Zhou Niannian was furious, not expecting a straight man to act so shamelessly.
"A straight man is still a man, not an idiot. Why would he refuse something given to him?"
"Besides, it was you who initiated it..."
Jiang Fan argued logically, his reasoning sound and his conscience clear.
"You want to reason, do you? You think you're in the right, do you? Just you wait."
Zhou Niannian, her face contorted in rage, took off her high heels and swung them at Jiang Fan's head repeatedly, muttering to herself.
"Illusions, disappear! Quickly, disappear!"
Jiang Fan, battered and bruised, couldn't retaliate. He cried out in pain.
"I'm not an illusion!"
Zhou Niannian had no intention of letting him off the hook.
"Hmph, you like pretending to be an illusion, don't you? Keep pretending then."
The viewers in the livestream chat, witnessing the pair's bickering, burst into laughter.
Only one person was unhappy, and that was Dai Xiaomei, who was a single dog.
"Stop it! Can you two stop showing off your affection? If you keep it up, I'm going to start hitting people."
Hearing that she was going to hit someone, Yao suddenly tensed up and gestured to Dai Xiaomei.
"No, don't..."
Dai Xiaomei, thinking Yao was afraid of her, was feeling smug. But then she heard Yao say,
"Don't talk about everyone, you... you can't beat anyone. You should know your own limits..."
Dai Xiaomei was stunned. Didn't Yao usually struggle to speak clearly?
How was he lecturing her so fluently now?
Yao looked at Dai Xiaomei earnestly.
"Am I... wrong?"
Dai Xiaomei's eyes welled up with tears. It seemed Yao had a point.
When it came to Jiang Fan and Yao, she couldn't even touch their little toes.
Even Zhou Niannian, she couldn't beat.
Despite looking delicate and frail, Zhou Niannian was a third-dan in Karate, a black belt in Taekwondo, a fourth-grade practitioner of Muay Thai, a fifth-dan in Aikido, and an eighth-dan in Sanda.
One or two ordinary burly men were no match for her.
Perhaps she could pick on a panda. Dai Xiaomei cautiously approached a panda.
"Roar!"
The panda let out two roars at Dai Xiaomei, showing off its strong biceps. Dai Xiaomei flinched and backed away.
"Hmph, I'll just hit myself then."
Dai Xiaomei sulked and sat down cross-legged on the ground.
The viewers in the livestream chat found it hilarious, mocking Dai Xiaomei.
"Poor Dai Xiaomei, a single dog like us, and she's been force-fed dog food."
"She wants revenge but can't beat anyone, hahaha."
"Hey, Gungun, just let her hit you a couple of times. Be her punching bag."
"Who told her to eat Gungun? Gungun doesn't care about her."
Yao looked at Dai Xiaomei, then at Zhou Niannian, unsure what to do.
"So... are we still going?"
He just wanted to know whose orders to follow, Zhou Niannian's or Dai Xiaomei's. Unexpectedly, Zhou Niannian, blushing and feeling guilty, immediately took the lead.
She moved so fast that Jiang Fan and Yao couldn't keep up.
Legend has it that human potential is limitless. For instance, in a fire, a mother once moved a pillar that was seemingly impossible to budge, all to save her daughter.
There are even legends that human genes have a limiter to prevent humans from unleashing their full potential, commonly known as gene locks.
Now, with her dignity bruised, Zhou Niannian's potential, under extreme stimulation, erupted. She went on a rampage.
Jiang Fan and Yao were panting, and this space was strange. People weren't walking on the ground but floating in the air.
Zhou Niannian's residual consciousness was still drifting everywhere. Strangely, only Zhou Niannian's residual consciousness had appeared; no one else's had.
As they walked further, the space felt narrower. Invisible barriers from all sides seemed to press down from the sky.
Zhou Niannian suddenly stopped because she could no longer see the path ahead.
In the distance, there seemed to be a black hole, constantly swallowing light, making it impossible for them to see.
Let alone Zhou Niannian, even Jiang Fan, with his 6.0 vision, could barely see.
If they went any further, they would have to feel their way forward with their hands.
"Wait a moment, I'll light a torch."
Jiang Fan took out a lighter from his pocket and flicked it several times, but it didn't ignite.
"Is it broken?" Dai Xiaomei asked worriedly.
Jiang Fan shook his head. This was a military-grade windproof lighter; it wouldn't break even if submerged in water.
The only reason it wouldn't light was the absence of oxygen in the air, which prevented combustion.
"What? No oxygen in the air!"
Dai Xiaomei's face turned ashen upon hearing this. She felt like she couldn't breathe.
"Ahhh, no wonder I felt so uncomfortable. It turns out there's no oxygen in the air."
"I can't... I can't breathe. I'm suffocating."
"Calm down, that's just psychological."
Jiang Fan said irritably. Although there was no oxygen in this space, they didn't need to breathe oxygen once they entered.
Zhou Niannian asked worriedly.
"Do we really have to walk into that mysterious black hole?"
"We have to. I suspect this is a place similar to a teleportation passage."
Jiang Fan made his assessment. The black hole could absorb everything. The group wasn't sucked in because they weren't close enough.
They had been sucked in by a vortex-like black hole earlier, and to get out, they likely had to go through the black hole again.
In quantum mechanics, things like wormholes are real. Inside a wormhole, one exists in a peculiar quantum state.
The famous "Schrödinger's cat" theory states that a cat is both dead and alive.
It's the same in a wormhole. Jiang Fan and the others are both dead and alive, assimilated into a quantum state by the wormhole, hence they don't need to breathe or eat.
In such quantum channels, physical strength is meaningless. Instead, the stronger one's mental power, the stronger their power.
This is why Zhou Niannian's residual consciousness was floating around and she could move so fast that Jiang Fan couldn't keep up. She was, in fact, quantum Zhou Niannian.
Jiang Fan subconsciously glanced at his watch. As expected, it had stopped. Time was completely frozen here.
"Boohoo, the black hole at the end looks a bit scary."
Dai Xiaomei was a little afraid and didn't want to move.
"The things above you are even scarier."
Jiang Fan pointed upwards.
Dai Xiaomei then noticed that the three-eyed electric ray outside was releasing even more powerful lightning.
Under the assault of the lightning, the invisible barrier had already begun to crack.
Next to the electric ray, a school of colorful sharks with hooked teeth was looking at Dai Xiaomei menacingly.
"Have you heard of the theory of temporal stasis?"
Jiang Fan sighed. Although Dai Xiaomei surely wouldn't understand, he still wanted to explain.
"Have you watched Dragon Ball? Goku trained in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber where time was frozen. In reality, such a thing is impossible."
"In a quantum channel, if you linger too long, the channel will collapse."
"There are many ways for it to collapse, like monsters breaking through the defensive wall and eating you, which is one of them."
Before he could finish, Dai Xiaomei let out a surprised cry, stood up, and ran even faster than Zhou Niannian.