It was a place the maps refused to draw.Ahead, the land split like an ancestral scar — a tear in the very fabric of the world, where not even the wind dared enter.The ground pulsed beneath the strain of what lay beneath, and the rarefied air whispered secrets long since forgotten.
There, even the sky seemed hesitant.Clouds hovered motionless, as if they had lost their way.Time... remained silent.As if even the gods had learned not to gaze upon that place.
The Celestial Abyss of the Dragon King.
Sealed ten thousand years ago, its name was whispered only by drunken elders or preserved in scrolls thick with dust and fear.No one dared speak of it aloud — not out of superstition, but instinct.To some, it was legend. To others, a nightmare.For even without knowing why... all understood:
That was where the world ended.Or perhaps... where it began to fall apart.
They said time did not flow there — it folded.A blink could last an era.A memory could consume millennia.Pain... echoed through the centuries, reverberating endlessly through every layer of the void.And sound… sound never returned.
There was no visible bottom — only a living, pulsing darkness, like the womb of an ancient being that never died.The abyss's edge trembled faintly, distorting direction as if it were merely a suggestion.Above? Below? Nothing made sense.
Here, logic was an offense.Reality breathed like flesh — and that flesh, ravenous, still pulsed, longing for more.
No aura flowed nearby.No technique formed.The Dao… bent.But not in reverence — in rejection.It was as if this space was not merely forgotten by the world.It existed outside of Creation.
And still… he approached.
Hei Liang.The child with no lineage.The youth with no spiritual root.His body was covered in wounds, in dried blood… and in a silence that never left him.His eyes held no hope, no defiance — only the recognition that nothing awaited him above.
He crossed the final threshold — the point where the heavens had placed a seal.An ancestral barrier, woven with vows from lost eras, forged to incinerate any cultivator who dared cross it.
But the seal… did not react.
For Hei Liang had no aura.No flow.No spiritual root.
To the heavens… Hei Liang was nothing.
And so...
The Abyss accepted him.
One step.Then another.And then…
The void swallowed him.
No sound.No light.No destination.
The rift closed behind him as if it had never existed.
The world moved on.The sects forgot.Time flowed.
But within…Where Dao does not enter and time goes mad…The dragon dreamed.
And now... it did not dream alone.
There was no ground.No end.Only layers.
Hei Liang fell.
And as he descended, the world unraveled him little by little.
On the first level, light vanished — not dimmed, but devoured.On the second, sound shattered — like glass hurled into an echo-less void.On the third... thought hesitated — as if the mind itself had lost its path.
He floated amidst colossal structures that resembled bones — or were they roots?Towers of stone rotated within the void, linked by bridges that appeared and faded as if made of sheer intent.On some of these structures, forms moved.
Creatures.
But they were no ordinary beasts.They were fragments of petrified will.Ancient beasts, deformed by time and the absence of Dao.Entities so old they seemed fossilized into reality.They did not live.They simply... persisted.
Some had eyes.Others, only holes in faces that resembled shattered masks.Some crawled.Others walked upside-down, clinging to vaults that had no sky.
And all of them… ignored Hei Liang's fall.
As if they knew.As if they had been waiting.
Gravity was not constant.At times, his body was pulled sideways, upwards, inward.And time... would halt suddenly, as if the Abyss itself was measuring his existence.
Until it ceased.
His body — or what remained of it — was caught by something that wasn't ground.But absence.Not stone.Not shadow.Not form.
Only the cold touch of a world where time had already died.
Hei Liang lay still.Or… believed he did.For here, even his body was a doubt.
Long moments — or centuries — passed.No sound.No breath.No thought.
He felt as though he had been lying there forever, though he did not know how long.He was hungry, cold, and hot.He could not speak.Could not scream.Could not move a finger.When his eyes opened, he saw a sky — or something like it.Stars, or a universe apart.And he thought that dying here wouldn't be so bad.He had been nothing.He had only ever been a burden to others.He didn't know his parents.And the only person who ever loved him was his grandmother.He had no one left.So dying… would be relief.
His thoughts grew heavy.He thought he heard sounds.Voices.
And then, something moved.
Not around him.But within the darkness.
An ancient heat, long asleep… opened like eyes.
And then, he saw them.
Two eyes.Blue as the sky he never reached.Luminous as submerged stars.Too deep to belong to any living creature.
They observed him.
Not with judgment.But with a stillness… that screamed.
And in that instant, the void shrank.The darkness trembled.Hei Liang's soul… recoiled.
Fear, at last, reached him.
But it wasn't fear of death.It was fear of being seen.
By something that had existed before Creation.By something that now… recognized him.
Then, a voice — that was not a voice — echoed through the bottom of the world:
— ...You… have arrived too late.Or far too soon?
Hei Liang wanted to answer.But his mouth… was no longer his.
The vibration of that "voice" coursed through the void like an eternal thunder.
It was not sound, but impact.As though each word reverberated through the world's very marrow.
Hei Liang felt it.Not with his ears —But with his entire body.
As if every cell, every shard of what remained of him, pulsed beneath the weight of that presence.
The cold dissolved.So did the heat.Only one thing remained —
An energy that could not be measured.Too ancient.Too immense.
And yet…
Entirely focused on him.
The voice echoed again.Dense. Vast. Almost... sorrowful.
— My child…You were deceived by traitors.Abandoned by insignificant beings.Your fear… your wish to die…None of it was born of you.It was planted.Cultivated by hands too small to grasp the vastness of the universe.
— They made you believe you were weak…But what is weakness, if not the silence before the thunder?
With every word, the void trembled.Hei Liang felt as if he were being undone —Not destroyed, but... redrawn.Revealed.As if the pain he carried was not the end,but the beginning of something even the heavens chose to ignore.
— I too was betrayed — said the voice, now deeper, like thunder buried beneath time.— Ten thousand years ago, in the realm you now call your own…I was handed over by those who swore loyalty.
— My betrayers walk this world no more.But their ambition…Still breathes.It pulses in the blood of their descendants.
— History was corrupted.Rewritten by cowardly hands.They made me a legend.A monster.A mistake.
— But vengeance…Vengeance does not forget.It only waits for the right moment.
And now…That moment draws near.
— I see your heart… — whispered the voice, now wrapped in something close to tenderness.— Pure… but marked.Warmed not by ambition,but by the quiet fire of vengeance.
— You have no aura.No root.But you possess something that cannot be taught:Will.
— I am the Infinite.The one who slept before time learned to run.And I can help you, my child…
— For in your eyes, I see the same desire that once burned in mine:Vengeance.And justice.
— So tell me…Hei Liang…Do you extend your hand to me?Or do you let the heavens go on lying?
Hei Liang could not reply in words.His mouth was silence.His body, a remnant of pain.There was no strength — not even for a whisper.
Then… the dragon's eyes changed color.From deep blue to blazing gold,like a sun rising within the abyss.
And in that moment, a new vibration echoed —not in the ears,but within the mind.Within the blood.
— Words are not needed…— I can feel it…— From every cell in you, every broken memory, every fragile heartbeat that still dares to exist.
The voice was fire and eternity.
— Just tell me:— Do you desire vengeance…— Or would you rather die here,in darkness and oblivion?