"Where is this?" Li Wenfei stood up and opened the armored window outside.
Luo Zhigao also turned his attention to the surroundings. Looking through the porthole, the scene before him was not the vast universe, but a black curtain, with no luminous stars visible.
" Old Gao." " Old Gao!!!" Luo Zhigao called out twice before Gao Zhengyang, who was engrossed in the moment, finally snapped out of his daze.
" Old Gao, where are we?"
"Minister, haha, we're going to be rich! We're going to be rich!!!"
"What nonsense is this? Old Gao, are you alright?"
"I finally understand what's going on, Minister, Wenfei, guess where this place is?"
" Academician Gao, I never would have guessed. There's absolutely no feedback coming back from this area, and the messages we send out seem to have vanished without a trace."
"Of course it's a complete waste of time. Minister, order the fleet, under no circumstances, to move."
" Old Gao, what's going on? You're acting all crazy."
"If I'm not mistaken, we're inside a black hole."
"What? Inside a black hole! How is that possible?"
"At first, I couldn't understand why we were trapped in that space. But now that I've arrived here, and considering the situation, everything suddenly makes sense. This is the only reasonable explanation."
"How can a black hole be empty? And judging from this, the space inside is quite large."
"Haha, Minister, how do you know the space is quite large?"
"We have over 30 million warships here, occupying airspace spanning millions of kilometers. Although I don't understand it very well, I have a general idea. Supermassive black holes exist, but unless they're empty shells, how could they have such a large internal space? Besides, black holes aren't exactly empty inside, are they?"
"That's right, Academician Gao, there's no space or time inside a black hole, or rather, even if there is, it's meaningless space and time," Li Wenfei added.
"Everything you've said stems from your understanding of standard black holes, specifically Schwarzschild black holes. However, Schwarzschild black holes are practically nonexistent. Matter is extremely compressed within a standard black hole, becoming a singularity. But I've always believed that normal space exists within Kerr black holes and Kerr-Newman black holes, two types of rapidly rotating black holes, much like the eye of a tornado is actually tranquil."
"These two types of rotating black holes don't have singularities, but rather ring singularities. We should be in the middle of a ring singularity right now. There are Closed Spacetime Curve around the ring singularity, and objects that enter it will always be stuck inside, including time itself. So don't move the warship until we figure out what's going on. Everything else is normal. It seems my previous guess was right."
" Academician Gao, how big must this black hole be? I'm afraid only the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy has such a large internal space. Could it be that we've arrived at the center of a galaxy?"
"That's not necessarily true. Judging from the time we've been traveling here, this is definitely not the central black hole of the galaxy. Moreover, although this place appears to be normal space, the space itself is definitely compressed. We have no way of knowing whether we are the size of an ant or a bacterium right now."
"Such a thing exists?"
"Yes, I talked to Academician Liu Bo before. They encountered a similar situation when they entered the Nebula Region. The space was compressed, not like gas. Everything in the compressed space was shrunk proportionally, so only people outside can know exactly how big we are now."
"What about time? Is one day here equivalent to a year outside?" Li Wenfei continued to ask.
"It's still unclear. Although we're outside the Closed Spacetime Curve, it's hard to say whether the flow of time here has been affected."
" Old Gao, what you're saying is giving me a headache. We were perfectly fine there, how could we suddenly end up inside a black hole?"
"Sigh, you two, you don't understand but you still like to ask questions, haha. Let me give you an example. Imagine this square table is a big balloon, the kind that's very elastic and can be stretched indefinitely. If I put a very heavy small ball on the surface of this balloon, the small ball can directly press the balloon skin to the ground. At this point, if we look at the balloon skin on the table surface, the balloon skin has actually closed up again, leaving only some marks from being stretched."
"The black hole is like this little ball, the space where we got lost is like the outer layer of a balloon, the Lost Zone is like the surrounding area of this balloon, and the location of the binary stars is the coordinates where the little ball was originally placed. That's all I can explain, because space isn't a balloon; space is rolled into a ring, and there's nothing to compare it to. If you two understand, you understand; if not, there's nothing more I can do."
" Wenfei, do you understand?" Luo Zhigao asked.
"I kind of understand... Minister, what about you?"
"I understand some of it now."
"Pretend? I don't think you understand as much as Wenfei."
" Old Gao, I didn't quite understand what you said before, but according to you, at most we'd just crash into a black hole and become its nutrients. How could we possibly reach the inside of a black hole?"
"Isn't this simple? Spacetime around a black hole is distorted, where three-dimensional and four-dimensional spacetimes mix and alternate. If three-dimensional spacetime can't get in, then four-dimensional spacetime can't either, right? I told you you don't understand as much as Wenfei."
"Old buddy, don't look down on me. If it weren't for the intense war to develop the Solar System back then, which forced me to stay away from studying, I might be a remarkable academician by now."
"Okay, okay, okay, I believe you, I believe you. Why don't you ask us if we can still get out?"
"You've got my head spinning. I forgot to ask. Now hurry up and tell me! We just solved the Stellar Worm and fell into a quagmire, climbed out of the quagmire, and fell into a deep well. Sigh, it seems like we've been having a run of bad luck lately."
"Actually, I don't know how to get out right now, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Others want to get in but don't have the chance. We got in by sheer luck. How can you say we're unlucky? We're incredibly lucky!"
"I'm too lazy to talk to you scientific fanatics. You're busy, Wenfei. Let's go and calm the public down. Academician Gao has already led the fleet to a completely safe place. We'll stay here for a while until Academician Gao finishes his important research and leaves. Please bear with it on the warships. That's all, understand?"
"I know, the public will understand."
" Old Gao, our energy reserves are not high, and our food reserves are also very low. We can only sustain ourselves for a maximum of two thousand years, so you'll have to work a little harder."
"Don't worry, we'll get out of here."