The fall did not end.
At first, Jin Huang screamed.
Wind tore past his ears, ripping the sound from his throat until even the act of panicking felt pointless. There was no sense of speed after a while, no rush, no resistance. There was only the sensation of down existing; he was still moving in that direction.
Then even down began to lose meaning.
The darkness around him was not the absence of light. It was something denser, heavier, like a vast curtain pulled shut over the world. His eyes were open, he was sure of it, but sight offered him nothing to hold onto. No horizon. No depth. No stars.
Only black.
Strangely, his body did not feel afraid for long.
The golden energy within him, still turbulent from its sudden gathering, began to calm. Each breath he took, instinctive now, slow and deep, drew in something unfamiliar. It wasn't demonic qi, nor was it spiritual energy as he understood it.
It was something empty, and yet, it fed him.
The gathered energy at his core tightened, compressing gently, settling into a stable rhythm. What had once been scattered warmth became a steady current, circulating with quiet confidence. His meridians no longer strained to keep up, but welcomed the flow.
Jin Huang's panic ebbed, replaced by confused awe.
"Am I fine?" he muttered into the void, as though it would confirm or deny his suspicions.
Of course, the abyss did not answer. Or perhaps it did- just not in words.
As he fell deeper, sensations began to return in fragments, and he became aware of a few things. A pressure that wasn't oppressive, but felt as though it lingered at the border between observance and interference.
And a silence so complete it felt deliberate, as though sound itself had been asked to leave.
Occasionally, something drifted past him in the pitch black. Exactly what they were, he could not tell, but their presences lingered before him long enough for him to somehow catch a glimpse.
A broken arc of stone inscribed with things he could not make out nor read. A flicker of light that behaved like a thought abandoned mid-sentence. Shadows that looked almost like mountains, except they shifted when he wasn't paying attention.
As time passed, he became more suspicious of the place he was yet to fall into. This was not a pit. It was something else entirely, filled with remnants of something he did not understand. Something that had once been enormously massive.
In the presence of it, Jin Huang felt very small. And very curious.
"How… deep does this go?" he whispered. There was no echo.
At some point- he couldn't say when- the falling slowed. Not abruptly, not enough to jolt him, but with the gentle insistence of a decision being made without his input.
Then...
Jin Huang landed with a soft thump.
He bounced once, lightly, as though he had dropped onto a thick cushion. The impact was so soft it confused him more than if it had hurt. He lay there for a moment, stunned, arms splayed, waiting for pain that never arrived.
"Is that... the first thing that went right today?"
Beneath him was something yielding, faintly warm, like dense moss or memory-foam that hadn't decided what it was imitating. When he pressed his palm down, it gave way slightly, then pushed back. It was supportive, but not solid.
The darkness did not lift when he sat up.
But it shifted with his movements, and his breathing unconsciously quickened. Unknowingly, his internal energy swam through his meridians and back to his dantian in a cyclical motion, like an excited heartbeat.
He could not see the abyss, yet he was suddenly aware of it in the way one would become aware of a vast room while standing in the dark. Space existed here, loosely. Distance was negotiable. The blackness stretched on in all directions, layered and profound, carrying the weight of forgotten eras without pressing them onto him.
Despair crept in uninvited.
It was something quieter than fear, and being unsure as to why his body was reacting the way it was did not help. The realization that if he called out, no one would hear him was one thing. The fact that something he might not wish to hear him was another matter entirely.
He ceased his movements, feeling that if he stayed still forever, the abyss would be in no hurry to make his life any harder.
And yet--
His dantian pulsed, golden aura rising out of his pores like mist. Steady. Warm. Alive.
It was the only color that existed here, making him glad that it had decided to show up. Jin Huang could feel it illuminating him from the inside as well, defining his shape against the void. The abyss did not consume it. It did not recoil from it either.
It seemed, however, to notice.
That awareness brushed against him; the reaction of the abyss to this new development was undeniable. That presence was vast, ancient, indifferent in the way mountains were indifferent to ants, yet undeniably present.
Jin Huang hugged his knees to his chest and exhaled slowly.
"The Abyssal Demonic Star System..." he started, "...this place must be linked to why its called that. So, is this the Abyss itself?"
He moved around sparingly, feeling around in the dark for something that he did not find. There did not seem to be any way to leave, nor was there any way for him to tell what was lying in wait for him.
He could not know, and would not until whatever it was was upon him. Thinking this, he stopped and sat on the soft, unlit ground of the abyss. His heart beating steadily, energy pulsating in steady 'heartbeats,' Jin Huang felt something unexpected stir beneath the weight of the dark.
The blanket of blackness around him seemed to ruffle; space seemed to recoil just a tad.
Gasping, Jin Huang became the sole spectator of something he could not possibly hope to understand. The blackness rolled away, like a sheet being folded, and reality replaced it.
As Jin Huang looked around him at the darkness being driven away, he saw more and more of what was really around him. The floor was some kind of gummy soil, like mud that did not give. Specks of glittering white dust decorated it, and beneath its surface he could see silvery veins of energy that spread out across the entire abyss.
Following them with his eyes, he found larger and larger branches of those veins, all leading into the residual darkness that had yet to fold away. Jin Huang scoffed, finding it all too marvelous and confusing.
He shifted to look as more and more of the black vanished, about to make a comment when his nose twitched.
Following that, his body unnaturally stood from his sitting position, as though gravity momentarily gave up. On his feet, Jin Huang took a big sniff, his eyes reminiscent of a predator locked on to its prey.
"That..." He folded his arms, nose still twitching curiously.
"...smells so damn good!"
His forward march was determined, polished-- perfect in ever sense of the word. He stepped through the once-dark abyss, following nothing but his nose but unknowingly following the white veins toward the very source.
The heart of the Abyss.
His nose and feet led him to a tear in space that extended far beyond what he thought was the floor, and high enough above that he wondered how he had not seen it when he was atop the obsidian structure.
This spatial tear was outlined by those white veins, but the thickest and largest ones of all. The energy seemed to be coming from within the rift, flowing out into the abyss.
Jin Huang stood as close to the rift as he could get; the gummy soil felt like it got softer and less durable the closer he got. Any further, and he felt as though he would sink into it like quicksand. It was the only reason he had stopped, despite his nose working overtime to deliver that aroma to him.
"That smells heavenly! Even better than that divine herb."
He licked his lips.
"I need to have it!"
He took the next step, his body sinking immediately into the 'quicksand.' As he sank, he started feeling the presence of the rift a lot more, and also the terrifying spatial force around it. It pulled him in with irresistible force.
Of course, resistance was the last thing on Jin Huang's mind.