Chapter 423: Crystal Remnant Heart

The vast cave structure twisted and interlaced, filled with dizzying forks and narrow paths. Strange crystalline substances covered everything, emitting an unsettling dim glow in the darkness. In some areas, the pale crystals even quivered and trembled slightly, as if they still harbored life—but those were merely the death throes lingering in the "limbs" of this massive structure after its demise.

Clusters of bright foxfire hovered around Hu Li, illuminating the path ahead. Irene vigilantly kept watch on all sides, summoning mass-produced dolls at regular intervals to guard the intersections—because she was constantly worried that something might crawl out of those dark side passages and attack the group from behind.

Xu Jiali stared wide-eyed at the mass-produced Irenes popping up one after another.

"How many... how many Irenes do you have now?" he asked in astonishment, watching another mass-produced doll "flip" out of a twisted spatial rift. The little thing, with dead fish eyes, silently walked over to a nearby stone hollow and crouched down, leaving him utterly bewildered. "Wait, before you were at least adding them one by one, but now you're turning them out in groups..."

"Mass production, mass production," Yu Sheng had already anticipated this reaction and cheerfully explained, "We're short-handed at the lodge. A valley that big, with all those facilities—we're missing too many people."

Xu Jiali's eye twitched. "...Normally, when an organization is short-handed, they recruit from outside."

Yu Sheng waved his hand. "Recruiting isn't as fast as making them on the spot..."

Xu Jiali: "..."

Lingdang walked at the back of the group, holding her mechanical sphere, occasionally glancing at her "boss" and then at Yu Sheng. Her vertical pupils held a hint of doubt, and her face showed a conflicted expression as if thinking, "The boss has somehow made a bunch of friends who seem a bit shady—theoretically not bad people, but they don't look like good guys either—should I report this to higher-ups?"

Just then, Luna, who was leading the group, suddenly stopped and waved a hand behind her.

Yu Sheng and Xu Jiali immediately stopped talking, exchanged a glance, and quickly walked forward.

Luna pointed to a fork ahead. "Over there."

A ball of foxfire immediately drifted over. Following the direction Luna pointed, in the light of the foxfire, Yu Sheng saw a figure.

Or rather, many intertwined crystal branches converging and rising there, twisting and swelling into a vague "human form"—that body, entirely condensed from pale crystals, was half-fused into the nearby rock wall. Its upper body protruded from the crystal cluster, with hair and beard bristling, a furious expression, and an aged face—it was clearly Yun Qingzi!

"That old man!" Irene exclaimed in a low voice, clinging tightly to Yu Sheng's head and tensing up (after all, she and her Irene army had been badly beaten by this old man before). "Is his real body here?!"

But Yu Sheng didn't speak. He stepped forward cautiously to inspect the old man's body, which was fused with the surrounding crystals. Then, after a brief hesitation, he raised a hand and turned to look at Luna. "Lu—"

Luna flashed over and, without hesitation, cut a small but decent wound on his hand.

Yu Sheng: "...Thanks."

With a mixed expression, he wiped the blood oozing from the wound onto the "Yun Qingzi" body and the surrounding crystals. Watching the blood quickly seep into the crystals, his brows gradually furrowed.

"No, this is just a 'node'... The central part I sensed is still ahead. This body is no different from the surrounding crystals in its internal structure."

Lingdang stared wide-eyed at Yu Sheng's actions—this man didn't wear protective gear on an alien planet, walked aimlessly in a possibly contaminated crystal cave, cut himself with a knife in an unfamiliar environment, and smeared his blood on suspicious crystals. Yet the boss called him the "Angel Countering Expert of the Borderlands"... When had experts from the Borderlands become like this?

The young psychic attendant shook her head, pupils slightly dilated, and continued cautiously observing the dark places in the cave.

Then she suddenly saw something.

"Boss! Over there!"

Lingdang's eyes widened as she called out to Xu Jiali and pointed to a narrow path ahead at the fork.

Another ball of foxfire drifted over. Yu Sheng and the group quickly approached, only to see another form embedded in the crystals there—another "Yun Qingzi"!

Seeing this eerie sight, shock and unease welled up in everyone's hearts. Yu Sheng frowned deeply, thought for a moment, then suddenly realized something and turned to walk deeper into the cave.

Balls of foxfire followed closely around him. Hu Li was the first to follow, and the others quickly followed suit.

The blue flames illuminated the way ahead. Up ahead, the crystals became denser. Among the increasingly thick crystal deposits were more... crystalline bodies.

"Over here too!"

"And here, another one!"

"This one is also in Yun Qingzi's form!"

The path ahead had almost completely turned into a "pipe" formed by piled and fused crystals. At almost every short interval, another "Yun Qingzi" appeared in the nearby crystal clusters.

Each "Yun Qingzi" was entirely "cast" from pale crystals mixed with gray-black, fused with the surrounding crystal clusters and branches. Their faces were all different—some angry, some ferocious, some struggling, some dazed—as if different states of a single person were "sealed" in these crystalline shells, laid out deep underground.

How many more were ahead? Dozens? Hundreds? Even more?

The group was unusually quiet. No one spoke, only continuing to walk forward in the eerie atmosphere, following Yu Sheng's lead as they quickly advanced toward the deepest part of this vast underground labyrinth.

A patch of "crystal glow," noticeably brighter than the previous sections, suddenly appeared at the entrance ahead.

Everyone instinctively slowed down. Yu Sheng signaled the others to be vigilant and slowly walked toward the entrance.

The moment he stepped through the opening, another open underground space appeared before him—a cave entirely covered in crystalline material. The faint light emanating from the crystals was enough to illuminate the surroundings. Large swaths of crystal branches extended from all sides, converging in midair, then hanging down and swelling. Several thick crystal pillars rose from the cave floor, supporting and suspending a "core" tens of meters in diameter...

It was a bizarre mass entirely made of crystals, like some nauseating swelling hanging in the center of the cave. Its surface shimmered faintly, and occasional slight tremors and expansions could be seen, as if it were still active.

It seemed that all the remaining "vitality" of this underground world had gathered here, converging into that crystalline accumulation.

Looking at it, everyone inexplicably thought of—a "heart."

"Damn, this thing is still moving," Irene muttered in a low voice, holding tightly to Yu Sheng's head. "Is it still alive?!"

Yu Sheng frowned, but before he could answer, a weak, aged voice suddenly came from a corner of that "heart": "No... it's dying..."

Everyone was startled the moment they heard the voice. Hu Li's tail bristled like a sword forest. Xu Jiali raised his rifle, which looked like it could punch a hole in a city wall. Luna immediately shielded Yu Sheng. A faintly glowing translucent barrier appeared around the group—Lingdang's mechanical sphere hummed as she floated into the air, erecting a psychic barrier for everyone.

But Yu Sheng relaxed upon hearing the voice. He waved his hand, signaling the others not to worry, and then walked forward following the perception established through the blood.

He saw another "Yun Qingzi."

This "Yun Qingzi" was embedded on the slightly pulsing crystal heart, or rather, he was part of it.

Unlike the "Yun Qingzi" they had seen before, this body's face was quite calm, and moreover... it was still "alive."

Yun Qingzi, fused with the crystal heart, lifted his head, seeming to focus his gaze on the person before him. After a moment, he spoke in a low, hoarse voice: "...I have been dreaming, and in my dreams... I have seen you, friend. But I have had too many dreams, and I can no longer tell what is real and what is illusory."

The faint light on the surface of the crystal heart surged, as if with Yun Qingzi's "awakening," the remaining vitality in the heart began to stir.

Yu Sheng frowned and cautiously asked, "Are you the 'real' Yun Qingzi?"

The old man frowned. "Real?"

"We saw many figures like you on the way here," Irene, sitting on Yu Sheng's shoulder, quickly spoke up. "But they weren't moving, looked dead."

"The real..." Yun Qingzi seemed dazed upon hearing this. He muttered a few unintelligible words, then suddenly grinned and slowly shook his head. "All of them, all of them. Every one you saw is 'Yun Qingzi'... Each time this thing 'cycles,' it iterates me once. It wants to shake me off, expel me..."

"Iterates?"

Yu Sheng's eyes widened. The moment he heard that word, many connections clicked into place. Looking at the only "conscious" Yun Qingzi fused with the crystal heart, he immediately furrowed his brow again—

"We were commissioned by the Taixu Spiritual Pivot to investigate the various anomalies that have occurred recently in the Feiyu Star Domain. What is the origin of these crystals? What exactly happened on this planet a thousand years ago?"

Yun Qingzi's eyes drooped slightly. After a long silence, just as Yu Sheng was about to urge him, he seemed to wake again and spoke: "That thing fell from the sky, bright as a star. I don't know what it was, but it seemed... to want to parasitize this planet..."