Chapter 2527: Kaleidoscope World
"You people from Zone 001 are really good at doing business," Xu Huo said flatly.
The middle-aged man didn't respond but persistently pressed on, "Are you agreeing or not?"
Xu Huo raised an eyebrow. "Want me to sign a contract with you?"
Hearing the sarcasm, the middle-aged man took out a map. "The circled areas on this map are relatively safe landing points."
"A route into the city center." Xu Huo carefully examined the buildings on the map. Some were relatively tall structures, but most were low-rise, especially after entering the commercial district in the city's heart. Although there were tall buildings there, the marked ones were mostly shorter ones.
"Where's the destination?" he asked again.
"There is no destination," the middle-aged man said calmly. "You said it yourself—the purpose of this venue left by that gentleman is to train later players. What's the fun in directly snatching things from the mini-boss in the instance venue? We need to reach the city center first."
Xu Huo laughed at that. "And you still dare to claim there are super items inside?"
The middle-aged man held back for a moment before saying, "What else can you do if you don't believe me?"
With that, he closed his eyes again, signaling that the conversation was over.
Xu Huo stared at him for two seconds before going to find Bubble Bean.
Bubble Bean had no objection to the plan being delayed. "Try his method first. I'll keep doing my thing. If your approach doesn't work, I'll step in. Even if I can't take down the mini-boss, I can at least annoy it!"
Xu Huo wasted no more time. He first headed to the nearest tall building marked on the map. At this point, he was still far from the city center's heartland. A single rapid movement didn't trigger any anomalies in the surrounding metal, and two subsequent location changes also went smoothly. However, when he used a spiritual gate to enter a low, inconspicuous building, the ground suddenly gave way beneath him, and he felt as if he had passed through a wall into another space.
Yet, after a delay of less than a second, he still landed on the floor inside that building—the location hadn't changed, and the surrounding city layout remained the same, but the space he was in was clearly no longer the same as before.
Xu Huo stood still because the space around him began to solidify. It was an extremely slowed-down transformation of spatial power. At first, it was just a faint fluctuation of power, like space rays dancing alone. Soon, these space rays shifted and converged, then compressed into irregular space barriers.
Then, the space barriers slowly shattered and, after being reinforced again, turned into more aggressive blades. Following that, these space ray blades began to compress, shrinking from large to small. More and more space ray blades compressed together, like stacking blocks—if you infinitely compressed the volume of a single block, even a fist-sized space could hold thousands upon thousands of blocks.
So Xu Huo watched as these space ray blades, after slow and massive compression, turned into irregular space bodies...
He wasn't surprised by this point. After all, his spatial evolution power had reached this level before being sealed. The only difference was that he could only control a limited number of space bodies, and the number of space ray blades stacked within each individual space body wasn't that many either... But when these space bodies began to change, his expression shifted.
Because these space bodies started compressing again. These were space bodies already formed from tens of thousands of compressions of space ray blades, yet they began to recombine and compress once more, turning into even smaller units!
The power contained within a space body was already terrifying. Even Xu Huo, who had only just touched the threshold, could unleash devastating force with the space bodies he controlled. It was hard to imagine the destructive power of these space bodies, far beyond his control, after further compression. This was the domain of super players. Even with his water cube barrier as a fallback, he couldn't guarantee safety if these space bodies went out of control!
But at this moment, he was surrounded by such space bodies. Forget escaping—he couldn't even move!
Hundreds of space bodies gradually compressed to the size of a fist. Then thousands of space bodies compressed into that same fist-sized space in the same way. Then tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands... until the number of compressions became too many for him to keep track of how many space bodies had gone in. But even after such compression, these super space bodies formed a continuous stretch around him, and even then, each individual super space body still only existed within his perception, not yet reaching Lawrence Li's level.
Because the gradual evolution of the space bodies was very slow, Xu Huo could clearly sense that there was still a force connecting these super space bodies. They weren't independent but linked together. Just as he was wondering what changes these super space bodies would undergo next, they began to arrange themselves in an orderly pattern and gradually shrink, then transformed before his eyes into a finger-wide, slender band of spatial power. Two seconds later, this finger-wide band of spatial power turned into a thin line, a scale resembling the smallest unit of space ray power.
The next moment, tens of thousands of such spatial power bands suddenly multiplied, and these tens of thousands of bands recombined into a finger-sized space body. This kind of space body finally seemed to have a bit of physical substance, allowing the naked eye to see a vague polyhedral form. When these polyhedra combined again, he could see a thin line composed of polyhedral space bodies.
This final spatial form floated before him like a gossamer thread. If one leaned in to look closely, they could see layers upon layers of polyhedral space bodies flickering within, like a magical star river...
A spiritual realm is called a "world" when spiritual power can be externalized and achieve the effect of interfering with others, because it is a "world" created with a mental evolver as its core. And this gossamer-like spatial band before him should also be called a "world."
Layers upon layers of polyhedra, infinitely compressed spatial folds, all contained within a single inch...
"Kaleidoscope World," Xu Huo thought first of a kaleidoscope. Of course, a kaleidoscope is just a small toy that uses optical principles, reflecting light through glass pieces to form various patterns, vastly different from space bodies. But from the final visual effect, they were strikingly similar. Moreover, wasn't spatial power in the hands of players just another kind of "toy"?
As he gazed at that "gossamer thread," a true kaleidoscope world involuntarily emerged in his mind. But just as he instinctively tried to control the space rays, the water cube barrier appeared again.
Although he had spent considerable time studying the composition of the water cube barrier, unfortunately, he had found no way to break through it so far. Just as he was about to stop, that "gossamer thread" suddenly flew toward him.