Calm, slow, matter-of-fact—Star Ring's voice seemed to rise and fall without emotion.
But as Fang Ran listened to him speak of nebulae, spiral arms, hundreds of billions of stars, a diameter of over a hundred thousand light-years, and a black hole millions of times the Sun's mass—
Using the overwhelming scale of seeing Earth and Jupiter with his own eyes as reference for such a grand conception, he looked at the image before him.
Only a thought similar to the one from before remained in Fang Ran's heart.
Within that tiny cluster of light that looked like a blurry texture—
Was there truly a galaxy even larger than the things just mentioned, one with more than 400 billion stars?
"It is the largest galaxy within ten million light-years. Together with more than fifty galaxies, including the Milky Way Galaxy and the Triangulum Galaxy—"
"It forms the 'Local Group.'"
It was as if direct, genuine observation could only reach this far. Looking at the blurry images outside, each resembling the Andromeda Galaxy—
Sagittarius, Sculptor, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and one galaxy after another were arranged as sparse pinpoints of light in a virtual spatial group model.
Only then did Fang Ran truly understand what the name Klim had mentioned that Midnight night actually meant.
Yet even before such a sight, Star Ring merely raised his hand with the same hollow calmness and continued pulling the view farther away.
"But galaxy groups are merely the smallest galactic assemblages. Sixty million light-years away, the Virgo Cluster contains more than two thousand galaxies."
"With it as the center, the surrounding hundreds of galaxy groups and galaxy clusters form—"
Fang Ran watched as the immense Local Group from a second ago shrank into scattered points of light, while a vast cluster of granular