Darkness.
Yet even in unconsciousness, Xiao Fang's mind did not rest.
He found himself floating—weightless—in a vast void of endless black. No sky. No ground. Only silence… until a whisper stirred the stillness.
"I knew you were special, but for you to survive even this—"
The voice didn't sound outside him—it was within, echoing from marrow to soul. A familiar voice. The Curse.
"Your body is weak, flawed… mortal."
"And yet..."
Cracks of violet lightning arced across the darkness. A pulse of power rippled through the void, and Xiao Fang's form—an outline of himself—flickered like a dying flame caught in a storm.
He groaned.
His bones were breaking and reforging. His dantian unraveling and being rewoven in foreign patterns. Bigger, stronger, deeper. His dantian quaked, unstable, bloated with far more Curse Qi than he thought he could ever contain.
