Chapter 1880: Space Compression

He Xianzi proceeded forward at a uniform speed, not caring what lay ahead.

Flying along, she bumped into a small meteorite, pushed it aside, and kept her course.

If she encountered a large one, she would directly destroy it, always heading toward the place her intuition pointed to.

Their speed wasn't extremely fast; covering a distance of several hundred thousand kilometers took them about ten to twenty minutes.

Xiao Feng had a star map etched in his mind; his intuition told him the ice crystal planet was right ahead.

At that moment, he opened his eyes.

However, what came into view was not a huge ice crystal planet!

It remained just as small, lingering in the distance; after ten to twenty minutes of travel, it felt like pointless effort, as if they were still in the same spot.

"How could this be?" Xiao Feng wondered, somewhat puzzled.

He Xianzi said, "Big brother, I wasn't slacking off—I did fly; this place is strange!"

"This is a formation, so of course it's strange; don't rush, let me think..." Xiao Feng said.

Making progress for ten to twenty minutes couldn't be ineffective; the unchanging scene before them admits only two explanations.

One possibility is that what they see is actually an illusion, not real, or perhaps it has been an illusion from the very start.

The second is that, during those ten to twenty minutes, the formation's influence made them loop around and return to the starting point.

First, let's test the hypothesis!

Xiao Feng closed his eyes and continued forward along the direction indicated by his memory.

If what they see is an illusion, then within three minutes he would be captured by the ice crystal planet's gravity, or crash straight into it.

If not, opening his eyes to look again and seeing whether the scene changed could also yield some information.

He Xianzi flapped her wings and continued onward.

One minute, two minutes, three minutes...

No gravity appeared.

Xiao Feng opened his eyes; the scene before him remained unchanged.

It seems all of this is an illusion.

"Let's try going all out." Xiao Feng said this time without closing his eyes.

"All right, big brother, hold on tight!" He Xianzi moved her wings and shot forward.

Her speed instantly surged to the extreme, ignoring meteorites and blasting straight through them.

Anyway, she isn't weak either; her head is as hard as iron, so she won't die from the impact.

Meteorites in the starry sky looked numerous, as if they might collide at any moment.

Yet actually, flying straight ahead, they didn't hit a single one; all naturally avoided them.

After flapping their wings and speeding for a short while, Xiao Feng found that everything he saw remained unchanged; although he brushed past some meteorites and clearly had covered distance, the distant ice crystal planet remained just as far away!

Not only did the planet's distance stay the same, but the distant scenery also remained completely unchanged.

"Strange, big brother—is this pure illusion, or a void formation?" He Xianzi also sensed something was off.

Xiao Feng tried using his divine sense to probe the distance.

His divine sense radiated outward; faintly he could feel that ice crystal planet, which was extremely cold, matching the image of the eternal frost prison described by Mo Long Lao Zu.

Yet no matter how hard he tried, he could not cross that distance.

"Let's try void shuttle," he said to He Xianzi.

If flying couldn't get them through, and it wasn't an illusion, then the surrounding space must be problematic—a special field that forced them to tread in place, unable to change position no matter how fast they flew.

It was like a treadmill that automatically adapts to one's speed.

He Xianzi immediately released her innate ability.

Whoosh!

Cloud Crane Nine Flashes, void shuttle nine times.

She deliberately flashed toward a relatively large meteorite and slammed straight into it.

Xiao Feng took a close look; this time, the spatial position had changed!

But the change was minuscule, hardly noticeable.

"Really strange—this place's spatial density is off!" He Xianzi finally understood where the problem lay.

"Spatial density?" Xiao Feng didn't quite grasp her meaning.

He Xianzi explained, "Big brother, the space here has been compressed; one cubic meter of space might actually be a hundred million kilometers across! That planet looks nearby, but in reality it could take months of flight to reach. Plus, with other formation effects interfering, relying solely on flight, we could never get close in a lifetime!"

Spatial compression...

"Then doesn't that mean we can only use void law to teleport or shuttle over?" Xiao Feng frowned slightly.

He Xianzi replied, "Probably so, but my void shuttle range isn't especially great; over this distance, each jump might advance only a few tens of meters, and I don't know how long it would take to get there."

He Xianzi replied: "That should be the case, though my void-shuttling distance isn't particularly far either; over this distance, maybe each time I only advance a few tens of meters, I don't know how long it will take to get past."

Xiao Feng furrowed his brows deeply.

The perceived space and actual space are two different things; the distance from here to the eternal frost prison, which is several hundred thousand kilometers, might actually be a light-year away—not something easily crossed.

The despair formation is a spatial-law formation, and Xiao Feng happens to be inept at spatial law…

He thought to himself, "The lord of spatial law is the Water Civilization Dao Ancestor, Cang Qiong Zhu; if this formation was laid by him personally, with my cultivation I'd have no chance to break it. If it was set by the Azure Dragon, there might be a sliver of hope, but it would probably still be very troublesome..."

The spatial density nearby is already exaggerated; the region near the eternal frost prison could be even more so.

Just how long this road is—aside from the one who set the formation, probably nobody knows.

This feeling of being close yet worlds apart instantly gave Xiao Feng a terrible headache.

"Big brother, I'm about to break through to become a God King; after the breakthrough my perception of laws will be clearer, so I can try to comprehend the void law to see if it works. Or you could go gather some transmission-type treasures and ask the trash-picker if he can help." He Xianzi offered several suggestions.

"Big brother, I'm about to break through to become a god king; after breaking through, my perception of the laws will be clearer, I can try to comprehend the void laws, see if I can make it work. Or you can also go collect some transmission-type treasures, then go ask the trash-picker if they can help." He Xianzi proposed several suggestions.

Xiao Feng nodded slightly: "There are still some of the scrolls we collected earlier; let's see if they're useful. Qian Sha…… I don't know if his ability can help."

Thinking of this, he took out the scrolls he had prepared earlier for Martial God Village, Sacred Dragon Cave, and the like.

He tore open a scroll, left He Xianzi in place, used the teleportation effect only on himself, vanished from the spot, and was transported away.

Then…… he appeared almost where he had been, with He Xianzi's position only separated by less than ten meters.

"Big brother, how far is this scroll?" He Xianzi asked him directly.

The person and the crane were less than ten meters apart; after spatial compression, the actual directional difference was actually far, yet the sound of their voices could be heard instantly between player and mount, which was incredibly miraculous.

This is like a dimensional compression; looking at the X, Y, Z axes individually, each is turned from a straight line into an infinitely winding curve, bent up and down countless times, becoming very long. From point X1 to point X2, the actual path traveled crosses 100 kilometers. But when viewed on another plane, it is merely one centimeter, so sound and light can reach it instantly.

He Xianzi flapped her wings toward her master; though the distance was less than ten meters, even with a sudden burst of speed she flew for a minute and still hadn't arrived.

Xiao Feng replied: "It's a 50-million-kilometer directed teleportation scroll; in the special environment of the Void Sea it seems to have a doubling effect, allowing a shift of 500 million kilometers."

"500 million kilometers? Our distance now is only seven or eight meters… Good heavens, just how far would it be from here to that star over there?" He Xianzi was instantly dazed.