The Final Battle (6)

What played on the screen was none other than high-definition footage of Xiao Hen lifting his foot and taking a step out of the antimatter sphere. With one step, he crossed a billion kilometers—and he had not even used spatial abilities.

After obtaining this video, all the scientists who watched Xiao Hen’s movements began to harbor a faint suspicion. It was simply too astonishing.

"C-could it be… time?" a scientist said with difficulty.

"It… it’s possible…" another scientist said, wiping away sweat.

"It’s not merely possible. It must be the Power of Time!" declared a ram-headed scientist.

"Only the Power of Time could accomplish something like this."

In the void of the universe, Xiao Hen quietly watched as the antimatter sphere slowly condensed and shrank, eventually becoming a solid sphere with a diameter of 1.6 million kilometers. It was a celestial body without color or a tangible form—or perhaps it could not even be called a celestial body. It was simply an unimaginably massive mass of antimatter.

Xiao Hen looked happily at the antimatter sphere before him. This was a truly terrifying weapon, one capable of instantly killing this avatar of his. Even a Main God body would find it troublesome to deal with. Still, it was also a good thing. Perhaps he would have to use the power of the Main God Avatar to take it away.

"But before that, I have to deal with this Space Imprisonment ability first!" Xiao Hen muttered as he turned to look at the fleets encircling him in the distant void.

Earlier, while he had still been inside the antimatter sphere, he had not foolishly waited for it to close completely. Once it fully closed and formed a solid sphere, with Space Imprisonment in effect, this avatar of his would certainly die. Therefore, at the instant the antimatter sphere completely closed, he made his move.

That was right—the Power of Time. As the Lord of Time and Space, he could do far more than wield Spatial Power. The Power of Time was also one of his specialties.

At the instant the antimatter sphere closed, time had stopped. Xiao Hen then casually walked out of the antimatter sphere step by step at nearly the speed of light, taking roughly two hours.

But in the eyes of the Prada people, Xiao Hen had merely taken one step and directly walked out of the antimatter sphere. It was unreasonable, yet it had happened. Existence was reason enough, so what method had Xiao Hen used to accomplish it?

At first, the Prada scientists thought the spatial wave frequency-locking device had malfunctioned and that Xiao Hen had used a spatial ability. After all, only spatial abilities could allow someone to cross a billion kilometers in a single step, to traverse more than a hundred light-minutes in one stride.

Yet the facts proved that the spatial wave frequency-locking device had not malfunctioned. The inspection results showed that the instruments were completely intact. That region of cosmic void spanning 1.3 light-years in diameter remained locked down, and the Imperial warships within that space were still unable to enter subspace. This showed that Xiao Hen had used another method to escape the antimatter sphere’s attack.

Without the high-definition footage, the scientists had not dared to consider time, because that was the domain of a Level 8 Civilization. If a Level 8 Civilization truly wanted to deal with them, a casual move would be enough to wipe them out. Why would it go to such lengths?

But now, it had been proven that it really was the Power of Time. For a moment, they found it difficult to accept.

Xiao Hen’s time stop was different from his previous Time Stasis.

In terms of the concept of time, he had synchronized with Virtual Time.

From the outside, he had crossed a billion kilometers in one step, and the entire process had taken less than a second. Yet in reality, he had spent around two hours. Where had that time come from?

The Prada people outside the range of the time stop detected no abnormality in the flow of time around their home planet. Even after conducting galactic and cosmic comparisons, they still found no issue with time. This only deepened their astonishment. It truly was worthy of being the domain of a Level 8 Civilization.

When Xiao Hen used time stop, his personal time disconnected from the universe’s true time and bridged with Virtual Time. Relatively speaking, the entire universe had stopped moving, and thus time had stopped.

Of course, this was impossible in reality, because the essence of matter was energy, and the essence of energy was motion.

The entire universe had been in motion since the Big Bang. If motion truly stopped, then time would stop as well. All things would freeze, just like pausing a movie.

Xiao Hen was naturally not an existence capable of pressing the universe’s pause button. Only beings beyond Level 10 could probably accomplish such a thing.

What Xiao Hen did was bridge with Virtual Time. Virtual Time was another concept of time, different from true time. Scientific theory had proven that observations and measurements of different spaces and times could produce different results.

Time was four-dimensional spatial geometry. It had certain spacelike directions and certain timelike directions. In a sense, concepts of different spaces and times within the same universe could be distinguished from one another.

At that moment, only one second passed in the universe’s true time, but two additional hours had appeared in Xiao Hen’s life. That extra time was Virtual Time, time that existed conceptually, yet Xiao Hen had truly lived through it. Those two hours were not false. Virtual Time was also a real concept of time; the word "virtual" was simply a different designation used to distinguish it from the universe’s concept of time.

One of the ultimate questions of the universe that scientists had always pursued was this: the universe had existed for more than ten billion years since the Big Bang, but before that singularity exploded—before the universe even existed—what had it been like?

At that time, was there a scale of time? Was the place where the singularity existed space? Did the concept of space exist?

The time of that era was when Virtual Time truly possessed conceptual significance.

From the Big Bang to the end of the universe, after the Big Bang ended and collapse began, would that count as time flowing backward?

With time flowing backward, the exploded matter would return to the singularity over the same amount of time, as though someone had pressed the reverse-play button. Everything would return to its origin before playing again.

What was the meaning of the universe’s existence?

How were those alternate-dimensional spaces formed? Why did the endless myriad worlds exist?

Xiao Hen did not concern himself with these questions. It was too early to think about them now. He had not even reached a true Level 8 Civilization. He now possessed the Combat Power of a Level 8 Civilization, but lacked the same reserve of knowledge and the diverse technology tree of a collective civilization. Under him were only a group of Koolm scientists and a large number of combat personnel.

Among the more than thirty billion angels, there were some female scientists, but they were too scattered and their fields too complex. For the time being, they could not provide him with any help. He could only wait until the Virtual Mall opened in the future.

At that moment, the large number of Prada warships surrounding Xiao Hen finally made their move!