An older man lay down on a cold steel bed in the middle of a white room. Bright lights shuffled by. Needles entered and exited his body. Tubes snaked through his holes. Pain, anxiety.
A deep humming accompanied a searing pain in the insides. Machines shuffled by making high-pitched mechanical sounds.
A man draped in pieces of a tattered blue robe lay on a prison floor, his body disfigured by lumps. A large hump rose above his back like a small mountain. This man was Wei Zhi.
As the memories faded, Wei Zhi opened his eyes slowly with a groan. His body felt heavy and unresponsive. As his heart thumped, a burning sensation spread from his back.
His eyes moved around. He was still in the prison. However, this cell was different. The ceiling looked like it was smoothed out from black rock. The floor was chiseled with some sort of patterns. There was not much other than a metal door. Although there were no candles, a soft ominous glow coming from the ceiling allowed one to perceive the room in some detail.
Suddenly the air started vibrating with a low humming. Slowly, black liquid started pouring from the walls into the patterns in the floor, filling all the markings.
Wei Zhi tried to sit up, but he did not have enough strength to lift his heavy torso. The lump in his back chained him to the ground.
As he tried to drag himself on the ground, the markings in the floor started to emit a soft black light. Then the liquid started to evaporate into a thick black mist. The mist swirled slowly around Wei Zhi, seeping into all his pores.
Wei Zhi groaned. He could tolerate a lot of pain, but the mist caused a new kind of pain he never felt before, as if his soul was being corroded. However, he could only groan. The lumps in his throat and mouth did not allow for more.
It was impossible to tell how much time had passed, but Wei Zhi had dragged himself ten steps shy from the door before he passed out. The exhaustion and pain were too much to bear.
As he lay down, a soft green light surrounded his body briefly, seemingly easing his pain as the labored respiration of the man became more stable.
Wei Zhi snapped open his eyes. His pain seemed to be only bodily, which he could bear.
His mind was blank. As he stared at the door, he only had one objective: to open it. There was no rhyme or reason. His life was reduced to this obsession, a freedom this door represented. Whether it was real or not did not matter. For Wei Zhi, the door had become his world.
As he kept dragging himself closer to the door, the room seemed to resume operation. The empty channels in the floor once again started to fill up with the black liquid. The mist swirled back into Wei Zhi's body, resuming the grueling process.
This time the lumps in his body started to swell and burst open. Dark pus-like fluid seeped out of them. The pus integrated with the black liquid in the floor, becoming once again mist that entered Wei Zhi's body.
Wei Zhi was unable to keep moving ahead. He felt an extreme pain in all his senses. As he started to pass out, he reached out with his mangled arm to the door, with a single-minded desire for freedom.
The hump of Wei Zhi's body kept growing under the influence of the mist. Now it was as big as half of his body. The hump started to palpitate rhythmically.
A green glow surrounded Wei Zhi's body. At the same time, the hump thumped strenuously as if resisting the light. A black light started to form, covering the pendant on Wei Zhi's chest.
As the dark light tried to damage the pendant, a thunderous sound of glass breaking rang out. A small hairline crack appeared on the pendant.
A sigh could be heard. A figure of a man in majestic azure blue robes adorned with soaring dragons in gold appeared. If one looked at them closely, it seemed as if the dragons were moving, breathing.
The man floated over Wei Zhi. His clothes danced as if in the wind. The person looked ethereal, as if he was in the room but also not. The details of his face were obscured as if by a blur, but his countenance was imposing like that of a mortal emperor.
The ethereal person looked up. "Why did it get to this... I guess this will either be your fortune or your curse." He flashed some incantation patterns with his hands, sending a set of seals into Wei Zhi's body.
The figure slowly became translucent. "This is all I can do for you right now..." His voice echoed as the ethereal person disappeared. The soft glow of the pendant dimmed.
The sound of running water seemed to fill the world. A majestic river ran as far as one could see. The river seemed colorless but at the same time like it contained all the colors of the world. If one thought the river was blue, it was blue. If one thought the river was yellow, then it was yellow.
Far in one extreme, a baby's cries could be heard. Further downstream, a child ran splashing around. Further down, a young man seemed to be fishing at the edge of the river. If one kept going, a middle-aged man sat contemplating the river. Even further down, an old man sat beside the river as if enjoying the sunset. Beyond that, only the river continued infinitely.
Coldness washed over Wei Zhi, as if he went through the river and sank down to the endless darkness below.
Wei Zhi opened his eyes. The world was completely pitch black. However, he was floating in water, his whole body submerged. Only his face peeked above.
He gasped for air as he tried to stabilize himself in the water. He flapped his arms around, trying to swim.
The darkness seemed to stretch endlessly in every direction. However, on one side he saw a very dim light. He tried to reach it.
As Wei Zhi swam, his splashing seemed to be the only sound in this world, which was deafeningly quiet.
Eventually he reached the light in the horizon. This was a small island, barely a patch of land. However, this land shone dimly in the middle of the nothingness, making it clearly visible.
Wei Zhi swam to the island. As he finally was able to set feet on it, he realized that there was nothing else anywhere in the horizon. This lonely patch seemed to be the only thing in this world other than Wei Zhi.
He sighed as he sat. The patch was not able to accommodate him fully, so his legs sank into the water. The water seemed to be black in contrast with the soft glowing land.
Wei Zhi sat looking at the horizon. His mind felt very clear. It did not ruminate with thoughts of the past or the future. It simply sat there observing the nothingness.
Time seemed to pass as Wei Zhi sank in this state. It was hard to say if it was just the blink of an eye or a whole century. But as it went by, Wei Zhi had the strange sensation that as he observed the darkness, the darkness observed him. At times he felt as if he was slowly melding with it. At other times it felt like the darkness wanted to swallow him whole. However, Wei Zhi blinked. Nothing really changed. He was still sitting on the patch of land looking into the horizon.
This cycle continued until one time, after feeling like being swallowed by the darkness, an idea appeared in his mind. He opened his mouth as if he was ready to bite back. He reached with his arm at the nothingness. However, he stopped midway. He realized he could not see his hand. Rather, he could not see any part of his body. He felt as if his body was there. He felt it move. He felt the hardness of the island, the coldness of the water. He could see the soft glow of the island, but he could not see himself. He realized he never did.
Just as he stood frozen with this thought in his mind, a soft glow startled him. In front of him, just within the reach of his arm, a golden symbol appeared floating.
Looking at the symbol made Wei Zhi's mind go spinning. His eyes could see it, but his mind could not truly understand it.
This caused Wei Zhi's mind to break from a trance. As he saw the golden symbol floating, a sensation he felt earlier got stronger. This sensation was hunger.
Wei Zhi had suffered hunger in his life. He had spent days without any food in solitary confinement. He had spent time crawling through the garbage cans in the park looking for food. He had slept to avoid being more hungry.
However, this hunger was different. It felt like a more primeval desire, a desire to consume, to consume everything.
Just as those thoughts flashed in his mind, the symbol flashed into his mind.
Wei Zhi felt very tired, something he had not felt during his time in this world of darkness. He had spent an unknown amount of time without sleeping or eating at all. However, he felt like falling asleep after having a big meal. It was soothing, a feeling that he had not felt for a long time.
As he slept, the black water around the island began to stir, slowly seeping into his body.
As time faded, so did the feeling of satisfaction, slowly getting replaced by hunger, insatiable hunger. In his mind a scene appeared. A plain filled with lush grass withered away. Ants dried. Butterflies turned to dust in the air.
The colors of the world seemed to fade. The earth turned gray and the sky black. A mountain of corpses filled a crater. A young man in black robes looked at the sky. His mouth moved, but the words could not be heard. Torrents of water rose from the corpse mountains into the sky. The earth cracked. The sky melted.
"Heaven Devouring Art..." A deep voice of a man, filled with contempt, resounded as the scene melted in a whirlpool.
Wei Zhi snapped open his eyes. He was sitting on top of a mountain at the ledge of a great cliff. Land sprawled as far as he could see in the horizon. He stood up and walked down the mountain. As he started descending, he could see a sea in the horizon. Surrounding the mountain, there were two large craters.
Wei Zhi looked at the land in front of him. However, the more he saw below, the more he had a strange feeling, a feeling he knew very well. The feeling of being stared back.
Wei Zhi started to shake uncontrollably. He felt like his mind expanded, like he could see the whole world. Then he saw it. The gigantic land looked like a person. Wei Zhi looked at the tiny person on top of the mountain. The person on the mountain was the same as the giant land. He stared at this impossible sight, trying to understand.
Wei Zhi recognized the man in the land. He recognized the man on the mountain. However, he did not recognize himself.