Shen Haoran was floating in a dark, empty space, his eyes closed.
There was no sound, no direction, no temperature, and no passage of time.
He was suspended in a dark void, suspended between the razor's edge of life and annihilation, hanging in the formless expanse of his own subconsciousness.
Just then, he opened his eyes.
POP! POP! POP! POP! POP—!
The moment his eyelids parted, the surrounding dark space violently tore open.
Millions upon millions of grotesque, lidless eyes and gaping, razor-toothed mouths opened simultaneously across the pitch-black void.
The infinite darkness itself seemed to be composed entirely of living, writhing flesh and oily, glistening membranes.
Every single mouth opened wide, shrieking, whispering, gurgling, and chanting in an incomprehensible, foreign, and alien tongue.
The unholy noise wasn't merely audible—it echoed directly inside the deepest walls of Haoran's mind with the weight of a thousand collapsing stars.
