Ye Chenyu advanced along the narrow, dimly glowing passage, the stone path beneath his feet gradually giving way to barren ground. The mist dispersed, and when he looked up, he found himself staring at a suffocating wasteland—dunes stretched like a vast sea, rising and falling endlessly, as if the horizon had been erased. The sky above was grotesquely twisted; the stars drifted as if melted into the heavens, their light stretched and warped. The entire world seemed distorted by an incomprehensible force. With each step, the grains of sand beneath him writhed as if alive, attempting to swallow his legs, his very existence.
Amid the wasteland, a strange creature appeared in his sight. It was enormous, with a bird-like beak as sharp as a scythe, black feathers glistening with an eerie sheen. Its eyes glowed red, capable of spewing scorching flames, radiating an indescribable bloodlust. As it spread its wings, the sand swirled violently, as if the entire wasteland obeyed its command. Ye Chenyu felt the air grow oppressively hot; his chest constricted, and his breathing became irregular.
As he held his breath to observe, the quicksand beneath him suddenly churned, as if attempting to swallow him whole. He was engulfed in a strange dreamscape, the surrounding landscape twisting into a fog-like illusion. He realized his body was slowly transforming: his skin became rough and scaled, his fingers elongated, his teeth sharpened. He was turning into one of the monstrous beings inhabiting the wasteland.
Within the dream, he seemed trapped on an alien altar. Surrounding beings whispered incessantly, ethereal tendrils of light winding around his limbs, pinning him in midair. A strange divine force pressed on his consciousness, an invisible presence whispering in his mind, simultaneously bestowing a "blessing" and stripping away his will. Every struggle only deepened the dream; the sands of the wasteland coalesced into arms, restraining him tightly.
Ye Chenyu felt his soul nearly torn away, his will swaying between fear and chaos. He tried to call out, but his voice was swallowed, echoing only in the void, leaving only the sound of his heartbeat and the whispers of shifting sand. He remembered the core fragment he had obtained in the South Mountain ruins; its faint glow and power seemed capable of resisting the invasion from the depths of the spiritual domain. Reaching through the hallucination, he grasped the fragment. Its eerie light erupted instantly, a warm, steadfast stream of energy shattering the dreamscape.
The wasteland and illusions collapsed simultaneously. Ye Chenyu's consciousness shook violently; he felt his entire body being pulled, as if falling into an abyss. When he finally regained control of his breath, the surroundings slowly restored—the dunes still stretched endlessly, but the twisted sky no longer swirled, and the fiery eyes vanished. His body was drenched in sweat, his heart racing, chest pressed as if under a thousand-pound weight.
Looking back, he saw the quicksand wasteland stretching endlessly, like an infinite chasm. At its far edge, a faint light flickered—an entrance to the next region. He realized that West Mountain was not isolated; it connected to South Mountain on a deeper, underlying level. The "blessing" in the dream, the alien illusions, the sense of being swallowed by the wasteland—all hinted at the greater order of this spiritual domain. Every land, every creature, was part of a larger system.
Clutching the core fragment, feeling its residual warmth flow through his palm, Ye Chenyu understood the path ahead would be even more perilous. The boundary between dream and reality could collapse at any moment, and the deepest secrets of the spiritual domain lurked beneath each grain of quicksand. He drew a deep breath and stepped forward, the sand beneath him wriggling subtly as he walked, as if silently observing him.
In the distance, the starlight flickered with an eerie rhythm, like the pulse of some unknown creature. Ye Chenyu did not look back; he knew he must continue forward, for if he stopped, he might never awaken from this dreamlike wasteland. His shadow stretched over the sands, swaying with the wind, yet it could never fully merge with the bizarre scene under the twisted sky. He understood that each step was a gamble against unknown beings, and each breath could trigger deeper hallucinations.
The wasteland was silent, save for the whispers of the shifting sand, as if reminding Ye Chenyu: this was only a corner of West Mountain, and the true depths of the spiritual domain had only just begun to reveal themselves.