Matters of life belonged to life, matters of science belonged to science. As soon as Xiao Yu’s expression turned serious and he announced that the experiment was about to begin, all the chatter in the meeting room instantly ceased. Every scientist fell silent.
“This is the real-time 3D image of Space Two.” Xiao Yu waved his hand and issued a command. Above the meeting room, a three-dimensional hologram appeared. Within it, the hemispherical Space Two quietly hovered in the void.
Space Two had an approximate diameter of one thousand meters and a total mass nearing ten million tons. However, most of this enormous device consisted of energy supply modules and instrument response systems. The actual firing mechanism measured only ten meters in diameter. According to Xiao Yu’s hypothesis, this ten-meter-wide launch port would slice out a portion of space from their current small universe, forming an even smaller universe. Though the scale would be much smaller, the underlying principles and mechanisms would be exactly the same as how the Trolor Civilization once split a small universe from the greater universe.
“Our hypothesis is that the difference between a spatial rift and a severed space lies merely in power level and the shape of the cut. Now is the time to test that theory.” Xiao Yu said. “Commencing countdown.”
A monitoring device had already been placed at the target area, right inside the region of space designated for separation. If the space-cutting operation succeeded, that device would leave the current universe along with the severed space.
Surrounding it were hundreds of additional scattered probes. These would collect every bit of data generated during the process, to be used later in Xiao Yu’s analysis.
“I believe I’m right.” Senya said calmly. “I have faith in my theory.”
When speaking of scientific matters, the shy and reserved youth vanished instantly. In its place was a confident and assertive scientist.
Senya seemed to possess two personas. One was its real-world self, humble, polite, shy, and gentle, always treating everyone with respect. But when it came to science, it instantly transformed into someone forceful and aggressive, sharp and unyielding, bold enough to challenge even Luka Three.
“This is a young person with great potential. When Luka Three is no longer with us, perhaps Senya can take its place.” Xiao Yu thought silently. He glanced at Senya, then began the calm countdown, “Ten, nine, eight, seven… one, zero.”As the countdown reached zero, the energy supply module activated. Countless elemental decay engines and antimatter engines roared to life, surging energy through the supply conduits into the reaction instruments, where it was compressed to an extremely dense state. This energy, like tearing through a sheet of paper, would rip space apart.
The rapidly flashing command lights on Space Two indicated it was now operating at full capacity. All the scientists watched the real-time 3D feed with unwavering focus. Only Senya wasn’t looking. Its eyes were gently closed, its expression calm. But beneath the table, its trembling hands betrayed its inner turmoil.
This experiment was directly tied to whether Senya’s status would rise to a new level. It also concerned the standing of Species Number Two within the fleet. In fact, behind the scenes, the species leader Rodel had already secretly told Senya, “If you want to marry Feili, you’ll need to earn the title of Number Five first.”
This was the first time Senya had led the direction of a major scientific initiative. This event meant more to it than anything.
Species Number Two didn’t differ much in appearance from humans, and their conceptions of beauty and aesthetics were largely similar. Possibly because the environment of their home planet resembled Earth, their social structures also bore a resemblance to human societies during Earth’s era.
As for the girl named Feili, Xiao Yu had seen her many times via his secretly deployed surveillance systems. She was quite beautiful, and also highly intelligent, almost certainly destined to join the ranks of scientists after graduation. A talent like that was indeed a good match for someone like Senya.
“If Senya knew that I’ve seen this Feili girl countless times through surveillance, even watched her bathe and sleep, and clearly saw all the wild things they did together out there on the grassland ranch at the edge of City 301, what would he think?” At this moment, Xiao Yu mused with a somewhat strange expression.
“I’m hoping you’re right too, Senya. Up to this point, your hypothesis aligns best with both logic and observable data. If your method really does allow us to leave this small universe, then earning the Title of Number Five is entirely possible, and personally hosting your wedding with Feili would be a trivial matter.” Xiao Yu gazed expectantly at Space Two, hovering in the void, lost in thought.
Space Two was now fully prepared. An immense surge of energy, processed through a series of incomprehensible and as-yet-unexplained reactions, finally erupted from the launch port. In an instant, a ring of black shadow engulfed the probe Xiao Yu had placed in the designated location.
There, a black hole had formed. Or rather, something resembling a black hole. A black hole itself is invisible, but when placed against a brightly lit background, and disregarding gravitational lensing effects, its presence could still be clearly perceived. Now, in front of Space Two, a black sphere had appeared, absent of any lensing phenomenon.
There was a pitch-black sphere, perfectly dark on the inside, emitting no light at all. Any external light entering it failed to reflect back. Under illumination from the light sources on Space Two, this shadowy void appeared particularly eerie.
“Hm?…” Seeing this scene, all the scientists began to breathe more heavily, even Senya couldn’t help but open his eyes.
The meeting room was silent. Not a single word was spoken. All eyes were fixed on the live three-dimensional projection.
They could clearly see that the black sphere was slowly shrinking. Its initial diameter had been around ten meters, but as time passed, it was visibly decreasing. After ten seconds, it had shrunk to less than five meters, and was still rapidly contracting.
Xiao Yu keenly observed that faint light distortions were starting to appear around the black sphere. Light from the probe behind it was becoming blurry as it passed near the sphere’s edges.
The entire reaction process lasted for twenty seconds before the black sphere finally vanished.
During this time, vast amounts of observational data were transmitted directly into Xiao Yu’s mind and simultaneously rendered in the 3D display.
One particular phenomenon caught Xiao Yu’s attention. He could say with absolute certainty that the probes he had placed near the test area were originally stationary relative to one another, in other words, their distances from each other had remained constant. But now, he noticed that the distance between them had mysteriously decreased by ten meters.
Ten meters, the exact diameter of the black sphere.
“Did the disappearance of space itself cause the matter within it to move?” Xiao Yu murmured, quickly formulating a possible explanation.
It was like this, imagine two people standing twenty meters apart. Then some force comes along and removes ten meters of space between them. Neither person moves, yet the distance between them is now only ten meters.
It was simple to understand and logically sound.
“So… did I succeed? Did I really peel off a portion of space from this small universe?” Xiao Yu silently pondered.
The observational data seemed to support that conclusion. The probe Xiao Yu had placed in the target area had maintained real-time communication with him, but the moment the black sphere formed, that link was abruptly severed. Neither tachyon communication nor standard radio signals could reach it anymore.
“In my hypothesis, tachyon communication can’t propagate along the fourth-dimensional axis, and as for radio waves, even less so. The probe was equipped with the most advanced and reliable communication module I can currently manufacture. I can say with confidence, as long as it remains in this universe, I’ll be able to receive its signal no matter where it is. But now, there’s nothing. That leaves only one explanation, it has left our small universe and drifted off somewhere unknown.”
It was just like having a communications device placed on a two-dimensional paper world. If someone were to tear that part of the paper off, the device left on the main sheet naturally could no longer communicate with the one on the torn piece.
Testing whether one could still communicate with the experiment device was the most intuitive and reliable method. After the connection was lost, and remained unrecoverable for five full minutes, Xiao Yu shared the results with all the scientists present.
“We’ve succeeded.” Xiao Yu declared. “Using Space Two, we’ve successfully created another small universe, a three-dimensional universe with a diameter of just ten meters.”
The moment Xiao Yu announced the results, the meeting room burst into enthusiastic applause. Every scientist stood up and offered their highest respect to Senya. Luka Two, Three, and Four were no exception.
Xiao Yu smiled broadly at the scene before him. He knew that he had just taken one more step closer to success.