Void Cultivation-Chapter 176- The Foundation Establishment Realm (4)

Chapter 176: Chapter 176- The Foundation Establishment Realm (4)

Before long, Grey sensed the presence of another spirit node. He didn’t hesitate, his hand tightened, and he forcefully struck it. The node burst open with a dull boom, flooding instantly with spirit energy and becoming yet another spirit perforation.

Then the world... went silent.

It wasn’t normal silence. It was as if the entire world suddenly exhaled and froze. Grey’s heart lurched in his chest, and before he could even question what was happening, his vision blurred, first dimming, then stretching, then collapsing in on itself like rippling water.

When clarity finally returned, Grey realized he wasn’t in his body anymore.

He wasn’t meditating and sensing his spirit perforations. He wasn’t breaking through.

He was standing in the middle of a wide, sunlit grassland, the scent of fresh earth and warm breeze brushing against his skin. He looked down and froze. His clothes were different, simple, dark, almost childish, and his hands... were smaller.

He wasn’t sixteen.

He looked eleven. Maybe twelve.

His breath caught. "What... is this? Where am I?"

As he turned around, trying to steady his racing thoughts, a small voice echoed across the grassland.

"Grey!"

He snapped his head toward the sound. A little girl, seven or eight at most, was running toward him with unrestrained joy. She was almost a blur of pale skin and raven-black hair, but halfway through, her foot caught on a rock. She slipped forward with a startled yelp.

Grey reacted before he thought, catching her just before she hit the ground.

The girl puffed her cheeks and wriggled free. "Humph! Why did you catch me? I can stand up on my own!"

Her voice was crisp, her pout adorable, and when Grey truly looked at her, really looked, he felt his entire mind go blank.

Black hair. Abyss-dark eyes. A face he had tried to remember for years but could only grasp in fragments.

She looked exactly like his sister.

The sister who had been swallowed by the void.

The sister he had never seen again.

"S... Sister...?" Grey whispered. His voice trembled. His heart hammered violently against his ribs as emotions he didn’t even have names for collided inside him.

The little girl blinked. "Just because I tripped doesn’t mean you have to catch me every time, Grey," she said with an oddly mature tone for her age as she dusted off her dress.

Grey’s breath hitched. That tone. That expression. That tiny, familiar arrogance. It stabbed into his heart so sharply he couldn’t endure it.

Before he realized it, tears were falling from his eyes, quiet, uncontrollable, and hot.

The girl stared at him, baffled. "Big brother Grey... why are you crying?"

Her small hands reached up and gently wiped his tears. Her palm was warm, so warm it felt unreal. Something inside Grey cracked open. A tenderness, a longing, a warmth he had not tasted since awakening in this world flooded through him, drowning him.

Family.

This warmth... this was family.

Grey swallowed hard. "W–What is happening to me...?"

"’What are you saying?" she asked softly. "We always come out here to play. You, me, big brother... we’ve been doing this since forever."

Grey froze.

She was right.

Fragments of memories, half-formed, hazy, dream-like, surfaced in his mind. A grass field. Laughter. His siblings. Days spent chasing each other under the sun. Moments he thought he imagined. Memories where the faces were always blurred.

But now...

now her face was clear.

"Yes," Grey whispered. "I... I remember."

The girl tilted her head at him, clearly thinking he was acting strange, but she didn’t press him. Instead, with a small smile, she grabbed his hand and started dragging him toward the distant city.

"What... what is happening?" Grey muttered, his voice barely carried by the gentle breeze. A moment ago, he’d been deep within his own body, striking open the final nodes to form his spirit perforations—his focus absolute, his consciousness anchored. Yet now, he stood beneath a warm sun, on a quiet grassy path that should’ve only existed in the recesses of his past.

"This scene... this should be one of my memories. But why am I seeing it now? The soul possession already ended. I shouldn’t be witnessing anything else." His words came out in a thin, confused whisper—yet the young girl pulling him forward caught every syllable.

"Big Brother Grey, what are you talking about?" she asked lightly, her small hand still wrapped around his wrist, tugging him ahead with innocent determination. "Are you talking about cultivating again?" She never once turned to look at him; her gaze remained fixed on the road ahead. Still, her soft voice drifted into his ears like a gentle ripple on water.

Grey’s brows knitted tightly. "Could this be a side effect of breaking through after nearly being possessed?" he murmured under his breath. "My memories... they were already scrambled after that incident, but I didn’t expect to suddenly awaken inside them. This shouldn’t be possible. Unless..."

The girl in front let out a tiny harrumph, cutting into his spiraling thoughts. "Big Brother Grey, you always talk to yourself too much. Can’t you just enjoy a peaceful moment for once?"

Her playful complaint struck him harder than any spiritual feedback. Grey’s heart trembled, a chill racing across his spine as her voice, so familiar yet impossibly distant, echoed inside his mind.

This wasn’t just a memory being replayed.

It felt alive.

As if the past itself was reaching out... or something inside him was trying to pull him deeper.

’What is really happening? Could this be connected to my breakthrough?’ Grey muttered inwardly, confusion twisting through his thoughts like a cold breeze he couldn’t shake off.

The young girl didn’t give him a chance to breathe or gather himself. Her small hand clasped his wrist and tugged him forward with surprising strength, dragging him out of the endless grassy field and toward the small city resting peacefully at its edge.

The moment Grey stepped over the boundary, something inside him stirred.

A strange ripple ran through his soul, an odd, aching familiarity. The kind that felt like a memory trying to surface from beneath thick, murky waters. But before it could take shape, before he could grasp it, the girl pulled him again, whisking him past the city gates like a determined storm.

Her raven-black hair danced lightly in the wind, catching sunlight as she moved. Grey finally stopped resisting and let her lead him, his gaze drifting upward out of old habit.

There it was.

The colossal hand of God... looming high above the world, suspended across the heavens like an eternal judgment. Its shadow stretched across the city, across the fields, and across Grey’s heart. It was the same sky he remembered from long ago... wasn’t it?

The girl called him "Brother" with so much affection that anyone who saw them would think they were bound by blood. But their appearances told a completely different story.

Grey was pale, almost fragile-looking, with a thin, frail body that looked like it had gone through winters it wasn’t built to survive. His grey eyes were dim and unfocused at first glance, yet if you looked deeper, you’d find a sharp, precise glint buried in them. A glint that hinted he was always calculating, always observing, always thinking far more than he spoke.

The girl, however, was the opposite in every imaginable way.

She was full of life, her raven-black hair flowing behind her like a dark waterfall. Her eyes were pitch black, so deep and dark that if you stared too long, you might feel as though the world around you was shrinking, collapsing into the abyss within them. Her presence radiated warmth, energy, and a stubborn liveliness Grey had never been able to match.

Aside from the faint pallor in her skin that matched Grey’s, they were completely unalike. No one would ever think they shared a drop of blood.

’She’s not my biological sister.’ Grey thought. ’But after all these years together... it truly felt like we were siblings.’

His mind drifted to his older brother. Same black hair, abyss-black eyes that were deep enough to amaze you, and very vibrant. Nothing like him at all.

So why was he the only one born looking like a misplaced piece in their family portrait?

’It must be me... I’m the one who was adopted, Grey concluded quietly. Or maybe they found me somewhere. Maybe someone left me. Maybe...’

But before he could finish that spiral of thoughts, a larger, colder question surfaced... one that loomed far larger than anything he had considered up until now.

’Then who am I? Where did I come from?’

The question dropped into his heart like a stone, sending ripples through every part of him. With each second, the ripples grew wider, deeper, darker.

Grey didn’t realize it until that very moment, but without his permission, life had slipped another mystery into his already tangled existence. Managing to make the fog that surrounded his life become even more hazy and doubt filled.

And this one... felt bigger than all the others.