How Aunt Hong and the other two outside the tower felt, Meng Zhao did not know. Ever since he had been drawn into the Ascending Heaven Tower by a powerful suction force within it, he had undergone an extraordinarily strange journey.
He seemed to have stepped into some sort of spatial turbulence, passing through countless shifts of time and ages. His entire being was shrouded in a strange shadow, while a hazy aura enveloped him.
In a daze, Meng Zhao's mind finally settled, as though awakening from a great dream, and he began to inspect this unusual environment.
Yet at first glance, he was utterly shocked. Had he fallen into a nightmare, or was there some other mystery at work?
The surroundings were neither the resplendent interior of a tower nor rows of pavilions and palaces. He was actually inside a grass-thatched hut that looked desperately poor and miserable.
The hut was only eight or nine square meters in size, bare and empty, without even a bed. There was only a tattered straw mat in the eastern corner, and Meng Zhao was lying upon it.
In the center of the room stood a small broken table, scavenged from who knew where. Three of its legs were lame, with only one remaining whole and intact.
To keep it steady, three well-fitted stones had somehow been found and placed beneath the three table corners, barely holding it up.
This table was already the only piece of furniture in this impoverished thatched hut.
There was also a broken bowl on the table, chipped at four or five places. Some unknown filth clung inside it, black streaked with yellow. One look was enough to evoke the vivid image of a latrine pit.
As for the surrounding walls and the ground beneath him, there was