He looked down at his hand; it was pale and stiff, but still there.

There was still a little ice stuck in the cracks of his fingernails, proving that he had been on that damn island not long ago. But the problem was -

"Where's Bai Di?"

No one answered. All around them was a thick, almost tangible white fog, slowly moving like frozen masses.

Blore waved tentatively, and the mist stirred, but quickly gathered back as if it had no interest in his presence.

"Well, looks like I've been thrown into some kind of hell again," he muttered, trying to stand up, and then—

"Bang!"

His knee hit something hard. Looking down, he saw a coffin.

"Oh, case solved."

Blore said rather dryly,

"I just sat up out of this thing."

The material of the coffin is unknown. It looks neither like wood nor metal. It feels strangely warm to the touch, like the skeleton of some deep-sea creature.

The surface of the coffin was covered with distorted symbols, some of which looked like mermaid tail fins, while others looked like mathematical formulas rearranged and combined by a madman in a nightmare.

Blore stared at it for two seconds, then felt dizzy, as if his brain were plugged into an old-fashioned typewriter and some nameless being was smacking the keys with its tentacles.

"Well, at least it's not an igloo this time," he muttered to himself, trying to give himself some comfort.

He climbed out of the coffin carefully, and just as his feet touched the ground, he heard a "click" sound -

“…”

Blore looked down and saw that he had crushed an eyeball.

Not metaphorically, but literally. Shriveled and turbid, as if dried out for centuries, yet a suspicious bit of slime still spurted out the moment it was stepped on.

"...I'm sorry?" he said to the air, as if explaining to some invisible landlord that he had damaged the floor.

There was a slight wriggling sound in the mist, like the rubbing of countless tiny tentacles. Blore froze and slowly looked up -

Deep in the mist, a few vague figures emerged. Their outlines were roughly human, but their proportions were distorted. Some had absurdly long necks, and some had arms as numerous as sea anemones. They "stood" there quietly, not approaching, but Blore could feel them—they were "looking" at him.

"Um, good morning?"

He waved his hand tentatively. He didn't know why he did that. Could it be that he was really abnormal?

"Or good evening? Are the times still normal here?"

The shadows didn't respond, but slowly, synchronously... tilted their heads.

Blore sighed.

"Okay, I get it. It's that 'indescribable' silent social interaction again."

He patted the coffin lid. "So, can someone tell me where this is? Or at least tell me if I'm dead?

If so, what is the password for Hell's communicator? I want to contact someone else..."

A new eyeball rolled out of the mist and stopped at his feet, its pupil facing upwards, staring straight at him.

Blore stared at it for two seconds, then—

"Forget it, I'll find my own way."

He stepped forward, the mist parting in front of him and closing behind him. Coffins, eyeballs, twisted shadows, all were swallowed up in the pale chaos.

Blore muttered as he walked, "If this is really the afterlife, then the designer must be a madman with terrible aesthetics."

In the distance, deep in the fog, came a low, inhuman... chuckle?

Blore stopped and frowned.

"...Was that a mockery just now?"

No one answered. Only the mist, rolling eternally and silently.

"How did I get here..." Blore continued to mutter to himself, his voice becoming fragmented in the thick white fog as if it had been chewed by some existence.

He blinked and found that his mind was unusually clear - so clear that it was a little scary, as if someone had pried open the top of his head with an ice pick and poured a whole bottle of mint-flavored liquid nitrogen into it.

The white mist around is not just water vapor, but a living community composed of countless tiny luminous bodies.

The fluorescent lights sometimes gather into blooming "flowers" and sometimes disperse into floating light spots. Each change in shape is accompanied by a crisp sound similar to the collision of glass wind chimes.

Blore reached out and touched it as if possessed by a ghost. A light spot immediately exploded at his fingertips, and the scattered light formed a string of Hebrew letters in mid-air, which disappeared in a flash.

"Don't touch the menu. It's not time for the owner to take orders yet."

A voice with multiple echoes came from the fog.

Blore turned around suddenly, but saw only the obsidian coffin in which he had been lying.

The reliefs on the surface of the coffin were slowly wriggling—the snake-like patterns that were supposed to be decorative patterns were now staring at him with ruby-encrusted eyes, and the forked stone tongues were hissing and scraping against the surface of the coffin.

He swallowed, and the sound of his Adam's apple rolling was particularly loud in the silence.

Then the inhuman voice began again, this time with a teeth-grinding rhythm, like someone tapping out a jazz beat on a blackboard with fingernails.

Blore hesitated for three and a third seconds (this exact number somehow occurred to him) and finally stepped out of the coffin.

The moment his bare feet touched the ground, the originally calm black mist suddenly shrank like a frightened jellyfish, and then exploded.

The mist droplets fell on the ground, and immediately strange flowers grew out of them. These flowers had velvety dark purple petals, each with golden pores that could breathe independently, and the stamens were a cluster of tiny tentacles that continuously secreted pearly mucus.

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