C119-1: A World I Know

"What's going on?  Hey, master! Why aren’t you two moving? Wait, what did you say, brother Xian? I can't hear you! Hey!  HEYYY!"

Tun Shi Tian looked extremely confused at the odd movements of its master and big brother. Both of them were standing really close to each other and silently moving their mouths. It didn’t make any sense to the cultivator bird who could easily hear the movements of an insect at that distance, let alone whispering conversations.

Suddenly, Han Xuhan backed down and Zhanxian almost staggered, as if the two of them had been locked into a mental battle of some sort.

"Uh, big brother Xian?"

"Aaah-oh, right. Littl-I mean, Tun Shi Tian! How are you?"

". . . ."

Wordlessly, Tun Shi Tian's suspicion fell toward Xuhan, who had facepalmed immediately.

"Little Tian, I just had a battle of aura with your big brother in order to assert dominance. As you can see, I obviously won and it left your brother a bit shaken and traumatised. Don't worry, just give him a few minutes to recover," Xuhan said lightly.

"Battle of aura? What the fuck is that? Sounds like bullshit to me."

Tun Shi Tian wasn’t so easily fooled. But the bird couldn't quite make him speak the truth either. While Xuhan absentmindedly floated around the dao tower, Zhanxian silently stood still in his original position.

Just while Tun Shi Tian was about to burst into an impatient, angry fit, the skeleton finally moved.

Walking forward, Zhanxian passed by Xuhan and headed toward his own 'room' in the dao tower. Curious, Xuhan followed alongside little Tian.

Entering his room, Zhanxian sat inside in a meditative pose without saying anything.

"Hey master, did you break him or something?" Tun Shi Tian whispered as he watched from outside.

Standing beside him, Han Xuhan maintained his silence. Zhanxian's behaviour struck him a tad too odd as well.

After a couple of minutes, Zhanxian suddenly looked up and stretched a hand toward Xuhan.
"You wanted to know what we discovered inside the pit? Come, let me show you, master."

". . . . Erm, yeah, okay." His doubts increasing, Han Xuhan floated inside Zhanxian's room, unsure of what was up with all the drama.
Tun Shi Tian didn’t make a fuss, watching it all unfold while boiling in frustration.

As Xuhan got close enough, Zhanxian reached out and touched Xuhan in the same way Xuhan had touched him just a few minutes ago. Han Xuhan's eyes widened in realization as he felt Zhanxian's mental touch.

BOOM!

An explosion, not quite physical but certainly disorienting, overpowered his consciousness.  Through the chaotic waves that rushed throughout his mind, a single string of calm thoughts acted like a lifeline to his consciousness, making Xuhan grasp it with every bit of mental force he could muster.

Then he realised that his eyes were working once more, except not quite the eyes of his own.....

Zhanxian, it seemed, had cast the same spell of transferring memories he himself had performed on the skeleton, somehow able to learn it instantly due to reasons unknown to Xuhan.

His sight seemed the same as any normal living human's, once more confirming his theory that his summoned minions all had the same racial trait as the rest of their species despite their undead appearance. The lack of eyes wouldn’t stop them from seeing normally, the lack of feathers wouldn’t stop them from flying....and the lack of venom wouldn’t stop them from poisoning their opponent to death.

Oh, the possibilities.....

But it wasn’t time to dwell on those daydreams, for a more concerning issue had appeared amidst the memories had popped up.

Zhanxian's memories started from the moment he had thrown the two minions down the pit to investigate what was wrong with it. Except....it had been more than ten seconds since the start of their fall and they hadn’t stopped falling. He could still see the bottom of the tunnel which seemed to be just a few meters away. But no matter how true his sensation of falling felt, the bottom did not get any closer to him.

Fifteen seconds.

Twenty-five seconds.

One minute.

Three minutes.

Just when he had started to think that Zhanxian had screwed up his memory transfer trick and was now simply showing him a loop of falling, his eyes suddenly were blinded by a sea of burning red colour.

"AAAAAAAHHHHH!"

"NEVER! NEVER! NEVER SUBMIT!"

"COME DOWN IF YOU DARE!"

"SING THE ANTHEM!"

"ANOTHER FORMATION! COME, BROTHERS AND SISTERS! LET US DESIGN ANOTHER FORMATION !"


Inhuman screams of fury and frustration brutally crashed in his eardrums. The sources of the screams were all around him. In every direction, there seemed to exist nothing but the purest of agony. Those screaming at the top of their voice seemed to have burst their own trachea and vocal cords way too long ago. Their hoarse, yet still barely legible screams full of pain invited nothing but terror in Xuhan's heart.

He had recognised this place after a few glances around him. And the realization was heavy enough to deal a fatal blow to his mental state.

This was the world of the crimson sun. Only, instead of being an observer from a faraway place, he was now standing right on the surface of the burning world.