From the end of the world

Chapter 19: The Beginning of Doomsday 4
I raised my right hand with my palm facing upwards, and when I activated my superpowers, a large amount of flames emerged from the palm of my hand out of thin air.

The flames gathered in the center, forming a large fireball with a diameter of nearly half a meter.

Superpowers are a concept that can be found in many fantasy stories. Some can stop time, some can control consciousness, and some can transform the body. Some superpowers have complex mechanism settings, and it takes hundreds or thousands of words just to explain them clearly, leaving the audience dizzy.

Unlike those superpowers that are either powerful or complex, mine is extremely simple.

In a nutshell, it means "manipulating fire."

You can summon fire out of thin air and manipulate it, or manipulate the fire that is already in your field of vision. It is so simple that in any fantasy story with superpowers as the theme, there will most likely be an early character who can manipulate fire. And those virtual characters can do, I would not say all of it, but at least 80% or 90% of it.

The "fireflies" I summoned earlier are essentially small flames. There is a reason why they can be used as reconnaissance tools.

Normal flames need three elements of combustion, namely fuel, combustion aid, and heat. But my flames are all produced out of thin air, without the need for those material conditions. In other words, all the material conditions are actually replaced by my spirit.

My spirit is fuel, accelerant, and heat.

In other words, my flame is my spirit. The "fireflies" scattered outside are "myself" scattered outside, and they can naturally perceive the surroundings on my behalf.

At the same time, of course, since it is fire, it must have powerful material destructive power.

I slowly lifted up the blazing fireball, and it collapsed toward the center, turning into an eyeball-sized ball of blazing light. I pointed forward, and the ball of light hit the solid concrete wall in front of me.

There was no obstruction, no explosion. The high-density light ball penetrated the concrete wall effortlessly like a spoon piercing tofu pudding, and came to the space outside the basement.

Using my spiritual connection to the flames, I was able to gain a perspective outside the basement.

Then, I couldn't help but hold my breath.

Nothing—

There is nothing outside the basement.

There is no earth, no sky; no color, no sound...only endless darkness.

From an external perspective, the basement I was in was just a small concrete box suspended in the vast void, and there was nothing else. Even if I manipulated the light ball to the bottom, I couldn't find any material supporting this "concrete box". Not to mention other objects, even the most basic air and gravity did not exist.

It’s like outer space, but at least there are countless stars, cosmic radiation that is harmful to the human body, and extremely thin cosmic dust. In a sense, it is quite "lively".

But it's different here, it's completely silent, it's a place of nothingness.

It seems as if all matter has reached its end, and this is a space-time that has ended.

Lonely, terrifying, suffocating.

This endless void seemed to have turned into an endless suffocation and poured into my respiratory tract. This basement was simply a tiny speck of dust in the vast afterlife, and I was the only passenger on the dust. I could turn into meaningless bubbles at any time and dissolve without a trace in the void.

After being stunned for a long time, I dispersed the external light ball and perspective, sat on the ground and tried to reorganize my thoughts.

The direction of "returning to the real world from outside the disk" is definitely not feasible.

Fortunately, even though the outside was empty, the air in the basement did not leak out through the hole I opened. Although as long as I enter the "second form", I can move normally in a vacuum environment, and it is not difficult to block such a small hole.

If we think about it in a happy way, we can also analyze another truth from this phenomenon. That is, in this place, some physical laws are not effective. This discovery can also be regarded as a kind of "exploration harvest".

So what should we do next? Should we re-examine the conditions for the formation of caves?
If there is still a connection between me and the "fireflies" in the real world, I can try other methods, but now the connection has been disconnected.

It's self-deprecating to say this, but when Chang'an came to my house this morning, I was still thinking that if Chang'an really encountered a strange incident, I would have the opportunity to use my superpowers to show off my skills, and in the process, I would be like a cartoon character, showing my strength and explaining my "ability settings"... As expected, most things in life are not as we wish, and my superpowers are useless in such situations.

Someone once said, "All fear comes from insufficient firepower." But even with more powerful firepower, there is probably nothing we can do about the current situation.

Perhaps this is the desperate situation I will inevitably encounter, a fate that will come sooner or later.

My superpowers are powerful and simple, and anyone can understand them. However, strange things are treacherous and changeable, and no one knows how they will kill people. Even if I have a spear that can destroy everything and a shield that can defend everything, there are still many things I can't do.

I stood up on my knees and paced around, looking for other useful clues on the shelves. In fact, the yellow cardboard boxes on the shelves were not completely empty. Some of them were filled with small items, such as cartoon stickers, plastic key pendants, candles, etc., which did not seem to be helpful to the current situation. If it were before, I would have been excited to take it away as a souvenir of my visit, but now I don't have that idea.

In order to concentrate my brain, I stopped using the "fireflies" that provided light from all directions and instead lit a candle I picked up from the shelf and placed it on the ground. The basement returned to darkness, and a little light in the darkness helped me concentrate and reminded me of some things in the past.

Speaking of which, when I was in the third year of junior high school and had just awakened my superpowers, the opportunity was also related to candles...

People who have experienced near-death experiences often say that when a person is about to die, they can't help but recall the past.

I am suddenly recalling the past. Could it be because I know that I am going to die here?

Time still passed by minute by minute, and I didn't know how much time had passed.

I was still making no progress in my analysis of the dilemma.

Since I'm not very hungry yet, it means there's still a long time before dawn.

However, this is a time and space outside the real world, and perhaps the flow of time also follows alien rules. The outside world may have already passed more than one day, just like the "watching chess and losing the chess" in the classical strange stories, I was abandoned by the world in this place outside the universe.

Marxism says that man is the sum of social relations. At this moment, I have been cut off from all ties with society, and I don't even know if I can return. If I die like this, it would be more like dying as an unknown animal than dying as a human being.

Perhaps influenced by the strange environment, I even had weirder thoughts - could it be that I have been a resident of this basement from the beginning and have never lived in the real world, and my life so far has been just an illusion?

I touched my pocket and found the key to my home, but this could not prove that I had ever lived in the house outside, nor could it even prove that the "real world" in my memory really existed. A key is a concept that is paired with a lock, and there is no lock here, so there is no way to prove that this piece of metal is a key.

The same goes for ID cards and small change. These things only have meaning in society. Once they are separated from society, they are just materials with special shapes - just like me now.

All the meanings built on the concept of "society" vanished here. Whether it was these materials, my personality, or even the clothes I was wearing, they all seemed to be dissolved by this dim space, revealing the most primitive and natural naked body.

I felt a little tipsy in the strange tremor. In this area isolated from everything, I seemed to be gradually transforming into some kind of heterogeneous existence that I had never imagined.

Those who live alone are either wild beasts or gods.

What’s incredible is that although I am now full of fear, anxiety, and pessimism, I don’t feel regret or panic.

Because I walked in with determination and awareness.

I have mentioned before that part of the reason why I have been looking for adventures beyond reality is that I really want to know what I will look like when the time comes. I think this can be classified as a "desire for truth". And now, facing difficulties, facing despair, facing the imminent death of a person alone... I seem to have finally found a more real me.

In my daily life, I might be proud of myself, feel excited and happy, but I don’t have such passionate emotions now.

It’s not that I’ve been controlled by negative emotions. On the contrary, I feel more relieved than ever before about myself now.

What a relief! No matter how many negative emotions arise in my heart, they cannot affect this pure state of mind.

But I wouldn’t say something like “If I hear the truth in the morning, I can die in the evening.”

I am very greedy, and this level of reward cannot satisfy my appetite.

I want to use my own strength to "pass" this predicament and prove that I am not an early character who will die easily in an adventure story that transcends reality.

After that, I want to go back to my home and meet Ma Zao again, and sooner or later I want her to tell me all her secrets; I also want to explore the secrets of Luo Shan and the demon hunters, and find out how the supernatural forces in this world distribute their power. There are many more things I want to explore, and they are really countless.

——So, the question is, can I really do it?
Just as negative emotions cannot infect my clear-headed state of mind, no matter how relieved my mood is, it is impossible to deny the objectively existing desperate situation.

It is because I am calm that I understand clearly.

Perhaps, this is the end of my adventure.

My adventure was over just as it had begun.

(End of this chapter)