A 16-year old looking youth was walking through a crowd of people on the streets listlessly. The crowd was boisterous as they tended their own business.
As if not seeing the youth in front of them, they continued walking straight in his direction without giving way. A glimmer of hope sparkled in the youth's eyes as their distance shortens.
Right when they should have collided, the people simply phased through him or him through them like beings from two separate dimensions that coexisted but does not interact with one another.
"Sigh… How long have I been trapped in this world?" The youth looked up at the cloudy skies with dulled eyes as raindrops began to fall.
He reached out his hands to catch the raindrops, but it just phased through his hands, just like the crowd, or rather the rest of the world.
Contrary to the colorful world everyone else lived in, the youth was trapped in a monochrome world, forever grey, dull, and gloomy.
There was nothing the youth could do to interact with the colorful world. Everything seemed so close, yet so far.
The two worlds were divided by a thin fabric of space that could not be seen, but crossing this space was more difficult than ascending the heavens.
The youth's name was Wu Juren, and he was just a normal 16-year old boy, who was lucky to be admitted into the Maple Ridge Academy, a place of study in the arts of magic.
Unfortunately, even after learning magic for a whole year, he was unable to cast a single spell, despite being measured to have a great talent for magic.
Due to his inability to wield magic, he was labeled as trash and ridiculed by his fellow students. Without face to attend classes, he spends most of his time in the library studying magic theories.
The academy did not feed useless bums. Thus, he had to take on side missions to feed himself and stay within the academy.
On a trip to the mountains outside of the city to gather herbs, he inadvertently stumbled into an unexplored cave. In his carelessness, he stepped on an ancient formation plate and activated the ancient formation, causing a crack in the dimension to appear and swallowing him inside.
Before he knew it, he was already in this grey-colored version of the world. When he managed to find his way back to the city, he was shocked that no one seemed to notice his existence.
"Xue-er, It's me! Can you hear me? Can you see me?" Juren called out to his childhood friend, Wan Xiaxue, but to no avail. It was like his existence disappeared from the world.
Wu Juren was fine when everyone could not see him, but when even his childhood friend could not see him, he was significantly shaken. Wan Xiaxue was the only one who stood up for Wu Juren when he was bullied by the others.
For an ordinary 16-year old youth with no family, no backing, no other friends, Wan Xiaxue was his only mental support.
"Arghhh!!! Why can't anyone see me!!!?" Juren roared to the skies.
Time passes, and Wu Juren could do nothing except observe quietly, watching the world progress day after day, month after month, and years after years.
Being located on the Magic Beast Forest borders, Maple Ridge City suffered beast attacks regularly, from small beast raids to large beast tides until the city was overwhelmed.
The city had three powerful families: The Wan, Chen, and Mo family. There should have been no problem repelling the beast tide if they had worked together under the Wan family's leadership, but the Mo family turned tail and fled during the most crucial moments.
As a result, the remaining Wan and Chen family failed to repel the beast tide. Magic beasts flood the city, and everyone was slaughtered and devoured by the magic beasts, including his childhood friend.
Wu Juren felt helpless and powerless that he could do nothing but watch as everything unfolded.
"Mo family, you traitorous cowards! If I can ever get out, I swear I won't rest until I slaughter every last one of you!" Wu Juren solemnly swore with clenched fists.
Wu Juren watched as Maple Ridge City was eventually razed to the ground before the magic beasts left to find their next big hunt.
Years later, new residents moved in and rebuilt the ruined city anew. The buildings came back, the people came back, but they were no longer the same buildings and people he knew.
Wu Juren was slowly eaten away by solitude and loneliness until he started forgetting about his own existence.
"Who am I…? Why am I here…? What is my purpose…?" He questioned himself. There was no point in living a life like this, but the problem was, he could not even kill himself.
Hundreds of years pass, and he continues to retain the appearance of a 16-year old. In this timeless and ageless world, he was immortal, but the price to pay was too great.
What was the point of being immortal if there were no one to enjoy it with?
Wu Juren could only pass his time by watching random people go about their daily lives in the other world. Inadvertently, he ended up learning knowledge in various fields of study from his countless years of observation.
A thousand years—No, tens thousands of years later… Wu Juren watched all sorts of nameless people grow, rise, and stand at the top of the world.
Many techniques were developed, quality of life was improved, and humans' lifespan was extended through magic. Attaining the power of God became a possibility. The threat of magic beasts became trivial.
The humans entered an age of prosperity, but the world became too small, resources became limited, and so the people set their sights on the stars beyond their world.
With high attainment in magic, they could travel through the stars and look for new worlds to explore. From stars to star fields, star fields to star clusters, they roamed the endless void.
Unfortunately, they were not alone in this boundless expanse and encountered another race in the depths of the void and invited a calamity upon themselves.
Peaceful negotiations failed when they could not communicate, and war quickly broke out between the two sides. It became a clash of civilization and a battle for the survival of their own kind.
Humans had grown too rapidly to establish a solid footing in the endless void. They were disadvantaged against the more advanced Otherworlders and lost every battle.
They were pushed back to their homeworld until the scale of destruction shattered the world and extinguished all life.
Wu Juren saw everything as their devastating battle shook the world. His own grey world was also affected as cracks began to form on the edges.
The two worlds did not interact with one another, but they occupy the same space across the dimensions, and could not exist without one another.
When the other world was about to shatter into pieces, large cracks already formed in the grey world. Without hesitation, Wu Juren jumped into one of these cracks in the dimension.
He was just an ordinary mortal on the other side and would die without a doubt in the cold void, but his dearest wish was to escape the grey world.
Death was a release for him. He was long tired of living.
Wu Juren was swept in the violent storm during the moment the world shattered, and the destructive force obliterated his mortal body. His consciousness slipped into oblivion before any rush of physical pain settled in.
He was at peace in death.
Unfortunately, the world had other plans for him and did not allow him to rest.
Before he knew it, he was standing back in that unexplored cave he had once stumbled upon long ago.
The world was not monochromatic, and there was no earthshaking battle. It felt surreal as if everything he had experienced until this point was nothing but a dream, an awfully long dream.
He knew everything he experienced was real, as his mind had been tempered by time and age. His knowledge bank was still present and reinforced like crystal clear memory.
Some color returned to Wu Juren's eyes as he could not help but place his hope on that slim chance that he had returned in time. He grabbed a handful of soil and recalled the nostalgic sense of touch, before quickly rushing back to Maple Ridge city.
The same old city stood before him as he was rooted on the spot for a good while.
"This… is the same city I once knew."
He entered the city and made his way to the academy. The closer he got, the more speed he picked up as he passed by many familiar yet distant faces.
On the training field, a particularly familiar childhood friend was seen practicing her magic along with other students, beautiful and graceful as ever.
"Xue-er!" Wu Juren dashed over and pull her into his embrace.
"Ah! Brother Ren? What are you doing? Quickly release me." Wan Xiaxue panicked and blushed furiously at the sudden hug in front of so many watchful eyes.
"Please… Just let me hold you like this for a while." Wu Juren sounded very weary as he rested his head on her small shoulders.
Being the closest person to Wu Juren, Wan Xiaxue could sense his emotions. Her resistance grew weaker and accepted his embrace under public scrutiny.