"Especially in a place like Canaan, everyone’s time is incredibly precious. Every day is spent either in secluded practice or out on a mission. Who has the spare time to pay attention to people and matters that don’t concern them?"
"Never mind anyone else, just look at me."
Qin Feng’s gaze grew distant. "It’s been over seventy years since I first enrolled.
"But in this entire, vast campus, the number of people I know well enough to call by name probably doesn’t even add up to a thousand.
"And the vast majority of those were just temporary teammates I met by chance during missions."
He only knew a thousand-some people, yet Canaan Starry Sky Martial Arts University enrolled around six hundred thousand new students every year! At its peak, the student population could even reach the tens of billions.
Everyone was like an NPC in everyone else’s world.
"Haha, now that you mention it, that’s really true!"
Dragon Jade laughed in agreement. "I’ve been enrolled for two hundred years, and I don’t have many friends on the Subspace Network either. A few are from high school, but I’ve almost forgotten what they even look like by now.
"Who remembers who anymore... After all, it’s been almost two hundred years."
On Nissan’s rugged face, a rare look of nostalgia and wistfulness appeared. "Yeah... two hundred years. The world can be remade in that time."
Ning Jing, who had been silent the whole time, finally spoke. "Such is life."
The four of them chatted idly as they moved slowly along with the crowd.
When they finally stepped inside the stellar-class dreadnought, they were all awestruck by the grandeur and intricacy of the interior.
It didn’t feel like the inside of a ship at all, but rather a city of steel that had been lifted into the heavens.
Guided by the ship’s automated system, they passed through countless wide corridors and finally found their assigned cabins.
Each cabin was like a private Martial Arts Room. Though not large, they were fully equipped with all manner of training facilities.
As the four of them settled into their respective cabins, an indescribable feeling welled up within them.
"In another few hundred years,"
Dragon Jade’s voice held a faint, ethereal quality. "When the relatives and friends who share our blood are all gradually swept away by the river of time, perhaps the only meaning left in our lives will be the pursuit of the Martial Dao."
Time slipped by slowly during the long wait.
A full hour passed. Only after the last competing student stepped through the boarding corridor did the dozens of massive bay doors begin to slowly swing shut, sealing with a deep, heavy sound of locking metal.
Immediately after, a faint, almost imperceptible tremor ran through the entire dreadnought.
Qin Feng gazed out of his cabin’s viewport.
The Canaan Starry Sky Martial Arts University campus began to slowly recede.
The dreadnought was in motion.
Its launch was utterly without turbulence or hesitation, as smooth as gliding across a flawless sheet of ice.
Yet, its speed was increasing at an unimaginable, exponential rate!
In the blink of an eye, the immense First Campus of Canaan Starry Sky Martial Arts University had already shrunk to a blurry silhouette.
Next was the magnificent Canaan Tower, so colossal it seemed to connect heaven and earth, piercing through the entire star system.
This marvel of engineering, whose summit was impossible to see from the ground, now rapidly dwindled before the dreadnought’s terrifying acceleration.
Its body, once so tall its end was lost to sight, now shot backward and compressed in his vision, swiftly transforming from a pillar that held up the heavens into a tiny speck of light.
Finally, even that speck of light dissolved completely into the deep, brilliant tapestry of the starry sky behind them, becoming a faint, unremarkable pixel that one had to search for to even find.
The Canaan Star System was left far behind.
What followed was an endless, cold darkness.
Looking out the viewport, everything had vanished.
There were no planets, no nebulae, not even light.
There was only a pure, profound darkness that seemed capable of devouring everything, a darkness so deep it was unnerving.
Occasionally, a few extremely distant points of light would flash past, but they were so small and far away that they only emphasized the emptiness and stillness of the surrounding Cosmos.
"Tsk... I never imagined this is what true deep space looks like."
Nissan pressed his face against the cold viewport, staring out at the hopelessly monotonous darkness. He couldn’t help but sigh. "I thought it would be a lot more bustling.
"After all, our Star Zone alone has hundreds of millions of star systems. And if you pick any one of those, it could have hundreds of millions of Life Planets and Educational Planets... I figured it would be a sea of lights, with starships everywhere."
"No, you’ve got it wrong."
Dragon Jade, sitting across from him, just smiled and shook his head. He began to explain.
"On a grand, macroscopic scale, the Cosmos is, of course, incredibly vibrant. Countless civilizations and countless races, as numerous as grains of sand, are scattered across the dark canvas of space."
"But,"
Dragon Jade’s tone shifted, becoming serious. "from the perspective of an individual—especially a Martial Artist below the planetary-grade—the Cosmos is just cold, dark, and filled with infinite distance."
"Without the Subspace Transmission Network the Empire built to cover all of Human Territory, a conventional ship, even one capable of near-light-speed travel, would take decades, even centuries, just to leave its own home star system. Forget about traveling between systems."