Su Huilan took a deep breath, slowly closed her eyes, and allowed her consciousness to sink into a state of clarity. Then she did what Qingmu had just done—disperse the surrounding Mental Power Field.
Her power wasn't as vast and boundless as Qingmu's, but her control was more refined and delicate. Her Mental Power spread slowly and evenly in all directions, first pushing away the natural Mental Power on the island from her body, creating a mental vacuum centered on herself.
Then, this space slowly expanded, eventually reaching Qingmu and gradually enveloping him.
Su Huilan had another strange feeling, as if she were touching that man. But the man was like a fairy in the clouds, and she couldn't see his true face no matter what she did, even though her consciousness had penetrated his body.
When the vacuum completely enveloped Qingmu, she stopped. The mental pressure from the outside increased dramatically as the space expanded, like pushing a spring to its limit and then suddenly stopping. What she had to endure next was the force of its rebound.
If she exerted all her strength, she could certainly expand the space even further, but she was quite certain that she couldn't reach the extent that Qingmu had just emptied the entire cave. This feeling of being under pressure from all sides was truly unbearable; her consciousness felt as if it were being torn apart.
Only now did Su Huilan realize how strong Qingmu was and how much pressure he had just endured!
"Where exactly are your limits?" she asked Qingmu, her gaze filled with both admiration and curiosity.
The vacuum had turned into a dazzling white expanse; space had vanished, leaving only her and Qingmu. The ground was gone, along with the stones, branches, and weeds. The fire had landed right on the edge of the vacuum, half inside and half outside. The half inside was gone, while the half outside was still burning.
Qingmu was smoking, the Mars from the cigarette butt and the white smoke were clearly visible, but only outlines remained. He looked like a black and white sketch pasted on the wall.
Su Huilan only wanted to confirm once again whether what had just happened was the norm here, so she didn't insist any further, after all, it was unbearable to endure the overwhelming mental pressure from the surrounding area.
She withdrew her Mental Power and said, "This is not an illusion; this place is indeed very strange!"
Qingmu said, "Did you feel like we were two-dimensional beings just now?"
Su Huilan nodded and said, "Indeed, I look at you as if you were a painting."
Qingmu said, "When you mentioned the Klein Bottle, I kept wondering what this special bottle was made of?"
"As I mentioned before, the Klein Bottle is actually a four-dimensional space; it has one more dimension."
"No, no, I'm not talking about space. I mean, a bottle should be made of some material, like glass or plastic."
"Ha, how could that be!" Su Huilan retorted. "Glass can only create a visual model of the Klein Bottle in the three-dimensional world, but it's not the real Klein Bottle."
"But since it's a distorted space, there must be some reason for it, right?" Qingmu said. "What are some common causes of spatial distortion?"
Su Huilan said, "Usually it's mass, that is, gravity. The space around a massive celestial body will be distorted due to gravity, and light will bend when it passes in its vicinity. Black holes are the most extreme example."
"Besides that?"
"The universe is very complex, and there are things like dark energy and dark matter that we don't know about."
"What about Mental Power?"
" Mental Power?" Su Huilan's eyes lit up. "You mean, Mental Power can distort space and form a Klein Bottle?"
"Why not? Think about it, our dreams are not actually limited by time and space. The only rule that limits the dream world is our memory. And the foundation that supports the dream space is the spirit. The spirit can shape it into any kind of space, and memory is just the content that fills that space, just like this island."
Su Huilan was startled. "According to you, we're dreaming right now."
"It's very possible! I just can't figure out who's so capable as to create such a dream."
Qingmu had witnessed the power of the Group Real-Scene Dream created by Kitano Masatake, which still exerted unimaginable force more than seventy years later. However, the space on this island was much larger and more magical than the cave in Southern Yunnan. The key to the gate and the Tushu was still the omnipresent Mental Power Field on the island.
Su Huilan shook her head and said, "I think it's impossible. Before we got to the island, we were in the vast Pacific Ocean."
Qingmu was smoking when he suddenly exhaled two smoke rings. The smoke rings were very round, slowly spreading in the air, and then merging together into a cloud of mist.
"Can Klein Bottle be broken down into two Möbius rings?" he asked uncertainly. Things named after scientists are really hard to remember, and his memory is sometimes good and sometimes messy. Sometimes he can recall some inexplicable things, and sometimes it goes completely blank.
"It's a Möbius strip, not a Möbius ring," Su Huilan corrected. "Theoretically, two Möbius strips can be pieced together to form a Klein Bottle, what's wrong?"
Qingmu said, "Could it be understood this way: suppose this space, resembling Klein Bottle, is formed by some unknown Mental Power Field? Then, when we use our Mental Power to push the field away, the Klein Bottle is broken down into two Möbius strips. Möbius strips are flat... so you see me as a painting on the wall."
Su Huilan was both surprised and bewildered. "Because we've become two-dimensional beings on the Möbius strip? This... is terrifying!"
Qingmu said, "Perhaps what we are seeing is a three-dimensional projection of ourselves on a two-dimensional plane, or perhaps it is merely a projection of our consciousness."
"Then... what about our physical bodies?" Su Huilan asked.
"I don't know." Qingmu shook his head.
In terms of academic knowledge, Su Huilan is a genuine professor with far superior scientific literacy than Qingmu. However, in such an environment, the higher one's scientific literacy, the easier it is to lack self-confidence. On the contrary, Qingmu can indulge in wild fantasies without feeling guilty for desecrating the sacred science. Moreover, after spending so much time with him, Su Huilan has come to recognize Qingmu's abilities. Humans are naturally inclined to rely on the strong, especially when facing the fear of the unknown.
When Qingmu offered a seemingly absurd yet plausible explanation, Su Huilan gradually regained her composure. She thought for a moment and then said:
" Captain Church's diary states that the Discovery once got lost at sea. They first encountered a dense fog, and then just kept sailing... They might have entered a Klein Bottle like us, only they kept spinning on the curved surface of the bottle, so they stayed at sea, unable to find a shore, and might even have traveled through a four-dimensional wormhole along the bottle's neck, arriving at Christmas several months later."
"The curved surface of the bottle?" Qingmu looked up, his gaze seemingly piercing through the dark brown stone at the top of the cave, illuminated by the firelight, and seeing a large bottle standing in the void above the Pacific Ocean. "So, they're probably right above us? Hmm... The Boss Coal flew upwards, also crashing into the bottle's belly, then slid down the neck to the bottom—that lake! Why didn't it go a few months later?"
Su Huilan said, "It may not have passed through the wormhole; it just slid down the surface of the bottle. Moreover, the position of four-dimensional space corresponding to three-dimensional spacetime is not fixed; the spacetime point it lands on may be different each time it travels through it."
"Oh, I was just thinking about whether we could travel through time and space to rescue everyone on the ship!" Qingmu sighed.
"That's impossible!" Su Huilan said with absolute certainty. "Parallel universes can't overlap; the one you saved definitely isn't this world."
Qingmu also found it quite absurd. Although he didn't quite agree with the parallel universe concept, he no longer wanted to save the entire ship.
"But we have to get Mrs. Larry out of here!" He exhaled a long puff of smoke, his tone languid yet revealing an undeniable resolve.