Lu Mingfei sprinted forward for some distance, passing shattered flagstones and deep trenches gouged by dragon tails, passing through billowing smoke and dying embers. The wind howled past his ears, gravel scattered beneath his feet, and his heart pounded like a drum, urging him onward, farther onward.
Then his pace gradually slowed.
A strange sensation surged toward him from ahead, washing over his body like a tide. It was not fear, not vigilance, not even any emotion he could name.
It was more like a summons—an ancient summons from deep within his bloodline.
Lu Mingfei had a powerful premonition: ahead lay the source of all the anomalies, and the end point of his own destiny.
That premonition was almost instinctive, like a migratory fish knowing the direction of the sea, like a migrating bird knowing the outline of the mountains. He could not explain why, but he simply knew.
Suddenly, he was no longer in such a hurry. He proceeded at an unhurried pace, looking around as he walked.
The scenery around him grew increasingly bizarre.
All the vegetation had turned red. Not the red of autumn, nor the red of maple leaves, but a moist, full-bodied crimson that seemed to flow.
The plants' forms had changed as well. They no longer had ordinary leaves and branches, but possessed a strange, fleshy quality. Thick and soft, their surfaces were coated in a damp sheen, like tissue freshly stripped from some enormous body.
Tentacle-like vines were everywhere. They grew from the ground, crawled out of cracks in the stone, and hung from the red canopy, slowly writhing in the air like countless lazy snakes.
They resembled animals and plants alike, but even more so, alien life forms from a movie.
The air was thick with a cloying sweetness, like overripe fruit,