"Unbelievably... there was no aether?!"
At this moment, Ian truly felt something unimaginable—an incomprehensible kind of unimaginable.
Some might think he was making a mountain out of a molehill, but in the Terra Universe—the Star God's Aether Universe—the very existence of aether was the foundation of all things.
Aether had integrated the forms of the stars; aether had built the origin from which all living beings were born... Simply put, before true aether spread through the Aether Universe, the entire universe had likely possessed only one form of life: the Star Gods. Only after aether emerged were humans and other carbon-based creatures, metal-based lifeforms, and all manner of other life born.
Without aether, the form of the entire universe would have been beyond the imagination of present-day life.
Yet the "outer universe" that spread with Terminus and continuously invaded "the interior of the Cradle" was a lifeless silence devoid of all aether.
Ian watched this scene without moving, his gaze not shifting in the slightest.
"The universe beyond the Cradle has no aether."
This was the greatest hint—and greatest contribution—the Ash Path had given him.
Muttering to himself, Ian drew a deep breath. "There are too many possibilities... Let me think this through carefully."
First of all, aether was a tool of the Star Gods, and the Great Aetheric Current was their supreme creation. Star Gods and aether were absolutely bound together.
If there was no aether outside, that could mean there were no Star Gods either. This also matched what Ian knew: in this War in Heaven, the Star Gods had been defeated.
Then, under that premise, there were two possibilities for why aether had vanished.
The first, and most likely, was that after Terminus crushed the Star Gods, it had also sealed away aether, the source of power