The sounds in his ears grew indistinct.
The faint cicada calls outside the window gradually faded away.
The pale white screen before his eyes vanished, and new audio signals flooded his mind.
Gao Jian's heartbeat was amplified, followed by the sounds of windblown sand, rustling leaves, shouting crowds, horse bells, and even distant tolling bells...
Sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch.
All five senses returned in sync.
Coarse bricks lay beneath his feet. The wind blew from the north, carrying the smells of loess and coal smoke, along with hoofbeats and the clang of metal.
Gao Jian slowly opened his eyes.
He stood atop a towering gatehouse.
The sight before him made his pupils contract sharply.
The sky was a grayish yellow, with murky clouds woven across this desolate expanse. Some dusky clouds hung so low they seemed within reach, and beneath that turbid canopy, the vast city of old Beijing slowly unfolded before his eyes.
Gao Jian instinctively activated his divine sense. At once, the bustling scenes around his residential complex flooded his mind, washing out the world before him. Damn. He immediately withdrew his divine sense... and the world before his eyes solidified again.
Without divine sense, he would have to explore with his eyes and feet.
Gao Jian walked around a little and found his body somewhat heavy, as though he were moving through a dream. He soon realized what was happening. His brain must have been generating the corresponding muscle-control signals, but those signals were not acting on his physical body, only on the brain-computer interface.
Only after the interface processed them in real time did he begin to "walk" through this world.
That meant Gao Jian had lost all his supernatural powers in this seemingly real world.
With a shift of his mind, Gao Jian entered