Having made his decision, Shen immediately began preparing before the more sensible part of his mind could convince him otherwise.
He first recreated the spirituality wall around his bedroom. Compared to his earlier attempts, the process was considerably smoother. He then guided his spirituality through the silver knife and slowly walked along the perimeter of the room, leaving an invisible boundary behind him.
When the two ends finally connected, the familiar sensation of separation descended over the bedroom, causing the sounds beyond the walls to become distant and muffled.
After carefully checking that the barrier was stable, Shen put away the silver knife and moved his chair and several other objects away from the center of the room, leaving enough space for him to walk. He then searched the apartment for the necessary staple food.
Zhou Mingrui had used four pieces of staple food when performing the luck-enhancement ritual. Shen didn't have exactly what he had used back then, but bread should work. At least, he hoped it would.
Returning to his room with four small pieces of bread, Shen placed them in the proper positions before standing in the center of the cleared space and looking around. The four pieces of bread were prepared, there was enough room for the four steps, and the spirituality wall was active.
Everything was ready.
However, now that the moment had actually arrived, the excitement Shen had felt earlier was rapidly being replaced by apprehension.
He knew exactly what Sefirah Castle was. More importantly, he knew who had once owned it.
This wasn't some ordinary ritual directed toward the Evernight Goddess or another orthodox deity. Even if the Celestial Worthy's consciousness was currently dormant, deliberately reaching toward something connected to that existence wasn't exactly the sort of thing a Sequence 9 Beyonder should casually attempt in his bedroom.
For a moment, Shen seriously considered abandoning the entire thing. Then his gaze fell upon the bread he had already arranged around the room.
"Well, I already set everything up," Shen muttered before taking a slow breath. "Once. I'm trying this exactly once. If anything strange happens, I'm stopping immediately."
He stepped toward the first piece of bread and searched through through his memories. The words quickly surfaced within his mind, and unlike the language he normally used as Shen Akivil, what came from his mouth this time was Chinese.
"The Immortal Lord of Heaven and Earth for Blessings."
Shen took the first step and waited briefly. Nothing happened, so he continued with the second.
"The Sky Lord of Heaven and Earth for Blessings."
Still nothing.
"The Exalted Thearch of Heaven and Earth for Blessings."
By the third step, Shen's heartbeat had unconsciously begun to accelerate. He swallowed, took the final step, and spoke the last line.
"The Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings."
Then there was silence.
Shen remained where he was, waiting for something to happen. One second passed, then two, then five, and finally ten.
Nothing.
There was no gray fog, no mysterious palace, and no sensation of his spirit being pulled away. His bedroom remained exactly as it had been before.
Shen blinked and looked around. "...That's it?"
He waited a little longer just to be certain, but there was still no reaction. The tension slowly left his shoulders as he released a breath that carried equal amounts of relief and disappointment.
"Well, I suppose that answers that."
By all logic, this was what he should have expected. He wasn't one of the transmigrators hanging above Sefirah Castle and had no connection to those mysterious cocoons. He didn't even possess a Beyonder characteristic from one of the three Pathways belonging to the Lord of Mysteries.
Shen crouched and picked up one of the pieces of bread to examine. "Still did I remember something wrong?"
He replayed the ritual in his mind. Four pieces of staple food, four steps counterclockwise, and the corresponding incantation spoken in Chinese. As far as he could remember, he had followed Zhou Mingrui's actions correctly.
"Maybe bread doesn't count? No, that shouldn't be it." Shen rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Or perhaps the ritual only worked for Zhou Mingrui because he was already connected to Sefirah Castle through the cocoon."
That explanation made considerably more sense.
"And I'm not from one of the Mystery trio either," Shen continued as he straightened. "Maybe Sefirah Castle simply looked at me and said, 'Who the fuck are you?'"
A faint smile appeared on his face at the thought.
"Well, whatever. It was worth testing."
Just as Shen turned to collect the remaining pieces of bread, something whispered beside his ear.
His smile disappeared instantly.
Shen froze where he stood, not moving for several seconds before slowly turning his head.
"...What?"
Nothing was behind him. The bedroom remained empty, but Shen's heartbeat had already begun to quicken. He listened carefully for several more seconds, only to hear silence.
"Was that my imagination?"
Another whisper sounded.
This time, there was no mistaking it.
The voice didn't seem to originate from anywhere inside the room. It sounded distant and distorted, carrying a strange quality that made it impossible to determine whether it belonged to a man, a woman, or even something human.
Before Shen could react, another whisper joined it, followed by another.
His expression changed immediately. "Wait—"
The whispers multiplied, overlapping one another until they seemed to surround him from every direction. Shen instinctively reached toward the silver knife, but before his fingers could touch it, he noticed something creeping across the floor.
Gray fog.
A thin layer of mist had somehow appeared inside the spirituality wall.
Shen stared at it in disbelief as the gray fog slowly curled around his shoes.
"No fucking way..."
He immediately looked toward the spirituality wall. It was still intact. Nothing had broken through it, and the gray fog hadn't entered from somewhere outside.
It had simply appeared.
Shen's scalp went numb as a name escaped his mouth.
"Sefirah Castle..."
The instant those words left him, the room disappeared.
One moment Shen was standing inside his bedroom, and the next, his consciousness was violently pulled upward. His body became weightless as the familiar physical world vanished beneath him, replaced by countless indescribable colors layered over one another. Brilliant lights stretched infinitely into the distance while impossible shapes flashed in and out of existence, carrying seemingly endless information within them.
Shen immediately recognized where he was.
"The Spirit World?!"
He was rising through it at an incredible speed.
Countless strange shapes passed around him. Some resembled translucent animals, while others were twisted masses of limbs, symbols, and colors that his mind couldn't properly interpret. Several Spirit World creatures turned toward him as he passed, seemingly surprised by the sudden intruder, but Shen barely paid attention to them.
Something above had captured all of his attention.
High above the chaotic Spirit World stood an immense structure shrouded in endless gray fog. It was a magnificent palace that seemed ancient, silent, and untouchable, standing beyond everything surrounding it.
Even from this distance, Shen knew exactly what he was looking at.
"Sefirah Castle..."
For a moment, he forgot to breathe.
It was real.
It wasn't merely words he had once read on a screen, nor was it something he had imagined while reading the novel. The legendary Sefirah Castle actually existed before him.
The gray fog surrounding the ancient palace shifted, and Shen suddenly felt something pulling him toward it.
His heart nearly jumped out of his chest.
"It actually worked?!"
He could hardly believe what was happening. He was genuinely being drawn upward toward Sefirah Castle—the place that almost any Lord of the Mysteries fan would want to see with their own eyes at least once.
For the briefest instant, excitement overwhelmed his fear.
If he could actually enter, then he could finally see what Sefirah Castle truly looked like rather tha—
Suddenly, excruciating pain exploded throughout his entire spiritual body.
"AAARGH!"
Shen's thoughts shattered.
It wasn't like the pain he had experienced when drinking the Rising Star potion. That had felt as though his body were being forcibly transformed from within.
This felt as though his entire existence was being torn apart.
Even his physical body back in the real world convulsed violently. His mind, spirit, soul, and every other part of his existence seemed to scream simultaneously beneath an unbearable pressure.
Shen curled inward despite having no physical ground beneath him. "What... the hell...?!"
Something inside him was resisting.
His Rising Star Beyonder characteristic.
Shen could feel it with terrifying clarity. The characteristic that had remained quietly fused with him since he consumed the potion was suddenly in violent turmoil.
It pulled against the attraction coming from Sefirah Castle with such force that Shen felt as though something inside his body was trying to rip itself free.
"No... argh... stop!"
Sefirah Castle pulled him upward while the characteristic desperately pulled somewhere else, leaving Shen trapped between the two forces.
The pain quickly became unbearable. For one terrifying moment, Shen genuinely believed his entire existence was about to explode.
Then the Spirit World behind him distorted.
Shen barely managed to turn his head, but the moment he saw what had appeared, his pupils contracted.
A crack had formed in space.
No.
It wasn't a crack.
It was a portal.
The strange opening unfolded soundlessly behind him like a kaleidoscope opening countless mirrored petals. Innumerable colors overlapped across its surface, constantly changing and rearranging themselves. Purple became blue, blue became gold, and gold split into crimson and white before all of them fractured again into colors Shen had no names for.
The instant Shen saw it, every instinct he possessed went insane.
His body, spirit, and soul all screamed the same warning.
Don't enter it.
No matter what happened, don't go inside.
There were no actual words. The warning came from somewhere far more primal, a certainty buried deeper than conscious thought itself.
Anywhere but there.
Sefirah Castle, the Spirit World, his bedroom—hell, almost anything felt preferable to entering that portal.
Shen's face went pale. "Urgh... what the hell is that?"
The kaleidoscopic portal continued expanding until its pull finally reached him.
At the same moment, something changed.
The Rising Star characteristic inside him suddenly stopped resisting.
Shen froze.
Instead of struggling against the portal as it had been doing before, the characteristic began pulling toward it.
His horror immediately deepened.
"You want me to go in there?!"
He couldn't hear an answer, but the instinct transmitted through the characteristic was unmistakable.
Yes.
Shen nearly cursed from sheer disbelief.
"Are you fucking insane?! My body, spirit, and soul are all telling me no! Hell, my very existence is screaming that thing is worse than throwing myself into Sefirah Castle and drowning in its corruption, and you expect me to listen to a damn Beyonder characteristic?!"
Ignoring the strange attraction coming from within himself, Shen desperately stretched both hands toward the distant gray fog surrounding Sefirah Castle.
"Come on! Pull harder!"
Sefirah Castle's attraction remained, and for one brief moment, Shen actually felt himself moving toward it again.
Hope appeared in his eyes.
Then the kaleidoscopic portal erupted with an overwhelming suction force.
"Wha—!"
Several nearby Spirit World creatures were immediately dragged toward it. The bizarre translucent beings attempted to flee, but their bodies stretched unnaturally beneath the force before disappearing into the portal one after another.
Shen struggled desperately. "NO!"
It made no difference.
The distance between him and Sefirah Castle rapidly increased. His outstretched fingers grasped desperately at the empty Spirit World, but there was nothing for him to hold onto.
"SHIT!"
The portal swallowed him.
Then it snapped shut and disappeared as though it had never existed.
The Spirit World returned to its former silence, while Sefirah Castle remained high above everything, surrounded by endless gray fog as though nothing unusual had ever occurred.
....
Shen fell through the kaleidoscope.
Or perhaps he rose.
He couldn't tell anymore.
Direction seemed meaningless inside this strange place. Countless colors surrounded him, twisting into shapes before breaking apart and reforming into entirely different patterns. His body still hurt terribly, but the farther he traveled, the weaker the pain became.
Then images began appearing around him.
Shen's eyes widened when he saw the person reflected within the nearest surface.
It was himself.
No...
It was Lin Qui.
In one reflection, Lin Qui sat behind a desk in an office, staring tiredly at a computer screen while completing another ordinary day of work.
Another showed him standing before several monitors, laughing with coworkers as a game ran across the screens.
Shen's breath caught.
In that life, he had achieved one of his dreams. He had become a game developer.
The image shattered and was immediately replaced by another. This time, Lin Qui sat beneath bright stage lights with a headset over his ears, his fingers moving rapidly across a keyboard while thousands of people watched.,He was a professional gamer.
The next reflection showed him as a doctor walking through a hospital and treating patients. In another, he had become a teacher standing before a classroom filled with students.
Another showed him as a successful businessman, dressed in expensive clothes and drinking wine while talking pleasantly with a beautiful woman.
Then another appeared.
In this one, Lin Qui was a starving homeless beggar curled beneath an overpass, slowly freezing to death.
Shen stared at the constantly changing scenes. "What is this...?"
The visions accelerated.
Different lives appeared one after another, each born from different choices and different paths that his life might have taken.
Then the person inside the reflections changed.
Shen Akivil appeared.
In one reflection, Shen stood before a mirror wearing the uniform of a Nighthawk, while a familiar potion bottle rested on the table in front of him.
The Seer potion.
The scene changed, showing Shen sitting behind a table and performing divinations for strangers as he slowly digested the potion.
Another reflection showed a completely different life. In this one, Shen had consumed the Hunter potion and stood aboard a ship, laughing arrogantly while flames consumed a pirate vessel in the distance.
Another had chosen the Reader Pathway. He spent years studying in libraries before eventually becoming a successful detective.
Then the scenes became darker.
Shen saw himself covered in blood, laughing madly while a corpse collapsed before him. His eyes were cold and exhilarated, without the slightest remorse for what he had done.
He was a Devil Pathway Beyonder.
A Serial Killer.
Shen recoiled in disgust and horror. "What the hell is that...?"
The reflection immediately changed.
He saw himself brutally beaten and murdered in an alley before he ever had the chance to become a Beyonder. Another Shen successfully graduated from university and eventually became a respected scholar.
Then came another.
In that life, Shen had joined the Aurora Order.
He saw himself kneeling before a corrupted altar, praying wildly with blind devotion and madness burning in his eyes.
It was The True Creator.
Shen watched that version of himself gradually descend into complete madness. His body eventually transformed into a horrifying mass of flesh and blood as he rampaged through the streets, screaming in pain and begging someone to help him before a group of official Beyonders finally killed him.
The next reflection showed Shen walking the Sleepless Pathway.
For several years, he lived carefully and quietly. Then something changed. The Evernight Goddess learned what he knew.
And Darkness descended. That version of Shen disappeared without leaving anything behind, erased so completely that it was almost as though he had never existed.
Another reflection appeared; in it a blond-haired, golden-eyed priest stood in the distance, watching Shen with a gentle, innocent smile reminiscent of a child. Yet behind those golden eyes was nothing but terrifying indifference.
Adam.
Shen's stomach twisted.
He watched another version of himself unknowingly become a piece within a story he never realized was being written around him. Every decision seemed to be his own. Every belief felt genuine. Every sacrifice appeared meaningful.
Even as he died, that Shen believed everything had been his own choice. With his final breath, he thanked Adam for allowing him to contribute to some supposed greater good, never realizing that the very person he thanked had arranged the path leading to his death.
The image shattered.
Another took its place.
Crimson moonlight illuminated an altar while Shen's hands were bound in chains. Several worshippers dressed in crimson robes dragged him forward alongside a few other captives.
The moment Shen saw them, he immediately knew what this version of himself had encountered.
"No."
They were the worshippers of the Mother Goddess of Depravity.
Shen struggled instinctively despite knowing he was merely witnessing another scene. "No, enough! I don't want to see this!"
The kaleidoscope didn't listen.
The moment he focused on the reflection, he felt himself being dragged into it. He experienced the corruption. The violation of his body.
Something began growing where nothing should ever have been able to grow. The Shen inside the reflection screamed, but the Shen watching from outside felt the exact same agony.
Then his abdomen began swelling unnaturally.
"No...!"
Something emerged from his stomach.
It tore through him.
Organs disappeared one after another as the newborn creature consumed everything it required from its host, taking flesh, blood, and every trace of nutrition it needed while the Shen inside the vision remained horribly conscious throughout the entire process.
Eventually, the creature even took his identity.
What remained of Shen's body was discarded like garbage and left behind to slowly die.
"Stop! Please, just STOP!"
Shen squeezed his eyes shut, but the visions remained within his mind. He could still feel some of them—the deaths, the injuries, the fear, the despair.
These weren't merely scenes he was watching from a distance. Whenever Shen focused too deeply on one, he became immersed within it. Memories that didn't belong to him flooded his mind, bringing emotions, pain, regret, happiness, hatred, and despair with them. Each experience lasted only briefly, yet from Shen's perspective, some felt unbearably long.
Eventually, he couldn't even tell how long he had been traveling through the kaleidoscope anymore.
Minutes?
Hours?
Years?
Centuries?
Time itself seemed to have lost all meaning. It felt as though an impossibly long period had passed since he had entered this place.
"Enough..." Shen curled inward, his voice weak from exhaustion. "Please... just stop..."
Then he heard laughter.
Familiar laughter.
Shen's eyes slowly opened.
The horrific visions were gone.
Instead, a familiar bedroom appeared before him, sunlight streaming warmly through the windows. Three teenage boys sat together inside, talking far more loudly than necessary.
Lin Qui.
And his two best friends.
They were arguing about which anime they should watch. One insisted that a certain anime adaptation had completely ruined the original story, while the other defended it because he liked the animation and believed the studio had clearly put a great deal of effort into it. Lin Qui sat between them, laughing at both of their opinions before proudly suggesting an anime of his own.
Shen stopped breathing for a moment.
"...Guys."
The scene shifted.
Now the three of them were sitting together inside a gaming café, competing as a team while shouting at one another, laughing whenever someone made a stupid mistake and cheering whenever they managed to turn the match around.
Another memory followed.
This time, Shen saw his uncle, Lin Jianyu, standing somewhat awkwardly in their home with a woman beside him. Jianyu introduced her as Mei Lian, his girlfriend, before announcing with complete confidence that he intended to marry her one day.
Lin Qui had been skeptical of her at first. He tested her patience more than once, watching carefully to see whether she genuinely cared about his uncle or merely pretended to.
In the end, however, she proved herself to be a determined and genuinely kind woman.
Lin Qui had been happy for him.
More memories appeared.
Jianyu had spent most of Lin Qui's childhood buried in work, struggling to support them both after the deaths of Lin Qui's parents. Eventually, he apologized for being absent so often and began making a genuine effort to spend more time with him.
Whether it was one of Lin Qui's whimsical ideas about watching movies outside, visiting new restaurants, attending gaming events, or going together to costume conventions, Jianyu tried to accompany him whenever he could.
Sometimes he acted like an older brother.
Other times, like the father Lin Qui no longer had.
Eventually, Jianyu married Mei Lian, and some time afterward Lin Qui moved out and began living on his own.
The memories shifted again.
Lin Qui was older now.
He worked as a programmer, sitting inside an ordinary office while a junior coworker leaned over and nervously asked him for help.
Another memory showed him drinking with several colleagues and juniors after work, everyone laughing over some ridiculous incident that had happened earlier that day.
Shen's vision blurred.
"...Home."
The memories continued around him.
His friends laughing together.
His uncle Jianyu and Aunt Mei Lian spending time with him.
His adult self sitting among coworkers and juniors after another ordinary day of work.
They joked, argued, laughed, and complained.
There was nothing supernatural there. No orthodox or evil gods interfered in their lives. No Outer Deities waited beyond a planetary barrier.
No Beyonder characteristic carried the threat of madness, and no ancient existence could destroy a person's life simply because he had accidentally learned something he shouldn't know.
Lin Qui's life had been unremarkable.
It had been peaceful, occasionally exciting, sometimes annoying, and often boring.
Looking at it now, Shen desperately wanted it back.
He reached toward the memories, but his fingers passed through them without touching anything.
His chest tightened painfully.
"I wish I could go back..."
The words escaped before he could stop them.
Since awakening as Shen Akivil, he had rarely allowed himself to think deeply about the life he had lost. At first, there had been shock, followed almost immediately by excitement at the impossible fact that he had actually transmigrated.
Then he realized which world he had entered.
The excitement had turned into terror.
When Lin Qui understood that he had awakened inside the world of Lord of the Mysteries, there had even been a moment when he genuinely wondered whether killing himself again might somehow send him home. He had been terrified enough to seriously consider it.
At the same time, however, the remnants of Shen Akivil's consciousness had still remained within this body—his memories, emotions, regrets, attachments, and everything that had made him Shen.
Both of them had died.
Lin Qui had died on Earth, while the original Shen Akivil had died in this world.
Their memories and emotions had collided until the boundary separating the two gradually disappeared.
Lin Qui wasn't possessing Shen Akivil anymore, nor was Shen Akivil merely a body Lin Qui wore.
They had become one person.
He was Shen Akivil now.
He had accepted that.
He had Arthur, a caring yet strict older brother who sometimes acted more like a father. He had Elara and Sera, his troublesome twin sisters. He had already begun building a new life here.
Yet looking at Lin Qui's memories still hurt far more than he had expected.
"I miss it..." Shen whispered, his voice trembling and choking with emotion. "I really miss it so much."
The scene surrounding him shifted once again, showing his friends arguing excitedly over a newly announced game.
Shen simply watched them.
He wanted to sit there again.
He wanted to hang out with his friends and argue about meaningless things.
He wanted to spend more time with his uncle.
He wanted to wait months for a good anime season to release and then discuss every episode with strangers online.
He wanted to argue over fictional characters and complain about games.
He wanted his greatest concern to be what annoying work would be waiting for him at the office tomorrow morning.
For the first time since coming to this world, Shen truly allowed himself to mourn the life he had lost.
Tears gathered in his eyes.
People rarely understood how truly precious the simple, ordinary parts of their lives were until they lost them.
Shen closed his eyes as the tears continued to fall. He hadn't realized how much those ordinary things had meant to him until they became something he could never reach again.
Then something strange began happening around him.
The memories reflected throughout the kaleidoscope started changing.
Anime, games, novels, movies, stories, and countless other works of fiction Lin Qui had once known began emerging from his memories and spreading across the mirrored surfaces.
Shen opened his tear-filled eyes.
Worlds that had once existed only as entertainment and fiction within Lin Qui's memories appeared across the countless reflections. For brief moments, they seemed almost real, as though imagination and fiction themselves were somehow giving birth to reality within the kaleidoscope.
Before Shen could understand what he was seeing, everything shattered into countless fragments.
The pieces scattered across the kaleidoscope before merging into other reflections, and Shen was suddenly pulled away from his memories and sadness.
Only then did he notice something strange.
He was no longer falling.
He was ascending.
"...When did I start going up?"
There was no answer.
The kaleidoscope accelerated around him, carrying Shen faster and faster until he suddenly struck something invisible.
A barrier.
Cracks spread across the unseen obstruction before Shen even had time to react.
Then it shattered.
The kaleidoscopic colors vanished, and absolute silence engulfed him.
When Shen opened his eyes again, he found himself floating within darkness.
But it wasn't ordinary darkness.
It was a universe.
Stars surrounded him in every direction, yet after staring at the nearest point of light for several seconds, Shen realized something was terribly wrong.
That wasn't a star. It was a world.
His expression slowly changed as he looked farther into the darkness.
Every distant light contained something within it—cities, oceans, civilizations, ruins, and landscapes completely unfamiliar to him. Countless worlds hung throughout the darkness like bubbles suspended within an endless sea.
Some remained intact.
Many others were broken.
One world burned beneath a crimson sky. Another had been completely consumed by black oceans, while a third contained the remains of enormous cities stretching across an entire continent. Farther away, another world seemed frozen at the exact moment some incomprehensible apocalypse had destroyed it.
Shen felt his stomach sink.
"What kind of place is this...?"
The despair emanating from some of those worlds was so intense that merely looking toward them made his chest tighten, as though fragments of their suffering were somehow reaching him across the distance.
Shen attempted to move, but his body refused to respond.
He continued ascending.
Deeper and higher into this unknown place.
Then he felt it.
Eyes.
Shen's blood turned cold.
Something was watching him.
Before he could react, another gaze fell upon him, followed by another, then another.
Countless unseen eyes turned toward the tiny intruder ascending through the darkness. Some carried curiosity, others hunger, while a few contained such overwhelming malice that Shen's mind nearly went blank merely from sensing them.
His instincts screamed.
Don't look.
Don't acknowledge them.
Don't even think about them.
Shen immediately closed his eyes and refused to open them again. The gazes remained fixed upon him, but he continued ascending through the darkness, not knowing whether seconds or hours were passing.
Then warmth touched his face.
The oppressive gazes gradually weakened.
Shen cautiously opened his eyes.
A brilliant star shone ahead of him.
No.
Not a star.
There was something within that light.
Shen continued approaching until its true form finally became visible.
His mind went blank.
Suspended within the endless starry void was a colossal floating city, its sheer size comparable to an entire planet. Its vast circular foundation resembled a world of its own, surrounded by swirling seas of stars, luminous clouds, and streams of violet-blue cosmic light.
Countless silver-white towers covered its surface, gathering toward the center where an enormous crystalline palace rose above everything else. Its tallest spire pierced upward like a needle aimed toward the heavens, while beneath the floating world, inverted structures descended deep into the cosmic abyss.
At its lowest point burned a brilliant golden radiance, resembling a miniature sun supporting the entire realm.
Yet even that planet-sized city seemed small compared to what surrounded it.
Across the starry expanse stretched an enormous symbol of infinity formed entirely from flowing streams of multicolored light. Blue, violet, pink, white, and gold intertwined endlessly within its two vast loops, converging around the colossal city.
At the point where the loops met burned a dazzling white-purple star.
Shen stared at it, and for several moments, every thought disappeared from his mind.
The pain that had followed him since leaving the Spirit World vanished. The fear disappeared with it, followed by the lingering horror from the countless lives he had witnessed. Even the homesickness that had been tearing at his heart only moments earlier seemed to become distant.
There was only the light.
It was warm, familiar, and indescribably beautiful.
Shen unconsciously reached toward it. He didn't understand why, but he desperately wanted to enter that radiance, submerge himself within it, and simply remain there.
Something within the light seemed to recognize him.
Even the Rising Star characteristic inside his body became completely calm, as though it had finally returned to somewhere it belonged.
Shen's eyes slowly began to close.
Then something within the city stirred.
An invisible pressure suddenly erupted from the planet-sized structure.
Shen's eyes snapped open.
His expression immediately changed to absolute horror.
"Wait... is that...?"
Corruption.
An unimaginable amount of corruption.
It poured from the colossal city like an invisible ocean. The warmth Shen had felt moments earlier vanished beneath something ancient and terrifying, while his spirituality screamed in warning.
The pressure crashed into him.
Shen didn't even have time to resist.
His entire existence was thrown backward.
The planet-sized city rapidly disappeared into the distance. The enormous infinity symbol became nothing more than a streak of multicolored light, while the countless worlds surrounding him blurred together.
For a single instant, the kaleidoscope appeared around him again.
Then—
Shen slammed back into reality.
His eyes opened to the familiar ceiling of his bedroom, except something was wrong.
He was several feet above his bed.
For a fraction of a second, Shen stared downward in confusion before gravity seemed to suddenly remember that he existed.
His body dropped onto the mattress.
The spirituality wall surrounding the bedroom shattered instantly, and Shen's vision swam as the ceiling spun above him.
He tried to raise one hand.
Nothing responded.
"...What... happened...?"
Those were the only words Shen managed before his strength completely disappeared.
His eyes slowly closed.
He lost consciousness.