Chapter 431: Reunion and the Lucid One

Seeing the figure of the woman in the black dress on the mountaintop, Yu Sheng and the others were all startled.

A normal person! A "lucid one" clearly out of place in this chaotic and insane environment!

Yet just as the woman on the mountaintop opened her mouth as if to say something, a shadow suddenly appeared behind her—before anyone could react, the shadow pierced through the woman's body. She only had time to turn her head in shock before her life was severed and her body collapsed on the mountain.

"Hey... what the hell!" Ailin exclaimed at the sight. "This opening isn't right, is it?!"

Yu Sheng immediately grabbed the fur of the fox beside him. "Go check it out!"

Huli sprinted toward that "mountain" formed by countless twisted buildings and raised city roads.

The next second, the "mountain" seemed to come alive. The buildings and roads stacked on its surface began to undulate and writhe like an unstable dream, rapidly changing their structure. Huli tried to fly mid-stride, only to find that the moment she took off, she inexplicably ended up inside a fully enclosed "garage." The walls around her kept collapsing and flowing like molten wax, while large holes opened up in the road. She hastily leaped over those holes but ran into a stairwell—the stairway slanted upward like steps, yet its end suddenly broke off, a rusted staircase that could never be reached dangling at the opposite intersection. The ground beneath her feet, as if made of loose bricks, began to shake violently.

Huli cried out in shock and instinctively lunged forward, only to find her body losing support. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't jump high or fly. She narrowly crossed over a building lying flat on the ground, only to find herself back on that bizarre mountain slope. The road ahead stretched infinitely into the distance, with buildings that looked like shells flanking both sides—empty doors and windows revealed staircases and corridors piled haphazardly inside.

But just as everything around rapidly descended into this "unordered dream," just as all paths were about to collapse, a mass of rapidly spreading spider silk suddenly appeared in the wind and rain.

"What a mess!"

Ailin, irritated by the chaotic dreamscape around her, raised her hand without hesitation and released her "threads." The cold, dark lines shot into the rain like living things, expanding fiercely in this area woven by disordered minds. As the spider silk spread, the heaving "mountain" instantly froze.

Yu Sheng's heart stirred, and he instinctively looked back.

He saw that most of the swaying humanoid silhouettes at the foot of the mountain had vanished at the same time.

Seizing the opportunity, Huli crossed the slope in the blink of an eye and reached the summit.

Where Ailin's spider silk covered, the mountain that had seemed insurmountable and constantly "growing" suddenly became a small hill. The massive nine-tailed silver fox could easily leap to its top with just a few steps. The twisted, piled buildings and long roads seemed to be "skipped" directly, shrinking into a miniature background behind Huli.

Many strange, huge "pillars" stood on the summit, arranged in a circle, enclosing a vast, dimly lit open space in the middle.

Yu Sheng didn't focus on the ring of pillars at first; instead, he looked for the woman in the black dress who had fallen earlier.

He didn't find her.

The wind and rain swept across the summit, but where the woman had fallen, there was only a patch of stone washed clean.

Yu Sheng frowned. Just then, he suddenly heard a sound of breaking air approaching from afar.

He looked up sharply and saw the woman in the black dress who had died on the summit charging straight at him, sword in hand. Her expression was icy, and the blade shimmered with a hazy radiance. The wind and rain seemed to yield to the edge of this sword, dispersing on all sides without any aura driving them away—

But the next moment, another figure like a phantom met her.

Luna stepped gracefully like a dancer, lightly crossing the rain curtain. The blade at her fingertips instantly severed the woman's sword momentum, then the knife aimed straight for her throat. The woman in black was forced to land and retreat several steps. Just as she was about to regroup, twelve Brass Knights charged out of the rain curtain and, without any chivalry, swarmed her in a beatdown...

The woman in black retreated again and again, her expression somewhat dazed. In that moment of disorientation, a gleaming sword pierced her chest from behind.

Even Luna and the Brass Knights were stunned.

The woman in black convulsed and collapsed weakly. Another woman, identical in appearance and attire, stood behind her, slowly withdrawing her sword. She wiped it expressionlessly on her sleeve and murmured softly—

"The thirty-seventh..."

The Brass Knights' figures dissipated in the wind and rain. Luna immediately returned to Yu Sheng's side, warily watching the woman standing not far away, sword in hand.

Meanwhile, the woman in black who had just been "killed" gradually turned into a writhing shadow in the rain, then melted and flowed away, washed clean by the downpour.

Yu Sheng seemed to realize something. He signaled Luna to step back, then fixed his gaze on the sword-wielding woman and tested, "...Are you 'Lord Mo Ran,' the one Xuanche mentioned?"

Mo Ran lifted her head and squinted through the rain as she carefully examined this group of... eccentrically dressed strangers.

A nine-tailed silver fox (the size of two cars), a "nun" dressed like a Star Attendant, a male human who looked ordinary but whose depths she couldn't discern, and a very small but cocky-looking doll.

Distinctive features.

"I am," she nodded, then raised her hand to point toward the huge pillars. "There's someone else over here. Should be your friend."

Yu Sheng paused, then turned his head to see a familiar figure peeking out from behind a pillar, waving nervously at him: "Brother Yu! Hey, you guys finally showed up..."

"Nephew!" Ailin exclaimed in surprise. "How are you here?!"

"Ah, well..." Zheng Zhi's mouth twitched. "It's a long story..."

As he spoke, Mo Ran walked over. Her gaze swept between Yu Sheng's group and Zheng Zhi, and she nodded slightly. "So he really is your friend. He described your appearances—pretty accurately."

Yu Sheng blinked and pointed at Zheng Zhi. "What happened with him...?"

"He was wandering around the city, attracted a bunch of those wandering 'shadows' chasing him, and ran over here in a panic," Mo Ran said, her tone tinged with three parts emotion, seven parts confusion, and ninety parts fatigue of 'when will this ever end'. "Don't ask the details. I was trapped on this 'mountain,' originally unable to help. I have no idea how he managed to run all the way here with zero combat power... All I saw was him somehow running straight up the mountain from the foot, then dodging the killing strikes of my 'heart demons' near the summit. Only then did I have a chance to pull him into the formation."

Listening to Mo Ran's account, Yu Sheng and the others couldn't help but stare at Zheng Zhi. He just awkwardly scratched his hair and looked at Yu Sheng innocently: "I don't know what happened either. I was just in my hotel room a while ago. Then I looked out the window and saw a refining tower on the edge of the city suddenly covered in crystals. Before I could even process it, I was already trapped in the city..."

Before the nephew finished speaking, Yu Sheng's eyes went wide. "Wait! You said you saw a refining tower on the edge of the city suddenly covered in crystals?!"

Zheng Zhi: "Yeah, right. Grayish-white, like branches. Seemed like it was all over the city too—but I didn't get a clear look before the surroundings completely went haywire. Even True Person Yuanhao disappeared."

Yu Sheng and Ailin exchanged glances, both seeing at least two hundred words of exclamation in each other's eyes.

"So you really are the 'penetration point'!" Yu Sheng turned to Zheng Zhi, feeling the absurdity of it but then thinking it made some sense, and couldn't help but sigh, "You... sure are lucky to be alive."

"I think luck alone doesn't quite explain it anymore... There's got to be some psychic influence," Ailin said, blinking as she sized up the nephew from head to toe, clicking her tongue in wonder. "He saw through the cognitive barrier created by the 'Derived Star Entity,' even if only for an instant—but it punched a solid hole in the barrier. Then he got thrown into this 'nightmare border' and survived till now..."

She paused, her small face scrunching up. "No, forget the wandering 'shadows' for now—we haven't provoked them either, so I don't know why they chased you. How did you manage to dodge those 'heart demons' Mo Ran mentioned? Even C-clasp fought back and forth with those things..."

Zheng Zhi spread his hands. "I dunno. They chased me, I dodged, and they stopped. You know my combat power—I haven't even been confirmed yet..."

Yu Sheng listened, dumbfounded. In the end, he could only sigh inwardly—this guy's few days as an intern already rivaled the lifetime experiences of many legendary investigators. He dared not imagine what would happen once he was confirmed...

Meanwhile, Mo Ran silently listened to Yu Sheng and the others talk, picking up words like "penetration point," "Derived Star Entity," "cognitive barrier," and the like. She furrowed her brow and broke the silence: "So you know something about this. Can you tell me what happened to Mo City? How did it become like this in just a daze?"

Yu Sheng fixed his gaze on Mo Ran for a few seconds, then, after a moment's deliberation, slowly spoke: "It's not just Mo City—it's the entire Shuji. This planet of yours has been controlled by a dark angel called the 'Derived Star Entity.'"

(End of chapter)