I raised my right hand, palm facing up. When I activated my superpower, a massive amount of flas appeared out of nowhere just above my palm.
The flas converged in the middle to form a large fireball nearly half a ter in diater.
Superpower is a concept found in many fantasy stories; so can stop ti, so can dominate consciousness, and others can transform the body; so superpowers have complex chanisms that take hundreds to thousands of words just to explain clearly, leaving the audience bewildered.
Unlike those either powerful or complex superpowers, mine was extrely simple.
In a word, it was "manipulate fire."
I could summon fire out of thin air and control it, or manipulate any existing flas in my field of vision. It was so classic that in any fantasy story with superpower battles as the the, there was likely a character in the early stages who could manipulate fire. And whatever those fictional characters could do, I could do at least eighty or ninety percent of it.
The "fireflies" I had summoned earlier were essentially tiny flas. And the reason they could be used as scouting tools was, naturally, logical.
Normal flas require three elents to form: fuel, an oxidizer, and heat. My flas, however, appeared out of nowhere, needing none of those material conditions. Or rather, my spirit replaced all those material conditions.
My spirit was the fuel, the oxidizer, and the heat.
In other words, my flas were my spirit. The dispersed "fireflies" were dispersed "," naturally able to sense the surroundings on my behalf.
At the sa ti, naturally, since they were flas, they possessed trendous material destruction power.
I slowly lifted the blazing large fireball, which then collapsed inward, transforming into a glowing ball the size of an eyeball. Imdiately, I pointed forward, and the light ball struck the solid concrete wall in front of .
Unimpeded, without explosion, the high-density light ball effortlessly penetrated the concrete wall as if a spoon pierced through tofu, reaching the space outside the basent.
With the spiritual connection to the flas, I smoothly gained the view from outside the basent.
Then, I couldn't help but hold my breath.
There was nothing—
Outside the basent, there was nothing.
No earth, no sky; no color, no sound... only an endless darkness.
From the external view, the basent I was in appeared as a small concrete box floating in an infinite void, with nothing else around. Even controlling the light ball to go directly below, I found no substance supporting this "concrete box." Let alone other objects, even basic air and gravity were nonexistent.
It was like outer space, but even outer space has countless stars, harmful cosmic radiation to humans, and extrely thin cosmic dust, which in so sense is quite "lively."
But this place was different, utterly silent, a realm of nothingness.
It seed as if all matter had t its end, this was a ti and space that had concluded.
Loneliness, terror, suffocation.
The boundless void felt like infinite suffocation rushing into my airways. This basent was like a tiny speck in a vast post-mortem universe, and I was the only passenger on that speck, at any mont to dissolve into aningless froth in the void, vanishing without a trace.
After a long daze, I dispersed the external light ball and view, sitting on the ground trying to gather my thoughts.
The direction of "returning to the real world via an external route" was definitely not viable.
Fortunately, although the outside was a void, the air in the basent did not leak out through the opening I had made. Although it's not difficult to seal such a small opening, especially if I entered into the "second form," which allows to operate normally even in a vacuum.
Thinking positively, this phenonon also allowed to deduce another truth: in this place, so physical laws do not apply. This discovery could also be considered a kind of "exploratory gain."
So, what should I do next? Should I indeed research the conditions that produced these caves?
If the "fireflies" set in the real world still had a connection to , I could try other thods, but now the connection was already severed.
It's ironic to think about it, when Changan ca to this morning, I was thinking that if Changan really encountered so bizarre event, I would have the opportunity to use my superpower to great effect, and explain my "ability setting" like a comic character during the process... But as life often disappointing, my superpower was utterly useless in this situation.
As they say, "all fear stems from inadequate firepower," but even with imnse firepower, it seems there's nothing I can do about this situation.
Perhaps this was also an inevitable predicant, a destiny that was bound to co my way.
My superpower, though simple and brutally strong in a way that anyone could understand, couldn't predict the bizarre and ever-changing nature of the strange creatures. Even with a spear that could destroy anything and a shield that could defend against anything, there were still many things that were impossible to do.
I propped myself up on my knees and stood, pacing around and searching for other useful clues on the shelves.
In fact, the yellow cardboard boxes on the shelves weren't completely empty. They still contained so small items like cartoon stickers, plastic keychains, candles, and so on, none of which seed helpful in the current situation. If it had been before, I would have been eager to take them as souvenirs of my visit, but now I had lost that interest.
To concentrate, I stopped maintaining the "Fireflies" that provided light from all directions and instead lit a candle I found on the shelf, placing it on the ground. The basent returned to darkness, and the single light source in the dark helped focus and also reminded of so past events.
Speaking of which, when I first awakened my superpower in the ninth grade, the catalyst also involved a candle...
People who have had near-death experiences often say that one involuntarily recalls the past when close to death.
Am I suddenly recalling the past now because I know I am going to die here?
Ti still passed, second by second, and I didn't know how much longer it had been.
There was still no progress in analyzing my predicant.
Since I wasn't very hungry yet, it ant that dawn was still a long way off.
However, this place existed outside the ti and space of the real world, and perhaps ti here flowed according to different rules. The outside world might have already gone through more than a day, just like the classical tales of "watching the chess ga and finding the wood decayed"; I had been abandoned by the world in this place beyond the universe.
Marxism says that man is the sum total of social relationships. At this mont, I was undoubtedly cut off from all social contact, not even knowing if I could return. If I died like this, it would be more like dying as a naless animal rather than as a human being.
Perhaps influenced by the bizarre environnt, I even had an even stranger thought—could it be that I had been a resident of this basent from the beginning, never having lived in the real world, and that my entire life up to now was just an illusion?
I felt my pocket, which contained the keys to my house, but this did not prove that I had lived in a house outside or even prove that the "real world" I rembered was real. A key is a concept that pairs with a lock, and without any locks here, this piece of tal could not be proved to be a key.
The sa was true for my ID card and change; these things only had aning within society. Once detached from society, they were rely materials with special shapes—just like right now.
All anings built on the concept of "society" had vanished here. Whether those materials or my personality, or even the clothes I was wearing, they all seed to dissolve in this dim space, revealing the most primitive natural nudity.
In the strange shudder, I felt a tipsy emotion. In this realm isolated from everything, I was gradually transforming into so kind of heterogeneous existence I had never imagined.
Those who isolate themselves are either beasts or gods.
Incredibly, although I was full of fear, anxiety, and pessimism, I had no regrets or panic.
Because I had entered with determination and awareness.
I had ntioned before that one reason I sought adventures beyond reality was a strong curiosity to see what I would beco during those tis. Boldly put, I thought this could also be classified as a kind of "yearning for enlightennt." Now, facing difficulties, facing despair, facing imminent, solitary death... I seed to finally find a more genuine self.
If it had been the everyday , I might have felt proud, excited, and happy for the present , but now I didn't have such fervent feelings.
It wasn't that I was swayed by negative emotions, on the contrary, I felt an unprecedented sense of release for the present .
What a clearing of the clouds. No matter how many negative emotions surged in my heart, none could infect this pristine state of mind.
However, I would not say anything like "hearing the Dao in the morning and dying in the evening would be alright."
I am very greedy; this level of reward cannot satisfy my appetite.
I want to use my power to "clear" this predicant, to prove that I am not a character who would just casually die in adventures beyond reality.
Afterward, I want to return ho to see Mazao again and eventually get her to spill all her secrets; I also want to explore the secrets of Luo Mountain and the demon hunters, to understand how the forces of supernatural power are distributed in this world. There are countless more things I want to explore.
— So, the question is, can I really do it?
Just as negative emotions couldn't infect my clarified state of mind, even a released state of mind couldn't deny an objectively existing impasse.
Because I was calm, I knew clearly.
Perhaps this was where my adventure would end.
My adventure was ending just as it had begun.
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