Thirteenth month of death

Chapter 268 The Lonely Traveler

Wudao is gone.

Li Daosheng stood before the vortex, his fingertips touching the cold void. Wudao's figure had vanished in the light, leaving only those words echoing in his ears. He suddenly realized that he had never had a world to which he belonged—he was a vessel created by Wudao using the characteristics of the Twelve Realms, an anomaly walking in the cracks.

The sky cracked open.

Li Daosheng looked up at the wound that stretched across the sky, like an old parchment torn open by invisible claws.

He felt his body involuntarily flying upwards.

"Li Daosheng!"

Su Moshi reached out to grab him, but grasped only air.

Every world collapsed under His influence, and everyone returned to their own world, except... Li Daosheng.

He has no world of his own.

Li Daosheng stared blankly at his body; a hideous wound had split open in his abdomen.

A thick, dark substance seeped from the scarlet wound, slowly consuming his body.

Su Moshi couldn't catch him because their laws were different.

Li Daosheng's shattered figure vanished completely into the void.

……

Where is this?
Li Daosheng became aware of his own consciousness.

The ground beneath our feet is groaning.

In the distance, a mountain peak collapsed without warning, like rotting flesh with its skeleton removed.

There was no roar, no tremor, only a silent collapse, as if the entire world was being devoured bit by bit by some higher-dimensional being.

Li Daosheng raised his hand and looked at his palm.

No physical entity?

And me?

He tried to clench his fist, but he couldn't feel his own presence.

But my consciousness still exists.

"what!!!"

A piercing scream interrupted his thoughts.

Li Daosheng turned his head and looked around; the village not far away had already fallen into chaos.

People fled in all directions like headless flies, not knowing where to go.

A woman holding a baby knelt in the middle of the road; her lower body had become transparent, like an erased charcoal drawing.

"Save my child!" The woman seemed to see Li Daosheng, reached out her hand to him, her eyes filled with desperate pleading.

Li Daosheng took a step forward, but suddenly stopped.

He saw the baby's face melting, dripping like candle wax.

The woman's screams abruptly ceased; her existence was being erased inch by inch, from her feet to her head, and finally, from her eyes filled with despair.

The whole world fell silent at that moment.

The wind stopped, the birdsong disappeared, and even the rustling of grass and trees ceased to exist.

The village was like being encased in a giant glass dome, where all sound was blocked out.

Then, the glass dome shattered.

A silent explosion swept through the entire village.

Houses, trees, livestock, and humans—everything was reduced to dust in an instant, yet strangely retained its original shape.

Li Daosheng watched as a peach tree crumbled before his eyes, its petals frozen in mid-air, like specimens nailed to an invisible canvas.

A wave of dizziness washed over me.

The world twisted and spun before his eyes, like a turbulent body of water.

When visibility improved again, a biting cold wind swept over us.

He stood on an icy plain, with snow-capped mountains stretching into the distance.

another world?
Or... somewhere else in the same world?

But the way it crashed here was completely different.

The sky didn't crack open; rather, it peeled away like old plaster, revealing the pitch-black void behind it.

Every piece of sky that is "peeled off" takes away a corresponding piece of land on the ground.

Humans were running desperately, only to watch in despair as the ground ahead suddenly vanished, replaced by an unfathomable darkness.

The land began to collapse on a large scale, like a biscuit being eaten by a giant beast.

Li Daosheng stared blankly at all of this. He was a man without a foothold. Every time the world collapsed, he was like a bystander. A strange numbness gripped him, making him want to just stand there and wait for the collapse to spread to his feet.

"How long are you going to watch?"

A voice sounded behind him. Li Daosheng turned around abruptly, but only saw a snowflake floating in the air.

The voice was familiar; it sounded like Wudao, yet also like his own.

"Who?" he said to the air. "Where are you?"

There was no answer, as if I had just hallucinated.

Li Daosheng clenched his fist, his nails digging deep into his palm.

The pain sobered him up a little.

Suddenly, the dizziness returned.

The world is twisted once again.

The sky here is a sickly purplish-red, like bruised skin.

The land is weathering at a visible rate, not being blown away by the wind, but disintegrating from the inside, like wood hollowed out by termites.

A group of herdsmen in long robes were weeping around a dry well.

The well dried up, along with their hopes.

An old man looked up and saw Li Daosheng, a glint of light flashing in his cloudy eyes.

"Messenger!" the old man cried out in a hoarse voice, "Have you been sent by Heaven to save us?"

Li Daosheng stood there, feeling a sense of absurdity.

save?

He doesn't even know who he is.

Is he Li Daosheng?

Or is it a continuation of the wicked?
Or is it just a pawn in the hands of some higher being?

“I am nothing,” he answered softly, unsure if the old man could hear him.

The old man walked unsteadily toward him, his withered hand reaching for the hem of his clothes.

Just as it was about to touch, the old man's body suddenly froze, then collapsed like a sand sculpture, turning into a pile of grayish-white powder that was blown away by the wind.

Li Daosheng took a step back, feeling a wave of nausea.

This is not death, but complete erasure, as if these people had never existed.

The meadows began to turn into desert on a large scale, not just sand, but nothing at all.

"How long are you going to watch?"

There it is again!

That voice.

Li Daosheng turned around abruptly, but all he saw was emptiness.

"Who! Who are you?"

No one answered, only... the world is changing.

Li Daosheng was already familiar with this dizzying feeling... In this time of decline for all worlds, he, without his own world, was indeed just an anomaly walking in the cracks.

Blood rain falls from the sky here, and every drop that hits the ground corrodes a small pit that emits white smoke.

People huddled in the ruins of buildings, using any containers they could find to catch the rainwater.

Because normal rainwater and blood rain were mixed together, and normal rainwater was their only source of water.

Li Daosheng stood on the ruins of the street, looking at the devastation around him. Rain streamed through his body, perhaps because he no longer had a body at that moment.

A thin, bony little girl is catching rainwater in a broken bowl; her arms are covered in festering wounds.

When she looked up and saw Li Daosheng, she actually smiled.

"Big brother," her voice was incredibly clear, "would you like a drink?"

Li Daosheng felt his heart being gripped tightly by an invisible hand.

He shook his head and went to the girl.

"Can you see me?" Li Daosheng asked.

The girl looked at her with a puzzled expression, seemingly not understanding the meaning of her words.

However, the next moment, the small figure was suddenly riddled with bloody holes, the blood rain blurring the image, and the flesh was mangled beyond recognition.

Her body rotted into mud and then disappeared completely.

really……

Only the dying can see me.

Li Daosheng looked up, his eyes already devoid of life.

What does this world want from me?

(End of this chapter)