"Where is this...?"
Xiao looked up at the dim Sky. Wasn't he just on the rooftop of a Liyue pavilion? How did he end up here now?
Lowering his gaze, Xiao saw a broken and twisted world.
This place seemed to have been very prosperous once—because all he could see were the ruins of buildings.
However, what was unsettling was that, in addition to the normal piles of broken walls and crumbling structures on the ground, there were also many curved and intertwined architectural fragments further in the distance.
These remnants had no discernible pattern or beauty; walls directly pierced through building bodies, and conical rooftops were connected to other equally incomplete rooftops.
From afar, these architectural ruins resembled clusters of wildly growing weeds, connecting, intertwining, indistinguishable from each other, collectively forming this gray-white stony wild forest.
"A distorted space?" Xiao looked at the blurriness at the edges of the distant ruins, somewhat unsure.
Although he could traverse space to some extent, Xiao did not fully understand the various properties of space.
He withdrew his gaze and began to survey the ruins before him.
Stepping into a dilapidated house open to the elements, a musty odor immediately assailed him. But Xiao paid it no mind.
"Wait..." Xiao saw the interior of the dilapidated house, and his pupils rapidly constricted.
On the walls of the dilapidated house, two colors were distinctly separate. One side was old and dim, much of the plaster having peeled off, revealing moss-covered red bricks beneath.
The other layer, however, was bright and new, the pristine white walls looking as if they had just been painted. Xiao could even detect the unique scent of talcum powder amidst the mustiness.
"Not just space, but time is also distorted!" Xiao felt a buzzing echo in his mind.
Xiao pursed his lips and walked out of the dilapidated house. Looking up at the Sky, the heavy dark clouds emitted a suppressed glow; everywhere, the brightness was equally faint. He couldn't tell where the sun was at all.
Looking at the distant ruins again, Xiao had some understanding. The space of this world was fundamentally formed by countless fragments from the past, pieced together and twisted.
As for why there were none from the future? Xiao felt that such a world probably had no future left.
"Boom, boom, boom!"
The ground suddenly shook, which surprisingly delighted Xiao. That this lifeless world could still produce vibrations was enough to excite anyone.
Leaping to higher ground amidst the chaotic ruins, Xiao's vision escaped the omnipresent debris and finally opened up.
In the distance, a surprisingly intact dark building and an open expanse of gray-white land appeared.
Xiao attempted to transform into a wisp of smoke, and in a brief moment, he succeeded. This somewhat startled him, but now was not the time to dwell on such things.
His speed was extremely fast, but how long did it take him to reach that open ground? He himself didn't know; perhaps a long time, perhaps a very short time.
The scenery on the ground was too monotonous, and the clouds in the Sky seemed to be still, so Xiao lost all concept of time.
The only constant was the occasional tremor from the ground.
Stepping on the gray-white ground, he kicked up a cloud of dust. Xiao looked down at the deep abyss, dense and swirling below, then looked up at the massive stone pillar rising from the thick fog before him.
Could this really be a naturally formed terrain? The scene before him was like the center of the world had cracked open into a bottomless pit, and in the middle of that pit, new land had risen, standing like an isolated island in the center of the great chasm.
Xiao shook his head in self-mockery. He was really overthinking it. This space itself didn't conform to his common sense; trying to apply his own experience to it was rather amusing.
Looking at the narrow rocky path that was the only connection between the isolated island and the world, Xiao swallowed and walked onto it.
The tremors of the ground continued incessantly, and Xiao worried whether this "rock shard" lifted from the cliff might crack.
Because this path was simply too "thin" compared to the isolated island and the world, like a "sheet of paper" inserted between the cliffs of the island and the world.
And Xiao was walking on the upper surface of this "paper."
Fortunately, Xiao's worries were unfounded.
At the end of the path was a natural battlefield. Apart from this exit where Xiao stood, the isolated island's center was surrounded on all sides by towering peaks.
And a battlefield, naturally, was for fighting.
Huge roars echoed across the isolated island. Twisted ripples were visibly reverberating in the air.
That distortion was both due to shockwaves from compressed air and due to pure power twisting space.
As the ripples impacted the ground, the isolated island, along with the outside world, vibrated in unison.
Now Xiao understood why this world was so strange. It turned out that this isolated island, abruptly standing in the abyss, was the true center of the world.
When it vibrated here, the outside world vibrated with it; when it twisted here, the outside world twisted as well.
The roar was loud enough, and the spatial distortion strong enough, but all of this, to Xiao on the edge, was like someone else's dream.
He could only watch, unable to do anything.
There seemed to be a heat source in the Sky; the vast land churned, and the entire space transformed into an ocean of lava.
Within the fiery red expanse, there were many dazzling reflections—those were the armors left behind on this land.
Not only one-on-one duels, but also large-scale wars had taken place here.
Xiao suddenly felt his eyes grow warm. He rubbed his eyes, and when he looked again, he found that two people had appeared in his vision.
One was Yu Jin; the other, like Yu Jin, was also completely encased in iron armor.
They were very similar, both Burning, both somber, both like inanimate objects. It was as if their eyes only held battle.
The one who casts the fire is the Soul of Cinder. The stronger the soul, the greater the flame that burns.
To maintain the Age of Fire, countless strong individuals have, over countless years, burned themselves, becoming kindling to sustain the world's prosperity.
However, the weakening of the First Flame was inevitable, and the world's strong became fewer and fewer... First gods, then heroes... In the end, to cultivate kindling for the linking of the Fire, even humans were used as bait, feeding into twisted monsters like Aldrich.
And Yu Jin's opponent was the Soul of Cinder of the past Soul of Cinders. It had no consciousness, only the martial arts of all Soul of Cinders.
Flames burned fiercely on both of them; with every step they took, endless sparks erupted.
Their weapons were also engulfed in flames, making it impossible to distinguish if they were swords or blades, but none of that mattered. Any weapon, to them, was an extension of their body.
With every swing of the Soul of Cinder's blade, countless blurry phantoms emerged from the gushing sparks. There were gods, humans, dragons... All the experiences of the Soul of Cinders collectively forged every attack of the Soul of Cinder. Each strike was impenetrable, yet each was parried by Yu Jin on the other side.
Thrust, slash, chop, parry, sweep... Straight sword, scimitar, spear, great hammer... The changes in moves and weapons flowed as smoothly as clouds and water for the two combatants.
Yu Jin and the Soul of Cinder's battle was unadorned; there was no dazzling magic, no unpredictable immortal arts, and certainly no suffocating amounts of element power.
There was only skill as bottomless as an abyss and power capable of tearing apart anything.
Xiao watched intently; his spear mastery had reached perfection, but even so, glimpsing the two occasional exchanges between Yu Jin and the Soul of Cinder using spears, his inspiration and desire to wield a spear grew even stronger.
It turned out that the peak of spear mastery was far beyond his mere superficial understanding.
"Hey!" Suddenly, a hand landed on Xiao's shoulder, waking him from his immersion.
"Who's there?!" Xiao was startled, but when he turned and saw it was Yu Jin, he jumped even further away.
"You... how are you here?" Xiao first looked at the Yu Jin still fighting in the distance, then at the mischievous Yu Jin before him, speaking somewhat incoherently.
"Hmm..., seeing my younger self?" Yu Jin stroked his chin, half-jokingly.
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