Chapter 1: Birth

The gloomy sky was filled with numerous black vortexes, resembling wallpaper covered in mold, speckled and eerie.

A foul odor wafted through the air. Thousands of corpses piled together, fermenting and decaying, were necessary to produce such a potent smell.

The vortexes moved slowly, drifting from a distant place, like ghosts and perhaps the entrance to hell.

Attracted by something, many vortexes gathered in a corner of the somber sky. Beneath this sky, a colossal abyss had been carved into the earth’s surface, forming a silent lake.

The abyss surged with a thick black viscous fluid, boiling and emitting faint gurgling sounds.

These fluids seemed to possess life, slowly rotating, forming dense vortexes, mirroring those in the sky. Vortexes interacted with each other, devouring one another.

Smaller vortexes were squeezed by larger ones, and larger vortexes were torn apart by even bigger ones. They engaged in self-destruction, their overly viscous texture approaching solidity. Each vortex was alive, each one moaning.

In the depths of the abyss, more of these vortexes devoured each other, emitting horrifying sounds.

There was no tranquility, no peace, and no light here…

A faint thought was born in the depths of the abyss, surrounded by darkness and many cries of pain. This thought was so clear, utterly different from the madness, chaos, and lust surrounding it.

One by one, insane desires sank, sinking to the deepest part of the abyss, yet only this faint thought floated upward.

It struggled to rise.

Many crazed malevolent thoughts detected its difference, surging towards it, attempting to strangle it.

This faint thought had no eyes, ears, or tongue, still naive. But it instinctively knew it had to escape from this dreadful place.

Like a small fish in a strong current, it swam against the current, heading upward.

Unable to see anything, it could feel that as long as it moved upward, upward without ceasing, the chaos and darkness surrounding it would fade away.

Gurgle… a faint sound echoed. In the foul-smelling abyss, among countless black vortexes, a small, soybean-sized pink ball suddenly emerged. Its body resembled crystal jelly, exhibiting a semi-transparent texture.

The ball floated up and down, got caught in vortexes, and wriggled its chubby body, desperately maneuvering.

All around were viscous fluids, attempting to darken and engulf it.

The pink ball luckily avoided one vortex after another, reaching the edge. Its fleshy body collided with a hard stone wall, which had small crevices leading to an exit above.

The exit revealed a gray sky with numerous vortexes, even more densely packed. Perhaps the sky was more terrifying than the abyss.

But the pink ball couldn’t see. It could only vaguely sense that above was bright.

A vortex surged, enveloping the pink ball. The terrifying force tried to drag the ball back into the depths of the abyss. There, this newly born faint thought would be torn into fragments, returning to nothingness.

The ball of flesh hastily squeezed its soft body into the crevice of the stone wall.

The vortex kept spinning, releasing suction, but the narrow gap firmly held the fleshy ball in place.

The vortex grew larger and more intense, generating stronger suction. It sensed the presence of the pink ball. It was malevolence, desire, and slaughter. It wouldn’t allow something so pure to be born within itself.

This ball of flesh possessed a clear consciousness. It wasn’t at all insane, completely at odds with the surrounding malaise.

Destroy it! This was the consensus of all the wicked thoughts within the abyss.

More vortexes converged, emitting murmuring whispers. They wanted to devour this still fragile life.

Cheep, the pink ball made a faint sound. It wriggled its soft body, leveraging the friction against the stone wall crevice, climbing upward.

It instinctively knew that above was the exit.

The vortexes in the abyss, churning, moaning, and emitting a putrid stench, moved farther away from it.

Suddenly, the densely packed vortexes in the sky opened up like giant mouths, spewing out repulsive things into the abyss. These objects fell into the viscous fluid, creating a splashing sound, causing ripples.

The vibrations of the ripples transmitted through the crevices in the stone wall were sensed by the pipink flesh ball . It immediately halted all movement, anxiously awaiting.

Sharp howls echoed in the abyss, as if hell had opened its gates at that moment.

The things falling from the sky into the abyss were, surprisingly, living creatures. Some resembled wild beasts, some humans, and some were like supernatural beings. However, their exact nature had become indiscernible.

The black fluid in the abyss enveloped them, its toxic content corroding their skin and dissolving their innards. They frantically scratched themselves, attempting to rid themselves of the poisonous slime. They struggled in pain, reaching out despairingly to the sky.

Suddenly, a humanoid creature wrapped in black slime swam towards the stone wall where the pink ball was located, forcefully digging its hands into the crevices, attempting to climb upward.

Ah ah ah… it emitted such sounds, sharp and insane, tearing through the foul air.

The pink ball couldn’t hear anything but could feel the vibrations in the crevice. Its chubby body started slipping downward, on the verge of being engulfed by the black slime.

Cheep, cheep! The pink ball anxiously made faint noises, arching its body and accelerating its climbing speed.

The humanoid creature was also climbing upward, moving agilely like a monkey. The intense survival instinct made it temporarily forget the severe pain of its corroded body. The black slime hanging from its body formed strands, dripping down.

Upon closer inspection, it could be seen that these strands of slime were alive. They wriggled like snakes, pulling out thin threads that firmly adhered to the stone wall. The other end of these threads burrowed into the humanoid creature’s body, entwining around its bones.

Soon, the humanoid creature couldn’t climb anymore. Dense black threads enveloped it, forming a massive cocoon, sticking to the stone wall. The threads subtly moved, penetrating the humanoid creature’s body, slowly sucking its blood and flesh.

Below the stone wall, the struggling creatures in the abyss had also turned into nourishment for the black slime.

The liquid surged, emitting sticky munching sounds, extremely nauseating. The smell of blood replaced the rotten stench of corpses, making it even more repulsive.

The pink ball remained motionless, wedged in the crevice. It was so nervous that it dared not emit even the faintest cheep. Not far below it, the black humanoid cocoon hung silently. Before long, the cocoon shriveled up, drained of its blood and flesh.

The black threads wrapping the cocoon slowly wriggled, detached, and crawled back into the abyss. A set of ghastly white bones emerged, falling from the stone wall and landing on the black surface below, scattering into fragments.

After a while, the scattered bones were also engulfed by the black slime.

The vibrations caused by the feeding sounds ceased, and only then did the pink ball arch its soft body and continue climbing upward. It could sense the change in light. It wanted to go to a brighter place.

However, it didn’t notice that the black slime formed by insane thoughts was still tracking its movements. Its existence was not tolerated by this dark world.

Gurgle, a white skeletal hand suddenly floated up from the abyss. The surrounding black slime turned into thin threads, entwining the surface of the hand bones, forming robust muscles.

After a moment, a black severed hand slowly climbed up the stone wall. Its five fingers, like steel nails, inserted into the crevices of the rock, dislodging countless fragments. The sharp nails were pure black and tainted with poison.

From a distance, it looked more like a black spider, moving very agilely.

The pink ball finally climbed to the exit. Its chubby body twisted out of the crevice and collapsed on the ground. Its little belly rose and fell rapidly, breathing heavily.

It didn’t know what fatigue was, but it knew it didn’t want to move at all.

Suddenly, a gust of cold wind swept down from above. The pink ball sensed danger and quickly wriggled its small body forward.

But it was still too slow. A cold and hard object pressed it down, pinning it to the ground. It couldn’t see anything and could only emit faint squeaking sounds, its soft body struggling violently.

Cheep! The faint squeaks suddenly became sharp, and the pink ball was struck by a terrifying sensation it had never experienced before!

It stopped struggling, and its body curled uncontrollably.

It didn’t know what this feeling was called—pain. It only knew that a sharp object had suddenly pierced its body.

Cheep cheep… The piercing cries echoed above the foul-smelling abyss. A red-eyed crow firmly pinned a pink ball beneath its claws, and its sharp beak ruthlessly struck down.

The ball ceased its wriggling, its body becoming stiff as if it were already dead. The crow pecked a few more times before releasing its talons, preparing to swallow the ball whole.

The pink ball shook imperceptibly. Its keen intuition made it aware that it would soon cease to exist.

It had climbed so desperately upward, escaping the abyss, fleeing the darkness, evading despair, only to fall into another abyss of despair.

It didn’t know what sadness was. Still, it had been swallowed by sorrow.

The crow opened its sharp beak, leaned forward, and fiercely pecked…

Gua! A sharp and mournful scream pierced the sky, and a few black feathers, stained with blood, scattered.

The crow, which was about to feast, had its plans disrupted by a suddenly appearing black severed hand. The sharp nails pierced its body, the steel-like fingers snapped its wings and neck, and a still-beating heart jumped out of the shattered chest, landing on the ground, drenched in blood. Immediately afterward, a crimson eyeball rolled out of the eye socket, tumbling into the pool of blood.

The pink ball was exceptionally skilled at escaping. While the crow flapped its wings frantically, trying to escape the severed hand’s onslaught, it had already swiftly crawled into the grass, squeezing its chubby body under a rock.

The severed hand crushed the crow into a pulp, the palm’s flesh twisting into a black vortex, devouring the mess.

The killing ceased, and the smell of blood became even more pungent.

The severed hand moved its five fingers to search the vicinity. The nails tapped the ground, making a clattering sound, and the vortex on the palm emerged on the back of the hand, resembling an eye, scanning for the pink ball’s silhouette.

After searching for a long time, the severed hand found nothing. It stood upright, the vortex returning from the back of the hand to the palm, resembling a dark eye, surveying the surroundings with a sinister air.

Suddenly, it spotted a rock with a familiar scent. The vortex in its palm squinted like an eye, and its five sharp fingers quickly crawled over.

The stench suddenly approached, and the premonition of impending doom made the pink ball shiver.

Click, clack – it was the sound of hard nails scratching the stone. The vibrations of the sound made the pink ball stiffen abruptly. Then it felt the stone being moved, and a cold breeze blew in.

The stiff body instantly turned cold. The pink ball felt a sense of despair.

At this moment, a python-like soft tentacle coiled around the black severed hand, swiftly pulling it back into the abyss. As it turns out, no living beings are permitted to leave that dark place.

The severed hand struggled violently, its sharp nails scraping against the rock, shattering stones with a loud clatter. More tentacles crawled up from the abyss, layer upon layer strangling the severed hand.

The hand fell into the black lake, devoured by the abyss’s vortices, turning into several gray foams. Silence returned to the surroundings, and the stench of decay and the smell of blood permeated the air.

Above the cliff, a pile of black feathers soaked in a dark red pool of blood announced the end of a massacre.

After an unknown amount of time, the pink ball shivered and trembled, crawling out from under the rock, cautiously wriggling towards the pool of blood, following the scent of blood.

The crow’s heart had ceased its beating, and the red eyeball had been dyed even redder by the fresh blood.

The pink ball trembled slightly, every cell in its body sniffing the scent of blood. Suddenly, a strong desire arose within it. It crawled into the blood pool, absorbing the crow’s blood like a sponge. Its soft body enveloped the red eyeball, absorbing it.

The eyeball dissolved, melted into a viscous substance, absorbed by the pink ball. Its soybean-sized body shrank to the size of a chickpea. The skin itched, and the soft flesh began to tremble. The next moment, the smooth surface of the pink ball unexpectedly grew a clear, bright, watery eyeball.

This eyeball spun around, observing the sky filled with vortices, the forest shrouded in black mist, the abyss teeming with malevolent thoughts…

As it turns out, this is the world that nurtured it.

As it turns out, from confusion to clarity, all it needed was a single eye…