Chapter 3645: The Measuring Tool |
The next day, Ronron brought Alex over to a special location within the center of the palace, two stories underneath, into a basement with thick Qi filling the room. The special room was guarded at every step with various cultivators, making it perhaps one of the most tightly guarded locations in all of the palace.
"All of this just for a single tool?" Alex asked as he walked down the stairs with his daughter.
Ronron could only shrug. "There are other treasures stored in other rooms down here, but yes. This is mostly for just one tool. As far as I understand, this formation-artifact is so old and so complex that no one currently alive can fix it if it breaks. So we have to be careful that no one can just come inside and break things."
Alex chuckled slightly. "Who would do that?" he asked.
"Some gods or sages who may dislike some decisions my master ends up making," Ronron answered with a straight face.
"Oh..." Alex’s laughter vanished. He had never thought of there being anyone who would dare act against the Sky God, but he supposed it was possible someone would. Especially considering the fact that there was growing contention between other individuals and the Sky God.
He looked around at the soldiers standing guard. It no longer felt weird for them to be there.
"What exactly will I gain from the formation as an answer?" Alex asked. "I’m hoping it’s not just a number. Numbers become hard to visualize if they’re too big."
It was easy to determine how large of a difference it was between 40 meters and 200 meters. Any person could easily visualize an approximate size in their mind. However, when the numbers grew large, reaching past any understandable metric, things became useless.
"It does indeed use regular measurements," Ronron answered. "But don’t worry, we already have reference materials present to figure out how large the measurement is."
"Oh? What sort of reference?" Alex asked.
"A comparative measurement in reference to the Sky God’s Palace and many other Immortal worlds out there," Ronron explained.
Alex raised an eyebrow. "How big was your Soul Space?"
"200 thousand kilometers in radius," Ronron answered. "In simple words, it’s two-thirds of the average east-to-west length of the realm we’re currently in. Or a few percentage points short of reaching the same size as the Bloodhaven realm. Although, my Soul Space holds more volume than the Bloodhaven realm since it’s spherical in shape, and the realm is not."
Alex was quite surprised by the size Ronron spoke of. Her Space Stone was supposed to be smaller than his, so to hear how large her Soul Space was was indeed quite fascinating. That only made him even more curious as to how big his would be.
"How about your master? Has she told you how large her Soul Space is?" Alex asked.
"She has. It’s nearly three times as large as this realm," Ronron answered. "It’s large enough to fit more than the Fiend’s Sanctuary, and just short of the Medicine World."
Alex raised an eyebrow. The Medicine World was indeed one of the larger realms out there among the human realms. And since Alex had visited that land, he knew just how big it was. It was even bigger than the Myriad Spirit realm, which in and of itself was quite big.
That made him even more curious as to what his results would be.
Alex arrived at the bottom of the stairs and saw a faintly glowing formation at the center of the room, drawn entirely with blue ink on a white marble floor as far as he could tell, and made with not only formations, but also some scripts upon it.
The entire thing worked as an artifact, so it was a complex mix of multiple professions coming together to form this thing. Alex wouldn’t have been surprised if Ronron were to have told him that dozens of people had to work with each other to create such a beautiful thing.
But sadly, she simply didn’t know who it was that made this. Like many things of the past, records of this had been lost or erased, or people at the time simply didn’t bother to keep a record of this.
Alex stood at the edge of the formation’s ring, not taking a step further. "What now?" he asked Ronron. "Do I just go to the center and wait?"
Ronron nodded. "That’s pretty much it. Let it search through your Soul Space. Depending on your Soul Space’s size, it can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour to get the result, so you need to wait patiently."
Alex nodded. "I can do that. I’ll head in."
He walked over to the center of the formation, finding a blank spot with no lines moving across that location. There, he sat down and gave a nod to Ronron.
Ronron asked someone else who was in charge of the formation to start it, and Alex saw the blue ink on the floor come alive in a bright light. Instantly, tendrils of aura touched him, trying to reach deep into him.
Alex hesitated at first, but having been prepared for this, he quickly took a deep breath and opened his Soul Space. The tendrils of aura found his Soul Space and entered inside, finding themselves at the edge of it, far, far away from the secret realm Alex didn’t want it to interfere in.
The tendrils turned into a stream of dull aura that went further in, forming a very thin thread that moved in a straight, unbroken line.
Alex followed the thread with his senses, but he could only do it for so long as his senses didn’t expand beyond a few hundred kilometers, which the thread had moved past in a matter of minutes.
If he were to follow it, he would move the opening away, and he couldn’t do that.
So, for the next however many minutes it took for the formation to do its thing, Alex remained still and waited for the result.