Everyone, whether cicada, mantis, or oriole, was part of this night.
But to each individual, they were neither an oblivious cicada, a vicious mantis, nor an oriole lurking behind the scenes. They were simply carrying out their own plans.
When Hou Guisheng awoke in that cold, uncanny place, he did not consider himself a pawn in someone else's plan. Even after seeing Xue Tingtao arrive and realizing Wei Guang was there, he still did not think so.
Because the one thing he had wanted most to accomplish in his original plan had, in fact, already been done.
Thin, eerie mist rose all around him. Strands of bone-deep cold seeped into his body, making him shiver involuntarily.
The yellow earth beneath him felt cold yet soft. As he rose from lying facedown to standing, it clung to the hem of his clothes.
Hou Guisheng saw the Plane beneath the Ghost Cave. Endless mounds of yellow earth stretched out on every side, laid bare before him. The air was bitterly cold, and the lingering, eerie mist made it impossible to tell east from west.
His bewildered gaze shifted upward, but the sight in the sky filled him with a strange sense of wonder and confusion.
The Ghost Cave's plane was an empty expanse of yellow earth, and suspended above it was none other than the Rose Hotel.
Hou Guisheng felt as though he had fallen into a glitched map in some video game. The Rose Hotel hovered dozens of meters overhead. Looking up from below, he could even make out the exposed first-floor reception area where the floor was missing.
In other words, the Rose Hotel was like an imaginary model built above this yellow earth. Its very structure gave the impression that this place was the foundation of everything.
Footsteps sounded