Shen Fei took that step forward.
The instant his toes touched the gravel, before his foot had fully settled, he lost consciousness.
It was not the kind of unconsciousness that came with fainting, nor the kind where everything went black.
In an instant, all perception was stripped away, as though someone had forcibly dragged him out of his body and thrown him into a completely blank space.
There was no sound, no light, no sensation. He could not even feel his own breathing or heartbeat. He floated in a kind of nothingness, unsure whether he was still breathing, unsure whether he even had a body.
Then the pain came.
It did not begin in any one place. It exploded throughout his entire body at once.
It felt as though he had been stuffed into an enormous, invisible mill, its stones turning slowly and heavily, grinding over every corner of his body, inch by inch.
First his limbs, then his torso, then the tiniest recesses deep within his bones and flesh. Inch by inch, they were ceaselessly ground down, crushed, and hollowed out.
He sensed that power. It was tearing at his consciousness, not from outside, but from within, as though something had come alive in the deepest part of his soul and was slowly, relentlessly pushing outward.
He felt his consciousness being stretched open bit by bit under that pressure, pulled taut like a piece of cloth tugged in different directions by four hands at once. Its fibers snapped one by one, and the tiny stings at each break spread through his entire body.
That tearing did not happen in an instant. It was continuous, slow, endless, like a thread being drawn out, then drawn out again and again, with no end to it.
He opened his mouth, but no