"Next, I wish you all good luck," Hoggus said in the end.
An orange-yellow light mass surged forward, engulfing everyone.
*Bang!*
A blinding flash of orange light swept past, followed by utter darkness.
Chen Chen floated in an unknown, pitch-black void. The surroundings were entirely black—or rather, no colors other than black could be found. He couldn't detect anyone or anything else, making him feel as though he had been banished to nothingness.
He propelled his body forward in one direction. *Hours? Days? Months? Years? Centuries?*
Subjectively, Chen Chen felt he had been flying for an eternity, yet he still couldn't touch the edge of this black void—in fact, he hadn't even discovered any boundaries at all.
There was no sound, no light, no time, no space. Apart from Chen Chen himself, nothing else existed.
"Is this what Hoggus called the 'projection of everyone's inner mind'?" A rare pallor spread across Chen Chen's handsome face. Here, his sense of space and time had become distorted, rendering his two most powerful abilities—the power of the Space Stone and the Time Stone—seemingly meaningless.
This place transcended space and time, the deepest fear of his soul.
Even when pondering the simplest question, like "1 + 1 = ?", he felt as if he had spent centuries in contemplation.
"How can I possibly break through my Heartscape?" Chen Chen sat cross-legged in the darkness, lost in thought.
With his eyes closed in deep contemplation, free from the constraints of space and time, countless ideas flashed through his mind. Endless streams of knowledge continuously constructed models of "breaking through this current predicament," while the Divine Sense Energy within him solidified.
After a moment, Chen Chen's long, narrow eyes slowly opened. His body vanished in an instant, and a torrent of Divine Sense Energy surged into the darkness.
It was impossible to tell how much time had passed when Chen Chen's rapidly moving figure finally came to a halt. His eyes revealed a weariness and despair utterly unlike his usual calm composure.
"Are there truly no more methods left?"
Chen Chen had exhausted every immediate solution he could conceive, yet none had helped him escape this dark Heartscape.
This Heartscape world was completely shrouded in darkness, a darkness so pure and profound that it extinguished not only sight and hearing, but even touch itself.
Without a shred of light or sound, the entire world felt like primordial chaos before creation.
In this environment, under this darkness, Chen Chen felt as though even he himself had ceased to exist, everything dissolving into nothingness.
He slapped his cheeks hard, shook his head, and forced himself to think clearly. "I must remain calm. If I continue like this, I'll descend into madness."
In this sensationless, perception-less Heartscape, Chen Chen understood clearly that the more dire the circumstances, the more crucial it was to stay calm. Otherwise, he would be forever trapped in this darkness, an torment far worse than death.
"But... yes. To become a stronger being, one must endure more unbearable trials and tests."
"The strong always endure what ordinary people cannot. That's how they become strong."
A starlight glimmered in his eyes as Chen Chen seemed to make a decision. The Divine Sense Energy swirling within him began to recede into his body, and he abandoned the thoughts of breaking through this place in his mind.
He grew calm and began walking through the Darkness Worm, step by step, tirelessly and without weariness.
In the darkness, he had to endure the darkness and the loneliness...
In the world of Black Hoof, time stretched endlessly. A lone figure wandered aimlessly through the darkness, like an ascetic monk whose steps never faltered.
Time seemed to pass for an eternity—a year, two years... ten thousand years...
Chen Chen had lost all sense of time. In this vast, endless darkness, there was nothing but him, as if this were the loneliest place in the universe.
"No matter what, I must keep walking."
Unable to break through by brute force or cunning spells, he could only rely on his own soul to overcome this Heartscape.
He continued to advance, his expression numb.
Meanwhile, in the twilight sky of Vermir Star, a colossal tiger-head phantom floated—the God of Order, Hoggus.
Around him, five soul-forms were gathered: Chen Chen, Kazusa, the Voodoo Doctor, the mysterious sorcerer, and Genos.
Above each soul-form floated a mirror.
"Ah, these five Mirrors of the Mind are treasures I traded from that old bastard Tanliatiwan, the Collector," Hoggus's tiger head displayed a remarkably human-like expression of pain. The Mirrors of the Mind could reveal an individual's Heartscape. Hoggus had previously used the energy from Soul Gems drifting through the dimensions, combined with his own power, to extract Chen Chen and the others' deepest fears and Heartscapes. He then observed their conditions through the Mirrors of the Mind to prevent any mishaps.
"It's a shame each Mirror of the Mind only has one use. After it's used, it turns to ash."
He shook his massive tiger head. "If it weren't to select the most suitable Supreme Mage, giving you these Mirrors of the Mind would be a waste of such treasures."
His gaze shifted to Genos's mirror, which now reflected a colossal, indescribable monster covered in tentacles and compound eyes, currently "ravaging" Genos with its tentacles.
*Truly eye-searing.*
Hoggus immediately averted his gaze. *Does this Genos think he's some magical girl? Tentacles just don't suit you at all!*
In contrast, Kazusa's Heartscape wasn't nearly as graphic. It began with a scene of everyday school life, but then took a sudden, sharp turn. The image showed Keiko, a woman who had previously been friendly with Kazusa, being simultaneously brutalized by multiple men. Kazusa could only watch it all unfold from the perspective of an observer.
"Keiko! Keiko!" Kazusa screamed frantically, reaching out as if to touch the scene before her, as if to stop it from happening, but she was powerless. She could only silently watch as her best friend was once again brutalized to death by those thugs.
*So this is the shadow cast by her friend?* Hoggus's tiger-like eyes narrowed as he observed Kazusa's despairing expression. *Even for an ordinary human, this would be a tragic experience. But since she wasn't the victim herself, overcoming it shouldn't be too difficult.*
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