The sensation of falling struck him without warning. Fragments of light and shadow swept across his vision like a storm, while a massive torrent of information poured into his mind before roaring away into the distance.
Yu Sheng had no idea how long he had been "falling" through the chaos. He only felt as though he had experienced countless switches between life and death in an instant, yet also as though his consciousness had merely been stirred into confusion, severing his perception of life and death. Then, at last, his consciousness stopped its seemingly eternal descent, drifting weightlessly as if it had been "sent" somewhere.
He opened his eyes in the darkness. The first thing he saw was a city. Towering spires rose in dense ranks, standing so high they seemed intent on supporting the sky. Endless chains stretched between the spires, all dyed black and patterned after spiderwebs.
Above the city, the sky was gloomy and the stars sparse. The strange firmament, covered in fine crimson stripes, resembled a thick, oppressive shell wrapped around the entire world.
Then he saw a group of people gathered inside a colossal building, surrounding some enormous computational device. They hurried back and forth through the hall, tense and busy. None of them had faces; they were only hazy phantoms, their features impossible to make out.
Finally, he saw a mountain, impossibly tall—as if it were reaching toward the starry sky.
The city at its foot stretched without end, with towers standing in dense clusters throughout. The temple at the summit was grand and awe-inspiring, its various sections decorated with the mark of a spiderweb.
A long flight of stairs extended from the foot of the mountain to its summit. Dark-colored flags fluttered over the platform before the temple, where the silhouettes of monks