918 Space and Matter

"Pearl, go back inside. I will have to remain here for a while," Alex said.

Pearl nodded and went in without any question. After Pearl went in, Alex got as in as he could before he felt as if the aura was going to overwhelm him.

Then, he sat down and started meditating.

Alex's senses spread wide, trying to see if he could notice anything different with the space that he could feel. However, it didn't look like there was anything wrong.

No matter how much he tried looking with his spiritual sense, Alex saw that the space was normal, and not twisted or split in any way at all.

He realized that his spiritual sense couldn't sense space at all. 'Is this because I haven't learned the mysteries behind Space, or is spiritual sense just not capable?' Alex wondered.

He kept his senses as they were and instead focused on the aura he could feel. It was still a mystery to him as to why he could feel the space aura, but since he did, he would try to master it.

He sat there, meditating, trying to feel space. The first step to understanding the properties of space was to figure out what the property of the current aura belonged to.

He needed to figure out if the current space was enlarged, shrunken, twisted, or cut off from the rest of the space.

Alex was sure this space wasn't cut off. If it was, it would be similar to the secret realms where the space would feel cut off from the rest of other space.

Alex knew that feeling, and due to that reason, he knew this aura did not belong that that property of space.

So, it was something else.

Alex felt the aura for a while and left the place. He had spent a week there and he could see no result from just sitting there.

So, he decided to be proactive about it.

Once far enough away from the place such that the aura didn't affect him as much, but it was still affecting the space, Alex used his Flickering Shadow's Technique to teleport to a close by location.

When he did, he tried to feel his effect on the space around him. He tried to understand why he was teleporting.

Until now, he had never tried to understand the mysteries behind how he could do anything, and that was for a good reason.

As he was right now, Alex had no way of manipulating or even feeling space unless something else was affecting it. He had thought of using formations or scripts to make a place where space was affected, but that required Saint-ranked spirit veins, and it was basically impossible to find such a thing in the Northern continent.

No one in their right mind would find a Saint-ranked spirit vein and let it be. They would either take it away, or create a city, sect, or clan around it.

The only place Alex could think of that had a Saint-ranked spirit vein without any owner was the Demon realm of this side where the ruler lay.

And with the ruler hiding there from the Heavenly Judgement there, there was no way Alex would be allowed to wantonly manipulate space there.

Even if he could, returning to the State of Xue was not something he had planned.

As such, he had been without a place where space was affected and now that he had found it, he was using it to try and learn whatever he could.

Alex teleported again and felt the space move around him. There was one question he had thought about for a while that he wanted to be answered.

Did an object occupy space or did they displace it?

Could an object move through space like a spiritual sense moving through walls by both existing in the same location at the same time? Or was it like water where it was pushed aside as one moved and returned back when the person left?

Normally, it was impossible for Alex to find that answer. However, in this affected space where the aura was just right enough for it to not overwhelm his feelings but still help him feel them, Alex found his answers.

When he teleported using the Flickering Shadows technique, Alex felt some disturbance in space. He quickly caught on to the disturbance and tried to understand what had happened.

He did it multiple times and each time he got closer and closer to the answer until finally a day later he understood what the answer was.

Space existed alongside matter. Space wasn't water or air that was displaced by something appearing inside it.

Space was an emptiness. It was the lack of something. In the area where matter existed, space couldn't exist. In the area where space existed, matter could not exist.

However, those two couldn't exist without each other. If no matter existed, there would be nothing to validate the existence of space.

If no space existed, there was nothing to validate the existence of matter.

When he understood this, he teleported, again and again, to figure out how the teleportation was happening. As he continued doing that, he understood how it worked.

When he teleported, he simply stopped existing in one space and started existing in another.

Of course, it didn't just happen because he felt like it. His Qi worked to connect two different points in space as a single one and then separated them again.

However, during the separation, the other space took him and the space where he was existing all along, started existing again.

When Alex understood that, he couldn't help but frown. He had just learned that matter and space were hot and cold. One existed to define another.

But if that was the case then how was his matter being teleported around through space? Surely there were some problems in his understanding of what was happening.

So, Alex spent weeks trying to understand it all over again and he came to the same conclusion.

Matter and Space existed side by side, but never together. Where matter existed, space didn't. And where space existed, the matter didn't.

But then, the teleportation clearly connected his body to a point in space, shrinking the space until it was nothing for him and then releasing it while also taking his body there.

How was there a point in space in a matter when space didn't exist when the matter was around?

It hurt Alex's mind for a while trying to figure out what was happening, but at some point, a thought came into his mind.

A piece of trivia that he had learned so long ago that he was surprised he still remembered it.

Back when he was still a young teenager, his mother had taught him something about science. It had to do with atoms and molecules and how they formed an object.

Atoms were made up of small particles that were so small that they only occupied about 0.01% of what was considered the entire atom.

So, an atom was 99.99% empty. In other words, every single atom was filled with space for about 99.99%.

Meaning that everything that was then made up of atoms was also subsequently mostly just space.

A human being was mostly just space.

Alex's eyes went wide. He realized that his entire body was practically all space and barely any matter. So when the two points in space were connected, they were in fact connected to his body, because his body was space.

However, even when his body was space mostly, it was the matter that was the body. After all, space was technically just emptiness.

Alex felt enlightened. With this new knowledge, he started to teleport again, trying to figure out how one could possibly teleport.

He teleported for a bit and felt the aura of space around him change as he did.

Slowly, but surely, Alex came to understand what was happening.

When the two points in space were connected, the space in his body, and the space where he was meant to become one thanks to his Qi.

When they did, they swapped places. Now, the space where he had been was free of the matter that made up his body, and the space where he was supposed to become the space in his body.

Then, when the Qi no longer affected the space, the two spaces went back to where they were. However, when they did, the 0.01% matter that made up Alex's body was taken away by the 99.99% of space that was his new body.

As such, while he thought he was moving through space, disappearing in one location, appearing in another, what was truly happening was Alex was changing the space that made up his body and as such the new space became his body, making it appear as if he had teleported.

Alex sat down to quickly meditate on what he had just learned.

The Flickering Shadows technique used Yin Qi to affect the space around the shadow where the Yin Qi affinity was high.

However, one didn't need Yin Qi alone to teleport. As long as one could affect space with normal Qi and force them to swap with the space in themselves or any objects, the teleportation would be successful.

As Alex sat there, gaining this new understanding of space, the worldly laws descended from the world, unaffected by the weirdness of the Ancient Battlefield, and fell onto Alex.

Alex meditated for an entire day with the worldly laws on him, and by the time the worldly laws went back to the heavens, he had learned the Dao of Teleportation.