Hao Ren suspected that the Orb may have very well ended up in the Surface World.
The traces and trails point towards the malfunctioning spacecraft and the Orb of the Holy Synod being dragged into the same chaotic trans-dimensional field. At that point, a portal opened at the Blood Lake in The Plane of Dreams, so chances of the Orb and the monks guarding it being transported into the Surface World were rather large.
But that did not even come close to determining the exact location of the Orb: The spacecraft was working fine when it ran into trouble at the bottom of the lake. From Hao Ren's guess, the ship was in space at that time, if the Orb's position was directly reflective of where the ship actually was, it may very well have been thrown into deep space. Plus, if it had already been floating there for a good two months, who knew where it actually ended up.
