Chapter 408
A Glimpse (VIII)
We were all loaded into a massive hall, decked out from top to bottom with pipe-like indentations that were all completely filled with Spirit Stones. The floor beneath us was tiled in a specific pattern, lines carved into circular motions and glazed over by some kind of transparent surface, giving us a view to the plumes of Qi flickering through.
Besides us, there were four more groups of people, totaling at around forty. Just as I thought there'd be no instructions and that we'd just be 'blinked' to the other side, a voice broke through from seeming everywhere.
"The travel is projected to last eleven seconds," it said. "Though stable, expect a slightly altered position at arrival. First-timers should brace themselves, as you will be traversing spatial tears; the pull of forces will likely rattle you in ways you haven't experienced before. Even Emperors, if they hadn't traveled somehow through space before, would experience uncomfortableness, at the very least. Above all, it is imperative that you keep your eyes shut. Even if almost every time there is nothing but dark, sometimes you might happen upon the minute tear in the void and a view of something you should not see.
"I repeat--keep them closed no matter what. Men and women far more impressive had gone mad because they did not listen."
"..." yeah. If I were running this thing, I'd never trust people not to do something. If it were to be an absolute rule, I'd just put some shades or helmets on top of their heads. Because I guarantee that at least a few will keep their eyes open. Or, at least take a 'peek' since it can't be that bad.
"Though we have alchemists at the ready on the other end in case something goes wrong," the voice continued. "They cannot cure the maladies of a mad mind, merely the shattered body. When the array is fully activated, you will find it impossible to move--do not panic. That is merely the force of Dao holding you in place. Good luck."
As soon as the 'orientation' finished, the pipe-like lines lit up like those RGB lights in custom water-cooling loops in PCs.
"Master," Long Tao said as the room began to shake.
"Hm?"
"You'll look with me, no?" he asked as he waved his hand. I immediately noticed that Qi sprayed out from his fingertips and seemed to force everyone else's eyes to close shut. The kids were just about to whine as the tremendous force of gravity--not Dao--froze us into position.
Before I could think of anything else, darkness emerged from beneath us and swallowed us whole, like the maw of the beast. Long Tao kept his eyes opened, staring at me, and I stared right back.
What is it that he wanted me to see? Or at least expected me to see?
There was nothing around us.
In fact, the only reason I could even see him was that I'd enhanced my eyes with Qi just before gravity would have otherwise made it impossible. No, seriously, I cannot move anything. Not my body, not any parts of it, not my eyes, not even my lungs, as I can't breathe manually, nor can I move an iota of Qi. It was a feeling depressingly similar to paralysis, losing complete control over yourself.
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Two seconds had ticked by 'in a flash', but nothing changed. I couldn't even feel us 'moving', per se, as there was nothing else to be relative to our position. There was no wind, no light, no shadows... just an endless void.
Five seconds were through, and I was certain we'd see nothing but this, and that he simply played a 'prank' on me. Though, why he forced the kids'--and even Lao Shun--to close their eyes...
Rather... were seconds even real? I count them in my head, but how real are they? I don't really feel like the time is passing--it's oddly similar to when you close your eyes and try to guess how much time has passed. The longer it goes on, the less likely you are to guess it correctly. But without any sensory anchors... what was I even counting?
It was on the eighth second that I realized the 'why'.
I noticed something in the darkness--a splinter of sorts, parting like a slit. And then it webbed out--like something ripping its way out of a cocoon; rather than smooth, it snagged--spinning around us in a full cylinder as everything turned unmeshed. All things became warped, though I couldn't really say exactly what those all things even were.
To me, they were merely blurs of light, shapeless things twisted over a massive span of space. And though beautifully terrifying, it was not the end--the end happened at, well, the end.
I saw it.
The gape on the other side and spacetime contorting around it. The twisting eased, and I could make out that the 'lights' were actually planets. Seven of them, with an additional fourteen moons. But... something was... off. There's an expectation in me of how a celestial body ought to be, and it's not being met. It was the stillness that caught me. The unmoving leviathans that stood still in space and time.
And lastly, I caught a glimpse of it. Something far greater than planets, far greater than what was clearly a wormhole of some sort.
The great dark.
It went on for what seemed like an eternity, but I could see the bends at the far edge of it; it curled, contorting spacetime around it in such a twisting fashion, with jets of plasma shooting off the edges like sprays of water from a hose. It was all-encompassing, greater than anything I'd ever seen, and more terrifying than eternal condemnation. The light was impossibly bent, appearing and disappearing like a magic trick meant to fool the gods, and I could scarcely make out even one billionth of the full picture.
And there were two of them.
Though colder than permafrost, they pressed together against each other like lovers, engaged in a slow-moving dance that must have been going on for uncountable years by now.
There was a point where two accretion discs met, swirls of light bending and twisting further in ways even more absurd. It was far from a smooth collision and more like somebody violently took a brush and started streaking it across the canvas that was the cosmos, smearing and shearing the colors. Fiery amber and cool pastel blue swirled in wide rings, blasting off before curving back in, with all perceptible matter being torn into filaments. Rings shredded into shimmering threads that whipped out, vanished, and then blinked back into existence as though they'd never left.
I could delude myself that even light itself seemed uncertain of where it ought to be, caught in one thing even it could not escape from. I saw them undulating oddly toward the end and followed the imperceptible shift as the planets themselves came back into view--they seemed to almost... shiver, like a leaf caught in the fading breeze.
Their event horizons hadn't even 'met' yet; still... some distance between them. There was no way I could comprehend the scale.
A billion miles? One trillion? One quadrillion? There was no frame of reference of any kind, just a brief still that I caught the fading glimpse of that made me realize at least two important aspects of this world that I'd found myself in: one, the 'seven' heavens and other minor realms were either planets or moons, and, despite having no orbit around a star (that I see every damn day?) or any inert spin, somehow they all had life.
And second, it all seemed to exist at the very edge of two black holes that were currently in the process of merging together... I think. Was that the 'void' they feared? The dark entities they thought they could worship to gain powers beyond compare?
Was the visage of what I saw even real? Or maybe a projection of some sort?
No, looking at Long Tao's eyes... I knew it was real. And this was what he wanted to show me. Why? Probably because he wanted to know what I thought it was. If I said anything other than what he thought--two dark entities in want of life--he'd know, well beyond certainty, that I'm not from here.
... speaking of.
How did I get here?
And when, exactly, is here?
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