**Chapter Five: The First Step Toward True Nothingness**
The void around him was boundless.
No ground beneath his feet, no sky above his head, no beginning or end...
A thick silence pierced the soul, and a strange coldness enveloped his consciousness, pulling him toward eternal drowning.
Within this colorless, radiant whiteness, Fang Yi's consciousness stirred...
His body was incomplete—a tangle of translucent threads, flickering like spectral smoke struggling to coalesce.
His eyes, still unformed, *felt* before they *saw*.
He sensed movement in the void.
A strange shadow... cold as betrayal, hungry as nothingness itself.
He smirked bitterly within the depths of his being:
"Even here... I'm not allowed solitude."
He advanced slowly—or perhaps the void itself shifted around him. The line between his movement and the void's blurred.
Every step his consciousness took screamed for stability. He needed to forge his existence... rebuild his body from nothing!
Yet, with each attempt, the void resisted.
As if existence itself rejected him.
As if this "nothingness" knew his arrival was a grave mistake...
And ancient entities, older than time, watched from afar, feasting on those who faltered here.
***
Suddenly—**an explosion**.
From the void's depths surged the **Hungry Shadows**.
Faceless, soulless creatures, swirling like ravenous black smoke. They lunged at him, serpentine coils seeking to devour the core of his consciousness.
Fang Yi stood defiant, his body still intangible, his will hardening into an invisible shield. His voice was not sound but a ripple across the void:
*"As long as I breathe... no one will stop me... I will pierce the heavens and transcend existence itself!"*
In that moment, a golden thread burst from his core.
Slender, yet harder than any blade.
It struck the shadows. They screamed soundlessly, recoiling.
But they did not vanish. Instead, they circled him like wolves awaiting weakness.
***
Timeless moments passed...
And within them, Fang Yi began to *carve* into the void.
He shaped his first bones from the light of his will.
Forged his muscles from inner resolve.
Wove his skin from the shards of his shattered soul.
Each moment felt like rebirth through searing agony.
Yet he persisted.
*"As long as I endure this pain... I exist."*
*"If I've fallen into nothingness, I'll make it my domain!"*
***
When the first part of his body—a beating heart—formed, something horrific occurred...
The void trembled.
Invisible cracks splintered through nothingness, as though a deeper, far older entity had awakened to his intrusion.
From the abyss, **It** stirred.
A horror beyond comprehension—vaster than galaxies, older than all beginnings.
A black sea oozing primal intelligence.
A single "eye," world-sized, slowly opened... and fixed on Fang Yi.
This was no mere creature.
It embodied the first law of nothingness:
*"All must return to silence."*
Fang Yi faced it, his body still incomplete, yet his eyes—the eyes of his will—unshaken.
He knew, in this state, he was but a speck before such might.
Yet...
He smiled.
A calm smile, mocking fate itself.
*"If I must die, let nothingness die with me!"*
***
A wave of terror surged toward him.
The black sea sought to swallow, erase, and forget him forever.
Fang Yi raised his blazing consciousness, gathering every shred of inner light to forge a "spear" of his soul.
A fragile spear, saturated with defiance.
He hurled it.
No words could capture what followed.
The spear clashed with the wave—and instead of shattering, it split a hairline fissure in the void's stillness.
One moment...
A single moment of freedom...
Fang Yi seized it.
He leaped through the crack.
The shadows' screams and the void's rending roar chased him as he plunged forward—into a new realm of this endless world.
***
He fell...
Into another domain...
Not the white void, but a place of faint shadows and strange energies... where ancient life groaned beneath death's crust.
Here...
His true journey through nothingness began.
This fall was different.
Not a descent through smooth emptiness, but a tumble through forgotten memories—as though his very being stumbled over specters of an unremembered past.
Sharp stings pricked his soul, as though this world rejected outsiders.
He opened his eyes—or what remained of them—and saw:
A gray, breathing earth.
Dead mountains slowly rising, as if straining to recall their purpose.
A sky devoid of clouds, yet fracturing moment by moment, threatening collapse.
The air here was different...
A blend of ash, dreams, and betrayal.
He inhaled deeply—or tried to—and felt an immense weight crushing his chest.
Every thought demanded Herculean effort.
*"This world..."*
*"It tries to kill me before I learn its name."*
***
He walked slowly, each step a battle.
His first step sank into the gray earth, which clung to him like living quicksand. He tore free and pressed on.
He passed remnants of bizarre creatures:
Twisted bones, fangs the size of arms, skulls with unnatural holes.
Everything screamed one truth:
*"Nothing survives here."*
Yet he did not stop.
***
Suddenly, in this desolate world, he glimpsed a faint light...
A flicker, like a dying candle in the distance.
He moved toward it.
With each step, his strength waned, as though tested by an unseen force.
When he drew close enough, he saw...
A figure crouched on a weathered rock.
Cloaked in tattered gray, its face hidden behind a tilted stone mask with a single slit—a half-open eye.
The figure did not move, yet it spoke.
Its voice resonated through earth, air, and soul:
> *"Where do you come from, incomplete one?"*
Fang Yi did not answer immediately.
He pondered:
*Is this creature alive?*
*An enemy?*
*Another shadow?*
But he sensed something else...
This entity, though strange, held no hostility.
Only... curiosity.
***
Finally, Fang Yi replied, his voice hollow yet steady:
> *"I come from where entities should not tread."*
A long silence followed.
The air froze.
Then the creature spoke:
> *"You bear the mark of an outcast."*
*"Yet you carry something else... an unbroken core."*
It extended a hand—bone wrapped in the dust of ages—and pointed:
> *"Come closer."*
***
Without hesitation, Fang Yi obeyed.
As the creature touched his forehead with cracked fingertips, visions exploded in his mind:
Worlds collapsing.
Cities swallowed by nothingness.
God-like entities weeping before chaos consumed them.
And finally... a single path.
A long, dark road fraught with incomprehensible foes... yet at its end—
A flicker of light, like an impossible dream.
***
Fang Yi shuddered.
This was no mere vision—it was a prophecy.
A reading of his fate.
The creature spoke again:
> *"Your destiny, child of light and darkness..."*
*"Is to shatter the laws of nothingness—or be shattered by them."*
*"Every step you take will curse or glorify you in the eyes of existence itself."*
It lifted its head toward the fracturing sky:
> *"Choose, Fang Yi... Will you walk?"*
The strangeness struck him—
It had spoken his *name*.
Here, in this realm, even thoughts were heard, souls laid bare.
Fang Yi answered calmly, ancient fire reigniting in his heart:
> *"As long as I breathe... I will walk."*
The creature seemed to smile.
Then, fading, it uttered its final words:
> *"Remember... When you reach the Gate of Eternity, hesitate not... Lest you become food for the endless void."*
***
The creature vanished as though never there.
Fang Yi stood alone in the realm of nothingness.
But he was no longer the same.
A cryptic map now burned in his mind.
A road of death...
And a life beyond miracles.
***
He raised his head to the crumbling sky.
His smile mirrored the coldness of the world he'd claimed.
*"O Nothingness... Prepare. I will not be another guest in your grave."*
And he took his first step into the new unknown.
***
**(End of Chapter Five)**