The world shaped itself around him once again as Ye Jun stood on red earth beneath a sky the color of dried blood.
The horizon stretched in every direction without any end, an ancient wilderness that felt older than anything he had ever stepped on.
Gigantic skeletons rose from the ground at intervals, ribs the size of mountains, skulls with teeth longer than his body. Some of the bones were embedded so deep into the earth that they had become part of it, fossilized into the bedrock itself.
The mountains in the distance bore deep claw marks down their faces, each one wide enough to swallow a city whole.
Even the air around him felt wrong. It pressed against his skin like something was watching from every direction at once, and the space itself carried a faint tension, like a held breath waiting to be released.
'...This is the Hunt Trial?' he thought.
