The falling consciousness, drifting and fluctuating.
She seemed to hear countless distorted voices lingering around her ears, like the murmurs of a dream, crowding together with the churning vortexes from the abyss, forming an even more chaotic world.
Such a world, devoid of gravity, without a concept of time, only endless solitude.
The entire dark space was silent, no sound of any living creature could be heard, even the sound of the wind seemed to have ceased.
After an unknown amount of time, Tang Sui slowly opened her tired eyes, staring blankly at the dark surroundings.
"You're awake."
A voice even more exhausted than hers sounded in this space.
This time, even a mechanical tone could not hide the weariness beneath.
Like an oil lamp nearing its end...
Tang Sui blinked her eyes with difficulty, and an invisible force lifted her, stopping her fall.
"Where am I?"
"Your strength is depleted, and my energy reserves are also exhausted."
The system did not answer Tang Sui's question but uttered words that jolted her back to attention.
She was stunned, her brain feeling as if it had been hit by a new wave of impact, falling into a daze.
"What do you mean..."
"The road ahead, you'll have to walk it yourself for a while."
"In this world of the survival of the fittest, strength is still too weak..."
Tang Sui's pupils contracted. Like a child who had done something wrong and was cautiously observing the wronged party's face, she was anxious and unsettled. "What do you mean? System, are you going into hibernation?"
After her energy was depleted last time, the system had been dormant for six full years. How long would it be this time?
Coldness enveloped her entire body, chilling her to the bone, making her shiver as if her bones were filled with wind.
"...I was wrong... I'll never be overconfident again. I'll work hard... work hard to cultivate my demonic energy, and my soul power will also be converted into demonic energy. Please don't leave, okay?"
As she spoke, her cautious voice became choked with sobs, and her vision blurred.
The system did not reply, as if it were too tired to sleep and could no longer answer Tang Sui.
The force supporting her began to dissipate, and Tang Sui's body slowly began to sink again.
Realizing something, Tang Sui froze. Large teardrops rolled down her cheeks, splashing into the void.
"Rumble—"
The space seemed to twist with an invisible force.
She was like a treasure locked in a Rubik's Cube; when the outside world tried to decipher and move the cube, the internal space was also affected.
Her vision turned a blood-red hue at this moment. She was like an incompatible anomaly. As the entire space was bathed in a blood-red light, an unknown force pushed her out of this blood cocoon, excluding her from reality.
Whispers swirled and crashed in her mind. Tang Sui clutched her head, writhing in pain in mid-air. Bloody tears dripped down her cheeks, sorrow and pain engulfing all her thoughts, and she could only emit meaningless groans of pain.
Twisted black patterns like thorns spread across her fair skin. The next moment, her soft fingertips touched not her equally soft cheek, but a cold, hard surface.
Scarlet lines curved into a smile. A fox-shaped mask covered her delicate, pale face, appearing for only a few seconds before transforming into another mask with large, round eyes resembling an ape beast, followed by the face of a fierce demon, and then the face of an old man...
The changing masks completed a full cycle. Tang Sui's trembling shoulders gradually stabilized, and the hands covering her face slowly lowered.
She hunched slightly, her head bowed, letting her raven-black hair brush against her broken skin, completely obscuring her profile. Her masked face was hidden in the shadows cast by her falling hair.
In the chaotic, disordered space, the darkness deepened, and the voices that had soothed her pain became more distinct, clearer...
"I tolerate all your willfulness and share all the gloom of your soul."
"We are one."
"Gurgle, gurgle,"
The scorching, boiling magma displayed a color like amber nectar, yet it possessed the terrifying, distorted heat of lava.
"She seems to be in great pain."
A hoarse voice, as if scraped by sandpaper, was inexplicably grating.
Rustling sounds mixed with the splashes of stones falling into the magma.
A giant, slender body slowly brushed its hard, dense scales against a stone bridge, its snake eyes, flashing with blood-red light, opened in the darkness.
As the blood-red light receded, the original golden-red color was revealed. The snake's head, with scale-like spikes like a flood dragon, lifted slightly, its snout pointed towards the black bats hanging upside down from the cave ceiling.
Its head and back had nine protrusions, each shaped like a spore, as red as blood, as if blood was flowing within, making it look very dangerous.
"Squeak, squeak!"
The bats rustled and stirred, as if something they feared was about to appear.
A black and red light cut through space. A white-haired man dressed in black combat attire stepped out of a distorted spatial vortex. The pair of huge bat wings behind him were surrounded by an ominous crimson glow. The bats, which had been agitated by the man's approach, now left their perches and flew towards the man, whose body was filled with the scent of blood and slaughter, surrounding him.
"Pain is natural. When I found her, she was already on the verge of death. I don't know what this little one has been through, but she seems to have suffered several times more than we did back then." The bat wings behind the man flapped, bringing him closer to the scorching magma.
The incessantly churning magma occasionally emitted large hot bubbles. Each explosion of a bubble released even hotter air, making the already thick air even more scorching.
It was as if something was being stewed, brewing an explosion.
The giant serpent lowered its head and gazed at the surface of the magma for a while, its gaze seeming to pierce through the amber-colored lava to see another small figure immersed deep within.
"...Are the words you spoke when you threw her over true?" The giant serpent slowly shifted its gaze, then returned its attention to the man.