Incoming

After the group had come up with and also rejected various hypotheses, Gao Liang had finally theorized a hypothesis that everyone could agree with.

"I believe that I might have some insight into this particular question."

"If we think of time not as a constant, but rather as paths that are affected by the actions that we take, we can make sense of moving right and left through time. For instance, if I met a fork in the road, taking the left side of the road would be one timeline, taking the right side of the road would be another timeline."

"Theoretically, both of these timelines are just as real as the other. And so, moving left and right through time would be simply moving through different timelines that diverged, based on the choices that you have made. So, therefore, I propose that the fifth dimension would be one that contains all of these alternate timelines.

"That does seem like a pretty sensible hypothesis," Zhongming replied, his mind trying to fully understand the implications of what Gao Liang has just revealed.

"If moving forward and backward through time is the fourth dimension and moving right and left through time is the fifth dimension. Then what is the sixth Dimension that allows you to move up and down through time?"

After Zhongming had finished asking his question, the group was more than a bit stumped. Indeed, how would you even conceive of moving up and down through time?

After all, time was not literally a three-dimensional object with length, width, and height. This was just a helpful visualization for explaining higher dimensions to lower dimensional beings.

After several minutes of racking his brain, Zhongming stood up and started to walk left and right.

He cupped his chin, adopting a thinking pose as he paced back and forth.

"Let's say that I am a three-dimensional being moving in three-dimensional space. Theoretically, it should be fully possible for me to move to any point within three-dimensional space. However, if I am a fifth-dimensional being that is moving through time, there is a limitation. There will always be some timelines that I can never reach. For instance, if I use the fork in the road example that Gao Liang had used prior."

"For the current 'me', who has taken the left path, there is another 'me' who has taken the right path, there is also a 'me' who didn't take any path and turned around, and finally there may be a 'me' that forever stayed at the fork and never left."

Zhongming stopped pacing as he turned to face his companions.

"Moving in five-dimensional space would allow me to reach any one of these timelines. However, there is a timeline that I can never reach from this point, and that is the timeline in which I had never approached the fork in the road in the first place."

"And thus, to be move between these incompatible timelines, One would need to traverse it through the sixth dimension."

As Zhongming was still explaining his revelation about the sixth dimension to the group.

Xue Jian quickly stood up, holding up his hand in the universal sign of halt.

"There is currently a large unidentified group that is moving directly towards us. Hualing quick, shrink us down to zero dimensions, and Gao Liang use your Dao of Karma to sever our karma."

Hualing and Gao Liang quickly did as they were instructed.

First, Gao Liang summoned the innumerable threads of karma that bound each person to all of creation, and then, with a rapid and violent swipe of his hand, he severed each and every single one of them.

Actually, completely severing karmic ties was impossible due to the nature of karma being tied to that of the Supreme Dao.

All any cultivator could hope to accomplish was to merely shrink the karmic ties rather than severing them completely. Although it appears as if Gao Liang was able to sever the threads of karma, he was truly only making them infinitesimally thin.

This process could be repeated ad infinitum, making the threads thinner and thinner, but complete severance was out of the question.

For the most part, karmic threads that were sufficiently thin were undetectable and therefore useless to most cultivators.

As Gao Liang was severing the lines of karma, Hualing was not idle.

Extending her Aura to cover the entire group, she sent out a pulse of energy.

Rapidly her Dao of Dimensions shrunk everyone in the vicinity down into a zero-dimensional point; they had become an existence devoid of any length, width, or height?

Being zero-dimensional, the group lacked any physical presence, and having their karma severed; the group also lacked any spiritual presence.

With both of these techniques, any interaction with the group was mostly virtually impossible.

Yet, for Xue Jian, this was not enough.

"Hualing," he called out. "Can you move us into one of your private dimensions? And from there, teleport us to another location."

"On it," was all Hualing had replied with it, as she used her Dao of Dimensions to teleport the group to a different location.

This teleportation was accomplished by entering a higher dimensional space and, from there, folding three-dimensional space so that two points would intersect with each other.

This would allow the group to jump from one point to another instantaneously. One way to visualize this would be to take a sheet of paper and roll it into a tube where the two edges of the paper barely touched each other.

If the piece of paper was a two-dimensional construct and there was a two-dimensional being that could move anywhere along that piece of paper.

They could move from one edge to the other edge in a seamless fashion.

Yet, from the perspective of other two-dimensional beings, it would seem almost as if it had simply teleported from one location to another location.