Before seeing the actual data, Hao Ren had made several guesses about what Purgatory really was. His initial idea had been simple: it should be a fragment that had broken away from the Dream Plane and become part of this universe after crossing the Wall of Reality. Due to the fragment's special nature, it had no fixed position in this universe, so it continually drifted along the edge of the real world, occasionally coming into contact with Earth. This was the cause of the repeated "Purgatory Openings" throughout Earth's history. But after the probes sent back more data, he realized the space was far more complicated than he had imagined. The fragment had indeed broken away from the Dream Plane, but it had never fully entered the Outer World. Instead, it had become stuck between the Outer World and the Dream Plane!
The data displayed above the Data Terminal continued to fluctuate, marking Purgatory space's relative position to this universe every second. An ordinary person would never be able to make sense of the data, and Hao Ren would have been no exception without auxiliary tools. The reason he could analyze so much was entirely thanks to the data link. His consciousness had been connected to the Data Terminal for a long time and linked to the Xiling Empire's data network. This network gave inspectors certain "perspectives" beyond those of humans. It could not enhance any of a human's innate abilities, nor could it give someone an intelligence of two or three hundred. Its greatest function was allowing Hao Ren to transcend his human thought patterns and understand knowledge that was too abstract.
Thus, he finally understood what Purgatory space was: it was a gangrene on the Wall of Reality.
The fragment's vibrations against the Wall of Reality were probably