(OLD/NOT CANON) Immortal Ascension Tower

Chapter 112 - Finally, Answers!

The girl's eyes slowly narrowed as she recovered from the shock:

"I Am Afraid... I Do Not Comprehend... What You Mean, Boy."

Cheng Hao grinned and shook his head, somewhat disappointedly:

"Weren't you some kind of high and almighty being, going about muttering truth this and truth that? You tell me that you do not even realize that I do not belong to this world?"

He smiled cheekily as he exhaggerated a bored expression and crossed his arms in front of his chest:

"I and that girl you are currently possessing are actually the one and the same, except she is... well... female. I am just borrowing this body for a while. It has something to do with a trial of some sort."

"... So I See..." the child with glowing eyes returned the smile as her expression eased.

Her face grew solemn as she waved her sleeve, pointing all around: "No Wonder This Whole Place Is This Hollow!"

Suddenly, Cheng Hao's face fell as his surroundings changed. They were not changes discernible with the naked eye, however they were so clear that it was impossible to miss them.

The powerful presence of the ancient being had spread with the female Xu Ling as its center. The emitted aura was akin to that of a rotting corpse, as if the person had been dead for an unmeasurable long period of time.

At the same time however, an even more intense will had made the air tremble. Such will contained a burning determination that it alone had visibly affected their surroundings.

It was a will so pure, yet so powerful, it was like a world-burning flame. And as if an actual flame was burning, like an invisible, blazing fire, the air trembled, the surroundings distorting, changing, twisting.

The heavens turned into the earth, clouds fell and formed oceans, mountains caved in and became bottomless pits... until space itself fell apart!

It was as if reality had been sucked into a black hole.

As if everything had been but a veil, masking the true face of the world, which had been just completely wiped away, like the removal of the tablecloth at the end of a meal.

With it gone, the reality that layer below the veil was revealed: it was actually... nothingness. Below the cover there was nothing, not even darkness. It was simply empty space, devoid of anything, a blankness that extended as far as the eye could see...

In the middle of that nothingness, a wide eyed Cheng Hao stared at his empty surroundings in amazement. He was back to his former appearence, a nine or so year old boy with a head full of long, black hair and a pair of bright, golden eyes.

The boy gaped and gulped multiple times before he could recover from the shock: the illusory world that the mysterious door had created within his mind had been completely wiped away!

He looked around as he felt terror swelling up in his chest: what now? What would happen now that everything had been completely wiped away? Was he going to remain there for eternity?

"Anybody there?", he wanted to ask. Of course, without any vessel to travel through, no sound escaped through his mouth. After all, this all might have been inside his head, but how could he call out to someone if nothing was around?

Could one picture a color he had never seen before? No. The same way of thought applied to this: if there was nothing around oneself, no one to talk or picture himself talking to, could one then imagine himself talking?

Kuh! It hurts! This is crazy! I shouldn't be able to see, hear, smell, taste or touch anything as I am surrounded by nothingness, and yet...