go through countless years to grow from the beginning of its birth to a certain volume; in these countless years, countless accidents could lead to the plane's growth being cut short or its original attributes being changed.

And a Habitable Plane is only relative to the human living environment; in this situation, one can imagine how low the probability of a Habitable Plane appearing is.

Not to mention that Material Planes are mostly hidden in the Ether Interlayer, and discovery itself has a huge threshold; one can imagine how much a Habitable Plane is worth!

But even so, Xia Duo did not intend to give up efforts in this regard, but would instead search more actively; precisely because Habitable Planes are so rare and so precious, it makes the crisis of the Main Plane look so terrifying.

Once the place of survival is destroyed, it can be said to be almost the end of civilization; even if a few people can escape, it is very difficult to develop civilization again.

Therefore, Xia Duo had only two attitudes toward the crisis that might appear in the Main Plane: one was to actively search for a solution within the Plane, which was the most basic, and at the same time, it was necessary to actively search for a new way out outside the Plane.

Such as other Habitable Planes, or facilities similar to escape ships (Floating City).

Returning to the Floating City, Xia Duo immediately activated the Floating City Jump System to perform intra-plane teleportation, and the destination he wanted to teleport to was not Netheril in the Northland of Xilu, but the South Pole!

He had already seen the East Pole, and he had to go and take a look at the other poles, then set up markers for long-term observation; only in this way could the true situation of the Plane's expansion be better reflected.

With a clear goal, the teleportation efficiency of the Floating City was extremely fast; it arrived at the southern sea area almost instantly, and then, according to the Scrying results, the second teleportation arrived precisely at the edge of the Plane at the South Pole.

Unlike the barren plain of the East Pole, the edge of the Plane at the South Pole was still the sea, but there was not the slightest vitality in the sea either; countless waves crashed against the Plane Barrier, lost their kinetic energy, and then slowly fell.

In this situation, erecting tangible markers like before at the East Pole was clearly not feasible, but Xia Duo had a contingency plan, using Magic Marks based on Spatial Positioning as markers.

He left over a hundred markers at the edge of the Plane at the South Pole.

Afterward, it was the West Pole and the Arctic; these two poles were still the same as the South Pole, a sea area without any vitality, and Xia Duo left Magic Marks as usual before driving the Floating City back to Daxia Territory.

When the Floating City lifted all spatial transformations and restored its original azure sphere form, the Daxia Territory residents who saw this scene outdoors all raised their hands and cheered toward the top.

The sound reached the ears of Xia Duo, who was observing the Territory in the study on the top floor of the Tower of Time; he couldn't help but smile knowingly. Having been away for nearly two months, he was warmly welcomed by the residents just after returning; to say he didn't feel a bit proud in his heart would be impossible.

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However, his focus on the residents greeting him was only for a moment; Xia Duo soon turned his gaze to the neatly planned roads of the Territory.