At once, Xu Changqing stopped.
Before him, a backdrop appeared.
It was a vast, boundless passageway. The two sides were not walls, but layer upon layer of overlapping light and shadow.
Within those lights and shadows, fragments of scenes could be seen.
Some people were walking, some were kneeling in worship.
Some were fighting, some were dying.
Yet those scenes were far too blurred.
So blurred that not a single face could be made out, nor the patterns on any robe.
Only indistinct outlines remained, playing out some story that had long been forgotten.
Faint human voices drifted from the depths of the passageway.
They were low and hushed, like people whispering to one another, yet also like the chanting of scriptures.
But by the time they reached Xu Changqing's ears, the sounds had already begun to warp.
First, the speech sped up, accelerating until it became piercing.
Then the pitch rose, climbing to a height no ordinary person could possibly produce.
Finally... the human voices became screams.
Those screams were sharp beyond measure, as though countless mouths were shrieking at once, yet no specific pain could be heard within them.
They were more like a pure sound stripped bare of all meaning. Sound itself was screaming, not any particular person.
Xu Changqing stood before the passageway for a long time.
So long that even he no longer knew what he was doing.
Then he stepped inside and sat cross-legged in the depths of the passageway.
Time around him accelerated, so quickly that even he could sense its changes.
Within this Interstice, time flowed at different speeds in different places.
The more mysterious and profound the backdrop, the faster time flowed.
And deep within this passageway, time flowed an unknown number of times faster than outside.
He did not waste