After a long walk, while enjoying the beautiful and untainted scenery along the way, Bai Chen finally reached the Azure Dragon City.
Looking at the majestic city, whose walls seemed to penetrate heaven and spanned till the end of sight, the people riding on various beasts that he had only heard about. The ancient-style building and the cracks and weapon marks on the walls increase and show the rich history of the city.
Bai Chen once again realized the immense difference between his current and past worlds. Looking at the city in front of him took his thoughts back to his city on earth, the city he grew up and lived his whole life in.
His mind gradually turned toward his last moment on earth and how his life was suddenly turned upside down when he was brought into this world.
Earth, China, Lijiang,
A young man around the age of 20 was seen walking down an empty street. His steps were light and carefree, and the neon lights on the street glowed enough to cover the dark street in colorful lights.
Distant sounds of vehicles moving echoed in the background, and a sweet aroma of grilled meat from a nearby street wafted in the air.
But Xiao Feng ignored it all, instead, his mind was filled with the scenes about his wedding that was planned for next year with the love of his life, Fei Mei.
He and Fei Mei were childhood sweethearts, and he had just proposed to her last week. She accepted, and they had just finalized their wedding date to be just one week after their graduation.
Both of them were really excited about that, even though there were almost 2 years before the actual wedding, it still couldn't dampen the excitement and expectations in their hearts.
As he kept walking, a sudden glow started to emerge around him, and all the hair on his body started to stand up.
Before he could understand what was happening, a sharp searing pain ran from his head to toe, and his body felt like it was on fire.
Amid this agony, he heard the sound of a thunder strike and lost consciousness.
When he opened his eyes again after an unknown amount of time, he, for the first time in his life, saw his own body from a third-person perspective.
"What....What the F**K is happening?" He asked.
The process was so fast that his thoughts were all over the place, and not a single reasonable idea came to his mind.
"Is that my body? Then what am I now?" he questioned as he tried to look at his hand, which was not translucent.
"I get it, this must be a strange dream probably," he thought, "I'll wake up soon enough."
Just as Xiao Feng was trying to delude himself with his imagination, he felt a strong pull on his soul, like a power beyond his comprehension was pulling him toward itself. Power he wasn't able to resist.
His vision blurred, and time seemed to have lost its meaning for him. He saw the land below his feet get smaller and smaller until he was able to see the whole world at a single glance, yet he didn't stop and continued on his forced journey.
His translucent figure, which seemed to be his soul, tore through the space-time spectrum and reached an area filled with nothing but darkness.
Xiao Feng continued to drift in total darkness.
How much time had passed? Maybe a day, maybe a year, or even perhaps just a few seconds, he didn't know that. Time seemed to have lost any meaning for him.
His consciousness tittered on the brink of madness, and he was even starting to forget himself.
'What am I? Am I Xiao Feng?'
'Or was that all just a dream? Or is this a dream?'
He wanted to scream, he wanted to shout and ask, why was he here, but no matter how much he tried, no sound came out of his mouth.
He neither felt warmth nor cold, it got to the point where he started to question whether he was even real.
'Where is this? Is this death?' His thoughts were all over the place. But he was able to hold on with the help of the memories, memories of him having a joyful dinner on Christmas Eve with his and Fei Mei's family.
He remembered the Fun time he had spent with his brothers, the time he spent arguing with them over small things, and the time when they once fought literally because he breathed on his younger brother's face.
He held on by remembering his mother's worry-filled face when he got home a little late and his father's stern attitude when he didn't take his studies seriously.
He kept holding on to the little sense of self he had by thinking about the first time he met Fei Mei and how much of a brat he was back then.
And he stopped himself from losing himself by replaying the memories in which Fei Mei turned from a naive little girl into a beautiful young lady in front of his eyes.
But even with all that, he was having a hard time keeping himself sane. After all, no matter how good, they were just memories, and the absolute silence around him wasn't helping at all.
Just as he was about to lose himself to the darkness, he saw a light.
Faint and distant at first, it quickly grew to be as huge as the sun itself. Finally, he was able to see what the light was.
It was a world, a world so vast that earth, the planet Xiao Feng belonged to, seemed nothing more than a spec of dust in front of it.
He also realized that he was getting pulled from somewhere in this world, he just didn't know who or what was pulling him and why.
When he arrived at what seemed like a barrier of this world, his soul abruptly stopped, and the pull vanished like it never existed.
This confused Xiao Feng, but more than that, it scared him. He was extremely afraid, afraid that he would be left alone, to float in this infinite void without a companion for infinity.
The fear that he would be left in this absolute silence, a place where he could not even feel his weight, a place where he could see nothing but darkness for all of eternity, made him feel as if his very existence was unraveling.
The longer he drifted, the more he felt like a mere thought lost in the void. No sound, no warmth, no sense of self—just an endless abyss stretching infinitely in all directions.
A suffocating dread clawed at his mind. Would this be his fate? Would he simply cease to be, forgotten even by himself?
Just as he was losing himself in his fears, his soul felt a slight ripple in space before an intense pressure started to bore on him from all directions.
"Hmm, you are not supposed to be here, little guy, so tell me, what are you doing here?" A voice sounded in the void.
Though light, it made him feel intense terror and awe from the deepest part of his very being.
As though if the voice told him to die at this moment, he would end his existence without a second thought, that is, if he could.
Xiao Feng's soul trembled under the weight of the voice, it wasn't just a voice. It was something way beyond that, something that commanded absolute submission, something so powerful that even the concept of resistance felt foreign to him.
He frantically tried to explain his situation, but he had no voice.
Perhaps looking at the panicking ant in front of it, the voice chuckled. It wasn't malicious or carried even a hint of animosity, but it still sent chills down the translucent spine of Xiao Feng.
"Ah... I see." The voice spoke, with a hint of curiosity perhaps, "a soul from beyond the veil of the void, which was never meant to be here."
"I don't know what happened, I was on earth one moment, and then... and then I was struck by lightning, and the next moment I was in the fucking void and I just don't know what is happening."
As the voice spoke, another ripple coursed through the void, and suddenly Xiao Feng was able to speak and without even realizing it, he started to blurt out everything that was going on in his mind.
"Struck by lighting, you say? fascinating, but no matter how strong the lightning is, it shouldn't be able to rip your soul and throw it out of its natural order." The voice spoke once again.
"Something must have interfered in the process."
At this moment, Xiao Feng felt as if his entire existence was being seen through, as though someone was stripping him layer by layer and learning everything about his existence.