The space seemed to have been swallowed by blackness, making it impossible to see anything. Immersed within it, he gradually seemed to become detached from his own body.
The only sounds—breathing, heartbeat, footsteps, and the blood flowing through his veins—went from clear at first to increasingly faint, until they seemed to vanish entirely, leaving only a consciousness drifting through the darkness.
Instinct drove Xu Huo forward, as though only by doing so could he regain control of his body. Yet even though he still felt that he was walking, his limbs seemed to have separated from his consciousness. "He" gradually drifted away from his body, like a soul leaving its shell and floating freely between heaven and earth.
In such circumstances, he seemed to have forgotten why he had come in. He drifted idly through the space, his consciousness controlled neither by himself nor by anything else. Like a wisp of air, it was merely moving.
At some point, Xu Huo's consciousness felt cold. It was an icy chill entirely unlike the cold felt by the body, as though even his intangible consciousness could be frozen. At the same time, it instinctively made him seek somewhere warm.
But where could warmth be found in this boundless blackness? Gradually, he began to sink, as though he were about to be utterly extinguished within the darkness.
Yet he did not die completely. From time to time, he awakened and began struggling upward, but after only a few seconds, he lost all strength again and continued sinking.
This repeated endlessly, until the consciousness he regained each time grew thinner and fainter.
The periods during which he remained awake became shorter and shorter. Every time he awakened, he felt himself thinning. At first, perhaps he had been a book; gradually, he became a few