Nebulae Intertwined

Situ Xuan passed through a nebula. The gas and dust within it swirled around his cluster of light, giving off a faint glow.

Some of those lights were purple, some blue, some red, all woven together like a watercolor painting splashed across a dark canvas. As he passed through the nebula, the gas and dust went straight through his cluster of light, leaving no trace behind.

He passed by a star. It was enormous—so enormous that his cluster of light was like a speck of dust before it. Scorching plasma churned across the star's surface, erupting into space in vast pillars of fire before falling back down again. The star's heat rushed at him head-on, but Situ Xuan felt no warmth. He only watched as that silvery-white cluster of light was stretched out in the star's gravitational field, then bounced back again, like a lump of dough being kneaded.

He saw many things.

He saw a dying star. Its core had already collapsed, and its outer layers had been hurled into space, forming a vast, glowing cloud of gas like a butterfly's wings. At the center of that cloud was an extremely dense white dwarf, its surface temperature unimaginably high, radiating dazzling white light.

He saw a newborn star. A vast molecular cloud contracted under the force of gravity. The gas at its center was compressed to the limit, its temperature and pressure reaching a critical point—then nuclear fusion ignited. The first ray of light shot out from the center of the molecular cloud, piercing through the surrounding gas and dust and illuminating the entire nebula.

He also saw farther places. There, galaxies were colliding. Two immense galaxies tangled together under gravity, their stars, planets, and nebulae torn apart, reorganized, and fused in the collision. Countless stars exploded in the