Two months later.
Penglai Immortal Island.
The void was still the same void. Gray-white clouds flowed quietly, like a river without end.
Above the stone platform, the living moon slowly rotated, its three halos flowing quietly, its nine Lunar Phase Eyes closed.
Two whole months.
Then.
The first eye opened, the New Moon Eye.
A thin sliver of silver light spilled through the opening, like a crescent moon just peeking over the horizon.
Then came the second.
The nine eyes opened one after another, each lunar phase lighting up once.
Last was the ninth, the full moon.
Nine silver-white beams shot from the nine eyes, piercing the boundaries of Penglai Immortal Island, piercing the gray-white mist of Higher-Dimensional Space, piercing an unknown distance through the void.
The moon's core began to swell.
Silver-white light surged from within, as though something was about to break out of its shell.
Then.
Wangchuan spoke.
All nine eyes sounded at once, their voices overlapping, like ten thousand people whispering, like the rising tide, like the moon drawing on an entire ocean.
"When the moon waxes full, the tides rise; when the tides rise, the abyss opens."
The nine beams began to rotate, weaving into a net. At its center was a point that grew brighter and deeper, as though it would suck everything inside.
"All things enter my mirror; waxing and waning are mine to command."
That point became a black hole. There was nothing inside it but pure moon-white, like a mirror, yet also like a well.
The black hole abruptly contracted.
Then.
Wangchuan walked out of the moon.
His body peeled away from his lunar form bit by bit: first his head, then his shoulders, then his arms and torso, and finally his legs.
Every step was like surfacing from beneath