"What's going on? Hey, master! Why aren’t you two moving? Wait, what did you say, brother Xian? I can't hear you! Hey! HEYYY!"
Tun Shi Tian looked extremely confused at the odd activities of its master and big brother. Both of them were standing really close to each other and silently moving their mouths. It didn’t make any sense that it couldn't head them when the it could easily hear the movements of an insect at that distance, let alone whispered conversations.
Suddenly, Han Xuhan backed away and Zhanxian almost staggered, as if the two of them had been locked into a mental battle of some sort.
"Uh, big brother Xian?"
"Aaah-oh, right. Littl-I mean, Tun Shi Tian! How are you?"
"....."
Wordlessly, Tun Shi Tian's suspicion fell toward Han Xuhan, who had facepalmed immediately.
"Little Tian, I just had a battle of aura with your big brother in order to assert dominance. As you can see, I obviously won and it left your brother a bit shaken and traumatized. Don't worry, just give him a few minutes to recover," Xuhan said lightly.
"Battle of aura? Do you think I am a child?"
Tun Shi Tian wasn’t so easily fooled. But the bird couldn't quite make him speak the truth either. While Xuhan absentmindedly floated around the dao tower, Zhanxian silently stood still in his original position, seeming shocked to his very core.
Just as Tun Shi Tian was about to burst into an impatient, angry fit, Zhanxian finally moved.
Walking forward, Zhanxian passed by Xuhan and headed toward his own 'room' in the dao tower. Curious, Xuhan followed alongside little Tian.
Entering his room, Zhanxian sat inside in a meditative pose without saying anything.
"Hey master, did you break him or something?" Tun Shi Tian whispered as he watched from outside.
Standing beside him, Han Xuhan maintained his silence. Zhanxian's behavior struck him a tad too odd as well.
After a couple of minutes, Zhanxian suddenly looked up and stretched a hand toward Xuhan, saying, "You wanted to know what we discovered inside the pit? Come, let me show you, master."
"...Erm, yeah, okay." His doubts increasing, Han Xuhan floated inside Zhanxian's room, unsure of what was up with all the drama.
Tun Shi Tian didn’t make a fuss, watching it all unfold while boiling in frustration.
As Xuhan got close enough, Zhanxian reached out and touched Xuhan in the same spot Xuhan had touched him just a few minutes ago. Han Xuhan's eyes widened in realization as he felt Zhanxian's mental touch in his consciousness.
Sssss!
An sizzling explosion, not quite physical but certainly disorienting, overpowered his consciousness. Through the chaotic waves that rushed throughout his mind, a single string of calm thoughts acted like a lifeline to anchor his consciousness, making Han Xuhan grasp it with every bit of mental force he could muster.
Then he realized that his eyes were working once more, except these were not quite the eyes of his own body...
Zhanxian, it seemed, had cast the same spell of transferring memories he himself had performed on the skeleton. He had somehow become able to learn it instantly!
Han Xuhan's new sight seemed the same as any normal living human's, once more confirming his theory that his summoned minions all had the same racial trait as the rest of their species despite their undead appearance. The lack of eyes wouldn’t stop them from seeing normally, the lack of feathers wouldn’t stop them from flying....and the lack of venom wouldn’t stop them from poisoning their opponent to death.
Oh, the possibilities.....
But it wasn’t time to dwell on those daydreams, for a more concerning issue had appeared amidst the memories had popped up.
Zhanxian's memories started from the moment he had thrown the two minions down the pit to investigate what was wrong with it. Except....it had been more than ten seconds since the start of their fall and they hadn’t stopped falling. He could still see the bottom of the tunnel which seemed to be just a few meters away. But no matter how true his sensation of falling felt, the bottom did not get any closer to him.
The discovery stunned Xuhan. Back when he had ordered his minions to jump inside the pit, he had seen them land on the bottom quite normally. There had been no such anomaly mid-flight. After they had landed, he had ordered them to examine the pit properly while his consciousness went back to his body to take care of business in the real world.
Yet from Zhanxian's perception, it was apparent that they were falling at an increasing velocity.
Fifteen seconds.
Twenty-five seconds.
One minute.
Three minutes.
Just when he had started to think that Zhanxian had screwed up his memory transfer trick and was now simply showing him a loop of falling, his eyes suddenly were blinded by a sea of burning red color.
"AAAAAAAHHHHH!"
"NEVER! NEVER! NEVER SUBMIT!"
"COME DOWN IF YOU DARE!"
"SING THE ANTHEM!"
"ANOTHER FORMATION! COME, BROTHERS AND SISTERS! LET US DESIGN ANOTHER FORMATION !"
Inhuman screams of fury and frustration brutally crashed into his eardrums. The sources of the screams were all around him. In every direction, there seemed to exist nothing but the purest of agony. Those screaming at the top of their voice seemed to have burst their own trachea and vocal chords way too long ago. Their hoarse, yet still barely coherent screams full of pain invited nothing but terror in Xuhan's heart.
He had recognized this place after a few glances around him. And the realization was heavy enough to deal a fatal blow to his mental state.
This was the world of the crimson sun. Only, instead of being an observer from a faraway planet, he was now standing right on the surface of the burning world.
The word sun wasn’t exactly an accurate description of this world, he realized. It wasn’t a giant ball of gas and plasma. Rather, it seemed to be pretty close to an inhabitable planet if he ignored the fire crackling all around him. The soil looked pretty close to Earth's, albeit being covered in a thick layer of ash. The terrain was mostly flat. But some long destroyed things strewn around him suggested signs of civilizations once existing here. The biggest giveaway was of course not these things, but the source of the screams.
Countless semi-transparent things.....maybe souls, were on fire all around him, as far as his eyes could see, as high as his sight could reach. In some places, they were clustered into one giant ball of flames writhing in agony, in some places only one soul burned like a sun, radiating light so bright that no colors could describe the scene.
Their state seemed both illusory and real at the same time, transitioning between the figures of human beings to nothing but twisted silhouettes made entirely of bright colors.
All of them were screaming hoarsely. Yet....all of them also seemed to be capable of rational thinking even under the excessive pain.
How long did one need to become accustomed to the pain of being burned alive? Or....were they alive at all? Could a soul, or an ethereal form, or whatever the state these people were in be counted as being alive?
Was the fire their source of agony? How was it affecting them?
More curious was the fact that Han Xuhan was sure that he had never heard of the language that was being spoken by the souls. Yet as he stood there in Zhanxian's memory, he could actually realize a good portion of the words somehow.
.....Was Zhanxian the reason behind his comprehension of this foreign language?
Just when Xuhan's mind had taken a nosedive down a path of questions he had no business pursuing in that situation, a deafening roar from behind came to rescue his attention.
"Traitor! Traitor! How could you!"
Zhanxian in the memory turned around to look hastily while Tun Shi Tian yelped and broke the silence it had been stupefied into since their first moment in this nightmare of a world.
There was one lone burning soul right behind them that had been screaming for a while. However, its screams had been more subdued and drowned out under the thunderous roars all around. But now that Zhanxian had turned to take a good look at it, they immediately detected its specialty.
The half-illusory soul had turned much vaguer compared to the rest of its companions. The layer of fire that it had been wrapped around for so long had diminished alongside the volume of its screams. What was left beneath the fire turned out to be a layer of crystalline substance, forming a roughly human-sized.....coffin, albeit a bit out of shape. That was the best description of the object.
The newly created crystal coffin containing the colorful being vibrated audibly, creating a wave of dust around it. Then like a rocket, it shot upward at the sky, crossing dozens of miles per second at the very least. Zhanxian's gaze followed the trajectory of the coffin and landed on one of the main features of the world that had clued Xuhan about the location he was in.
In the sky hung a giant natural satellite, originally grey, but now marred by what seemed to be frequent reception of the red crystal coffins. A significant portion of the satellite's surface was full of red specks. Seeing how it had taken up nearly one-third of the sky, Xuhan guessed that it wasn’t even that far away. Perhaps a few thousand miles above this hellhole of a world.
Thrice before, Han Xuhan had had the experience of entering this place that held the souls of his potential minions. But all three times he had landed on the satellite, it seemed. The clues lined up perfectly.
There was no reason for little Zhe's dao pit to have a link to any place other than its own origin. Instead of forming a connection with the satellite where Xuhan had found the snake's soul in its crystallized state, the pit had led to the original world of the crimson sun where the soul of the snake originated from.
Zhanxian and Tun Shi Tian too were the same case. But why did their dao compartments not lead them to this burning planet?
What was so unique about Little Zhe?
Lost in his thoughts, Han Xuhan almost missed the approaching souls all around him. They were the ones who had screamed at the lone soul just then.
"That traitor, Luo! How could he submit now? We were so close to a new formation! Aaaah!"
"Son of a bitch!"
"One day we shall track him down, brothers! Do not give up! Do not submit! Our justice shall be delivered one day!"
"This puny world will not hold us! Nor will this filthy fire will ever make the worthy submit! Sing the anthem of the ultimate transformation! All hail the Supreme Overlord!"
Some sang, some screamed, some roared profanities at the sky. Most of the words were unknown to Xuhan. But he understood much. He also realized that the souls were gradually coming closer and closer to them.
"Hey, big bro, do you think those things noticed us?"
"I don’t know. But there is no reason for us to take the risk and examine their attitude right now. Come, let's go back-"
"Yeah, did you just realize that we can't get back? I have no idea how we got here in the first place."
"....Fuck."
"Fuck master."
The souls encircling them were now barely dozens of meters away. The only reason they hadn’t been noticed was perhaps their avatar state which was much smaller than their real body. They could hide temporarily behind the destroyed constructs that were poking out from the soil.
Panicking, Zhanxian and Tun Shi Tian spun around and kept looking for a place to hide or run to desperately. However, the area they had landed on was pretty much a flat field. There was nowhere to go.
As their terror reached a peak of no return and both minions were about to start screaming for help to no one in particular, a familiar-looking snake skeleton materialized in front of them without any warning.
"Wahh, run away!" The snake shouted fearfully after one look at its surroundings. In a stroke of brilliance, Zhanxian caught the snake by the tail and Tun Shi Tian by the wing.
Seconds later, both of them found themselves back inside the pit, standing on the bottom which was now rock solid. They had returned to their home, Han Xuhan's dao tower.
Little Zhe made a cheerful shout and whizzed around like an arrow, spouting garbled nonsense that suspiciously sounded like the language they had heard in the other world.
Han Xuhan realized that when little Zhe had run away upon their meeting with Xuan Zi, it had actually rushed to investigate his minions' business in its pit.
"Hey, big bro! How about we dupe Master into thinking that place is too dangerous for us to go?" Tun Shi Tian said in a conspiring tone.
"Woah, good idea little Tian!"
Han Xuhan suddenly had the urge to throttle someone.
"What's going on? Hey, master! Why aren’t you two moving? Wait, what did you say, brother Xian? I can't hear you! Hey! HEYYY!"
Tun Shi Tian looked extremely confused at the odd activities of its master and big brother. Both of them were standing really close to each other and silently moving their mouths. It didn’t make any sense that it couldn't head them when the it could easily hear the movements of an insect at that distance, let alone whispered conversations.
Suddenly, Han Xuhan backed away and Zhanxian almost staggered, as if the two of them had been locked into a mental battle of some sort.
"Uh, big brother Xian?"
"Aaah-oh, right. Littl-I mean, Tun Shi Tian! How are you?"
"....."
Wordlessly, Tun Shi Tian's suspicion fell toward Han Xuhan, who had facepalmed immediately.
"Little Tian, I just had a battle of aura with your big brother in order to assert dominance. As you can see, I obviously won and it left your brother a bit shaken and traumatized. Don't worry, just give him a few minutes to recover," Xuhan said lightly.
"Battle of aura? Do you think I am a child?"
Tun Shi Tian wasn’t so easily fooled. But the bird couldn't quite make him speak the truth either. While Xuhan absentmindedly floated around the dao tower, Zhanxian silently stood still in his original position, seeming shocked to his very core.
Just as Tun Shi Tian was about to burst into an impatient, angry fit, Zhanxian finally moved.
Walking forward, Zhanxian passed by Xuhan and headed toward his own 'room' in the dao tower. Curious, Xuhan followed alongside little Tian.
Entering his room, Zhanxian sat inside in a meditative pose without saying anything.
"Hey master, did you break him or something?" Tun Shi Tian whispered as he watched from outside.
Standing beside him, Han Xuhan maintained his silence. Zhanxian's behavior struck him a tad too odd as well.
After a couple of minutes, Zhanxian suddenly looked up and stretched a hand toward Xuhan, saying, "You wanted to know what we discovered inside the pit? Come, let me show you, master."
"...Erm, yeah, okay." His doubts increasing, Han Xuhan floated inside Zhanxian's room, unsure of what was up with all the drama.
Tun Shi Tian didn’t make a fuss, watching it all unfold while boiling in frustration.
As Xuhan got close enough, Zhanxian reached out and touched Xuhan in the same spot Xuhan had touched him just a few minutes ago. Han Xuhan's eyes widened in realization as he felt Zhanxian's mental touch in his consciousness.
Sssss!
An sizzling explosion, not quite physical but certainly disorienting, overpowered his consciousness. Through the chaotic waves that rushed throughout his mind, a single string of calm thoughts acted like a lifeline to anchor his consciousness, making Han Xuhan grasp it with every bit of mental force he could muster.
Then he realized that his eyes were working once more, except these were not quite the eyes of his own body...
Zhanxian, it seemed, had cast the same spell of transferring memories he himself had performed on the skeleton. He had somehow become able to learn it instantly!
Han Xuhan's new sight seemed the same as any normal living human's, once more confirming his theory that his summoned minions all had the same racial trait as the rest of their species despite their undead appearance. The lack of eyes wouldn’t stop them from seeing normally, the lack of feathers wouldn’t stop them from flying....and the lack of venom wouldn’t stop them from poisoning their opponent to death.
Oh, the possibilities.....
But it wasn’t time to dwell on those daydreams, for a more concerning issue had appeared amidst the memories had popped up.
Zhanxian's memories started from the moment he had thrown the two minions down the pit to investigate what was wrong with it. Except....it had been more than ten seconds since the start of their fall and they hadn’t stopped falling. He could still see the bottom of the tunnel which seemed to be just a few meters away. But no matter how true his sensation of falling felt, the bottom did not get any closer to him.
The discovery stunned Xuhan. Back when he had ordered his minions to jump inside the pit, he had seen them land on the bottom quite normally. There had been no such anomaly mid-flight. After they had landed, he had ordered them to examine the pit properly while his consciousness went back to his body to take care of business in the real world.
Yet from Zhanxian's perception, it was apparent that they were falling at an increasing velocity.
Fifteen seconds.
Twenty-five seconds.
One minute.
Three minutes.
Just when he had started to think that Zhanxian had screwed up his memory transfer trick and was now simply showing him a loop of falling, his eyes suddenly were blinded by a sea of burning red color.
"AAAAAAAHHHHH!"
"NEVER! NEVER! NEVER SUBMIT!"
"COME DOWN IF YOU DARE!"
"SING THE ANTHEM!"
"ANOTHER FORMATION! COME, BROTHERS AND SISTERS! LET US DESIGN ANOTHER FORMATION !"
Inhuman screams of fury and frustration brutally crashed into his eardrums. The sources of the screams were all around him. In every direction, there seemed to exist nothing but the purest of agony. Those screaming at the top of their voice seemed to have burst their own trachea and vocal chords way too long ago. Their hoarse, yet still barely coherent screams full of pain invited nothing but terror in Xuhan's heart.
He had recognized this place after a few glances around him. And the realization was heavy enough to deal a fatal blow to his mental state.
This was the world of the crimson sun. Only, instead of being an observer from a faraway planet, he was now standing right on the surface of the burning world.
The word sun wasn’t exactly an accurate description of this world, he realized. It wasn’t a giant ball of gas and plasma. Rather, it seemed to be pretty close to an inhabitable planet if he ignored the fire crackling all around him. The soil looked pretty close to Earth's, albeit being covered in a thick layer of ash. The terrain was mostly flat. But some long destroyed things strewn around him suggested signs of civilizations once existing here. The biggest giveaway was of course not these things, but the source of the screams.
Countless semi-transparent things.....maybe souls, were on fire all around him, as far as his eyes could see, as high as his sight could reach. In some places, they were clustered into one giant ball of flames writhing in agony, in some places only one soul burned like a sun, radiating light so bright that no colors could describe the scene.
Their state seemed both illusory and real at the same time, transitioning between the figures of human beings to nothing but twisted silhouettes made entirely of bright colors.
All of them were screaming hoarsely. Yet....all of them also seemed to be capable of rational thinking even under the excessive pain.
How long did one need to become accustomed to the pain of being burned alive? Or....were they alive at all? Could a soul, or an ethereal form, or whatever the state these people were in be counted as being alive?
Was the fire their source of agony? How was it affecting them?
More curious was the fact that Han Xuhan was sure that he had never heard of the language that was being spoken by the souls. Yet as he stood there in Zhanxian's memory, he could actually realize a good portion of the words somehow.
.....Was Zhanxian the reason behind his comprehension of this foreign language?
Just when Xuhan's mind had taken a nosedive down a path of questions he had no business pursuing in that situation, a deafening roar from behind came to rescue his attention.
"Traitor! Traitor! How could you!"
Zhanxian in the memory turned around to look hastily while Tun Shi Tian yelped and broke the silence it had been stupefied into since their first moment in this nightmare of a world.
There was one lone burning soul right behind them that had been screaming for a while. However, its screams had been more subdued and drowned out under the thunderous roars all around. But now that Zhanxian had turned to take a good look at it, they immediately detected its specialty.
The half-illusory soul had turned much vaguer compared to the rest of its companions. The layer of fire that it had been wrapped around for so long had diminished alongside the volume of its screams. What was left beneath the fire turned out to be a layer of crystalline substance, forming a roughly human-sized.....coffin, albeit a bit out of shape. That was the best description of the object.
The newly created crystal coffin containing the colorful being vibrated audibly, creating a wave of dust around it. Then like a rocket, it shot upward at the sky, crossing dozens of miles per second at the very least. Zhanxian's gaze followed the trajectory of the coffin and landed on one of the main features of the world that had clued Xuhan about the location he was in.
In the sky hung a giant natural satellite, originally grey, but now marred by what seemed to be frequent reception of the red crystal coffins. A significant portion of the satellite's surface was full of red specks. Seeing how it had taken up nearly one-third of the sky, Xuhan guessed that it wasn’t even that far away. Perhaps a few thousand miles above this hellhole of a world.
Thrice before, Han Xuhan had had the experience of entering this place that held the souls of his potential minions. But all three times he had landed on the satellite, it seemed. The clues lined up perfectly.
There was no reason for little Zhe's dao pit to have a link to any place other than its own origin. Instead of forming a connection with the satellite where Xuhan had found the snake's soul in its crystallized state, the pit had led to the original world of the crimson sun where the soul of the snake originated from.
Zhanxian and Tun Shi Tian too were the same case. But why did their dao compartments not lead them to this burning planet?
What was so unique about Little Zhe?
Lost in his thoughts, Han Xuhan almost missed the approaching souls all around him. They were the ones who had screamed at the lone soul just then.
"That traitor, Luo! How could he submit now? We were so close to a new formation! Aaaah!"
"Son of a bitch!"
"One day we shall track him down, brothers! Do not give up! Do not submit! Our justice shall be delivered one day!"
"This puny world will not hold us! Nor will this filthy fire will ever make the worthy submit! Sing the anthem of the ultimate transformation! All hail the Supreme Overlord!"
Some sang, some screamed, some roared profanities at the sky. Most of the words were unknown to Xuhan. But he understood much. He also realized that the souls were gradually coming closer and closer to them.
"Hey, big bro, do you think those things noticed us?"
"I don’t know. But there is no reason for us to take the risk and examine their attitude right now. Come, let's go back-"
"Yeah, did you just realize that we can't get back? I have no idea how we got here in the first place."
"....Fuck."
"Fuck master."
The souls encircling them were now barely dozens of meters away. The only reason they hadn’t been noticed was perhaps their avatar state which was much smaller than their real body. They could hide temporarily behind the destroyed constructs that were poking out from the soil.
Panicking, Zhanxian and Tun Shi Tian spun around and kept looking for a place to hide or run to desperately. However, the area they had landed on was pretty much a flat field. There was nowhere to go.
As their terror reached a peak of no return and both minions were about to start screaming for help to no one in particular, a familiar-looking snake skeleton materialized in front of them without any warning.
"Wahh, run away!" The snake shouted fearfully after one look at its surroundings. In a stroke of brilliance, Zhanxian caught the snake by the tail and Tun Shi Tian by the wing.
Seconds later, both of them found themselves back inside the pit, standing on the bottom which was now rock solid. They had returned to their home, Han Xuhan's dao tower.
Little Zhe made a cheerful shout and whizzed around like an arrow, spouting garbled nonsense that suspiciously sounded like the language they had heard in the other world.
Han Xuhan realized that when little Zhe had run away upon their meeting with Xuan Zi, it had actually rushed to investigate his minions' business in its pit.
"Hey, big bro! How about we dupe Master into thinking that place is too dangerous for us to go?" Tun Shi Tian said in a conspiring tone.
"Woah, good idea little Tian!"
Han Xuhan suddenly had the urge to throttle someone.
