Xan Li Fang stepped through the mystical gateway formed by the intertwined twin trees, anticipating the familiar verdure of a forest or perhaps the solemn, dusty interior of another ancient temple, yet his expectations were instantaneously shattered by the alien reality that awaited him. He emerged into a void that defied the binary concepts of luminescence and obscurity, a realm of absolute, crystalline clarity where the conventional spatial markers of zenith, nadir, and horizon were rendered obsolete. There were only Mirrors. An infinite regression of shimmering, reflective surfaces encased him on all trajectories—above, below, and to every lateral cardinal point—creating a dizzying kaleidoscope where his ocular gaze encountered only a singular subject: Himself. Thousands of reflections of the figure clad in the strange, multicolored robe and the ominous pitch-black hat stared back at him; however, these were not static duplications, for some reflections wept with silent grief, others convulsed with manic laughter, and some maintained a stoic, statuesque silence. "This domain..." Xan gasped, his voice echoing endlessly through the reflective labyrinth. "I possess no comprehension of this location's nature... however..." He clutched his thorax in sudden agony.
The instant he penetrated this domain, the dormant, volatile powers residing within his somatic vessel awakened with a deafening metaphysical roar. RUMBLE. The Chaos Sword Qi residing in his chest began to rotate with violent velocity; the Power of Order situated in his abdomen flared with blinding intensity; and the Vertical Eye of Law concealed upon his forehead commenced a rhythmic, agonizing throbbing. The atmospheric pressure of this Mirror World did not seek to crush him, but rather to compress him, forcing these three distinct, terrifyingly dissonant powers to grind against one another in a brutal attempt to fuse them into a singular, flawless system. But the requisite cost of this apotheosis was pain. "It is excruciating... HAAAAAAA!" Xan collapsed to his knees, his digits clawing desperately at the invisible floor, an action mimicked simultaneously by his reflection in a thousand divergent directions. It felt as though his skeletal structure was being pulverized into calcified dust and instantaneously reconstituted a thousand times per second, while his meridians were scorched by the flow of liquid incandescence. The primordial conflict between Chaos—the force of entropy—and Order—the force of structure—was tearing his soul asunder, while the Law attempted to forcibly bind the warring factions together.
"Arghhhhh!" Viscous blood leaked from his ocular and auditory canals, staining the pristine reflection beneath him, for the agony transcended the physiological limits of human tolerance; it was the visceral torture of a mortal vessel being forcibly reshaped to accommodate the infinite potency of a Deity. Although the environment was acting as a catalyst to accelerate the merger, offering him a probability of achieving a legendary breakthrough, the sheer magnitude of the agony threatened to fracture his psyche before the process could reach fruition. Xan's vision blurred into incoherence as he watched his own reflection distort, the visage in the mirror twisting in a shared, silent torment. Suddenly, a vocal resonance echoed through the infinite spatial geometry. "Hmm, old friend." The sound did not emanate from a specific vector; rather, it permeated from the mirrors, from the void, and from the very synapses of his own consciousness. It was a voice that possessed no gender, belonging neither to the masculine nor the feminine spectrum, but sounding like the primordial vibration of the universe itself—ancient, majestic, and paradoxically gentle.
Xan attempted to elevate his gaze to identify the speaker, but his cervical vertebrae refused to articulate, pinned down by the sheer gravitational weight of the entity's presence. "I did not anticipate your arrival..." the voice mused, tinged with a slight note of surprise, as if greeting a guest who had materialized a billion years prematurely—or perhaps, too belatedly. The presence seemed to scan Xan's trembling, fracturing physique, sensing the cataclysmic internecine war raging within his dantians. "Ha, very well," the voice resonated with a tone of profound benevolence. "Since you require assistance... I shall render aid." FLASH. A soft, blinding luminescence erupted from the mirrors, washing over Xan and penetrating his epidermis and musculature to dive deep into his spiritual core. The sharp, tearing agony did not vanish, but it transmuted, becoming heavy, drowsy, and distant. Xan's grasp on consciousness slipped as the reflection in the mirror faded into a comforting darkness. "Old... friend...?" Xan mumbled, his thoughts dissolving into the ether. His body went limp, and he collapsed onto the reflective surface, drifting into a deep, recuperative slumber.
The Arnadu Forest was not merely a geographical feature; it was a verdant purgatory, a suffocating expanse of botanical malice that functioned as a green hell for any living organism foolish enough to trespass. In the heart of this incredibly dense, labyrinthine woodland lay a broad thoroughfare, carved violently out of the wilderness and spanning approximately fifteen meters in width. This was not a path designed for the frail or the faint of heart. The forest teemed with ferocious Spirit Beasts and poisonous flora capable of liquefying bone, meaning that to even entertain the fantasy of traversing this region alive, a traveler required a cultivation base of at least the Middle Stage of the First Step; anything less was a guaranteed death sentence. Towering adjacent to this perilous artery, casting a long, primordial shadow that seemed to swallow the light of the sun, stood the Ancient Ruins. For billions of years, it had remained an immutable sentinel—majestic, enigmatic, and radiating an aura of such profound antiquity that it caused the very atmosphere to oscillate in reverence.
Traversing this formidable forest road, a convoy moved with a disciplined, militaristic precision that defied the chaos of the wild. A phalanx of heavily armored soldiers marched in formation, encasing a luxurious horse-drawn carriage within a protective perimeter of steel and Qi. Their identity was unmistakable; the intricate, glowing symbols etched into their plate mail identified them as the elite custodians of the Merry Andro Temple. They proceeded in absolute silence, their gauntleted hands never straying far from the hilts of their weapons, their eyes scanning the treeline for threats with paranoid vigilance. They were safeguarding an individual of immense significance, a figure concealed deep within the velvet confines of the carriage, shielded from the prying gaze of the mundane world.
Suddenly, the continuum of reality ground to a halt. RUMBLE. The earth beneath their boots groaned in protest; this was not a standard tectonic event, but a fundamental vibrational shift that rattled the dental roots of every soldier and sent waves of panic through the spirit horses. "Hold fast!" the captain bellowed, his voice straining to maintain order amidst the tremors. However, the soldiers were not inspecting the ground; their gazes were fixed upward, their jaws slack with disbelief. The Ancient Ruins—that fixture which had existed since the dawn of time, the immovable object that even God Kings could not displace—flickered like a dying candle in a gale. And then, in the blink of an eye, it vanished. The colossal floating islands, the swirling grey mist, the obsidian monuments—all were instantaneously excised from existence. The skyline was rendered terrifyingly vacant, leaving only the pristine azure vault where a legend had stood but a moment prior.
The soldiers were paralyzed by cognitive dissonance, unable to comprehend the impossibility of the phenomenon they had just witnessed. However, amidst this chaotic tableau, there existed a singular observer who perceived a different reality. Inside the carriage, the heavy curtains parted slightly, revealing a pair of sharp, perceptive eyes that gazed upward toward the void where the ruins had once dominated the sky. While the soldiers perceived only empty atmospheric space, the occupant of the carriage possessed a vision that transcended the ordinary spectrum. There, suspended high in the heavens within the vacuum left by the ruins, a solitary human body floated in a state of suspended animation. It was a young man clad in strange, multicolored black robes. "Intriguing..." the figure in the carriage mused internally, their gaze locking onto the drifting form of Xan Li Fang with predatory curiosity.