"Hey..."
"Wake up."
After an unknown period of silence, a familiar voice rang out in his mind.
It came with a faint stabbing pain.
Gu Shen recalled what had happened seconds earlier. The moment Lion's Awakening Code was released, he had clenched the Dead Sea Authority Stone in his palm and poured all of Blazing Fire into it.
The Mental Sea waters throughout the Dead Sea Zone had boiled in an instant.
Then, he had fallen into utter darkness.
Closing one's eyes in the Real World meant sleeping.
But did closing one's eyes in the Mental World count as sleeping too?
Gu Shen opened his eyes.
There was not a trace of light in the world before him. It was completely black.
But he knew this was not the Dead Sea Zone.
Nor was it the Array Box.
This was...
His own Mental World.
With a soft swish, a brilliant, resplendent flame ignited between his brows, illuminating the entire dark world.
This was the first time Gu Shen had seen his own heart with such detail and clarity.
So this place was this dark.
Even beneath the radiance of Blazing Fire, vast swathes of gloom remained, impossible to dispel.
And most importantly...
A pitch-black figure sat cross-legged before him. It sat some distance away, motionlessly watching him.
Had the voice in his mind just now come from across from him?
Gu Shen froze.
That voice was familiar. He quickly understood why. Many years ago, when he held the Truth Ruler and killed those two Transcendents atop the burning building, that voice had appeared in his mind. Later, whenever he used Truth to the point of overdraw, similar voices would ring out in his head.
The Adjudication Court's explanation had been that such phenomena were hallucinations caused by mental instability.
At