Late at night.
An owl rolled its eyes and was just about to pounce on its prey when thunder suddenly rumbled across the sky, startling the prey away.
The owl raised its head. Reflected in its round, bulging eyes was a black "crack" in the sky.
It was a branch of Yanfu, winding and stretching beneath the firmament. When it stopped, its tip expanded and elongated, forming a small but irregular black plane.
Within that dark surface, something approached. It then broke through the dark plane beneath the night sky and entered reality.
A mass of black shadow fell from the sky and landed in the river. After a while, something surfaced.
It was a lump of flesh—not a giant beast, but only the size of a basketball. Numerous short, stubby flesh tendrils grew across its surface.
It drifted with the current and soon disappeared into the distance.
High above, the branches of Yanfu Realm Space drew together and gradually shrank, finally vanishing into the night sky as if they had never appeared.
As for that lump of flesh, it traveled downstream. Mountains gradually appeared ahead, and at their foot was a karst cave.
The stream eventually flowed into the cave, and the lump of flesh followed it inside.
The karst cave was pitch-black and inhabited by countless bats. The river rounded a bend around a rocky shoal inside the cave before flowing underground.
As the lump of flesh passed the bend, the current carried it onto the rocky shoal, where it remained in the darkness.
After a while, a lizard crawled over. The little animal seemed attracted to the lump of flesh, taking it for a delicious meal.
But when it crawled near, the lump of flesh began to writhe. Dozens of flesh tendrils suddenly shot out, wrapped around