Seeing her husband had already entered a state of cultivation, Hathaway couldn't help but smile gently, her expression filled with softness. She spread her arms wide toward the pale and boundless world and took a light breath. "It's not so uncomfortable after all..."
She stepped lightly down the stairs, her long purple hair flowing behind her. Like a young girl, she sat hugging her knees, resting her chin atop them, tilting her head as she silently watched Taro ditating in midair. Wrapped in a white aura of ki fla, Hathaway felt as if she were nestled in Taro's arms—warm and safe.
As for Taro, ever since opening his Nine Tomoe Rinnegan, he had not blinked once, his gaze locked intently on the void before him.
Inside this other-dinsional space of the Hyperbolic Ti Chamber, all sense of the outside world was completely severed. There was nothing natural here; the ki was thin, and even with Taro's thods, it was difficult to draw any energy from beyond.
His gaze was like a bottomless abyss, like the vast heavens themselves, as if he sought to pry open a seam in the very fabric of the space before him.
"Since gaining the ability to teleport, it's been about two hundred and ten years. I've used it around 1,296 tis... During my exchange on Planet Yardrat, I demonstrated it 362 tis... After returning to Earth, I continued to ponder over this ability and used it 759 more tis... Over the centuries, I've also used it hundreds of tis just to travel..."
The sheer magnitude of Taro's spiritual power now was terrifying. If an ordinary person's mind was like a teacup filled with murky water, then Taro's was a golden liquid sphere the size of the Earth itself—perfect and cohesive. His thod of spiritual ditation, obtained from the Magic Star, was said by the God of Destruction to be a divine path capable of leading one to true godhood.
So... when Taro focused completely, reviewing his mories felt no different than flipping through a well-worn book. Every past mont flashed across his heart like bolts of lightning.
The sensations and insights from each of those 1,296 uses of Instant Transmission resurfaced in his mind, as though ti itself were reversing. Taro tasted each mont, savoring them like a cow chewing cud.
At the sa ti, his Nine Tomoe Rinnegan gazed into the space-ti of the Hyperbolic Ti Chamber; part of his focus was devoted to analyzing the spatial power hidden in his eyes; another part was observing and contemplating the strange void before him; yet another part revisited his experiences using Instant Transmission. Beyond that, he also compared these teleportation experiences to the spatial anomalies he now observed, trying to uncover so ultimate truth about space and ti...
For a Muken user, multitasking was a basic skill. But for soone like Taro, whose ntal strength was vast as the ocean, saying he could split his thoughts into three thousand might sound exaggerated—but given that he could connect his spirit to the hearts of all people in the world, he wasn't far off when going all out.
Taro sat cross-legged, floating just above the ground, eyes fixed on the void before him.
From ti to ti, rolling mists surged around him, transforming into humanoid shapes that flickered in and out of sight.
Hathaway quietly humd a song, hugging her knees and watching Taro for a long, long ti. Eventually, she smiled and stood up, her body so light it startled even herself—it was the ki surrounding her from Taro's presence. Adjusting slightly, she glanced back at Taro, who remained imrsed in cultivation, lost to the world. Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, she turned and walked out through the hallway of the chamber.
Once Hathaway left, their perception of ti completely diverged.
To the outside Hathaway, Taro inside the Hyperbolic Ti Chamber was like a recording playing at 365 tis speed; but to Taro, everything outside moved in slow motion.
For fifteen days straight, Taro did not move an inch, the Nine Tomoe Rinnegan in his eyes as calm as still water.
When he finally returned to awareness, he blinked, collected his thoughts, and looked toward the distant sleeping quarters. Letting out a light chuckle, he shook his head and smiled. "She left, huh..." After a mont's thought, he murmured, "Well then... shall we give it a try?"
He lowered his cross-legged posture until his feet touched the ground. Taking a deep breath, he gathered his ki, let it surge, and activated the Muken at fiftyfold power...
Facing the pale void before him, Taro let out a thunderous roar—"Ahhh!"—a torrent of scorching power erupted from his mouth, blasting toward the void ahead.
"It didn't hit anything 'solid'?"
He hadn't expected results from that roar. He wasn't reckless or arrogant—he knew he was still a far cry from Super Saiyan 3 Gotenks or Majin Buu. He had no illusions that brute force alone could tear open a spatial rift.
Yet the power of that roar hadn't even found a single point in space to strike—it just shot out like any ordinary ki blast, flying forward endlessly until it dissipated.
Taro rested one elbow on his hand and tapped the bridge of his nose, lost in thought.
This was unusual...
If tearing open space with brute force still required spatial comprehension, how did Super Saiyan 3 Gotenks and Majin Buu manage it in the original story? Neither of them had even grasped Instant Transmission in any form.
And yet Taro—who had studied spatial abilities in depth—had just roared at empty air.
"Could it be... the more one thinks, the more the truth is obscured, like being lost in a fog? Alright then... let's forget all spatial theory for now and see what happens..."
As the thought crossed his mind, Taro cleared all distractions, emptied his heart, cast aside the last fifteen days and the past two centuries of experience. He treated himself as nothing more than a brute with raw strength, took a deep breath again—and unleashed another fiftyfold Muken-powered roar!
This ti, it was different. The blast didn't fly off blindly—it struck sothing in the void right before him! From his chest and mouth surged the torrent of power, crashing into the fabric of the Hyperbolic Ti Chamber. A faint sliver of darkness—like a snake of black lightning—flickered in and out of sight. It didn't expand, but it was there.
As the torrent faded, Taro muttered, "Still not quite there..."
"Let's keep going!"
He sorted through the experience of "roaring open space," then returned to his ditative pose, floating midair, eyes once more fixed on the void. At the sa ti, his mind continued to simulate and refine his theories of space and ti. Around him, flickering silhouettes of ki and spiritual avatars shimred in and out—like brushstrokes of ink, like bursts of fireworks—like a thousand warriors cultivating, like ten thousand seekers seeking
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