The world was a blinding, absolute white. No up, no down, no sound, no texture, no sensation of air or gravity. It was a space beyond dimension, a realm between life and death, where time itself had ceased its relentless march. For Li Chen, this stark emptiness was a familiar, if expanded, void, but for Yueling, it was a sudden, terrifying expanse after the chaos of the battlefield. The iridescent light that had erupted from her on the plain below had consumed everything, yet here, it was merely the ambient glow of their shared purgatory.
Li Chen floated before her, no longer impaled, no longer bleeding, yet his form was a shimmering, translucent outline, flickering between the obsidian of his Dark Guardian avatar and the golden light of his original celestial self. The Soul-Erasing Blade
