Chapter 1: The Absurd World Cycle

  It was all a colossal joke to me. I was trapped. World 1 was soothing, but it was absurd, more absurd than any dream you could have. The birds were flying backwards, their tiny forms defying every law of physics and migration. The sun was like a moon silver orb that gave warmth. It was certainly not fitting with reality.

  I stared at the sky, looking at the absurd face of this world. It was just the beginning. I'd have to keep moving, one bizarre reality to another horrible reality.

  My voice came in a low, muffled whisper barely audible. “What is happening and why only to me?” The world felt calm, a sort of nightmare. This was the holding cell. A nonsensical reality where I was trapped.

  I was Mo Fei, a nineteen-year-old who, until yesterday, believed only in the things I experienced. I'd never thought about supernatural things. My descent to anonymous worlds began not with a dream, but on a simple, normal Tuesday, a day that felt normal only to me. Today, the tension in the air was thick enough to choke on.

  It had been a "simple" afternoon. I was walking home from my university library, a usual work of a student worrying about studies. The surrounding air was still everyone was moving with caution. People walked on the street, their movement echoing in the air, deliberately trying to silence them.

  I hadn't felt the true dread until I passed the old antique shop on Qing Street. Likely any normal day, the windows were dusty, and the sight of worthless trinkets with a strange box was put near the edge of the counter.

  The box was carved in twelve holes interconnected with eleven black spots. The box was decorated with seven feathers glued to the wood, looking jagged and old. Without trying to oppose my will, the curiosity pulled me towards it.

  My hands curled around the handle of the door, and when I pushed the door open, a smell hit me. It wasn't just old dust; it smelled like the musty scent of the antique object from the dead past. The shopkeeper greeted me with a small, gentle nod, his face filled with the patience of a seller and his eyes solemn, the attitude of a shopkeeper flickering. His eyes held a sharp look, but underneath, there was a grim exhaustion.

  My lips curved to speak.

  “What is this strange box, I don't think it is useful.” The voice was the tone of a witty remark, a teenager who enjoys his life by annoying others. Though the answer I got was absurd and utterly unexpected.

  "This box defines the eleven worlds of calamity," his words were yes empty and distant, his voice was tired of a person who hadn't slept for a while. "The path of the An Jie. It is the map, and the consequence."

  But it felt really absurd, like a cheap idea of selling, and without thinking twice, I came out of the antique shop. "They really know how to sell things, huh? Hah," I made a light-hearted comment, and a muffled chuckle came from my throat. Though I knew it was humorless.

  When I came out on the Qing street, there was a thick tension; everyone was staring at something, almost as if something was going to devour them. A normal scenario, but from the surroundings, I could feel that it was profoundly wrong. The parents were holding their child like a lifeline. The buildings stand tall, completely still.

  At this moment, a change happened, the colour of the building shifted from a dull purple to a light blue, like a static his, it made my eyes squint, but the next second everything was normal. An imagination?” I thought. My stomach felt astringent. To be honest I didn't know what was going on. It had been only two months when I shifted here to an apartment, and society really said that for a reason: "Curiosity kills a cat."

  I wanted to know what was going on, out of curiosity, I asked one citizen, an old man with a pale face, who was clutching a shopping bag; his hands had wrinkles, the sound of crinkling plastic could softly be heard, and what he said was more absurd than the words of the shopkeeper.

  "Don't you know about the feather of calamity, Ji Yu? It chooses a person, and they die miserably, vanishing between worlds. They say they reach the An Jie...the one no one returns from."

  His words were chilling, but I dismissed them

  “A feather killing someone? Nowadays, jokes are really reaching the next peak.” This was my last thought before a man started frantically waving his face had sweat of pain, and there in his neck was a mark, an eye with two feathers embedded there. The next moment was not a moment but a sight of dissolving reality into a berserk black dream.

  The sky, my eyes were flabbergasted and locked in. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Feathers were falling without any birds flying in the sky. The most stunning thing was that these feathers were not simple-looking. Instead, they were black like a moonless night, etched with sharp edges, and the corner had a drop of crimson blood.

  The sky itself was like a page of a God. The feather fell slowly, the blood was the ink, they were writing names in Mandarin across the sky, acting as a page of a notebook. My steps went back without my will, a movement of instinct; it was not a prank or any joke. My body felt getting weightless from the tension, when I saw my name written in perfect black strokes

  -"Mo Fei"- my entire body went cold.

  "What is that thing? It can't be just a feather. What type of joke is that?" I was going to say something more till I felt something burning in my shoulder. My hand instinctively went to touch the area, and I held a thing. A feather the "Ji Yu" was clenched in my trembling hand.

  My shoulder started to burn, but there was no fire. My blood was boiling. Inside, I screamed, my throat let out a sharp shrill. The crowd noticed, their eyes watching a young man screaming with all his might. Their expressions were dread, terrified.

  "I feel pity for this kid. He was new here, and he was facing such a pitiful death."

  "My, why is this world so unfair?"

  "I feel sorry for him."

  "He is the second chosen one today. Such a sorrow."

  My blood was boiling, my eyes were teary, threatening to gouge out of the pain. Ji Yu had taken away my senses, while everyone else was having different reactions to me. Some felt pity, others felt relief that they had not been chosen. I was burning inside, and they couldn't do anything. I heard six more screams from the crowd, and now I could feel the relief of the others; it was palpable, almost annoying.

  My vision got blurry, and I felt every pain till my eyes closed. And then the last thing was the burning pain, and the faint memories of my family and my home

  And then, I had reached World 1. I don't know how I traveled, but the pain was gone. The world was strangely peaceful, the defying flight of the birds already a strange comfort. This world was soothing, yet it was just absurd.

  My body lightly stands up with a rhythm of soft air. My clothes were the same, but they felt weightless, as if made of shadow. As I stood, a smooth piece of fabric brushed my wrist. There was tied a simple, silk soft ribbon, it was made of mushy wool; the colour was silver, a symbol of peace.

  It was definitely not there before, I didn't mistake. The ribbon had eleven numbers perfectly embedded in mandarin calligraphy: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,11. The first character (1)-壹-was glowing with a soft, dimming silver moonlight. The others were dull, dark grey like a stormy cloud.

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  "What is this ribbon? Who tied it?" A chilling thought settled inside my bones. My mind was now repeating the same question over and over. "Who tied it?" But to question insanity was also a descent into madness itself. Question dilapidated, the silence was the only incontrovertible answer. And then thought of knowing this world more so that I can go back home. “Standing won't give me anything except collapse.”

  The fields gave way to a forest where the trees grew in geometric spirals. A stream flowed with water clear as glass, utterly quiet, an acknowledgement of the silence of this world. A fish made of swirling mist took a long jump out of the river; its flesh was visible. It landed in water with a splash like an urgency of prey running from a predator.

  My eyes were shifty now. This awkward fish made me feel anonymous. The entire world felt like a carefully curated diorama of peace, but the peace was not just the absence of fear, but was presence of a serene mind. I didn't have this at this moment; the surroundings were totally different.

  As the silver sun began to set, my eyelids got heavier. It was almost like a command of the world to rest, my eyes had the weight of a mountain pressing them to close up It was still now, when my whole body stumbled near a tree and could no longer hold the weight of my frame. It collapsed, fell like a leaf, a hesitation of question crossed my brain, what if I sleep and never wake up again?

  The weight of the question was heavier than my anatomy. My last conscious act was to hold my ribbon in my grasp, the smooth wool giving me comfort.

  "I want to go back home," a soft mutter left my lips one last time before my eyes closed, but deep within my heart, sleep was horrible. Because of unfamiliar surroundings, I felt a fear that anything could happen in this new place, as I was an anonymous man who was trying to find a way to go back home.

  The words of the man unconsciously repeating in my mind, "They say they reach the Absurd World... the one no one returns from". It was a heavy reminder of my fear, even when I was sleeping, my face was tensed, filled with a fear of the unknown, the greatest fear of mankind.

  Time moved in a flow, and the tides took a large step in carrying out the silent destiny. My fear was right. My weight sank to the grass. The silver sun was now a faint mimicry, my dreams chasing the reality to escape from another bizarre reality, my hand clutching the ribbon tightly, turning my knuckles white, a protective instinct.

  I was waiting for the night. But it didn't come everything was loudly quiet, and I was unaware of my surroundings. Everything was peaceful until the world shattered, its entire existence let out a unified screech. My eyes flew open from the sound my hand pressed in my ear to stop the sound; it was a painful feeling like a hammer bumping inside my mind. And at that moment, the sky was cracking.

  The blue sight of an endless space was now a web of spiders. I was an insect, a moth, who was getting pulled into the webs. The sly colour was fading like ink had been poured out to mess up the painting. The field of flowers, those red flowers dried up, their colour faded, and became black like a lunar eclipse, their saturation covered by the world itself, making them hideous.

  Then came a pulling force. Not from around me, but from the ribbon itself. The same burning sensation, and heat bloomed on my wrist where the character 壹 (1)glowed silver. The silk tightened around my wrist; fabric was now a concept that was binding me to a new destination. It felt less like a tracker and more like a slave bound by cruel shackles to a slave with no dreams or freedom.

  "What is going on? Does this happen because of my sleeping? It can't be this, right?" Question circling me a faint flicker of hysteria, before everything collapsed, and then I woke up with a loud shrill. The last thing in World 1 was a single, perfect bird, flying in its correct, forward path for one instantaneous second, before it imploded into a shower of ink-black feathers.

  "It can't be my imagination. A bird was flying normally. Does that mean I was close to my home? Am I back home?" A tide of confusion flowed in my head, but just in that phase, my hands and legs got weakened, my steps shuffling. It was taking all my will to keep standing. My body went on its knees, a heavy reminder of exhaustion, but how when I rested a while ago.

  The air was thick, filled with fetid. A sibilant noise, a little further from my location, cut through my earbuds. It wasn't a human shrill. Then another dissonant howling voice echoed, an awkward sound of air.

  “Where am I now? What is this place?” I wasn't home; it was a visceral feeling. The scent of the flower field was now a faint, distant memory. I was in a forest on a path that was not normal in any way. My body trembled like a beetle fluttering its wings, and my mind was processing the aftershocks of the violent entrance into another world.

  My attention instinctively went to my ribbon. My wrist had that ribbon, but it was not burning; the moonlit silver light had moved away, the character of 1 壹 was inert, grey. The second - 贰 - (2) now shimmering with that same faint moonlit silver light. A bone-deep realisation wave of cold comprehension washed over

  "This ribbon.... It's not any tracker; it actually shows which world I am in. This means if I somehow reach World 11, then I might come back home."The perfectly curved number was a truth that settled in me like a lead, my hopeless controller of body giving me hope reaching world eleven, and I could go back home. An elegant way of giving myself hope. This thought was like a scent of perfume in a desolate realm,

  Then with a flash.

  A new, more chilling thought arose: What triggers the ascend? Time? Or something else? Or perhaps it was just sleeping. The world answered, but the answer was only silence. A drop of viscous substance fell on the petrified bone. My breath hitched when it hit my ear.

  "Come on, I have to ascend. I can't give up. Not yet," I begged silently to my dread sensation of brain, clenching my fist, the greatest fear of me was the fear of the unknown surroundings of the world.

  "Let me understand this place first." But were rules mine to make? No, I was a passenger on a train with eleven stations, without a ticket. The driver was insanity itself. Even if I reached World 11, I was not certain that this would help me to go back home, my mind calculating and wary because if it was, then at least one person could have come back to World 0, but I had no other option.

  The night was suffocating and felt really terrifying.

  "If I keep wandering around the World looking at this horrifying shit, I'll get eaten by my fear very soon," I was talking to my mirror side, the same protective instinct, so that I could forget the danger for a minute, but my thoughts were delirious. My feet were making a trudging movement, my palm hugging the trembling glass walls.

  My figure somehow reached out of the forest into the outskirts of a town. The alley opened into a vast street. A sight was grotesque. The ground was ghastly, rotting, and blood-soaked. Trees give oxygen, but these trees, planted in the town, were gnarled and twisted in most ominous shapes. Leaves were butchered, tattered like meat.

  Roots of the tree coming out of the surface of the forsaken land as petrified wood. And whole region had bones scattered everywhere. There was a garden full of thorny flowers glistening with ephemeral moisture, as if the owners had dissolved minutes ago.

  And there lay a bone, the flesh was still there like a leftover of something, and the ground was sticky like the flowers were moistened by the fresh blood.

  "Bones....they feel like....they died a few hours ago," my eyes looked into the sight of the bones and scattered flesh covering the bone that was not rotting, but it was just a few hours ago or even less. And suddenly something moved behind me where the mangled bones were piled twenty feet away, my breath hitched. "A mistake ?"

  Behind me, a scatter of ribs and a shattered skull twitched with a clattering noise. The surrounding roots coiled like awakened snakes. With the crunching noise of formation, then the very next second, the bones snapped together, forming a multilimbed amorphous being.

  A cluster of vertebrae formed a rattling tail. Finger bones articulated into legs. It had no face. Just a clattering jaw, from which spilled a whispered chorus: "...lost, I'm lost..." and "...why can't I see..." His broken bone in his hand reached towards me, making a writhing sound. I flinched from that moment, fear taking over me. I couldn't say anything. I heard another whisper. "Give me....give me your eyes..I want to see. I want to see this terrifying World. The "Yan Gu" turned its body of assembled grief toward me. The symbols on its bones flared.

  I ran.

  The ground was treacherous, tangled with roots that seemed to cover a vast area of blood-soaked ground, one single wrong step could make me trip over the ground, but it wasn't a real concern; it was the clattering resonance that I could hear behind me, not pounding, but scraping and crawling. My brain was imagining the scene happening behind me, a wave of dry clicks moving far too fast. The resonant noise grew stronger than ever. A cadaverous entity was screaming and crawling after me, taking my eyes.

  "LOOK BACK LOOK BACK LOOK-"

  "-the sky is falling in-"

  In the response, a trembling, heavy voice came out of my exhausted lungs.

  "--bié guòlái! DON'T COME CLOS-"

  I didn't look back. My instinct told me not to look behind; it was most likely a horrible scene that was giving me a panic attack. Even if I escaped , this would come in my dreams. But then I saw a slope leading downward, toward a cluster of structures that weren't glass, but dull, weathered stone. A town? Shelter.

  "I'm safe, I-I'm saved."

  I veered toward it, my lungs burning with the metallic air. A root lashed out from the ground, tripping me. I fell hard, the wind knocked out of me. The skittering was right behind.

  I rolled over. The Yan Gu loomed, a scaffold of nightmares. A long, spine-like limb stabbed down, not at my heart, but at my arm. It pinned my sleeve to the ground. Its jaw-cluster leaned in, whispers becoming a focused hiss. A sharp, root-wrapped finger-bone extended toward my forehead-to begin its inscription.

  My body thrashed recklessly like the beating of a drum ; my leg bit into a spot that connected with a clattering knot of it's ribs. It made a loud guttural reaction, the whispers turning into a wild , animalistic sound. With a strong pull, I yanked my arm free, fabric tearing, and scrambled up . No thoughts came to my mind; survival instinct was giving everything it had. My sprint echoed in silence as I caught up the final distance down the slope.

  The stone walls of the town rose before me-crude, silent, and ominously still. No lights. No movement. But it had a gate. An old, iron-wrought thing, slightly far.

  "It definitely doesn't look like a good place to stay, but at least it's less terrifying than a monster made of bones. Ugh What's wrong with this guy trying to gouge out my eye to see the horror?" A relief had washed over my face, the peace after the exhaustion, but for how long?

  I threw myself through the gap, then turned and shoved the creaking gate shut with my full weight. A moment later, a heavy THUD shook the metal. Then another. Then... silence.

  "It's over, damn." I sighed. "Geez, I was really close to seeing heaven." My breathing was heavier than a mountain.

  I slumped against the gate, gasping through the heavy silence and the scent of rotting bone; anyone could feel it. The Yan Gu stood motionless just outside, its ribs making a sound of clattering bones. It didn't try to break in again; it simply... waited.

  The whispers softened to a resentful murmur. The rule was clear: the town was a boundary. Slowly, I pushed myself away from the gate; the coolness was chilling my back slightly, and I turned without caring about my surroundings. My thoughts ran after an observation. "The bones and flesh weren't old... Does that mean someone died who came with me? There were six more humans. If I remember correctly, one is already dead... but the most important question is, what happens if we die? Will it end?"

  It was a question to myself, knowing that I had the clue of a dodo that knew nothing about predator existence, and here I was, who didn't know about the world.

  From the corner of my eyes the town came into the line of sight through an odd window made of iron; the edges were sharper than obsidian. The town was a maze of rocky streets and houses made of only stones. The windows of those homes were dark. No smoke rose from chimneys-a sign of no humanity.

  It was less a sanctuary and more a void of life, a negative imprint of a community. And the bones were there, too. Not scattered, but arranged. Though they were not new, it was like they were here from the last year and neat piles by doorsteps. And there was placed a skull on a windowsill. Almost like an ornament. It was a collection of whoever live here.

  "A skull," I stared at in horror. "It's arranged did I come into a worse danger."

  And on my wrist, the ribbon pulsed-贰-(2) a cold reminder. My time here was already bleeding away. The real terror wasn't just the monster outside the gate.

  It was what, or who, had gathered all these bones inside