943 The Crack

Alex walked through the aura-less path, letting Whisker handle as much as he could. He was noticed by a couple of people during the times, and while some thought to come and approach him, Alex's cultivation base made them reconsider.

They had learned how strong he was before he had even entered the Saint realm, so trying to fight or challenge him right now was simply idiocy.

After a few days of walking, Alex arrived at the location of the spatial rift where the aura of space was the most potent.

After arriving, Alex waited on the outskirt where he could barely feel the aura, and started cultivating. He was waiting for Whisker to be done, so he had to remain out here.

However, Pearl had no such restriction at all, so Alex sent him inside to feel the stronger spatial aura. He warned Pearl not to go too far in, but other than that he could do whatever he wanted to.

However, Pearl said something that Alex felt was absolutely ridiculous in Alex's eyes. Apparently, Pearl couldn't feel the space aura at all.

"What? What do you mean you can't feel it? You learned the Teleportation Dao," Alex said. If someone was capable of learning such a dao, there was no way they couldn't feel Space Aura right?

"But I really can't feel anything. This is nothing like the aura from when you broke through," Pearl said.  He tried sensing it a little more, but he couldn't feel anything.

Alex frowned. 'What's going on?' he wondered. Was Pearl not accustomed to the Space aura enough to recognize it? Or was teleportation somehow different from everything single other aspects of the Space properties?

He didn't think of that to be true, which was to say that there was likely another reason why Pearl couldn't sense Space aura. Or maybe even another reason why he could only sense Teleportation aura.

In the end, since Pearl was useless here, he called him back and let Whisker stay with him while he himself went in and tried to understand the Space aura.

He spent the next few days trying to remember everything he had learned about the aura here and compared it with what new things he was learning.

Unfortunately, he didn't see any difference. Which was to say that he had learned everything he could from the aura itself. If he wanted to learn more, he needed to change his environment. He needed to change his surrounding.

"Pearl, Whisker, you guys will need to hide for a bit," Alex said. Pearl stood up and walked back to Alex before jumping into his beast space. Whisker went back a second later as well.

After they both were back, Alex stood up and walked in closer, closer until he was up and close to the crack in space.

The last time he was here, he remembered the crack, seeing it wide open and his senses never making anywhere in it. He remembered the fear he felt when he stood in front of the open crack, even though nothing of harm ever came from the crack itself.

He wondered why he feared it. Was it instinct? Was it the fear of something he could not see or feel? Did breathing the fabric of space put in him fear of the unknown?

Alex didn't know, and this time, he wanted to find out.

He stood before the crack, that was visible to his naked eyes as well if you knew where to look. The light shifted at just the right angle around the crack, giving it a glass-like refraction capability, making it visible to him.

Alex moved his hands towards the crack but stopped. There was no reason he should be putting his arm at risk here. So, he brought out a random sword from his storage bag and slowly moved it toward the crack.

As he got closer, Alex felt a slight suction coming from the crack, one that slowly tried to pull on his sword. He easily resisted the force, but he was still surprised there was anything.

However, Alex didn't feel any movement of the air around the crack. So he wondered why his sword was the only thing being dragged in. Or was it that the air that was around the crack had already gone in?

Maybe the fact that time slowed down drastically for the air in the area had something to do with it as well.

Alex took the sword and instead of moving it close to the crack, he moved it around the crack. More specifically, he tried to see how sturdy the wall was.

Previously, the slightest use of Qi had made the crack wide open, so this time he wanted to see if it was just as easy to open it. Or maybe, hitting it from the side even made the crack disappear altogether.

Alex slightly nudged the side of the crack and was immediately shocked. For something that was supposed to be made out of nothing, the silver lines of the crack were incredibly sturdy.

He pushed with slightly more strength and was even more surprised how he wasn't capable of forcing it to budge at all.

'How is it so strong?' Alex wondered and used more force to move the sword through the crack in space. However, when even that didn't work, Alex used his entire cultivation base and body to force the sword to move.

To his surprise, it worked. His sword moved through the crack and… one-half of the sword fell to the ground. Alex watched in surprise when he realized that he hadn't moved his sword through the crack, but rather the crack through his sword.

'How can this be?' he wondered. 'How is this so sharp that it can cut my sword?'

While his sword wasn't made up of the best material, it was still quite great. Especially after his perfect tempering, the sword was a lot strong than other swords made up using the same materials and design.

'Space can cut through items too?' Alex thought for a bit. That was a massive piece of information he had just learned.

He tried meditating on that fact, ignoring his broken sword, but he reached nowhere. Cutting space was already something that he was barely capable of doing. Using Space to cut was not something he could hope to do anytime soon.

Alex got back up and looked at the silver crack that somehow shined even in the night light, most likely by refracting the silver light of the moon itself.

He hesitated for a bit, but there was nothing else he could do here that would help him learn more. There was only a single thing left, so Alex did it.

He took a deep breath and sent his Qi into the crack with the intent to open it up. Space aura emerged from him along with his intent and Qi, and when it landed on the crack, the crack opened up.

He sucked in even more air from the instance of fear he could help but feel. However, he quickly lost that thought as the majesty of what lay in front of him enamored him.

In his sense, the open crack in space was dark and turbulent. However, to his eyes, it looked beautiful. Like a work of art, the inside of the crack was ever-shifting with purple and silver colors along with some dark parts that constantly seemed to move around.

For some reason, Alex's eyes, despite the fact of how good they were, couldn't focus on anything in front of him. The silver and purple mixture looked as if it was right in front of him at one moment, and in the next, it was so far away that it looked tiny in comparison.

Alex didn't know much about space, but even he could tell that the space inside the crack was ever-shifting, ever-changing.

Alex felt his spiritual sense crumble within a moment after entering again, and this time he thought he knew why.

When his spiritual sense entered the crack, it would be close to him. However, at the next stage, it would be hundreds of thousands of kilometers away and thus no longer work.

If what he realized was true, then there was more in this world than he thought he knew.

Alex took the broken top piece of the sword and took it close to the crack. He held it firmly so that the space crack didn't suddenly swallow it in, but he also held it loose enough so that if there was any strong suction force around the crack, it didn't drag him along as well.

When he did bring the blade close enough, he was surprised that the blade wasn't sucked in at all. There was still some suction force, but it was of the same strength as when the crack was nothing but a splinter in space.

Still, he wanted to see what would happen to a blade if it did go into the crack, so after reaching close enough, Alex tossed it in.

The blade floated in the air right where Alex had tossed it, not going anywhere at all. It wasn't affected by gravity, it seemed. Nor was it affected by time.

Alex was confused this time around. The space inside was definitely shifting, so why didn't the blade move along with it?

He thought for a moment and wondered if it was stationary because he had opened the crack here. What if the blade was away from the crack?

He wanted to do some experiments with the crack now.