Nous

There were no walls, no ceiling, and no floor.

Zhang Qi floated in a void. Beneath his feet lay bottomless darkness, while stars close enough to touch hung overhead.

Those stars were not decorative ornaments forged from glass and lamplight.

They were real. Each one radiated an ancient, frigid glow, like diamond dust scattered across black velvet. Large and small, near and far, they formed a panoramic map of the cosmos.

He tried to move. His body could drift freely, yet no matter which direction he floated in, the star chart around him did not change in the slightest, as though it had been nailed to a wall like a specimen.

The only passage lay directly ahead: a trail made of faint particles of light, barely worthy of being called a "road."

Zhang Qi lowered his head and looked at his hands. At some point, the Xing Tian Armor had already been dismissed.

This was a place where starry skies converged, a gap dimension independent of the real universe.

It was similar to the spirit world or astral world he had encountered in the world of Backlund—a dimension distinct from the material world.

The difference was that this place was far more vast than Backlund's world...

Was the Stellaron Hunters' goal simply to imprison him here?

Zhang Qi frowned. No matter how he thought about it, the conclusion felt absurd.

They had gone through all that trouble, thrown a whole combination of attacks at him, just to invite him into this minimalist cosmic observatory? Could this even hold him?

He raised a hand and began analyzing the area.

This was a spiritual dimension. As long as he found an anchor in the material world, he could leave on his own.

It would not take much effort...

So why?

Had the