The gray light illuminated the temple's domed ceiling.
Beneath it, the murals surrounding the Goddess's statue in the center of the hall began to revolve without pause.
The wind began to howl around the temple.
In the gale, all the murals seemed to come alive, shifting and changing until they became an entire world.
The Goddess of Fate Temple vanished.
Gu Qingshan found himself standing in a desolate land swept by wind and snow.
"Master?" Mountain Girl called out.
"I'm fine. Don't do anything. There's probably a secret hidden here. Lachesis wants to tell me something," Gu Qingshan said.
He looked around.
There was no sky. Beyond the land stretched an endless void of darkness.
The ground was blanketed in white.
There wasn't a single living creature, nor could he see any plants.
It was a cold, lifeless world.
Gu Qingshan stood there for a while, and an inexplicable sense of dread crept over him.
"Strange. This is only a scene made of light and shadow, yet it's making me feel this way..."
He sensed the surroundings carefully for a moment, then crouched and brushed the snow off the ground.
Beneath the snow lay a sheet of crystal-clear ice.
The entire land seemed to be made of ice.
Something seemed to lie deep within the ice, but when Gu Qingshan looked closely, he couldn't make anything out.
Lachesis's voice suddenly sounded beside him:
"At the beginning, in the boundless void, there was only this frozen land."
"Until one day, a pool of blood welled up from within this ice, whose depths could not be reached."
A vivid red spot appeared on the pure-white land. It slowly spread, staining the entire snowy expanse crimson.
Countless tentacles rose from the blood-red earth, gathering in midair to form the outline of an old