Jing Shu had no idea why she always blacked out whenever her Cube Space upgraded. Was it really necessary to knock her unconscious every single time? Couldn't it just update online or something? What was with this forced shutdown? It was wasting her time! She could've collected way more black liquid if it hadn't kicked her offline.
But then again, after thinking about it for a bit, it did kind of make sense. The Cube Space's upgrade was probably like anesthesia before surgery. It had to knock her out before cracking her skull open and stuffing new stuff inside, then wake her up once the operation was done.
If there wasn't any anesthesia, the pain alone would probably kill her.
Her thoughts blurred as the dizziness deepened. Her head throbbed, sweat poured down her face, and it felt like thousands of bugs were gnawing on her brain.
This pain was worse than anything she'd ever felt before.
"It hurts so bad!" she groaned.
Still, before losing consciousness completely, Jing Shu managed to glance at the Cube Space, where nearly a full cubic meter of black liquid was already stored. She smiled in satisfaction, then her eyes rolled back, and she passed out cold, collapsing into the muddy pit. Within minutes, the mud swallowed her whole.
What she didn't know was that a massive, world-shaking event was happening at that very moment.
The army of bugs tied to her silk threads was still plunging nonstop into the black liquid. They'd completely lost contact with her, so naturally, they weren't sending any more liquid into the Cube Space.
Under normal circumstances, nothing could enter the Cube Space without her direct command. But now, the entire space was humming and thrumming with excitement, releasing bursts of joy. The silk threads that sank into the black liquid began to dissolve, and the liquid itself was vanishing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Just a moment ago, Jing Shu had tried to collect that same liquid but failed every time. Now, while she was unconscious, the Cube Space was absorbing it on its own!
At the same time, the black hole let out a furious, ear-piercing roar. Every living creature in the Tianshan Mountains trembled in terror. Even Xiao Wei's gastropods huddled together, shaking uncontrollably. Xiao Wei herself felt a deep unease, though she didn't know why. A voice full of rage—and fear—echoed in her ears, like something being tortured, crying out in pain.
The sound was so strange that it instantly killed almost all the nearby bugs that had just finished feeding. Humans couldn't hear it, though—it wasn't a frequency within the range of human hearing, so they had no idea something this terrifying was happening.
In truth, when we pluck an eggplant from the stem, it screams thirty-seven times. It's just that its cries vibrate at a frequency our ears can't detect. We're simply not tuned to the same channel.
This was a war between dimensions.
Just like how a two-dimensional ant could never fight against a three-dimensional human, beings from lower dimensions couldn't possibly resist those from higher ones. Normally, different dimensions didn't interfere with each other. But ever since the apocalypse began, everything had gone haywire—dimensions had started colliding and overlapping chaotically.
The crimson liquid Jing Shu encountered before was a product of the fourth dimension. No one knew how many dimensions the black liquid came from. Inside the black hole, they were like fat sheep, being devoured by the starving wolf that was her Cube Space.
Only when the Cube Space finally let out a satisfied burp did everything fall quiet again.
The ground shook even harder. The black hole roared, furious that half of what it had spent months collecting was suddenly stolen.
The entire Tianshan range began to tremble violently. The rolling peaks twisted and turned, swallowing every living thing nearby. The movement of the crust intensified, shaking loose the narrow valley where Jing Shu had been. It was now on the verge of collapsing completely, about to be swallowed by the earth itself.
And through it all, Jing Shu remained unconscious, completely unaware of the chaos she'd caused.
Normally, her Cube Space upgrades only took a few hours before she woke up.
But this time, she'd absorbed too much black liquid. Even in her unconscious state, her head throbbed with unbearable pain, like someone hammering her skull nonstop. The Cube Space kept running wildly, its energy churning. She lay there in the freezing mud for two full days, completely out cold.
She didn't wake up until Xiao Dou led Li Dayou's team to find her and carry her back to the boat.
"Holy shit, my head hurts…" Jing Shu groaned awake, her eyelids heavy as lead. She struggled to open her eyes just enough to see that she was lying inside her tent on the ship. At least she was safe.
Outside the tent, Xiao Dou clucked loudly to call for people.
Normally, Jing Shu loved keeping clean, but now her cotton jacket and inner clothes were caked with dried mud. She felt disgusted. Even the tent floor was filthy, like she'd dragged the entire mud pit in with her.
"So sleepy… feels like I haven't slept in days," she mumbled. Somehow, she forced herself to sit up and grabbed her phone. The time made her blink—she'd been out for two whole days. No wonder she was this exhausted. The drowsiness weighed on her like a blanket, and if not for her curiosity about the upgraded Cube Space, she would've passed out again.
Before she could check, Wang Dan rushed over with a cup of hot water, scolding, "Seriously, how could you just faint in such a dangerous place? If we hadn't found you in time, you'd have been swept away before rescue even got here! You've got no idea how crazy it got—outta nowhere, that whole area went berserk. The waves expanded, and now our safe zone's only a few hundred meters wide, shrinking by the hour. I don't even know if rescue's still coming."
Jing Shu took a sip of water, but the fatigue hit her too hard. She dozed off again almost immediately.
Xiao Dou stayed faithfully by her side, her loyal guard chicken, keeping watch day and night.
Even half-conscious, Jing Shu knew something was off with her body. She'd never been this tired before. It had to be a side effect of the Cube Space's upgrade—maybe even a sign of a new ability awakening.
That sleep lasted another three or four days. When she finally woke up again, she realized she was lying inside a luxury minibus. Still, she felt unbelievably sleepy.
"What the hell's wrong with me?" she muttered, panicking a little. She wasn't hungry at all—in fact, she felt full, like she'd just eaten. For someone like her, who was always starving and could eat endlessly, that was definitely not normal.
Fighting to stay awake, Jing Shu opened her upgraded Cube Space.
The moment she did, her breath caught. It was like stepping into another world. The Cube Space had changed completely.
"This is… the Cube Space's third form! The new ninth-tier Rubik's Cube! It's got a full 9×9×9 grid, that's 729 cubic meters—217 cubic meters more than before!"
Overwhelmed by excitement, she promptly fainted again.
When she woke up three days later, she swore that this time, no matter what, she'd properly explore her new Cube.