Chapter 398: A Hand Crossing the Void

Whirring!

The weather had been very cold recently. With the fan spinning, the temperature in the living room felt like it dropped by a few more degrees.

“In the Lava World, there’s no sense of winter approaching. It’s scorching hot there all year round, which even causes the Ishdars to wear minimal, revealing clothing.”

Xu Zhi sat in the living room, calmly eating home-style dishes from the Food World with his chopsticks, occasionally looking up at the black mechanical spaceship spinning wildly beneath the ceiling fan.

Spinning at high speed, it had become a blurry, black top-like shadow, even bouncing up and down as if tethered by a rubber band due to its irregular shape.

A strange thought suddenly occurred to Xu Zhi:

“Considering the technological gap between our civilizations, I’m like an Earthling who’s caught a flying saucer from a highly advanced alien civilization capable of interstellar travel and is now dangling it from a ceiling fan??”

He didn’t feel there was anything wrong with doing this. After all, he had to give them something to do, didn't he?

After some time spent together, Xu Zhi still understood the nature of this race: if given free time to think, these scientists would undoubtedly cause trouble. Who knew their intelligence? If they had time to spare, they might discover something amiss. Better to just spin them until they're dizzy! Preventing them from thinking was the best option.

“There’s no other way; I have to guard against your overthinking and uncovering any flaws.”

Xu Zhi ate quickly, finishing his meal within three minutes. Only empty, grease-stained dishes remained on the table. He took them to the kitchen, turned on the tap, and left them to soak, thinking, “After I finish today’s work and send them off, I’ll come back to do the dishes…”

Washing dishes himself every day, he suddenly felt that perhaps it was time to find a housekeeper. His meals were now cooked by others from the Food World, with fresh, unique delicacies every day, but he still lacked a butler to manage household chores and cleaning.

However, the mention of a butler sparked an idea in Xu Zhi’s mind.

“For a perfect butler, my first thought is Little Wei. If I could get a Little Wei, that wouldn’t be bad… After all, the Enigmatic Little Wei is the most perfect woman in existence: beautiful, kind, incredibly intelligent, and uncomplaining, which ironically stirs people’s dark jealousy, leading them to return with hoes and shovels to dismember her…”

He wouldn’t dismember her, and she would have no negative effects on him. An Enigmatic being, formed from the collective wishes of all sentient beings, would be an incredibly reliable and safe butler. The problem was how to acquire one.

But what could an ant-sized Little Wei do? To be a butler, it would have to be a Big Wei, wouldn’t it!? That was the question. For an Enigmatic to grow to such a colossal size—tens of thousands of feet tall—the amount of fear it would need to gather from all beings would be terrifying.

Perhaps he could acquire a domestic robot from the Ishdars; that would be very simple and straightforward… But one that large would require him to build it from scratch, which would be troublesome. These two ideas flashed through his mind, but he still needed to give them more thought.

As for finding a native from the 'Myriad Worlds' to be a housekeeper, he hadn’t considered that yet. Setting aside their size, only powerful figures who practiced the Nine Revolutions Mysterious Technique and Cthulhuian evil gods could grow that large… And those who possess such abilities? Various factors would make it impossible.

“Being so large can be a bother,” he mused, as he turned off the ceiling fan and took the mechanical spaceship down from the living room.

Thud!

Inside the mechanical spaceship, countless scientists in white lab coats swayed precariously. If they weren't inherently strong, the spatial turbulence that had disoriented them for days would have long since made them foam at the mouth.

At that moment, everything suddenly stopped.

“Has the spatial turbulence, which traversed worlds and time, finally passed?!”

“Perhaps this spatial turbulence is something we must endure every time? Or perhaps it was an unfortunate natural phenomenon we encountered by chance?”

“This was too dangerous! A narrow escape from death!”

“Have all the major data points been recorded?”

“Fully recorded!”

White lights flashed.

In the mechanical science hall, before rows of precise scientific instruments, the Ishdars' top scientists, though pale-faced, continued to examine the data. Their expressions gradually shifted to ecstasy. What were these spatial storms compared to the invaluable data they were collecting? They had initially guessed that traversing space and worlds would demand a huge price! The risk was extremely high, and what they had just experienced perfectly matched their predictions: the spatiotemporal storm was terrifying, like a tiny ship tossed about by a tempest at sea. Only at this moment did they truly experience the might and vastness of nature.

But the very next second, the world spun again. The entire mechanical spaceship seemed to be tossed by someone, jolting heavily twice in a row.

After Xu Zhi detached it from the fan, he casually bounced the mechanical spaceship in his palm, curious. “It looks small, but it's quite heavy. About fifty catties, perhaps?” He extended his hand, and an old, rusty scale with a weighing arm, which had been stored in a corner of the outdoor orchard, flew through the air into the living room. This was the scale he used to weigh lychees in the orchard. He adjusted the black weighing stone. “Fifty-three catties. My guess was indeed accurate… This technological civilization is more advanced than I thought. It must be a lightweight alloy metal incorporating magic-energy technology, forming technological devices with a structure similar to magical artifacts. No need to test its hardness; it can withstand a vacuum.”

Having completed these tasks, he wasted no more time. It was best to finish this work quickly. He took out a white woven bag, typically used for rice, put the mechanical spaceship inside, and walked out of the orchard.

“Invisible Qi Body!”

A hazy elemental spell, a faintly distorted storm of air, obscured Xu Zhi’s vision… He ascended directly, flying towards the clouds like a towering pillar of light, straight into the atmosphere. Xu Zhi was no longer an ordinary Level Six cultivator. Having survived multiple world extinctions, his cultivation was now approaching that of a Quasi-Emperor. His overall strength had increased by a full two times compared to when he first entered Level Six, and flying into the atmosphere no longer required much energy.

Inside the mechanical spaceship, various tremors resumed.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

“We’re accelerating! The spatial displacement device indicates that we are undergoing stable displacement!”

“The gyroscope tells us our direction is stable!”

“The speed is incredible!”

“Could it be that we have passed through the spatial turbulence and are nearing a period of calm? Are we about to safely arrive in another world?”

Precise calculation machines flashed. Scientists in white lab coats frantically fiddled with their instruments. The atmosphere inside the mechanical spaceship was incredibly tense; even though they were highly confident in their civilization’s technological prowess, this was their first experience with such events, making them extremely nervous.

After a period of detection and integration, they felt the spaceship still moving steadily forward and immediately took a deep breath, relaxing. These past few days had been rough. After countless days of spinning and shaking, as if battered by waves of tides, they finally slumped into their seats, letting out a sigh of relief. The feeling was wonderful, like a ship that had weathered a great storm and now welcomed the calm, blue sea.

“Detect and analyze the newly acquired data!”

Now that they were safe, Melivina began her work, sitting at the mechanical control console and continuously analyzing the freshly acquired data.

But the very next second, her expression gradually froze, revealing disbelief. “Based on the spaceship’s surface area under force, and mechanical inertia…”

A virtual display of the forces exerted gradually appeared.

“Impossible!”

“Could my calculations be wrong!?” Melivina suddenly cried out. She frantically typed on her keyboard, and after several attempts, she roared at an Eastern female scientist next to her, “Li Bing! Lend me your brain.”

Li Bing paused, then quickly used her own brain to wirelessly connect to the display screen in front of Melivina. These scientists seemingly all had their personal computers, working in front of them. In reality, these were just screens; they connected their own brains as the computer’s central processing unit, with the display screens merely serving for convenient operation and communication with others.

Melivina used Li Bing’s brain for calculations, but the result was still the same.

“This… This is…!!”

Her expression completely froze.

“What happened?”

The other scientists noticed something was wrong. They came to the display screen and saw a terrifying virtual image on her computer. The image showed various data calculations, presenting a virtual force diagram derived from the spaceship’s contact area with the outside, as well as the height and angle of the applied force during takeoff.

They clearly saw:

It appeared to be a gigantic human hand, casually tossing their vast, massive mechanical spaceship into the air with a single palm… As simply as tossing a basketball…

Instantly, all the scientists present were stunned. But that wasn’t the most terrifying part.

Next, they saw a scale…