6: Who I am (4)
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Zu Feng's eyes widened in fear and disbelief. The man who only moments ago radiated the beauty of an immortal—snow-white hair like cascading silk, blue eyes that contained galaxies, features sharp enough to seem sculpted by divinity—was now unrecognizable. The elegance was gone. In its place, he bared his teeth like a beast, fangs glinting in the void, his expression twisted with something dark and violent.
"My… fault?" Zu Feng whispered, his voice trembling. The words scraped out of his throat, weak and uncertain. He felt as though he had shrunk into the body of a child, cornered by an angry father's shadow, fear crashing down like an ocean tide. His hands began to shake uncontrollably, his toes curled so tightly against nothingness they ached. He forced his lips shut in a straight, trembling line. From his forehead, blood oozed in a slow trail, arching across the bridge of his nose before spilling onto his lips.
Gandolah's sharp gaze caught every detail. He leaned closer, so close Zu Feng could see the divine clarity in those cerulean eyes before the god sighed, almost tired, almost human. And then—he vanished. The air where he stood shivered and fell still.
Zu Feng gasped and staggered, still shaking. With unsteady fingers, he touched his own forehead, expecting warmth and blood. But when he pulled his hand back, he was stunned—the wound was gone, as though it had never been there. His skin was smooth. His fingers were clean.
He lowered his hand slowly, uncertain, and raised his eyes again. Gandolah stood directly in front of him once more, his posture perfect, his presence flawless. This time, however, there was a frown on that flawless face, a deep crease of irritation.
"He is supposed to be the strongest in the Nero Dimension?" Gandolah muttered under his breath, his teeth bared again, not in fury but in disappointment. His voice was like steel striking stone, cold and sharp.
Then, as if remembering himself, he cleared his throat. In an instant, the mask of beauty returned, his face regaining its ethereal symmetry. He smiled faintly, tilting his head with deceptive grace. "Sorry. I suppose I was… a little too harsh just now."
With one hand, he brushed his long hair aside, letting one side spill over his shoulder while tucking the other neatly behind him. His movements were graceful, rehearsed, every strand falling into place like it obeyed his will.
"Well," he continued softly, his voice flowing smooth and calm, "it isn't strange to feel that way. Fear, doubt, trembling…" His eyes sharpened suddenly, their blue depths piercing like blades. "…That is what happens when you stand in front of a god."
Zu Feng couldn't move. His body was frozen, paralyzed not by force but by the sheer weight of divinity pressing against him. His lips parted, but no sound came.
"Now," Gandolah said, sinking into the formless dark as though it were a throne carved just for him. His back straightened, his arms rested against unseen cushions, and in his hand appeared a red apple. It glowed faintly, lavish and tempting, like a jewel shaped into fruit. He bit into it, the crunch echoing unnaturally in the silence. Juice glistened on his lips as he spoke again, his voice calm and deliberate. "Let me tell you your fault. Shouldn't I?"
Zu Feng's breath caught. His chest rose and fell in shallow waves.
"Now that I've told you about the Graveyard of Memories," Gandolah continued, his fingers turning the apple idly as if it were the world itself, "let me explain what you did wrong. When you first began to fade into the Absolute Nothingness, you should have fallen into the Black Void. That Void was the Graveyard of Memories belonging to Guye Zu Feng—the boy whose body you now occupy. I sent you there for a reason… to merge with his memories, to let his essence take you in. That was the design."
The apple vanished between Gandolah's fingers. He rose from the unseen throne, his robe billowing despite the lack of wind, his figure glowing faintly against the endless black.
"If you had not broken out by force, if you had allowed Guye Zu Feng's memories to absorb you naturally, then you would have been reborn whole. Reincarnated, yes—but with his life intact, his memories unbroken. You would have lived as him, and the world would have remained balanced." His words dropped heavy, like stones sinking into a bottomless well. His eyes narrowed. "But you… you shattered that order. You are the reason things are not as they should be, Doughlas Vierra Varkierd III."
He raised one long finger and pointed directly at Zu Feng. The gesture was simple, but it carried a weight that pressed down on Zu Feng's chest like a mountain.
"Listen well. You were, and still are, the first soul to step into the First Dimension—the Martial Realm. Every step, every breath, every chance you were given… I planned it. For years beyond your understanding, I shaped it. But now?" Gandolah's tone dipped, cold, cutting. His disappointment wrapped around each syllable like venom. "Now, because of you, it all risks being wasted."
Zu Feng's jaw tightened. The fear in his chest twisted into something heavier. Loneliness, yes, but beneath it, deeper and sharper—guilt. He clenched his fists until his knuckles whitened, his eyes falling to the unseen ground beneath him.
And then his vision began to blur. His head grew light, his balance slipped away as though the void itself was spinning. The world tilted, colors he could not name bleeding into the darkness.
"What's… happening?" Zu Feng whispered, his words slurring as the swirl of light swallowed his sight.
"Hm." Gandolah glanced at his wrist as if there were a watch there, though there was none. His tone was casual, almost amused. "The time's up?"
Zu Feng's vision blurred further, his eyes struggling to hold focus. Gandolah's figure wavered before him, bright one moment, shadow the next.
"Well," Gandolah said, calm again, "time flows differently in Shénzhī—your consciousness. Slower, stretched. But even here, limits remain. This was only our first meeting, Zu Feng."
Zu Feng tried to hold on, but the colors pulled at him, tearing away the edges of his awareness. Gandolah's figure loomed closer, impossibly close, his smile radiant. His eyes closed in satisfaction, and the last thing Zu Feng saw was that divine face, half swallowed by shadow.
"I hope you remember," Gandolah whispered, his words sinking directly into Zu Feng's soul, "you must find out who you are."
The black swallowed everything. Gandolah's form split in half, one side luminous, the other side fading into void. Only his lips remained visible, hovering in the darkness, repeating the same words in a voice both distant and near:
"Find out who you are… Guye Zu Feng."
And with that, Zu Feng's vision collapsed entirely into nothingness.
---
Zu Feng drifted through an endless expanse, yet it did not feel like flight. It felt like falling—slow, weightless, unending. His body was suspended in the void, his consciousness tumbling downward into some unseen depth. Space itself blurred around him, a canvas of black streaked faintly with dying embers of light, as though even the stars had given up trying to shine here.
His long black hair floated up around his face, weightless and wild, framing eyes that held no clarity, only exhaustion. Inside his skull a storm raged—his brain throbbed as though bound in iron, pierced by thousands of needles of light. Every beat of his heart sent fresh stabs of pain into his temples. It was more than pain, though. It was a reminder. A reminder of how lost he was, how alien this all felt.
His expression was hollow, the kind of hollowness that was heavier than grief. A face not twisted by rage or fear but dulled by something worse—confusion that had curdled into despair. The deeper he sank into the void, the sharper the pain became, until each thought itself felt like a blade carving into his mind.
I don't understand…
The words whispered inside him, a voice trembling in his own skull. He couldn't even hear himself properly—just fragments of his own despair echoing back.
I can't understand… why? Why that god… why Lord Gandolah can't understand my feelings?
Each question was a bruise against his heart. He remembered those piercing blue eyes, that flawless face—God, he had called himself. Supreme. Absolute. Yet how could such a being, perched so high above, understand what it meant to wake up lost and powerless?
Idon't know who I am. I don't know where I am.
The confession cracked inside him like a sob.
I woke up in a foreign place, in a body that isn't mine, in a life that isn't mine… possessing a weak body.
The words in his mind trembled now, no longer thoughts but pleas.
I… don't understand…
He drifted deeper still. The void darkened, pressing closer, a suffocating velvet. The pain sharpened, piercing his skull until it felt like threads of glass were stitching his brain.
I don't know anything here. I don't even know me.
His breath came ragged, though there was no air to draw. The void didn't suffocate like water or smoke—it suffocated like loneliness. Like an empty room echoing back your cries.
Ifeel left out.
That phrase repeated in his mind, echoing like a child whispering to himself in the dark. Left out. Left behind. Forgotten.
The pain surged suddenly as if to answer him, shooting through his body until his fingers curled inward, clawing at nothing. The darkness below seemed to reach up for him, pulling him downward into its cold embrace.
I'm feeling lonely… I'm feeling left out…
A single tear slipped from the corner of his eye. It didn't fall—it drifted upward, glowing faintly as it floated into the void like a tiny, lost star.
He thought of a place he no longer had. Faces he could no longer recall without pain. His throat hardened as though he had swallowed a rock. Each breath came wrong—exhale before inhale, backwards, unnatural. His own body was forgetting how to be alive.
Iwant to go back.
The words inside him were no longer thoughts—they were cries.
My place… my friends… my son…
Images flickered in his mind—blurred faces, a smile he couldn't fully remember, a voice he couldn't quite hear. He reached for them in his memory but they slipped away like smoke.
His breathing faltered, jagged and uneven. The emptiness around him felt colder now, heavy and infinite.
I want to go back…
The tear floating upward split into two. His chest ached as though someone had taken his heart and squeezed.
Idon't want to be here.
His voice inside him cracked like glass.
I want to go back into my world… please…
And then his cry tore free, silent but desperate.
I don't want this! I want to go back!!!
The void did not answer. Only pain and darkness welcomed him as he fell deeper, his tears drifting upward into nothingness like small stars snuffed out one by one.