00:00Luo. Feng stood on a suspended miniature continent and stared into a sky made of words.
00:05Each character hung in the void like a star, glowing and linked to the ones beside it.
00:10He had climbed to the eighth level of Wu-Chi Tower for a single reason.
00:14Take one secret technique from this place and use it to reach the ninth.
00:19The bargain was cruel, though. Fail, and every memory he owned would be wiped away,
00:24and he would be thrown out of the tower with nothing. He searched the sky for a beginning
00:28and found none. He could not find an end, either, or any natural place to pause.
00:33How could anyone cut something this vast, into stages before understanding? A single stroke of it?
00:39To cultivate it I must first organize its contents, he said quietly.
00:43But I know nothing about any of it. Without phases, there is no starting point.
00:48Without a starting point, there is no cultivation. The frustration that followed was the worst kind.
00:54The kind that comes when the answer sits in plain view and still refuses to make sense.
01:00Nine days passed. Luo Feng spent every one of them watching the characters,
01:04and they never stopped moving. Some blazed and some dimmed, rising and falling as though the whole
01:11scroll were breathing to a rhythm of its own. It was a gigantic scroll whose ending had been stitched
01:17to its beginning. Complete and yet unreadable. Light was nothing new to him. What he could not do was
01:23decode the meaning hidden inside it. So I must stop at the eighth level? He whispered. The thought stung.
01:30He had come too far to accept that. Yet the characters seemed too profound, like lines from a holy writ
01:37that no ordinary mind could hope to grasp. Then the entire scroll lit up at once. The light swept
01:43outward and seized him. Luo Feng felt his consciousness pulled loose and drawn inward,
01:48as if someone had attached a virtual universe sensor to his mind and dragged it into a world,
01:54built from text. In a single breath, he was inside the scroll. Far off, a blurred figure took shape.
02:01He wore a luxurious robe edged with faint black rays, and he stood in the void as though he were
02:07the very
02:07heart of the eighth level. Even as a shadow, he carried an air of quiet elegance. He looked across
02:14the emptiness at Luo Feng, who was frozen on his small continent.
02:18This is the second one, the figure murmured. The first failed quickly. Let us see whether this one
02:24endures. His voice carried regret. Perhaps I have asked for too much. My world of jinn is vast and mighty,
02:31but raising someone capable of cultivating this technique may be unrealistic. My original body
02:37has been annihilated. I have no other choice. He paused, and the longing in his gaze was plain.
02:43Among countless lives, a miracle is bound to be born. Luo Feng heard only part of it. He was already
02:49being pulled forward by a force he could not resist. When the blur cleared, a towering palace stood before
02:55him, glowing with faint purple light. It rose from the peak of endless mountains, and was wrapped in
03:01clouds that softened its outline. Even from a distance, a crushing pressure pressed against him.
03:08He turned and looked back. The mountain range stretched on without end. What place is this? he asked.
03:14I was stuck.
