Lin Tao paced step by step toward the western boundary of the white cube.
Each step was measured to exactly one meter. At pace forty-nine, the untextured white expanse still appeared infinitely distant, an unbroken void that offered no depth cues to human depth senses. But at pace fifty, his outstretched left hand collided with an invisible, unmoving barrier.
There was no sound of impact. His palm simply stopped dead in mid-air, arrested by a total slowdown that felt less like touching a wall and more like striking an exact limit.
Lin Tao pressed his weight forward.
His full body weight pressed into his open palm. But the boundary yielded not a fraction of a tiny fraction of an inch. There was no elastic warping, no tiny bending of load-bearing stone, and no moving give. His skin flattened against an iron-hard upright plane that felt unnervingly slick, devoid of tiny friction.
He withdrew his hand and leaned down, inspecting the contact point at eye level.
There was no oil, no moisture, and no frost on the surface. Yet when he dragged his fingers across it, there was zero rubbing drag. His skin slid along the barrier with easy, unnatural fluidity, as though sliding across a surface whose multiplier of friction was exactly set to total zero.
