Ash-Illuminating White Flame?
Amid the chaos, as warmth enveloped his entire body, Xu Xiaoshou's true body felt his scattered, shattered self plummeting rapidly.
A fierce sensation of weightlessness swept over him!
From his floating state, he fell onto that long, familiar street, as solid as reality itself.
He saw the little girl Aberrant, the candied hawthorn skewer in her hand, and, of course, the Straw Hat flying toward him.
"Puff, puff..."
Everything was fake.
Even the Straw Hat was fake, merely a projection of memory.
Yet just as comfort wound through his body and warmth spread from within, his soul and will seemed to be caught by something.
Boom!
An explosion rang out in his mind.
A huge, blurry phantom surged up behind him, white flames billowing across it.
The phantom was humanoid. It wore tattered straw sandals, a coir rain cape, and a Straw Hat. The difference was that its hands were blackened and sleeveless, while behind its back loomed the illusory holy image of Nine-Dragon Ancestral Burn... like nested dolls, a phantom wrapped around a holy image.
"Oh, you're here again?"
As that voice sounded from nowhere, the world spun around him, and Xu Xiaoshou arrived in a familiar place.
It was a vast expanse of white, with a blaze every few yards, boundless and endless. It was clearly Elder Sang's Taixu world, the place he had visited once before.
Wait!
That old man Sang?
Xu Xiaoshou spun around sharply and saw a somewhat unruly figure standing behind him, his face wearing a teasing smile.
The man's features had grown more weathered, and his attire differed somewhat from what Xu Xiaoshou remembered. He wore white robes with a large "Prisoner" character on his chest. His hands were withered, skinny, and blackened, and wisps of white flame laced with