Chapter Forty: Tang Yi's Conjecture

"What exactly is the condition?" Tang Yi hemmed and hawed for a long time without explaining himself, leaving everyone anxious.

"I haven't thought of the specific condition yet. Just wait and see!" Having said his piece, Tang Yi began shooing everyone out. Meanwhile, Hua Ruoxue had finished signing a contract with the little white monkey, making it her new spiritual beast.

As everyone filed out of the rapid-cultivation chamber, Tang Yi shrunk the structure back down to a miniature size and slipped it directly into his pocket. Witnessing this, the crowd dispersed, and even Hua Ruoxue wandered off to play somewhere, cradling the little monkey in her arms.

Fingering the rapid-cultivation chamber in his pocket, Tang Yi sighed to himself. *It's a pity I still can't refine a spatial ring capable of holding living creatures. Yes, making that will be my next priority.* Glancing around the vast warehouse now empty of everyone but himself, Tang Yi vanished in an instant.

At the same instant, Tang Yi materialized in another part of the spaceship. Following its latest upgrade, the vessel had grown even larger, expanding by roughly a third of its original size. Consequently, a vast section of the ship remained closed off to the crew, and many spatial layouts and functional settings had undergone major modifications. However, there was no need to worry about getting lost on such a colossal ship. Every open area was equipped with map directories and self-service query displays. If someone was truly hopeless with directions, they could always ask Jett for help, who could guide them to any corner of the ship. Of course, the restricted areas remained completely inaccessible without Tang Yi's permission.

What lay before Tang Yi now was a small forest. He released the spiritual beasts from the rapid-cultivation chamber and herded them into the woods. To provide these beasts with a suitable environment, a massive stretch of forest—spanning nearly fifteen hundred meters across—had been directly transplanted from Planet Green-Green. This area accounted for eighty percent of the newly expanded space from the ship's upgrade. Tang Yi had many other concepts he wanted to realize using these new zones, which was why he was so eager to craft a true spatial ring capable of holding living creatures—the legendary "Universe in a Sleeve." Although lore claimed that only true immortals could refine such a wonder, an idea had struck Tang Yi after utilizing his superpower earlier. Could the "Universe in a Sleeve" simply be a different phase of the same space? If this theory held, he was entirely confident he could forge such a ring.

Once the beasts were settled, Tang Yi had Jett separate them with level-ten light barriers to prevent them from attacking one another, which would render his efforts pointless. With that done, Tang Yi vanished once more, reappearing inside his private laboratory to begin his grand undertaking of refinement.

Deep space was a lonely place. It had been two weeks since they departed Planet Green-Green, making today the fifteenth day of their journey. Initially, the crew had bickered endlessly over how to distribute the spoils harvested from the planet. Annoyed by the constant clamor, Tang Yi had simply tossed out nearly a thousand top-grade spirit stones and barked, "If you can't divide the loot evenly, make up the difference with these! Stop coming to bother me one by one. I have important business to attend to. Hmph!" After that outburst, he had not shown his face since.

With Tang Yi occupied, Hua Ruoxue spent her days playing with the little white monkey, Zhang Sanfeng was in secluded meditation, and even Zhang Cuishan shut himself in his room all day, training like a man possessed. The younger members of the group were essentially unsupervised. Had Jett not been keeping a constant eye on them, heaven only knew what trouble they might have stirred up.

In the dining hall, Hua Shaojie, Bai Dongfang, and a dozen others were gathered for a feast, eating and drinking to their hearts' content. Previously, Jett had occasionally allowed them to venture out into the void of space for recreation. Now, however, without explicit orders from Tang Yi, they were strictly forbidden from stepping outside the hull. Tang Yi had instructed Jett that his absolute priority was to guarantee the safety of everyone on board. After all, the perils of deep space were far beyond what these rookies could anticipate.

Their grounding was triggered by an incident five days prior, when the spaceship bypassed a nebula. The nebula was quite small, spanning only about ten kilometers across, making it not much larger than the upgraded ship itself. Gu Zhenzhen and Liu Yuefeng had been captivated by its breathtaking beauty. In truth, despite Jett's vast database, there was no record of a nebula so miniature yet so stunning. Jett dispatched a dozen probes to investigate, and Gu Zhenzhen and Liu Yuefeng seized the opportunity to slip into the nebula themselves, shielded by their energy barriers and the Sifang Compass.

That was when disaster struck. The moment the probes entered the nebula, they lost all contact with the ship. Simultaneously, Gu Zhenzhen and Liu Yuefeng found themselves completely paralyzed within the cloud. They immediately broadcasted distress signals, but the nebula blocked all transmissions. Left with no choice, they activated the emergency escape function of the Sifang Compass. As the compass propelled them out of the nebula, something unbelievable occurred: the nebula moved. This was no natural cosmic shift; it was as if a beast had opened its maw, pursuing the fleeing pair. Its speed was actually a fraction faster than the Sifang Compass. Just as the cloud was about to overtake them, Jett fired two beams from the ship. One teleported the two women safely back on board, while the other pinned the nebula in place.

Under the influence of the tractor beam, the nebula began to contract. It shrank until it was roughly the size of a human, condensing into a large orb that radiated a dazzling, iridescent glow. It seemed almost ephemeral, yet if one stared at it for too long, a sudden, overwhelming urge to plunge into the light would take hold. Jett classified the entity as a high-risk anomaly—either an object or a living creature—and had it teleported to the high-security containment zone where the strange entity had once been kept, reinforcing the area with extra layers of energy shielding and containment grids.

Meanwhile, in his lab, Tang Yi was repeatedly performing a single action: using his superpower to shift an object into another spatial phase, opening a gateway between the phases to retrieve it, and then sending it back. While this was trivial for him, it would be an insurmountable task for anyone else. Tang Yi's goal was to refine a spatial ring that could replicate this function, allowing others to use it with ease. This was no simple feat. One might wonder: hadn't Tang Yi already crafted spatial rings before?

However, it must be remembered that standard spatial rings only contained a three-dimensional pocket, whereas the world Tang Yi and the others inhabited was four-dimensional. Tang Yi hypothesized that because he existed in a four-dimensional reality, he could easily construct three-dimensional rings. By this logic, was the legendary Immortal Realm a five-dimensional, six-dimensional, or even higher-dimensional space, which was why its inhabitants could forge a four-dimensional "Universe in a Sleeve"? If that theory held, wouldn't a four-dimensional spatial object be unusable within a four-dimensional world? Yet legends spoke of immortal-grade artifacts of this caliber appearing in the cultivation world. It seemed contradictory. However, since his superpower had upgraded, Tang Yi had discovered that the space of the cultivation world possessed other spatial phases. This indicated that the cultivation world was, at the very least, a space of more than four dimensions.

Deducing along these lines yielded a logical explanation: cultivators simply had not yet mastered the technique of refining four-dimensional spatial rings, rather than the world itself lacking the necessary dimensions. Once he worked this out, Tang Yi's confidence surged. He retrieved a mountain of raw materials and prepared to begin his experimental refinement. Just then, Jett's voice echoed through the laboratory.

"Captain, a planet containing vast deposits of rare ores has been detected in a sector one hundred thousand light-years away. Among them is black-and-white magnetic ore, which can accelerate the harvesting of antimatter energy," Jett reported.

"Is that so? Then why haven't you gone to harvest it yet?" Tang Yi asked, puzzled.

"Because the planet is inhabited by advanced intelligent life. Under the core directives you established, we cannot conduct unauthorized or forced extraction on such worlds," Jett replied.

"Ah, I see. Do you have any real-time scans of the planet? Let me take a look first," Tang Yi said, a look of sudden realization dawning on him.

A chime sounded, and a three-dimensional holographic projection materialized in the center of the lab. It was an azure planet, strikingly similar to Earth, except that its volume was comparable to the sun of the Solar System.