While Pan Long's thoughts were running wild, Tie Feiyan completed the move known as "Great Black Heaven."
Between his hands, a mass of flowing arcs spun rapidly into a vortex sphere. At its center, rings of light rippled like water, now and then revealing a narrow gap.
Through that gap, Pan Long could see a black hole surrounded by light.
Most of the time, though, the rippling rings concealed the hole completely. They obscured much else besides, twisting every image they covered, wholly or in part, into something bizarre and almost unrecognizable.
Pan Long knew that everything he saw was merely a natural phenomenon caused by the black hole at the center absorbing matter from its surroundings.
Strange and magnificent as those sights were, the true power that made him shudder lay in that one insignificant speck at the center.
It was an astronomical wonder capable of drawing in everything in the world. Even light, which had no mass, could not escape it. It was a star's final struggle and final blaze of glory.
Astronomers in his previous life had confirmed the existence of many black holes. They had even observed what appeared to be remnants left after certain black holes dissipated.
At the centers of those nebulae were extraordinarily "clean" regions. Nothing was there at all, and there was no sign of matter flowing toward them. If anything, there were signs of matter flowing out.
Scientists believed those "extraordinarily clean" regions had once been black holes. But the mass they absorbed had been far less than the mass they lost through radiation. In the end, they had radiated everything away, leaving only those absurdly empty stretches of space.
Unfortunately, even the nearest such nebula was impossibly far from Earth. Unless faster-than-light travel made a major breakthrough, humanity would not