For a fledgling civilization, the Immortal Path was an unfathomable maze set against a backdrop of stars.
It led to the entire observable universe. The high-dimensional projection of that entire observable universe was the maze built into it.
But for the Immortal Alliance as it stood now, all they could do was scout paths, mark them, and then travel back and forth by means of the Immortal Path. Beyond that, there was nothing they could do.
They could not even draw a detailed star map.
When distance was measured in "light-years," vision itself became unreliable. All people could see was light; the actual celestial bodies remained far away, and what they saw was only light emitted many years ago. Any changes that occurred after that starlight had departed had nothing to do with the light already sent out.
Triangulation? Light-cycle relations? Redshift?
If humanity had honestly built magical items or flown here on escape lights, these primitive methods might still have had some use and allowed them to map the stars. But now, humanity had merely obtained one puzzle piece after another, without knowing whether they could even fit together.
Perhaps humanity had long since acquired several adjacent puzzle pieces, yet did not know they could be joined together.
Precisely because this work carried little meaning, it was generally tossed to newcomers in the Dark Department as practice.
To put it absurdly, the Immortal Alliance could even suspect that the Immortal Path's function was not to connect different planets billions of light-years apart, but to link universes governed by the same physical laws.
—Of course, that was only a joke.
But for a weak and fledgling civilization like humanity, that joke was truly rather heavy.
"No matter how I think about it, I still don't understand why the Immortal Path