Chapter 645: The silhouette of a higher civilization

The myriad things outside the Domain are bizarre and difficult to describe.

However, these civilizations are still within Li Qi's scope of understanding; they are still confined within the material Domain. Their so-called uniqueness is merely different applications within the material Domain. Ultimately, they all lead to the same destination.

Decades after the war began, Li Qi had the opportunity to witness truly advanced civilizations.

They are the true controllers among countless civilizations outside the Domain, existences that walk alongside the Nine Lands Under Heaven, and one of Shaman Dao's allies this time.

Yes, they are true allies, not those ordinary worlds forced into joining.

A Second-Grade world, the Zhongwei Bird World.

This is a truly advanced civilization; its form of existence is completely different from any civilization Li Qi has known.

Li Qi's next action will be to destroy the 'Great Wall' together with the Zhongwei Bird World. This is a major operation involving several war zones working together, and it is very important.

And Li Qi, due to his excellent combat record, has become the helmsman of this major operation. He will be responsible for leading the commanders and masters from other war zones to destroy a certain section of the Great Wall and break through that place's Human Dao's tortoise shell.

However, finding the Zhongwei Bird World is a very troublesome matter. High-Grade worlds all have their own unique characteristics that even the Nine Lands Under Heaven cannot replicate.

For a long time after the Zhongwei Bird World became a Second-Grade world, no one even knew of their existence; not even the Nine Lands Under Heaven discovered them.

Great Powers, naturally, wouldn't bother to search for them if they didn't know about them, and other material world existences simply lacked the ability to observe them.

Yes, it is that strange. They cannot be observed or influenced. They do not exist on the same plane as material life. They cannot observe other life, and other life cannot observe them.

Because… they exist outside of physical laws.

Yes, outside of physical laws.

After Li Qi's mission required him to contact this civilization, he immediately applied to the Third-Grade members of the 'Alliance' to retrieve data on the Zhongwei Bird World.

He received approval three months later. The Zhongwei Bird World's data was classified, and Li Qi could only obtain a portion of it, but even this portion left Li Qi awestruck.

The Zhongwei Bird World was born after 'Spreading Across the Nine Lands Under Heaven'.

After 'Spreading Across the Nine Lands Under Heaven', the Universe erupted in a great war, a super war between all Dao Orthodoxys.

This war directly led to the shrinking of the Divine Dao, the Formation of the current Nine Lands Under Heaven pattern, and also… the weakening of the Universe's own Dao, which could now be gradually modified.

When cracks appeared in the Dao, naturally, something would come to fill those cracks.

What eventually emerged was the Zhongwei Bird World.

This is not a world in the usual sense. The Zhongwei Bird World is as vast as the entire Universe; the Zhongwei Bird World is everywhere. They are located in the gaps of physical laws, where they are born and die, existing entirely within the material world, yet not having any impact on the material world.

Life forms of the Zhongwei Bird World and life forms of the material world, even if they were face to face and overlapped, would not have any interaction.

The Zhongwei Birds also do not know of the existence of the material Universe. From the moment they were born, they only believed this Universe to be empty, with nothing else besides themselves. Thus, in the void, they explored and found a Dao that was completely different from the material Universe.

A Dao of only gravity, without any Qi, without other fundamental forces, only gravity.

That's right, the only force that can affect the Zhongwei Bird World is gravity. Besides that, nothing else can touch them or interact with them. Light will pass directly through them instead of reflecting. They don't even have 'Qi', nor do they have material bodies or Spirit Souls. It's an indescribable state.

Besides knowing of their existence, nothing else is known.

They are beings of gravity, and gravity can penetrate all dimensions. In their world, there is nothing else but gravity.

They even recognize people through gravity. After all, any object with mass has gravity. They also feed on gravity and cause gravitational fluctuations. The world clusters can coalesce also because of the existence of the Zhongwei Birds.

Originally, the matter in world clusters was very sparse, and the gravity formed by this matter was far from enough to hold them together over such a large range. But with the existence of the Zhongwei Birds, gravity became much greater, which then led to the current world cluster pattern.

But precisely because of this, it caused a change in the gravitational constant, where the data for gravity at macroscopic and microscopic levels became different.

Finally, under the research of a Great Power of the Dao of Reason, through this strange change in gravity, the existence of the Zhongwei Birds was ultimately discovered.

And now, Li Qi has been ordered to go and communicate with these inexplicable life forms.

Li Qi held a compass in his hand, which could point to the gathering points of gravity.

He had already been traveling for several months.

At this moment, among Li Qi's team, a Diviner said, "Captain, we have traveled three thousand four hundred world clusters. This area is where the nearby world clusters are most dense, and there's also an extraterrestrial wonder, the 'World Fountain'."

The World Fountain is an extremely vast, gigantic star cluster spanning millions of light-years. The gravity here is immense, attracting a large amount of matter.

With so much matter, under the influence of gravity, collisions and intermingling occur, and then worlds are born from it. After worlds are born, they are attracted to a super Void Realm located at the very center of the star cluster. Some are directly consumed, but most are flung out by the accretion disk, spewing out from the two poles of the Void Realm.

Ultimately, the effect is that countless worlds gush out from the star cluster, just like a fountain.

Tens of millions of world clusters around were all born because of the World Fountain.

A gigantic star cluster tens of millions of light-years across, countless worlds, and gushing streams of light, even on an astronomical scale, it is so magnificent.

Li Qi used to think this was just a place where matter simply gathered. Because matter was overly concentrated, its mass was large, and naturally, it would become a gravitational convergence point, thus attracting more matter. This snowball effect then led to the birth of this extraterrestrial wonder.

But now it seems, that's clearly not the case.

The gravity convergence here is not due to matter at all, but because the Zhongwei Birds have built their 'nest' here.

Therefore, there is an unusually strong gravity here, which attracted countless matter, gave birth to a super Void Realm, and then produced the 'World Fountain'.

According to the data, this super Void Realm has an incredibly enormous mass, extremely rare even in the Universe. Its event horizon spans a terrifying three hundred thousand light-years, and its gravitational range is enough to pull in tens of thousands of worlds.

Li Qi nodded slightly and said to his teammates around him, "Attention, the event horizon of that super Void Realm is the 'nest' of the Zhongwei Birds. For them, it's a comfortable environment, but for us, it's not."

Saying that, Li Qi pointed at a team member.

Including him, there were four people in total.

Invoker Li Qi, Invoker Yan Cong, Diviner Youxiong Gong, and Zong Ren Shao Chi.

Of the four, besides Yan Cong, the others were all top-tier Fifth-Grade.

Although Yan Cong was not top-tier, he came as a technical expert. His lineage specializes in space-time and has a very deep understanding of gravity, making him the most suitable type to communicate with the Zhongwei Birds.

"The surrounding space-time has begun to warp, and gravity has twisted our route. The course needs to be slightly altered, otherwise, we won't be able to travel in a straight line," Yan Cong said at this time, checking the star map while guiding the modification of the flying vessel's course.

During extraterrestrial navigation, one must always be vigilant, as a slight deviation can lead to a difference of a thousand miles, so corrections are needed at all times. And in an environment where gravity is strong enough to warp space-time, even greater caution is required.

"Mm, be careful, and remember to avoid the natives here," Li Qi reminded.

"There are natives over there," the Diviner responsible for observation pointed at the star map.

Everyone immediately looked over there and saw a strange world and a strange flying vessel.

In such an environment with immense gravity and warped space-time, it's naturally impossible for ordinary species to be born. They were a species resembling crawling slugs. They struggled to pilot their flying vessel, exploring in this chaotic space-time environment.

Gravity is too strong, only a slug-like shape can survive, and they cannot have bones, otherwise, they would have shattered long ago.

If they stood like Li Qi and the others, with endoskeletons, they would simply turn into a pile of rotten flesh and die here.

So, it's better to be a pile of rotten flesh from the start, that way they can survive.

"Their flying vessel… can't leave. Once it reaches the outside world, it will disintegrate. The constants they are using are wrong," Zong Ren Shao Chi glanced at the flying vessel and commented.

This was a very fair assessment. These flying vessels were built to fit this extreme environment and could not navigate in the outside world; they would collapse as soon as they entered the outside.

"I can tell. Look at that pile of ruins over there," Li Qi glanced and pointed out the edge of the gravitational distortion in the star map.

There were still detection responses there, indicating some scattered matter.

Although it was just some data and lines, for those who frequently navigate outside the Domain, they could determine what exactly was there based on this data and these lines.

It's like a spectrometer scan; ordinary people only see some feedback, strange data and lines, but professionals can analyze the information they need from it at a glance and obtain intelligence.

Through the waves transmitted by the flying vessel's detector, Li Qi's small team could draw a conclusion: this civilization has been continuously launching such flying vessels, but each time they went out, they never returned. The debris of the flying vessels has accumulated at that boundary to the extent that it can be clearly observed by the detector.

Clearly, they are constantly improving and modifying the composition of their flying vessels, attempting to break through this barrier.

But unfortunately, they have always failed. No matter how they modify the composition, as long as the underlying manufacturing principle remains unchanged, they will never be able to leave this place. The entire civilization's direction of effort is wrong.

Oh, not forever, because this area will gradually be sucked towards that super Void Realm. In another one or two hundred million years, if they are lucky enough not to be swallowed by the Void Realm but are instead flung out like other worlds from the World Fountain, then they will experience a wave of civilizational collapse, a great decline in technology, and all cultivation methods and traditions based on the space-time distorted environment will disappear.

They would have to start from scratch in the outside world.

But perhaps before that, this civilization will have already gone extinct. They seem to be a very active civilization, but unfortunately, they were born here.

The four-person team didn't stay long. In this area, there were such civilizations everywhere, nothing worth noting.

They continued flying forward, but this time they accidentally crashed into a stellar Sword Qi Formation.

After several dangerous brushes with 'Sword Qi', Li Qi finally gave the order: "It's relatively safe here, let's stop here and rest for a bit."

As Li Qi gave the order, the other three also breathed a sigh of relief.

The stellar Sword Qi Formation they had just entered was indeed somewhat dangerous, even for them.

In the Void Realm, when so much matter converges, some unusual celestial bodies are born, such as supermassive stars.

These stars are rare in the Domain outside, which is dominated by 'worlds', and are usually only seen within High-Grade worlds.

Some Third-Grade worlds, with internal sizes of tens of billions of light-years, will have many star systems composed of stars. However, in the Domain outside, they generally exist as world clusters.

But here, due to that super Void Realm, the world barrier was directly destroyed, and matter surged out, leading to the Formation of these stellar bodies.

And supermassive stars will collapse after a period of time, producing a supernova explosion. This kind of explosion is very similar to the Sword Qi of a High-Grade Martial Artist, so it is called stellar Sword Qi.

They are all pure destruction.

Under certain extreme coincidences, these explosions will interweave to form a natural 'Formation'. If caught inside, even their flying vessel could be damaged or even scrapped.

If they didn't have a flying vessel, they would have to fly on their own, and then who knows how long it would take, so the flying vessel absolutely could not be damaged.

"Phew, this trip was much harder than I imagined. This kind of work is really tiring," Youxiong Gong put down his Spiritual Tool and wiped his sweat.

Being able to dodge many stellar Sword Qi just now was the Diviner's功劳 (credit), and he had consumed quite a bit of energy.

"You said, why can't the Zhongwei Birds just come out and meet us, but instead insist that we go visit them?" Zong Ren Shao Chi relaxed and leaned back in his chair, asking.

"Because they can't be seen, perhaps. They can't react with ordinary matter. Among the fundamental forces, they can only interact with gravity. If we don't go to a place where gravity distorts space-time like this, we simply can't see them," Invoker Yan Cong said.

"By the way, technical expert, how are we supposed to contact the Zhongwei Birds?" Shao Chi asked.

"Sacrifice. Sacrifice can communicate with everything. We need to go to the event horizon of that Void Realm and hold a Grand Ritual, forcibly establishing a deep connection with gravity through the distorted space-time, then we will be able to perceive the Zhongwei Birds," Yan Cong continued to explain.

This was the technical expert's task, to help everyone understand the specific situation.

"Then why are they called Zhongwei Birds?" Shao Chi's curiosity was very strong.

"It is said to be because their shape resembles a bird, but also a fish. Originally, they were going to be called the Zhongwei Fish World, but later it was deemed not pleasant to the ear, so they were called birds."

"As for Zhongwei, it comes from their nature. Zhongwei is a peculiar state, widely existing in the Universe, passing through our bodies every second without interaction, so they were named after it." (End of Chapter)