Wu Pifu's consciousness and true soul had slept for a long time. He had no idea how much time had passed outside, because at this moment, he was trapped.
From the moment he arrived here, his consciousness and true soul had been tugged at and suppressed by something. A thing that sometimes transformed into a gaping abyssal maw and sometimes into The Fish drifted beside his consciousness and true soul. Whenever The Fish appeared, a water surface would emerge—at times an endless chaotic sea abyss, at others a pitch-black rabbit hole concealing infinite mysteries.
Along with The Fish came a gracefully fluttering butterfly. At times, it transformed into countless drifting skulls; at others, it became a dazzling, dreamlike blaze of colors.
Both The Fish and The Butterfly seemed illusory yet real. Wu Pifu had been completely unable to sense them before, but now he could. The Fish and The Butterfly were not actually powerful, but their status was unimaginably high, beyond the limits of his comprehension.
He did not know how to describe it. If ordinary mortals, transcendents, Ascendant Bodies, and Origins were compared to The Fish and The Butterfly, then ordinary mortals were roughly air, transcendents were water, Ascendant Bodies were soil and stone, Origins were metal and alloys, while The Fish and The Butterfly were neutron-star matter. No—they ought to be black-hole matter.
Such an unimaginably lofty status produced certain effects. Much like a neutron star distorted the surrounding spacetime, or a black hole could directly create an event horizon, the extraordinary status of The Fish and The Butterfly meant that merely existing, merely seeing them, knowing of them, or becoming aware of them would produce a peculiar phenomenon: one's own narrative layer would be overwritten by theirs.
To be precise, they were real, and you were false.