It was similar to looking at the world through the opening of a glass bottle. At some point, the edges of his vision had become warped and twisted which Hao Xuan only noticed when he stepped on a piece of broken glass by accident.
It was so faint that if one wasn't paying attention, it would be easy to overlook.
The colors were washed out and even the dark purple streak he was following now looked like a shade of black.
After a few minutes of walking, Hao Xuan stopped in front of a staircase going down. His frown deepened staring at the light at the bottom of the staircase.
'Why does it look different?'
The construction material used for the staircase was different than the rest of the building. In fact it was different than any of the structures Hao Xuan had come across so far. It was made of bright red clay bricks while the rest of the structure was a mixture of various compounds like plastic and metal.
It looked distinctly out of place as if someone had placed it here much more recently. And even though it was going down, there was no water there which didn't make sense because all lower floors were flooded.
Yet the streak did not stop here.
'What should I do? Baracus?' Hao Xuan called out and waited but there was no response. Instead, a one-word automated message popped up a few seconds later.
'Busy.'
Hao Xuan almost cursed out loud. He looked back and could still clearly see where he had come from. There was no sign of anybody or anything else there, at least nothing he could see.
'I know, I know it's a bad idea but I still have to try. I can't go back empty-handed, they barely trust me as is, losing one of their men while he was supposed to be following me, even I wouldn't trust me,' he argued with himself.
The relationship between Hao Xuan and the barbarians was quite a strange one. He was forced to come here and he did end up saving all their lives in the lightning world but ever since then, he had led them deeper and in worse spots one after another.
It didn't matter if he didn't mean to, only how they saw it. Hao Xuan had caught the wary glances they had thrown his way whenever they thought he wasn't looking. The whispers about how weird his abilities were and how he was hiding things from them, he had heard all of them even without meaning to.
They were all trapped here and needed to work together which would be that much harder if something like this happened. Burak could only hold them back so much.
Hao Xuan didn't want to get stabbed in the back in the middle of a fight.
He took in a few quick breaths to calm his thoughts and stepped forward.
At that exact moment, the right-most door within Hao Xuan's mind palace suddenly shook and opened just a little.
**
Step by step, as slowly and as carefully as he could be, Hao Xuan moved down the staircase and safely reached the bottom. The temperature down here was so low that every time he breathed a cloud of smoke would come out of his nostrils.
*Squelch*
Unknowingly he had stepped on something soft and wet. Hao Xuan raised his foot to check what it was but jumped back in shock upon seeing it.
'The fuck!'
It was a tongue. A full human tongue freshly ripped out of the body, still letting out blood.
'Mothefucker!'
He lifted the glaive in front of him and looked around him prudently for any other clues.
He was standing on a hard surface which was surrounded by a thick mist on all sides. There were no walls anywhere in sight, nor a living soul. The black-ish color of the streak was diffused all over the surrounding mist and Hao Xuan couldn't tell where it was leading to anymore.
There were a few white marks on the floor along with some blood.
Keeping a watchful eye on his surroundings, Hao Xuan backed up towards the stairs but instead of stepping up, there was a drop behind him. He turned his head to see the staircase, it was still there but…it was now leading down into the ground, not up as it should.
'Huh?!'
A sudden jolt and tremor went through Hao Xuan's brain. He felt like someone had grabbed him by the shoulders and shaken him back forth with such force that he couldn't even stand anymore.
'Wha…'
He fell to his knees, his mind reeling from shock.
"What is…going on…" he muttered out loud.
His recent memories distorted and rearranged themselves to make sense of things, playing back a different set of events. He saw himself going down the stairs but at some point during that and god knows how, he started walking up instead.
The direction completely changed and he had come out of these same stairs.
"Is this…real…?" he asked himself in a low voice.
"Everything is real if you believe hard enough," answered a voice from beside him.
