Chapter 2601: The Situation Isn't That Complicated
Xu Huo didn't respond. The Metal Badge player, unsure of his intentions, didn't press further.
The night stretched long, but the sounds of people around them grew fewer and fewer. Monster head masks appeared one after another. After resting for a while, the group had no choice but to get up and move again. They walked in the same direction, occasionally encountering space teleportation portals, but they never experienced being teleported back to a previous location again.
In fact, each time they passed through a space teleportation portal, most people didn't feel anything unusual. Only the old man's sensitive instruments clearly recorded every spatial shift when there was no one nearby to serve as a reference.
However, whether judged by position or time, there was no discernible pattern. The cities they saw after each space crossing seemed unremarkable, making it hard to tell if they were revisiting spaces they had already traversed.
But they couldn't stop. Once they halted, the number of attacking head masks increased, like beasts catching the scent of blood, gathering in groups as if calling friends and companions.
"What exactly are we doing?" a player asked. They had been told to head toward the area with ghost and monster head masks, but that didn't seem entirely accurate either. Although the general direction was correct, they hadn't walked in a straight line. Instead, they twisted and turned through streets and alleys. If they weren't getting closer to the ghost mask zone, they would have thought the guide was leading them aimlessly.
As a member of the rescue team, the Metal Badge player was naturally the one being questioned. Unfortunately, he didn't know either. Even though he had learned the positions of other teammates through the Under Dimension, they still couldn't meet up. Given the current situation, it was unlikely they could leave the restricted zone before the instance ended. The only option now was to head toward a relatively safer place—like the ghost mask area—and wait out these seven days.
Since the general direction was correct, the Metal Badge player didn't interfere with Xu Huo's navigation. Based on past experience, although this man wasn't a Spatial Super Evolver, he was highly sensitive to temporal and spatial forces. They could part ways once they entered the ghost mask zone.
After walking through streets and alleys for a while, Xu Huo, who was leading, started choosing rooftops again. This time, he walked in a straight line, but the players following behind began to understand his intention.
"Is he trying to figure out the difference between ground level and high altitude?" someone found it baffling. Given the danger level of this instance, how could there be such an obvious loophole in the restricted zone? Even if there was a difference, it wouldn't matter to them—could they actually break through space?
In reality, they could have used a faster method to travel.
Just as everyone's patience was wearing thin, Xu Huo stopped to rest again. He didn't even look back at the people behind him, only said indifferently, "I didn't ask anyone to follow me."
Although his earlier actions had partly been to probe the spatial patterns, another reason was that he found the spatial layout interesting.
During the journey, the Metal Badge player had already communicated with companions in other spaces. So far, rescue team players could confirm that at least five layers of space existed at the same location in this city—when they passed the city library earlier, four other groups of players had been near the library as well.
However, if the cube space hypothesis was correct, it only meant that at that moment, five layers of space overlapped at the library's position. It didn't necessarily mean the entire city had five complete layers of space.
Of course, that was a more complicated way of thinking.
This state was somewhat similar to Xu Huo's spiritual library tower—a hundred-story building, with countless rooms on each circular floor. Every room had rooms above, below, left, right, and behind it. These rooms could freely swap and move, making it nearly impossible to return to the original room after stepping out of a door.
But that was a fantasy within the spiritual realm, requiring no real location or absolute spatial constraints. The Night Tour Sub-Area, however, was a real space.
The state of spatial isolation was quite fascinating. If the active spaces in this instance were truly independent—similar to partitioned spaces—they would find it absolutely impossible to float like bubbles and constantly change positions. Even the spatial super instance seen in the previous 001 District couldn't achieve this.
If they weren't independent spaces, that meant this was some application of spatial power.
Such faint, barely detectable power could directly split space, and the divided regions basically didn't interfere with each other—this was different from how players manipulated spatial power. It wasn't a space barrier formed by combining space rays as Xu Huo understood it, at least not something that could be easily disassembled and reassembled like the multi-faceted space bodies of a kaleidoscope space.
Its state was more like the space barrier released by a Water Cube.
Of course, the kaleidoscope world was just one state of spatial power usage that Xu Huo had observed. It didn't mean it was the absolute state or final form. Perhaps there were many branches on the path of spatial evolution, and each person's choice led to a different final state.
Being able to split space—for now, consider it as something truly comparable to space itself. But power of this level didn't have a naturally formed state like real space...
When this thought flashed through his mind, he suddenly paused.
A partitioned zone, as a space capable of sustaining tens of billions of human lives, had spatial power permeating every corner and every object within it. The original state of spatial power was so relaxed that it was imperceptible. It was only when evolvers mastered the method that they could stir space rays and thereby influence spatial power.
If these space portals in the restricted zone appeared in a state close to space's original form, it would naturally be hard to sense any strong spatial power—just like when the Dimension Train crossed different spaces, players could barely feel the changes in spatial power. Its presence was so overwhelming that any player who unconsciously passed through a space felt disoriented, inevitably overcomplicating their thoughts. In reality, it was no different from the spaces connected along the train tracks, just less noticeable to players.
Being hard to notice didn't mean it was weak. It was merely limited by game mechanics, making little difference to players.
It was like riding a vehicle—a person could feel the car shaking but couldn't perceive the planet's movement through the interstellar ocean.
Therefore, these space portals that appeared and disappeared weren't the result of space being cut into countless cubes. They were randomly teleporting people or objects to different spaces. Assuming the restricted zone had five layers of space, the portals appearing in the city were entrances and exits to each layer. It was just that players could only explore a limited area in a short time, and large movements easily led to being teleported into other spaces, creating such a strong sense of confusion.
Xu Huo took out the "Metal Rubber Clay."