Xandar

Chu Hang was still drifting through the universe.

He had no idea how much time had passed. Here, time had no meaning. The circulating energy within his body was the only clock he could sense.

He was restless at first, but soon calmed down.

He had survived the meat grinder of World War II, slept in ice for fifty years, and started from nothing in the unfamiliar world of the nineties.

Compared to those, this was merely a larger cage.

He spread out his consciousness like an invisible net, catching the faintest tremors in space.

Most of this universe was smooth. He had tried several times to find a weak point. Once, he thought he had found one, only to discover after chasing it that it was a gravitational wave left behind by a supernova explosion—violent and fleeting, completely useless.

Another time, he felt his way to the edge of a massive vortex, only to realize it was a wandering black hole. He had retreated in fright. Going into that thing meant there was no coming back.

He became more patient.

Finally, just as he was beginning to think he would drift forever, he felt it.

It was neither the ripples of gravitational waves nor the tearing pull of a black hole.

It was a continuous, rhythmic, exceedingly faint "tremor."

Like an almost imperceptible crease beneath a smooth canvas.

It was stable, right there, like a hidden river buried within the cosmic background radiation.

Chu Hang's spirits lifted.

He had found it.

He did not rush over immediately. Instead, he spent an entire day circling the area and confirming it again and again.

He used his spatial perception to feel the "texture" of that crease. It was thin and narrow, but it was indeed a stable structure.

A naturally formed