From an unknown direction within the furnace, a breeze swept over the eight humans, carrying with it the scent of falling snow and the cool wind of spring. This air was a mixture of floral fragrances they had never encountered before.
"This scent... why do I feel like I'm in my mother's flower garden?" Yun Hai murmured, her voice now sounding much calmer. "Spring? This is like springtime!"
"Spring?" Li Wei sniffed the air greedily. "Xinghe, do you smell that? This isn't the smell of Guangzhou mud. This is... the scent of jasmine, but sharper. Like jasmine growing on a snowy mountain peak."
"It smells so sweet," Lin Mei whispered, slowly loosening her grip on her dead phone. "It feels as if all my fear has just been washed away. This makes no sense. We just left Earth; how is it possible for there to be plant scents here?"
"Xinghe, do you see that?" Xin Yan pointed toward the center of the crystal platform. "There is a rotating image."
Chu Xinghe narrowed his eyes, sharpening his focus on the center point of the platform that Xin Yan indicated. There, on the previously plain crystal floor, a glow appeared, forming a small vortex. The light was not static; it moved, weaving like a silk thread caught in the wind.
"That... is that a vehicle disc?" Li Wei crawled closer, his curiosity overcoming the nausea that had been tormenting him. "The images... flowers, the sun, leaves, the moon. What is this?"
Yun Hai followed, crawling closer, her eyes fixed on the disc-like object that had suddenly appeared. "The disc is huge. And those images... they are like the seasonal symbols in a painting my mother once bought. Flowers for spring, the sun perhaps for summer, leaves for autumn, and the moon for winter, right?"
Chu Xinghe joined them, kneeling beside Han Dong, who had also moved closer. "Seasonal paintings?" Chu Xinghe muttered, his brow furrowing slightly. "Li Wei is right; this is like a disc on a vehicle wheel, but larger and featuring... what are those? They look like four molds filled with images of a flower, the sun, a leaf, and the moon."
"But look there, in the middle of each seasonal image there is a small hole," Han Dong noted, his finger pointing exactly at the center of each symbol. "It's square-shaped, but with sharp angles on each side. Like a keyhole, but not for any key we know on Earth."
"Don't touch it yet!" Zhao Lin snapped, even though he was already in a crawling position closest to the disc. "What if it's a trap? What if it's a self-destruct button? Xinghe, you know the most about antiques; was this in your grandfather's books?"
Chu Xinghe shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving the details of the disc, which had begun to rotate slowly. "It wasn't. My grandfather only recorded the nine cauldrons and the stellar journey, but he never mentioned a mechanism inside the furnace. But looking at its shape... this disc is an axle. If this furnace is a carriage, then this is the steering wheel."
"Steering wheel? Are you saying we can drive this giant cauldron?" Li Wei laughed hysterically, his voice cracking amidst the purple mist. "Xinghe, I failed my driver's license test twice! You want me to steer dead dragons through the galaxy?"
"Not steering in that sense, Wei," Xinghe replied, feeling the crystal surface around the disc and sensing a faint vibration traveling to his fingertips. "This thing seems to operate on different commands. That scent of spring earlier... it wasn't a coincidence. It came from this flower symbol section."
Xin Yan observed the flower symbol, which was now glowing brighter than the other three. "Does that mean we are in the 'Spring' phase? If so, why does the scent feel so real? I can feel the humidity on my skin."
"Because it's not just a picture, Xin Yan," Lin Mei intervened, venturing to touch the air above the flower symbol. "There is energy coming out of here. It feels like... like touching a gentle electric current, but it doesn't sting. It feels warm."
"Perhaps this is what is called essence," Chu Xinghe murmured. "In ancient texts, every season has a different energy. Spring is birth. If this scent is coming out, it means the furnace is 'activating' something for our journey."
"Activating what?!" Zhao Lin shouted again, his eyes darting wildly at the darkness outside the platform. "Those dragons are dead! Are you saying this flower smell will make those corpses come back to life and eat us?"
"Be quiet, Zhao Lin! You're giving me a headache!" Fang Hua clutched her temples. "Xinghe, if this is the steering wheel, what should we do? We can't just sit here and wait until our oxygen truly runs out or until we crash into a star, right?"
"We do nothing," Xinghe answered shortly. "I mean, look around; we or this object are moving across space as if walking in a backyard. Besides, this thing won't stop anywhere recognized by humans."
Chu Xinghe pointed around him again while still kneeling. "Look, isn't this map, which resembles a star chart, pointing to things humans don't recognize? We can only sit and wait to see where we end up. Stay close together!"
Hearing Chu Xinghe's words, not a single one of them argued further. Physical and mental exhaustion slowly began to gnaw at the remaining adrenaline in their bodies. One by one, the eight youths dropped onto the crystal floor. They sat in a loose circle, surrounding the glowing disc that continued to rotate slowly with the radiance of the spring symbol.
Li Wei sat cross-legged, hugging his own arms. He looked down at the reflection of his mud-stained face on the clear crystal surface. Beside him, Han Dong leaned his back against the strange empty air that felt oddly solid, as if an invisible wall supported his body. Lin Mei and Fang Hua sat leaning against each other, while Yun Hai folded her legs neatly, her gaze still not fully focused.
Xin Yan chose to sit directly to Chu Xinghe's right. Their distance was so close that Xinghe could feel Xin Yan's shoulders still trembling slightly. Zhao Lin sat furthest from Xinghe, his eyes darting sharply with distrust at the surroundings, as if waiting for a monster to emerge from behind the purple mist above them.
The furnace room now felt incredibly silent. There was no longer the sound of atmospheric friction or the screeching of dragons from outside. All that remained was a low-frequency hum coming from beneath the crystal floor, resembling the sound of a giant machine operating in silent mode. Lin Mei reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. The screen of the rectangular object lit up brightly, displaying a battery level of sixty-four percent. She swiped the screen, opening the photo gallery.
"I never thought I'd look at a photo of my cat and feel like crying out loud," Lin Mei murmured. Her voice was hoarse. She played a short ten-second video of an orange cat playing with a ball of yarn on her living room rug. The small meow from the phone speaker broke the furnace's silence, sounding incredibly foreign and fragile in the vastness of space.
Fang Hua peered at Lin Mei's phone screen, a tear falling from the corner of her eye. "Your mother must be looking for you right now, Mei. They must think we drowned at the harbor."
Hearing this, Zhao Lin reached into the inner pocket of his torn shirt. He pulled out the latest model phone with a protective titanium shell. His finger tapped the screen harshly several times. "Damn it. Damn it! This thing, worth three months of an office worker's salary, can't even pick up an emergency satellite signal! What's the use of that damn factory installing dual antennas if it's useless in space?!"
"You are outside Earth's orbit, Zhao Lin. Communication satellites aren't designed to beam signals toward other galaxies," Han Dong said flatly. He also held his phone, but his eyes only stared at the lock screen displaying the time.
Han Dong furrowed his brow. He pressed the phone to his ear, then stared at the screen again. "Look at this. The clock on my phone is messed up. The seconds are jumping. Sometimes it stops for five seconds, then suddenly jumps ahead ten."
"That's time dilation," Yun Hai suddenly spoke. The girl turned toward Han Dong with a pale face, but her eyes showed a clarity of thought. "The speed of the object out there is too high. The digital clocks on our phone systems use quartz oscillators that depend on Earth's gravity and speed."
Li Wei swallowed hard. "You mean... one hour here could be ten years on Earth, like in those science fiction movies?"
"I don't know exactly," Yun Hai replied softly. "The physics we studied in school doesn't have a formula for a cauldron carriage pulled by dragons. But if we return to Earth tomorrow, maybe our parents will have already turned to ash. Or maybe not even a second has passed."
Yun Hai's words made the atmosphere chilling once again. The thought that the world they knew might have passed by hundreds of years extinguished any small hope of returning to a normal life. Xin Yan huddled closer to Xinghe's arm, seeking real security amidst all these conceptual impossibilities.
Chu Xinghe observed the glowing star map on the interior wall of the furnace. The constellation patterns on the map continued to shift. Ancient symbols blinking near the map's latitude lines indicated coordinates that were constantly changing. The bronze watch in Xinghe's hand still ticked with a steady, slow rhythm.
"This map seems alive," Xinghe said, breaking the silence. "It reacts to the environment outside. Its coordinate lines light up every time we pass a large galaxy cluster."
Lin Mei tried to match the patterns on the furnace wall with an offline star map app on her phone. "I can't find a single matching constellation. No Ursa Major, no Orion's Belt. Every point on this furnace map is completely alien."
The journey continued in silence for a duration that could not be measured with certainty. The scent of spring from the crystal floor remained, keeping their lungs filled with clean air. The sight of streaks of light outside the walls continued without a clear end. However, gradually, Chu Xinghe realized something had changed.
The streaks of light from the stars rushing backward began to decrease in number. The tunnel of light that was previously so dense and blinding now began to thin out. The star map on the furnace wall also began to dim in its central part.
"Is our speed decreasing?" Li Wei asked, realizing that darkness was slowly beginning to dominate the view outside.
Chu Xinghe looked out. "It's not the speed dropping, Wei. The stars are disappearing."
In a span that felt very short, the thousands of streaks of light outside the transparent glass walls vanished completely. There were no more white lines, no more flashes of blue or pink galaxies. Outside was only absolute darkness. A blackness so thick and deep, darker than the purest ink. Not a single speck of light as small as dust was visible.
The atmosphere inside the furnace suddenly felt much colder even though the scent of spring remained. A feeling of extreme isolation immediately struck their chests. Being in space with the view of stars still provided the illusion that they were somewhere. But being in the middle of this total darkness felt as if they had been erased from existence.
Yun Hai suddenly stood up. The girl's knees shook violently as she stepped toward the transparent glass wall of the furnace. She pressed both palms against the cold surface, her eyes wide as she stared into the absolute void out there. Her breathing began to quicken, her chest heaving.
"Yun Hai, what is it?" Xin Yan asked worriedly, standing up to join her.
"This... this is impossible," Yun Hai's voice trembled, sounding more like a desperate whimper. She turned back, looking at her friends with a deathly pale face illuminated by the glow of the wall map. "We are in a Supervoid. The Eridanus Supervoid."
"Super what?" Zhao Lin asked, his voice rising again as Yun Hai's panic infected him. "Explain it in plain human language, Yun Hai!"
Yun Hai swallowed hard with difficulty. Her eyes looked out again at the nothingness stretching without end. "The Eridanus Supervoid. This is one of the greatest mystery structures in the universe ever discovered by human telescopes. A void region that spans up to one billion light-years, you know."
Li Wei blinked several times, his brain trying to process that number. "One billion... light-years? Empty?"
"Empty," Yun Hai emphasized, her voice now sounding like someone losing their sanity. "By astronomical standards, space is indeed empty. But usually, there are galaxies scattered every few million light-years. But in this Supervoid... there is nothing. Almost no matter, no dark matter, no galaxies to create light. This is a giant hole in the universe."