"Please, have mercy and spare this wisp of my remaining soul!"
"I don't want to vanish completely in this wasteland!"
"I drifted for a thousand years and suffered untold hardships before reaching this world. All I ask is a chance to live!"
"My lord, spare me, and I will offer you all the power and resources I have left!"
Yang Yong's gaze did not shift.
Then... the blood-red phantom suddenly stopped crying out.
It fell silent for a moment, the corners of its mouth lifting...
It was brief, so brief that Yang Yong almost thought it had already been drained dry.
In that instant of silence, everything around him changed.
Light.
Yang Yong's vision suddenly blurred.
The ninth-floor ruins, the stone platform, Huang Pi's body, and the White Bone Ring's white light all disappeared in the same second.
In their place was a warm light.
White and soft, like sunlight slipping through a gap in the curtains on a winter morning.
He blinked.
His vision cleared.
He stood beside a wide road.
The asphalt was smooth and clean, marked with the white stripes of a pedestrian crossing.
The leaves of the roadside plane trees shone green, rustling in the wind.
Behind the trees stood a row of small shops with colorful signs hanging outside.
People came and went, carrying plastic bags.
The air smelled of food: the sauce on savory pancake wraps, the grease of grilled sausages, and the cloying sweetness drifting from a milk tea shop.
A delivery rider on an electric scooter brushed past him, stirring up a gust.
Yang Yong looked down at himself.
Casual jeans.
White sneakers.
He wore a cotton T-shirt, its neckline a little loose, softened by too many washes.
A backpack rested on his back, its straps digging into his shoulders, something inside