Nan Song felt that his consciousness was being withdrawn from his body bit by bit.
At some point, she stood on the sidewalk, her fingers unconsciously stroking the rough wall, trying to grasp some sense of reality, but the touch of bricks and stones was as blurry as through a layer of frosted glass.
But she shouldn't be here...
She's still looking for her companions...
No! Why are they here?
It seems, it seems... Yes! There is a mission! There is a mission, so where is she now?
The dusk light was distorted by some indescribable force, taking on a sickly orange-red color.
The neon sign across the street flickered, its flashing frequency completely out of sync with Nansong's disordered heartbeat.
She looked up at the sky, where sparse starlight should have begun to appear, but all she saw was a chaotic grayish-white color, like muddied ink.
She was unusually annoyed and scratched her hair hard.
This place seems very dry, and even without the sun it is still crazy dry.
After thinking hard, she decided to move forward.
Before her, a scene unfolded that she had never seen before.
The city before me was like a rusty dagger, stuck at the junction of dusk and dawn.
The outlines are sharp enough to cut through the sky, and the towering spires of the buildings are like the fangs of some giant beast, piercing the lead-gray clouds.
The glass curtain wall had long lost its original luster, and now only countless cracks remained, like the finger marks left by the invisible hand of time.
She walked alone in the city.
The buildings on both sides of the street present a morbid beauty - the concrete surface is covered with dark red rust, like dried blood; the decorative metal components are twisted and deformed, but unexpectedly form a kind of highly tense modern art shape.
There are always wisps of blue smoke floating on the tops of the sharp towers at the highest point. I don’t know whether it is the exhaust gas from the still-operating industries or the spontaneous sighs of this steel jungle.
The strangest thing is the flames.
They are not the usual orange-red color, but a pale blue with a metallic texture, dancing strangely between the gaps in buildings, under the chassis of abandoned vehicles, and even in the cracks in the sidewalks.
These flames seemed to follow some unknown laws of physics, sometimes flowing like liquid, sometimes solidifying like solid, and occasionally climbing upward against gravity, leaving scorched marks in the air.
Surprised, Nansong discovered that time seemed to be still flowing and the sky was changing.
As dusk falls, the entire city is shrouded in a sickly halo.
Most of the neon tubes have been broken, and the few remaining light sources cast distorted shadows, cutting the streets into fragmented geometric shapes.
The blue flames seemed even more active at this moment. They gathered at the sharp corners of the building, like some mysterious ritual candles, or like countless pairs of eyes peeping at the world.
Moreover, she felt the rain.
The rain was not heavy, just very light, but it was precious in this place full of sulfur and fire.
When the rain falls, it does not extinguish these flames, but makes them burn even more vigorously.
The water droplets evaporated the moment they touched the surface of the flame, making a slight hissing sound, as if the city was whispering its pain.
The outlines of the buildings became blurred in the rain, but the sharp edges became more prominent, as if to pierce through the rain curtain and break the dimension that trapped them.
Nansong felt a little confused. Why would there be rain in a place like this?
Occasionally, the wind would blow, bringing with it the roar of distant machinery and an inexplicable smell of decay—not simple decay, but a more complex kind of decadence, like the inevitable decline after extreme prosperity, or a deliberately maintained aesthetic of decay.
When the wind blows through the narrow gaps between the buildings, it makes a sharp whistle, like the death wail of this steel behemoth.
She was a little confused. She had come to this place for no apparent reason, so why did she feel Bai Di's presence in this rain?
Her spiritual image was clearly related to water, so why did the aura of Bai Di appear inexplicably?
She couldn't figure it out, so she just kept walking.
Tireless and unaware of fatigue.
In the ruins of prosperity, time seems to have lost its meaning.
Here, past and future meet to form a kind of eternal present—both an end and a beginning; both death and rebirth.
Those flowing flames may be the symbol of life of this city, existing eternally in a posture of destruction.
"What day is this?"
Nan Song muttered to himself, his voice rolling dryly in his throat.
She tried to recall the last time she was awake, but found that her memories were like torn pieces of paper, and no matter how she pieced them together, she could not form a complete picture.
Time seems to have lost its meaning here. The second hand, minute hand and hour hand on the tallest building are all twisted and tangled together, turning into a mess.
A strong heat wave swept across the street, and Nan Song subconsciously raised his head to protect his face.
There was a smell of decay in the wind, as if it had come from long, long ago.
The buildings on both sides of the street began to weather and peel off at a speed visible to the naked eye, with the wall paint falling off piece by piece, revealing the rusty steel bars inside.
The sound of breaking glass came from afar, one after another, like the death knell of doomsday.
"Is the world here finally coming to an end?" This thought flashed through Nan Song's mind, but it did not cause her the panic she should have felt.
Instead, she felt a strange calm, as if all this was destined.
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