lost

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Consciousness returned in slow, painful waves. Hao Yu’s eyes fluttered open, then snapped wide. He instinctively jumped up, frantically checking his body. Surprisingly, the catastrophic injury he’d braced for wasn’t there.

"Ouch. Did I actually survive such a height?" he questioned, a tremor in his voice. He couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that the scenery before he hit the ground had been completely different. Looking up, he gasped. A colossal tree, wide enough to build a house within its trunk, loomed over him. He stumbled back, then turned to see a single, weakly dangling leaf, so massive it could serve as a bedsheet.

The sheer strangeness of the sights and sounds was overwhelming. Hao Yu averted his gaze, only for something black to flash before his eyes, missing him by an arm's length.

Hao Yu: "?!".

The creature landed, revealing itself to Hao Yu. It was a short green thing with black patches all over its body, long ears, long fingernails, and a bone impaled on its shoulder. The bizarre creature, upon seeing Hao Yu, immediately bolted. Hao Yu’s brain, reeling from the sight, ground to a halt. He was jolted back by a loud screech from a rather unknown animal.

Even if this was Earth\, Hao Yu knew he would have been utterly lost. But given that he was alive and breathing\, in such an alien landscape\, he knew with chilling certainty this was not the Earth he knew. This was a different world entirely. He glanced in the direction the strange-looking thing had fled\, half-expecting another to appear. Instead\, he saw a **white moose with golden horns** leap over him\, vanishing into the distance.

Hao Yu: "???".

He looked back, suddenly remembering the creature's shoulder, impaled with a bone that protruded from its chest. Maybe something had been chasing it?. He spun around again, spotting a white patch where the moose had emerged, streaked with gold of varying sizes and lengths, but motionless. Hao Yu squinted, trying to discern what it was.

The sharp sound of a whip-like object landing close to his leg sent a jolt of terror through him. It was a spear, as big and long as a fully grown bamboo tree**. His wits were scared right out of him. Behind him, a herd of the white moose was rapidly approaching. Without thinking, Hao Yu sprang to his left, diving behind the enormous tree he’d seen when he first woke up. Mercifully, he hadn’t strayed far.

"Boom!" A thud echoed from behind the stampeding animals, making Hao Yu flinch. What was that? One moose was lifted into the air, then another, then a third. No matter how much he squinted, he couldn't discern what powerful force was effortlessly hoisting them skyward. "Neeeghh," one of the elevated moose cried out as it watched its herd disappear, leaving only broken grasses and ruined shrubs in their wake.

The stampede had ceased, but Hao Yu's instincts screamed at him not to emerge. A final thud sounded from the scattering dust, and the three moose lay dead, bleeding from their noses. The rhythmic flapping of immense wings descended, revealing a huge eagle-like bird. Its feet seemed massive enough to pierce through anything, its height approximately thirty inches, with each wing spread ten centimeters wide. Its feathers were faintly tinted black and red, mixed with a darker shade of blue.

The sight was too much. Hao Yu felt his consciousness slip away, and he passed out.

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