A chill ran down Fatty's spine. He thought, if Han Yu hadn't stopped him in time, his hand might have been stretched into an irregular noodle, just like pulled noodles.

...

The "tornado," wrapped around the flashlight, stood there silently like a statue made of some unknown substance. It didn't resemble an airflow, nor did it seem like compressed air.

Han Yu frowned, gazing at the scene before her. After pondering for a long time, finally, in a flash of insight, she understood the principle behind the flashlight's deformation. Pointing at the "tornado," she said with slight excitement, "I know the principle now! It's not an airflow at all, nor is it compressed air, but rather a distorted space!"

Han Yu's explanation was like opening a door to a world they had never set foot in for Fatty and Rou Yi. Inside the door lay a miracle that did not belong to Earth.

Fatty asked doubtfully, "Distorted space? What does that mean?"

Han Yu pointed to the flashlight that had been stretched into noodles and explained, "Look at that flashlight. Initially, in our world, its shape was normal. But inside the 'tornado' space, it's distorted. This instantaneous distortion isn't caused by external force, but by changes in space. I don't know if you've ever seen a kaleidoscope. A colored piece in our space becomes a colorful world in the kaleidoscope. The flashlight with its regular shape in our world, upon entering the kaleidoscope world, has become what it is now."

"Relying solely on tangible substances that we can understand, like the flashlight, is actually not enough to illustrate my conjecture—but look at the light emitted by the flashlight, its twisted state is actually the same as the twisted state of the flashlight. Light is a very special substance, possessing wave-particle duality. I think there are only two things that can twist light: one is gravity, which acts on light particles, causing light to bend; the other is space distortion and stacking, which can cause light to be twisted. The reason can only be the latter, because the former is easily ruled out. If it were gravity affecting it, we would have been torn apart by gravity long ago. The 'tornado' before us is actually formed by the bending and twisting of space. It is an 'image' left behind after a change in space."

Even though Han Yu was explaining using very simple principles, her explanation completely confused Fatty.

Fatty couldn't understand what Han Yu was saying at all, and he scratched his head in frustration.

Rou Yi had a flash of inspiration and asked, "Han Yu, what would happen if Fatty had put his hand into the 'tornado' just now?"

Rou Yi's question was more down-to-earth. The principles behind the twisted flashlight and the twisted light were too profound and abstract to understand. She believed that as long as Han Yu explained this question clearly, she and Fatty would naturally understand the principle of the 'tornado.'

Unexpectedly, Han Yu's next words not only didn't solve their problem, but made them even more dizzy: "If Brother Shi had put his hand into the 'tornado' just now, Brother Shi's arm would have disappeared directly. The reason is very simple, because the same object cannot appear in two spaces at the same time, so after Brother Shi put his hand into that space, his hand would be equivalent to entering another space. Now, look at the light of the flashlight in the 'tornado.' If the light was both in the 'tornado' space and in our space, its light would penetrate the 'tornado' and shine into our space, but you see, the light of the flashlight is actually always in that space and has not shone into our space. That light is like being trapped in that space, and we can only observe this light from an objective side."

Fatty obviously still didn't understand what Han Yu meant. He came up with a "clumsy" idea on his own: "Han Yu, are you saying that if I pulled my hand out of the 'tornado,' wouldn't that be the same as my arm coming out of another space?"

Han Yu shook her head: "Brother Shi, you're thinking too simply. We only have the possibility of entering the 'tornado' space now, but not the possibility of coming out of that space. It's like a one-way door; once you go in, you can't get out. Moreover, I strongly suspect that the flashlight we see and the light it emits are very likely to be just a phantom. The real flashlight may have been torn apart and destroyed by the distorted space the moment it entered the 'tornado.'"

The more Han Yu explained, the more Fatty and Rou Yi felt the "tornado" before them was terrifying.

Fatty simply stopped dwelling on the question of what the "tornado" actually was. He raised one last question, a very practical one: "Han Yu, we're not going to worry about the 'tornado' anymore. What I want to know now is, where did the meteorite go?"