Hong Gemata opened his eyes and looked around in confusion.
All around him was pitch-black void, while beneath him stretched a bridge giving off a faint glow.
"Wasn't I dead?" Hong Gemata murmured in bewilderment. "Eh, am I really dead? I... I should be dead, right?"
He tried to recall what had happened a second ago, but his memories felt like a lump of stiff paste—no matter how hard he tried, he could not remember.
Hong Gemata knocked hard against his solid head, trying to knock his rigid thoughts awake.
His sluggish mind did not become any more active, but some memories from "before his death" were knocked out from the depths of his mind by that "blow."
Hong Gemata remembered that he had been a member of an exploration team.
His job had been to investigate the mirror spaces that appeared near the Crystal Kingdom alongside his teammates.
Within the Mirror Realm, mirrors were born and vanished every moment.
Yet many mirrors remained for a long time after coming into being. These mirrors were both dangers and opportunities.
Their danger lay in their instability. They might seem as though they would endure forever, yet the moment explorers entered them, they could shatter, scattering the explorers' souls to the winds.
Moreover, these mirrors constantly moved about. Who knew when one might collide with the Crystal Kingdom?
Though the Crystal Kingdom was generally sturdy enough that there was no need to worry about it being smashed apart, the collision might still destabilize its internal space and trigger a massive earthquake.
Thus, these mirror spaces lingering near the Crystal Kingdom were extremely dangerous.
But these mirror spaces were also filled with opportunities.
That was because the birth of mirror spaces was one of the underlying operating laws of the Mirror Realm. They