After closing his eyes, the small black sword in Ye Lin's hand slowly left his palm and drifted before his brow.
The little sword hovered in front of Ye Lin's forehead, its surface giving off a faint glow.
The instant Ye Lin closed his eyes, he felt the space around him violently shift.
His consciousness sank into a profound darkness.
It was not ordinary darkness, but a primordial dark in which even light had yet to be born, like that instant before heaven and earth opened and chaos was divided.
His consciousness floated in that darkness, neither sinking nor rising, neither cold nor warm, with no point of reference by which to judge direction or distance.
Then, a light came.
It welled up from the deepest part of the darkness, neither fast nor slow, like ink slowly blooming through water.
The light was dark red—not the warm red of dawn, nor the crimson of sunset, but the color of an iron billet in a blacksmith's forge, heated to its very limit and about to be quenched.
Beneath that scarlet lay a heavy layer of black, fervent heat and deathly stillness existing side by side.
The dark-red light continuously spread through the darkness, expanding like a wound slowly splitting open across the sky, exposing the flesh and blood beneath the skin.
A moment later, a figure emerged from within that light.
Ye Lin could not make out the man's features.
His outline was as blurred as though viewed through a thick pane of frosted glass, yet his aura surged forth like a breached floodbank, overwhelming heaven and earth.
Within that aura, Ye Lin smelled the scorch of ashes, the sweet metallic tang of metal melted by searing heat, and the lingering warmth left behind after something had shattered.
That aura was