Absolute silence.
It was like sinking to the bottom of the deepest abyss, where even time seemed frozen.
The Shadow Fiend Fragment lay beside a thick "riverbank" paved with information dust and material debris, like a truly dead black reef.
After excessive expenditure, Ming Xin's consciousness had fallen into a deep slumber bordering on stagnation. Only the most fundamental "key" frequency remained.
Like primordial life tenaciously surviving beside a deep-sea thermal vent, it maintained the faint spark of existence with the rhythm of minimal energy consumption.
This slumber was deeper and longer than any before it.
There were no dreams, no sensations, only pure "nothingness." The power of restoration did not operate actively, instead relying on the unique "environment" of this sedimentary layer.
--
The relative stability brought by settled laws, and a certain "field of existence" formed by countless interwoven information remnants.
As well as the slow, passive energy exchange between the Shadow Fiend Fragment's own shadow matter and its surroundings.
Like a true piece of wreckage, it was slowly washed over and buried by the flow of time, waiting for a "rediscovery" that might never come.
No one knew how much time had passed.
Perhaps a year, perhaps merely a long instant.
An exceedingly faint yet exceptionally clear "vibration" pierced through the heaviness and deathly stillness of the sedimentary layer.
Like a stone dropped into an ancient well, it sent ripples spreading through the depths of Ming Xin's silent consciousness.
This vibration was neither a physical tremor nor an energy fluctuation, but a resonance of... an "information structure."
It came from the deepest part of Ming Xin's "key" frequency, as though it had triggered and awakened some hidden "engraving" within the frequency itself.
By some external "information imprint" of the same origin, or at least one related to