Countless bubbles drifted through the endless void, each one glowing with its own hue of multicolored light. Some shone brilliantly, brimming with vitality, their surfaces pulsing gently like living hearts. Others, scattered farther away, were dim and sickly, wrapped in a faint aura of decay that seemed to gnaw at existence itself.
This deathly qi was insidious. It did not surge or explode; instead, it crept forward at an agonizingly slow pace, like mold spreading across forgotten stone. To an untrained eye, nothing appeared to change. But anyone who looked closely would notice the truth: the bubbles with weaker light were already losing their vitality, their glow thinning and flickering as the rot seeped inward, eroding them from within.
Suddenly, the void trembled.
