Chapter 1: The Absurd World Cycle
It was a colossal joke to me. I was trapped. World 1 was soothing, but it was absurd—more absurd than any dream you could have. The birds were flying backwards, their tiny forms defying every law of physics and migration. The sun looked like a moon—a sterile, silver orb that gave heat without warmth. I was lying in a field of flowers, the vibrant red and purple colors of the blooms aggressively bright, yet somehow they gave me the faintest flicker of hope to escape the World.
I stared at the sky, looking at the absurd face of this world. It was just the beginning. I knew that World 2 was going to become something terrible, a world where even nightmares fail. Every step I took toward the next world made everything worse. I just have to keep moving forward, relentlessly, from one bizarre reality to another.
"Why is this happening to me?" I asked myself, the words barely a whisper against the unnaturally still air. The world felt calm, a bizarre sort of anesthetic, but I knew that World 2 would bring even more horrifying and truly bizarre things. This was the holding cell.
I was Mo Fei, a nineteen-year-old who, until yesterday, believed in the permanence of the ground beneath his feet. My descent began not with a dream, but on a simple, normal Tuesday—a day that felt normal only to me, yet the tension in the air was thick enough to choke on.
It had been a simple afternoon, I was walking home from the university library. But the air was still. Too still. Everyone in the street moved with a strange, deliberate caution, looking up. Not at the sky, but at the corners of buildings, like they expected the walls themselves to start breathing. The dread was a tangible thing, a communal poison we were all breathing.
I hadn't felt the true dread until I passed the old antique shop on Qing Street. The window was usually dusty, displaying worthless trinkets, but today, it held one thing: a small, dark wooden box, intricately carved with twelve interconnected circles. There were eleven black spots inside, and one empty space. It beckoned, and against my common sense—against the rising tide of fear—I pushed the door open.
I asked the owner of the antique shop about the box, and he said something really absurd, his voice dry as aged paper.
"This box defines the eleven worlds of calamity," he said, his eyes empty and distant, "The path of the An Jie. It is the key, the map, and the consequence." But it felt really absurd, like a cheap sales pitch, and without thinking twice, I came out of the antique shop. "They really know how to sell things, huh?" I made a light-hearted comment though it felt humorless.
When I came out, I saw tension outside Qing street—a dense crowd was gathered. Their expression said something was profoundly wrong. I don't really know why I was shifted here for like three months ago. I saw parents were holding their children like lifelines, their eyes wide and staring. I stared at the sky, for a moment I saw a change, a slight change, as if I was in a game that had just glitched. The color of the municipal building shifted from a dull purple to an unnatural, shimmering light blue in a fraction of a second. It wasn't a slow transition; it was a hard, digital skip that made my stomach lurch. I thought it might be my imagination, but the fear in the crowd was too real.
I wanted to know what was going on, so I asked one citizen—a pale man clutching a shopping bag—and what he said was more absurd than the shopkeeper.
"Don't you know about the feather of calamity, Ji Yu ? It chooses a person, and they die in a miserable way, vanishing to the place between worlds. They say they reach the Absurd World... the one no one returns from." His words were chilling, but I dismissed it. A feather killing someone? I thought what kind of joke this was. This was my final thought until I saw a man in the center of the crowd getting crazy, thrashing his arms as if fighting an invisible swarm.
Then I saw a symbol on his neck, a really weird eye with two feathers around it. The mark was ancient, pulsing with a dull, sickly orange light.
When I looked at the sky, my eyes were stunned and locked. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Feathers were falling, but there was no bird. The most stunning thing was that these feathers were not simple looking. Instead, they were black as night, etched with impossible, shimmering edges, and there was a drop of crimson blood caught in the corner of each one.
The sky itself was like stretched, gray paper. The feathers were not falling aimlessly; they were writing names in Mandarin across the clouds. My steps went back without my will, frozen with the horrifying realization that this was not a prank, not a story. When I saw my name written in perfect, stark black strokes—"Mo Fei"—my entire body went cold.
"What is that thing? It can't be just a feather. What type of joke is this?" I was going to say something more until I felt something burning in my shoulder. My hand instinctively went to touch the area, and I held a thing. When I looked at it, a feather—the Ji Yu—was clenched in my grasp.
My shoulder started to burn, but there was no fire. It felt like liquid metal had replaced my blood, heating to a boil inside my veins. I screamed, a raw, animal sound ripped from my lungs. The crowd noticed, and their pitying, horrified gazes fixed on me, watching me writhe in terror.
"I feel pity for this kid. He was new here, and he was facing such a pitiful death."
"My, why is this world so unfair?"
"I feel sorry for him."
"He is the first chosen one today. It's such a sorrow."
My blood was boiling, my eyes were teary, threatening to gauge out of the pain. The Ji Yu had stripped away my senses, leaving only the agonizing, searing heat. While everyone was having different reactions to me—some felt pity, others felt relief that they had not been chosen—I was burning inside, and they couldn't do anything. I heard six more screams from the crowd—six more were chosen, and the relief of the others was palpable.
My vision got blurry, my mind disconnected from the screaming body, and my eyes got closed. The last thing I remembered was the searing pain, and the disjointed memories of my family.
And then, I had reached World 1. I don't know how I traveled, but the pain was gone. The world was silent, the bizarre flight of the birds already a strange comfort. This world was soothing yet, just absurd.
I pushed myself up. My clothes were the same, but they felt weightless, as if made of shadow. As I stood, something brushed my wrist. I looked down. Tied there was a simple silk ribbon, the color of old parchment. I was certain it hadn't been there before. Eleven numbers were elegantly embroidered along its length in Mandarin: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,11. The first character (1)—壹—was glowing with a soft, moonlit silver light. The others were dull, dark grey.
"What is this ribbon, Who tied it?." I thought, a chill settling in my bones, My mind repeating the same question over and over. But who tied it? There was no answer. Only the silence. And then i thought of knowing this world more so that i can go back home, I wandered. The fields gave way to a forest where the trees grew in perfect, geometric spirals. A stream flowed with water clear as glass, utterly silent. I saw fish made of swirling mist swimming upstream, it's flesh was visible looking at this awkward fish made me feel anonymous. The entire world felt like a carefully curated diorama of peace, but a peace that was waiting.
As the silver sun began to dim—not setting, but simply fading like a light on a dial—a profound, physical exhaustion gripped me. It wasn't the tiredness of a long day. It was a command. This world was telling me to sleep. The air grew heavier, pressing down on my eyelids and one thought crippled in my mind. If I sleep here, in this absurdity, will I ever wake up? The fear was primal. But the compulsion was absolute. My body, no longer entirely my own, sank to the soft, cool grass amidst the glowing red flowers. My last conscious act was to clutch the ribbon on my wrist.
"I want to go back home" I muttered one last time before my eyes closed deep within my heart i was scared to sleep, i knew that anything can happen in this new place i was an anonymous man trying to find a way to go back home. The words of the man consciously repeating in my mind "They say they reach the Absurd World... the one no one returns from" It was a heavy reminder of my fear.
Time moved forward. Maybe I was right. I sank to the grass. The silver sun was now a faint smudge, I closed my eyes, clutching the ribbon, waiting for the dark. But the dark didn't come, I was unaware of my surroundings. The silence shattered. The backward-flying birds—in perfect, silent formation their entire existence—let out a single, unified screech. It was the sound of reality tearing. My eyes flew open. And at that moment, I saw the sky was cracking. Not like glass, but like old porcelain, fine black lines spiderwebbing from horizon to horizon. The cracks didn't spread light or darkness—they spread a different scene. Through them, I saw flashes of a bruised-purple sky, wet glass towers, a discordant flicker of another place. The ground beneath me lost its substance. The red flowers bled their color upward, staining the fracturing air. I wasn't falling asleep. I was being ejected.
Then came the pull. Not from around me, but from the ribbon. A searing heat bloomed on my wrist where the character 壹 (1)glowed. The silk tightened, not as fabric, but as a concept, binding me to a new destination. It felt less like a tracker and more like a leash yanked by a cruel master.
"What is going on? Does this happen because of me sleeping? It can't be this, right?" I questioned myself before everything collapsed, and then I woke up with a loud scream. The last thing I saw in World 1 was a single, perfect bird, flying in its correct, forward path for one glorious second—before it imploded into a shower of ink-black feathers.
"It can't be my imagination. I saw it. I saw a bird flying normally. Does that mean I was close to my home am I back home?" I looked around in confusion, but then I felt my hand and knees getting weaker. I couldn't keep standing. I came to on my hands and knees, retching. Nothing came up. The air was thick with salt and decay. The screaming wasn't human; it was the wind howling through a canyon of singing glass spires.
"Where am I now? What is this place?" I'm not back home. I was no longer in the field of flowers, I was with an ally who was not normal in any way. My body trembled with the aftershocks of the violation. That wasn't slept. That was an eviction. My attention instinctively went to my ribbon. I looked at my wrist. The ribbon was cool again. But the light had moved. The character of 1 壹 was inert, grey. The second character—贰— (2) now pulsed with a soft, silver light. My proof. A wave of cold comprehension washed over the nausea "This ribbon.... There's not any tracker that shows which world i am in. This means if I somehow reach World 11, then I might come back home." The ribbon wasn't just tracking. It was directing. Or something was directing me through it. The peaceful field wasn't a rest stop—it was the first chamber in a sliding puzzle, and I had just been forcibly shoved into the second. A new, more chilling thought arose: What triggers the shove? Time? Or something else? Or it is just sleeping as if, in response, a droplet of condensation fell from a glass pipe overhead. It didn't splash. It sang a single, clear, mournful note as it struck the wet cobblestones. The note hung in the air, and as it faded, I felt a fresh, subtle tug of exhaustion at the edges of my mind.
"Not yet," I begged silently, clenching my fist around the glowing ribbon. "Let me understand this place first." But the rules weren't mine to make. I was a passenger on a track with eleven stations, and the conductor was the absurdity itself. Even if reach World 11, I was certain that this couldn't be the solution, because if it was, then atleast one person could have come back to World 0, but I had no other option. The night was suffocating and felt really terrifying.
"If I keep wandering around the World looking at this horrifying, I'll get eaten very soon," I talked with myself so that I could forget the danger for a minute. And then I moved, hugging the trembling glass walls. The gong-like pulses through the ground were getting faster. A heartbeat. I rounded a corner and froze. The alley opened into a vast plain under the bruised-purple sky. The ground was webbed with thick, pulsating roots that glowed with the same sickly light as the symbols carved into the glass towers. And everywhere, bones. Sun-bleached and fresh, still glistening with ephemeral moisture, as if the owners had dissolved minutes ago.
"Bones....they feel like....they died a few hours ago," I thought, looking at the bones and scattered flesh that was not rotting like it was days ago, but it was just a few hours ago or even less. And suddenly I noticed something moving, my breath hitched. A mistake ? At the sound, a pile of bones twenty feet away—a scatter of ribs and a shattered skull—twitched. The surrounding roots coiled like awakened snakes. With a series of wet, percussive clicks, the bones snapped together, forming a multi-limbed, crawling thing. A cluster of vertebrae formed a rattling tail. Finger bones articulated into legs. It had no face. Just a clattering jaw, from which spilled a whispered chorus: "...lost, I'm lost..." and "...why can't I see..." His broken bone of hand reached towards me. I flinched from that moment, fear taking over me. I couldn't say anything. I heard another whisper. "Give me....give me your eyes..I want to see. I want to see this terrifying World " The Yan Gu turned its body of assembled grief toward me. The symbols on its bones flared.
I ran.
The ground was treacherous, tangled with roots that seemed to clutch at my ankles. I could hear it behind me, not pounding, but scraping and skittering, a cascade of dry clicks moving far too fast. The whispers grew louder, layering into a cacophony of borrowed deaths.
"LOOK BACK LOOK BACK LOOK—"
"—the sky is falling in—"
"—bié guòlái! Don't come clos—"
I didn't look back. I knew if I looked, something terrible would happen. I was certain that this would be the end. Even if i escape, this will be coming in my dreams. But then I saw a slope leading downward, toward a cluster of structures that weren't glass, but dull, weathered stone. A town? Shelter.
"I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm saved."
I veered toward it, my lungs burning with the metallic air. A root lashed out from the ground, tripping me. I fell hard, the wind knocked out of me. The skittering was right behind. I rolled over. The Yan Gu loomed, a scaffold of nightmares. A long, spine-like limb stabbed down, not at my heart, but at my arm. It pinned my sleeve to the ground. Its jaw-cluster leaned in, whispers becoming a focused hiss. A sharp, root-wrapped finger-bone extended toward my forehead—to begin its inscription. I kicked blindly, connecting with a clattering knot of ribs. It didn't scream; it reverberated, the whispers stuttering into a shocked silence for a half-second. I yanked my arm free, fabric tearing, and scrambled up, sprinting the final distance down the slope. The stone walls of the town rose before me—crude, silent, and ominously still. No lights. No movement. But it had a gate. An old, iron-wrought thing, slightly ajar.
"It doesn't look like a good place to stay, but atleast less terrifying than a monster trying to gauge out my eye." I was relieved that I was saved. I threw myself through the gap, then turned and shoved the creaking gate shut with my full weight. A moment later, a heavy THUD shook the metal. Then another. Then... silence.
I slumped against the gate, gasping. Through the iron bars, I could feel it. The Yan Gu stood motionless just outside, its bone-limbs twitching. It didn't try to break in. It simply... waited. The whispers softened to a resentful murmur. The rule was clear: The town was a boundary. Pushing myself away from the gate, I turned to face my new refuge. "The bones and flesh weren't old.... Does that mean someone died who came with me? There were six more humans. If I remember correctly, one is already dead....what happens if we die will it end ?" I was questioning myself, knowing that I had no clue about this world. I looked at the town, it was a maze of narrow, cobbled streets and squat stone huts. The windows were dark. No smoke rose from chimneys. It was less a sanctuary and more a void of life, a negative imprint of a community. And the bones were there, too. Not scattered, but arranged. Though they were not new, it was like they were here from the last year and neat piles by doorsteps. A skull placed carefully on a windowsill. It wasn't a graveyard. It was a collection.
"A skull," I stared at in horror. "It's arranged did I come into a worse danger."
And on my wrist, the ribbon pulsed—贰—(2) a cold reminder. My time here was already bleeding away. The real terror wasn't just the monster outside the gate.
It was what, or who, had gathered all these bones inside.
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