416: Chapter 416 Hey, you're finally awake?

Zhou Yan woke up in a state of complete weightlessness.

Or rather, he hadn't "woken up" at all; his consciousness had merely floated up a sliver from the boundless Chaos.

His body seemed to have vanished, all sensation in his limbs and bones gone; even his Soul felt as if it had been crushed and spread out, thinning and powerlessly seeping into this nothingness.

He tried to gather his Divine Sense, only to find that as soon as the thought arose, it dissolved into a deeper darkness, failing to stir even a single ripple.

There was no up, no down, no time, no space.

Only a humming sound coming from the depths of his Sea of Consciousness, dull and long, like the tolling of an ancient primordial bell echoing from a great distance.

Then, light came.

It wasn't a shining through, but a "descent."

He "saw" himself, if that could still be called "seeing."

At this moment, Zhou Yan seemed to be traveling through an infinite tunnel, a river of light surging past.

That wasn't some simple colored radiance; it was more like the Law itself flowing.

Every kind of light seemed to carry some unspeakable power, boiling at the edges yet remaining incredibly stable.

He traveled through the cracks of this river of light, like a speck of dust, or like a broken egg being swept forward.

He couldn't see himself clearly or sense himself, but he knew he was "moving."

He was being pulled by some ineffable force, "moving" through this strange place.

Just then, he "saw" Them.

Not in the river of light, but on its other shore.

In the gaps where the Laws intertwined, in the shadows of the folds.

There were countless pairs of eyes.

Those eyes were so massive they were beyond measure; some were like dried-up Star Domains, hollow and deep, where a single glance felt like having all one's thoughts sucked away.

Others were as tiny as mustard seeds yet shone with a cold, piercing light, like indifferent gods looking down upon ants.

They were watching him.

It wasn't an ordinary "look"; it was scrutiny, it was covetousness, gazes cast from across countless worlds.

Beneath some of those "eyes," "hands" reached out.

Those hands were woven from light and shadow; some were as vast as clouds hanging from the sky, blotting out the sun.

Others were as thin as strands of hair yet pierced through the barriers of countless rivers of light.

They stretched out desperately, their fingertips almost touching his dissipating consciousness, carrying an unnamable greed.

It was as if he were some rare prize fish, worthy of these existences casting a line regardless of the cost.

He wanted to move, to gather even a trace of magical power.

But his Soul was scattered and his thoughts were empty; he could do nothing.

Before fear could even arise, another force arrived.

It had no form, no color, not even an origin.

It simply "was."

At the moment those countless eyes bared their fangs, it surged from all directions, from the depths of every river of light.

It pushed forward silently, gently brushing aside those reaching giant hands like wiping away dust.

Those eyes trembled violently; some struggled unwillingly, some closed rapidly, and some blurred, retreated, and dissipated under the washing of the river of light, as if they had never existed.

The whole process was as fast as an instant, yet as slow as eternity.

He only had time to catch a glimpse of the final looks in those eyes—some were angry, some were fearful, and some, strangely, held a hint of bizarre curiosity.

Then, everything came to an abrupt halt.

Opening his eyes again, Zhou Yan found himself on a horse carriage. This carriage was of poor quality, consisting of just a wooden board and a railing.

The person in front was driving the carriage, and there were many more carriages ahead of them. They were traveling along a small path through a forest, heading to an unknown destination.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, where the hell did I end up?"

"Is this still the Eastern Extreme?"

A bearded man sitting to the front-left of Zhou Yan had been looking at the scenery, but hearing the muttering beside him, he turned around and said with some surprise.

"Hey, you're finally awake."

"But I'm sorry to say, it seems your nightmare has only just begun."

These words were quite something, instantly jolting Zhou Yan's groggy mind awake.

This is such a ridiculous sense of déjà vu; have I transmigrated again?

It was only then that Zhou Yan realized his hands and feet were shackled with iron chains, and there were even some on his body.

"Where is this? What exactly happened?"

Zhou Yan still felt a bit dazed, as if he had just had a very long dream.

The bearded man then went back to looking at the surrounding scenery, saying as he watched.

"Who knows where this is? We're probably almost at Xihe County."

"As for the situation, all I can say is that this is the beginning of a nightmare, though I'm already used to it."

"You guy, why are you so calm? It's already come to this, and you're still in the mood to talk to this person!"

Zhou Yan looked at a scrawny young man to his front-left; compared to the bearded man, he looked much worse.

It seemed he had been beaten quite a bit, his body was somewhat dirty, and he was currently quite emotional.

The bearded man once again stopped looking at the scenery and turned toward the man.

"Alright, young man, stop complaining."

"This isn't the first time I've been sold. Being a slave at my age, there's nothing strange about it anymore."

"Your impulsiveness won't change anything; it'll only bring more injuries to your body. You might as well relax and wait for a miracle to happen, or die crushed by the darkness before a miracle arrives."

The bearded man seemed indifferent, not showing any panic at being locked in shackles; on the contrary, he was unusually experienced.

He even struck the most comfortable pose one could manage while shackled.

"You really are a hopeless fellow."

The scrawny young man lowered his head again and said nothing more.

Seeing this, the bearded man stopped talking to him and began to converse with Zhou Yan instead.

"Speaking of which, you're quite unlucky. Although your face is covered in mud and I can't see clearly, judging by your build and robes, you should be quite a respectable person. How did you end up unconscious in the forest?"

Zhou Yan's state was gradually recovering, and he also noticed that these people's accents were very strange.

They had a sort of medieval and ancient feel to them.

"I passed out because of some matters and woke up here. What exactly is going on?"

"Didn't I say? This is the beginning of a nightmare. This convoy will take us to the nearest Xihe County and auction us off."

"To put it simply, you were unlucky enough to be picked up by a group of slave traders."

"If it weren't for the fact that your clothes look decent, your frame seems sturdy, and you don't look sick, your treatment might have been even worse."

"They probably think you're a wealthy Young Master from a nearby county and plan to take you there to see if anyone recognizes you."

"It's best if there's someone in that county who knows you; otherwise, your fate will likely be the same as ours—stripped clean, tidied up, and then sold together."

"Of course, you can also wait for a miracle to happen there."

After saying that, he looked back at the surrounding forest, wondering which trees were so interesting to look at.

However, Zhou Yan also seemed to realize something.

He first quickly opened his panel, only for it to show that because of a long period of inactivity, the System had begun an automatic update.

The countdown was actually 120 hours, and it had already counted down to 108 hours, meaning there were still more than four days left for the update to finish.

At the same time, an even more tragic problem occurred.

This appeared to be a major update that required a server shutdown, so many things were unavailable.

What exactly happened?

I should have been suddenly slapped by that bastard Ma Hao after he jumped over, and I seemed to see an adult version of Feng Xu.

So what's my situation now?

Zhou Yan checked his current state; there were no traces of Not Falling into the Yellow Springs having been used, and his body didn't have that faint aura of the Law of Creation.

That meant either it hadn't been used, or it had been used a long time ago and the aura had already dissipated.

And he was certain he was still alive, so this couldn't be the underworld.

Could it be that the effect of the Old Ancestors' protection, which grants immunity to one Major Achievement attack, was triggered?

And it also sent me to some strange place?

Looking at the current situation, this seemed to be the most likely possibility.

However, the mini-map was also unavailable, so he didn't know where he was.

Judging solely by the concentration of Spiritual Qi nearby, this was likely a very remote place.

Given their strange accents, it might even be within a Small World.

The main issue was that Zhou Yan really couldn't distinguish what they were saying; he was only able to understand and respond with the same pronunciation because his language skill points were high.

So, to Zhou Yan's ears, their words sounded like a dubbed movie or a caricatured accent, making it impossible to tell where they were from.

But he could first rule out them being from the Eastern Domain.

Zhou Yan looked at the long convoy of horse carriages ahead.

At the very front was a sedan chair, and inside sat a middle-aged fat man who had no cultivation and emitted strong feelings of greed, lust, and laziness.

Translated, that meant...

He felt suppressed, wanted to rest quickly, and then go out and have fun.

However, the several burly men near the sedan chair were different.

Most of them were Mortals with more robust blood and Qi—in other words, Martial Artists, whom Zhou Yan hadn't seen in a long time.

Traveling so far off the beaten path without even a single Cultivator leading the team suggested it was very remote, at least on the same level as Zhou Yan's hometown.

Zhou Yan didn't resist immediately.

He needed to figure out where this place was, and for that, he needed to rely on them to get to the nearby county town.

So, he would just treat it as catching a hitchhike.

At the same time, this would give Zhou Yan more time to sort out the situation.