Inside the boundless, lightless abyss of Haoran's spiritual sea, there was no sky, there was no earth, there was no horizon, and there were no stars.
There was only a stagnant, freezing ocean of liquid midnight, stretching into an infinite vacuum that smelled of stale graves, curdled milk, and prehistoric bile.
In the center of this suffocating gloom, Haoran hung suspended, limp and motionless, stripped of his waking authority.
The majestic golden light that usually defined his immortal lineage had dwindled to a faint, dying ember buried deep beneath his sternum.
Around his supine form, a thick, viscous sea of pitch black sludge churned with a grotesque, unnatural life of its own, slowly crawling over his limbs, his chest, and his throat, slowly eating him from the metaphysical plane downward.
The sludge did not merely submerge his spirit; it digested his identity.
