Just as Zhou Jianmin had anticipated that Lin Yi would ask about his family, Lin Yi had, even before the second contact began, readied himself to present information about the Tianling Realm—or rather, drafted his talking points.
So very quickly, he adjusted his state:
"No problem, Director Zhou. Let me begin by outlining the situation in the Tianling Realm."
Zhou Jianmin gripped his communicator tightly: "Good."
Afterward Lin Yi sat on the grass, shifted into a more comfortable position, plucked a blade of grass, and, pinching its stem and twirling it, began to speak:
"Director Zhou, the exact time and cause of the Tianling Realm's birth have never been verified. In any case, the mainstream view is that since the creation of heaven and earth, the calendar has been divided into four periods: Taigu, Yuangu, Shanggu, and Jingu."
"Toward the end of the Taigu period, the Tianling Realm split into four great domains—east, south, west, and north—in some upheaval. After countless years, each domain formed a number of immortal dynasties."
"The Great Zhou Immortal Dynasty is one of the Seven Great Immortal Dynasties of the Northern Domain. It has stood for more than eight thousand years, jointly governed by the Immortal Alliance formed from the six great sects."
"The Guihua Sect where I am currently located is in Qingzhou, one of the twenty-one prefectures of the Great Zhou Immortal Dynasty."
As soon as Lin Yi finished.
Inside the Think Tank base.
An expert with dark skin immediately raised his hand.
After a few seconds.
The microphone indicator light before the expert turned from red to green, and his voice was patched into the encrypted channel: "Comrade Lin Yi, hello. I am Liao Xingwei of the research office at the Institute of Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences."
"If convenient, could you describe Qingzhou in detail?"
"For example, its shape, span, and area, and so on?"
Qingzhou?
Lin Yi barely hesitated before giving his impression of Qingzhou: "Qingzhou is located in the western part of the Great Zhou Immortal Dynasty. Its shape is somewhat like a mirror-image version of Anhui Province."
"That is, long from north to south, narrow from east to west, overall presenting a sort of olive shape."
"Though I can't give an exact figure, I estimate the entire territory of Qingzhou is about five or six times the land area of Huaxia."
"Big as—" Liao Xingwei adjusted his glasses in astonishment, nearly letting slip a hometown curse, "Cough cough... five or six times? That big?"
Although he had already braced himself that Qingzhou wouldn't be small.
At the moment of learning the answer, Liao Xingwei was still somewhat unprofessional.
A territory five or six times the land of Huaxia...
And this was just the area of a single prefecture?
Hearing this, Lin Yi smiled understandingly: "That's right, it is quite large."
Back when he first transmigrated to the Tianling Realm, he too had been startled by the vastness of Qingzhou.
But later, constantly on the move to survive year after year, he gradually came to accept this reality.
Liao Xingwei, enduring his shock, recorded these data in detail, then asked: "Then what about the Great Zhou Immortal Dynasty and the entire Tianling Realm? If we take Qingzhou as a reference sample, roughly what's the situation?"
This time.
Lin Yi's thinking was clearly much longer; fully ten-plus seconds passed before he spoke: "Qingzhou is a minor prefecture. In both strength and territory, it ranks near the bottom among the twenty-one prefectures of the Great Zhou Immortal Dynasty, with its territory ranking around fifteenth or sixteenth."
"Each of the top ten great prefectures is one to several times larger than Qingzhou."
"For example, Dongge Prefecture, hailed as the number one prefecture under heaven, has an area nearly seven or eight times that of Qingzhou, and is also where the Immortal Alliance headquarters is located."
"As for the Great Zhou Immortal Dynasty, among the Seven Great Immortal Dynasties of the Northern Domain, it only ranks mid-tier. The largest in the entire Northern Domain, the Xuanji Immortal Dynasty, is said to have a territory over ten times that of the Great Zhou."
"As for places farther away… I really don't know the situation. All sorts of rumors circulate."
As he said this.
Lin Yi shook his head with slight regret.
Although he wanted to provide more world-level information for the home world, this was already the limit of his knowledge.
No way around it.
He had spent the vast majority of his life roaming Qingzhou; outside Qingzhou he had only visited three neighboring great prefectures, staying for not long at all.
Most information outside Qingzhou, Lin Yi only knew through hearsay.
There were even folk rumors.
At the center of the endlessly distant Southern Domain, there was a super dynasty a hundred times vaster than the Great Zhou Immortal Dynasty, now at its peak.
"Comrade Lin Yi, what about the structure of this other world?"
Liao Xingwei's fingers flew across the keyboard as he recorded and asked again: "For instance, is the Tianling Realm a planet? Is there a starry sky above the ground?"
"There's a starry sky!" Lin Yi's answer this time was quite certain, after all it was something visible just by looking up. "At night you can see many stars. This world also has a sun and moon, but their rising and setting cycles differ significantly from Earth's."
"I once calculated with my phone: a day in the Tianling Realm is close to twenty-nine hours, and the four seasons are fixed throughout the year—there's no situation where winter days are short and summer days are long."
Hearing these words from Lin Yi.
Inside the Think Tank base.
Liao Xingwei couldn't help but turn around and exchange glances with several experts in geography and astrophysics nearby.
All of them frowned in unison.
Something was very wrong…
According to Lin Yi's account.
The total area of the Tianling Realm was probably thousands, even tens of thousands of times larger than Earth—and that was without calculating the Tianling Realm's sea area.
Suppose the Tianling Realm really was a planet. What would its celestial structure be like?
After all.
Planets are divided into gas giants and rocky planets, each with theoretical limits.
The limit for gas giants is 13 times Jupiter's mass, with a surface area 277 times that of Earth.
Rocky planets… that is, so-called Earth-like planets… have a theoretical upper limit of 1.5 times Earth. The largest celestial sample currently discovered is called pj1719-1438b, whose formation involves high contingency, with a surface area roughly fifteen times Earth's.
Either way, it differed enormously from the Tianling Realm.
Let alone a planet so enormous, its celestial constants still remained close to Earth's—otherwise Lin Yi and his companions would have been blown to bits the moment they transmigrated.
So either the Tianling Realm was not a regular planetary structure, or…
There was some special power that filtered… or corrected the physical constants.
Afterward, Liao Xingwei recorded Lin Yi's information item by item, gestured to Zhou Jianmin, indicating his questions were finished.
Seeing this.
Swish—
Another old expert with a scholarly air raised his hand.
The signal source was quickly connected.
"Comrade Lin Yi, hello," the old expert spoke a little weakly, clearly not in good health, "I am Huang Rong from the Institute of Modern Physics. Very glad to speak with you."
Lin Yi likewise politely returned the greeting: "Hello, Elder Huang."
Although he had never heard the name Huang Rong.
But from the other party's tone it was not hard to judge that this person was most likely also a retired old expert urgently called out of retirement, with outstanding contributions in the field, definitely not some hacks posing as researchers.
So although he was actually much older than the other party (nearly a hundred), Lin Yi still politely called him Elder Huang.
"Cough cough…"
Huang Rong coughed twice, moved the microphone in front of him: "Comrade Lin Yi, I have only one question to ask you. That is…"
"What exactly is cultivation?"
Chapter 22