Chapter 474: A Fleeting Glimpse Through the Rift

The mirror remained quiet, and by the middle of the night, nothing strange had emerged from it.

After Hu Li went back to her room to sleep, Yu Sheng sat in front of the mirror, clutching the Omen Banner fragment, staring at the wall opposite like a weirdo waiting for a midnight horror story. In the end, he even fell asleep still sitting in the chair, having a bunch of jumbled, forgettable dreams. In the dream, he saw Eileen wandering around—finally, the little doll asked him in the dream why he wasn't going to his room to sleep. He suddenly woke up, helplessly, and went back to his room.

After that, he slept straight through until the sun was high in the sky.

Today, Eileen still wanted to go into town, but Yu Sheng had other plans. After some discussion, Yu Sheng decided to let Hu Li take the little doll down the mountain to play.

But he was still a bit worried—after all, Hu Li rarely went out by herself, and Eileen was a troublesome rascal. Letting the two of them go down the mountain together was bound to be risky no matter how you thought about it...

So after thinking it over, he decided to send Luna along as well—although the Saintess was quiet and slow to react in the real world, she was at least steady and honest. With her keeping an eye on the two live wires, the fox and the doll, it shouldn't come to any serious incidents requiring him to bail them out from the public security department.

"Eileen, after you go down, don't go around tying people up with your thread, don't curse at people randomly, don't use the Omen Wanderer to smash someone's windows... Hu Li, remember to pay when you eat, don't go fishing in the park pond, the immortal birds flying above the city walls mostly have owners, so you can't catch them to eat either... Luna, you keep an eye on these two. If anything happens, contact me directly."

Yu Sheng stood at the door, nagging and instructing like an old father seeing his troublesome kid leave home for the first time. Eileen, nestled in Hu Li's arms, rolled her eyes. "Alright, alright, alright, we're not children. And what kind of image do you have of me? I am the dignified Alice Doll—would I do something like smashing glass?"

Luna, standing nearby, nodded. "Mm, right."

Sometimes Yu Sheng really couldn't tell what this Saintess meant by her "Mm, right," and with her strange delay, he couldn't even be sure who she was agreeing with.

...Wait, come to think of it, is she really steady and honest?

Yu Sheng suddenly had this doubt, and his mind involuntarily recalled Luna's chattering and lively state in the Soul Wilderness. But just as he was about to say something more, the fox girl before him quickly turned, did a somersault, and with a "bang" turned into a huge nine-tailed fox. Then, carrying Eileen and Luna, she shot up into the sea of clouds in a streak of white light...

Like a Samoyed that had slipped its leash.

Watching the nine-tailed fox's fiery streak through the sea of clouds, Yu Sheng helplessly smiled and shook his head. Then, after a moment's thought, he pulled out his phone and sent a message to True Person Yuan Hao.

In just a moment after sending the message, he saw a streak of light rise from the direction of Queyun Palace. In the blink of an eye, the streak landed on Guan Yun Terrace, transforming into a dashing old man with snow-white hair and beard, robes fluttering.

Yu Sheng stepped forward to greet him, but halfway there, he noticed that True Person Yuan Hao's usual carefree and unrestrained expression was actually frowning with worry today. He was taken aback. "What's wrong with you?"

The old handsome guy somehow produced a fan, waved it, then slapped it into his palm, heartbroken. "My three-hundred-year Spirit Frost Brew!"

Yu Sheng: "...?"

Fortunately, True Person Yuan Hao's Dao heart was quite stable. After lamenting for a while, he recovered and told Yu Sheng about his miserable experience after returning yesterday.

Basically, his two junior brothers had found his wine stash while he was down the mountain setting up his stall, and they had only gone for the most precious ones, drinking twelve jars of his wine in half a day...

"Those two have no respect for their elders!" Yuan Hao sighed. "I was so afraid they would find it that I dug a wine cellar under the Patriarch Hall. Who would have thought they would not fear the Patriarch's majesty at all and forced open the cellar lid behind the Patriarch statue..."

Yu Sheng listened, sweating layer by layer. He dared not say much or ask much, just inwardly marveling that these three senior and junior brothers were all so formidable. Their cultivation had reached a certain level—to say nothing else, their thoughts were truly unobstructed. In comparison, Xuan Che's cultivation was clearly lacking—he would make a big fuss about spinning around on a beam...

Of course, don't ask about the specifics of how that spinning started.

While he was lost in these random thoughts, Yuan Hao quickly adjusted his state. The old handsome guy took a deep breath, set aside his three-hundred-year Spirit Frost Brew for the moment, and composed his expression. "Ahem, let's put aside personal matters for now. First, take me to see that 'room.'"

Yu Sheng snapped out of his thoughts and turned to head for the door. "Alright, follow me."

A few minutes later, True Person Yuan Hao, led by Yu Sheng, arrived at the end of the second-floor corridor at 66 Wutong Road, standing in front of the eerie empty room.

This was precisely his main purpose for coming today—to see for himself from what kind of place the 'Omen Banner fragment' in Yu Sheng's hand had 'entered' the real world.

The door opened, and the empty room at the end of the corridor looked the same as before.

Sunlight filtered through the somewhat old and thin curtains, casting patches of light and shadow alternatingly across the room. The slightly faded wallpaper bore simple patterns. A lone mirror hung on the opposite wall, reflecting the figures of Yu Sheng and Yuan Hao.

"The 'focal point' of the rift should be this mirror. It occasionally reflects the scenery of the 'other side,' but the timing and duration are irregular," Yu Sheng explained the room's properties while pointing at the mirror. "Besides that, the entire wall where the mirror hangs should be part of the rift. When something abnormal appears in the mirror, the whole wall becomes 'thin,' and then material from the other side flies over—like wind and snow, metal parts, and the Omen Banner fragment."

Yuan Hao nodded as he listened, his attention always on the mirror. After studying it for a while, he casually reached into his sleeve and pulled out... a stack of talisman paper.

Yu Sheng watched him in amazement.

The old handsome guy was startled by Yu Sheng's expression. "Why that look?"

"This is the first time I've seen you pull out something other than a brick from your sleeve."

"I do use other techniques," Yuan Hao said, a bit embarrassed. "For something as delicate as investigating subtle details, I can't just use the Heaven-Overturning Seal to smash your precious mirror, can I?"

Yu Sheng thought to himself that he had indeed expected the other to do just that and had even mentally prepared himself...

And as they spoke, True Person Yuan Hao casually scattered the stack of talisman paper. Each piece, inscribed with mysterious patterns, transformed into countless ethereal phantoms the moment they left his hand. Then, those phantoms connected end to end, the paper vanishing into thin air, leaving only faintly glowing golden runes that formed flowing curtains in the air. Without Yuan Hao performing any hand gestures, incantations, or incense rituals, the runic curtains completed countless dazzling combinations and changes, then slowly draped over the wall on either side of the mirror.

Faint golden runes emitted tiny sparks around their edges, gradually adhering to the wall like brand marks.

"I prepared these talismans over a hundred years," Yuan Hao said, letting out a light sigh as he watched the scene, a hint of emotion in his expression. "After leaving that 'Black Star,' I recorded all the 'traces' related to spacetime that could be deduced from the immortal vessel and refined them into these 'waypoints,' hoping to capture the Black Star's trail when it appeared again. I never expected the Black Star to never reappear, but even more unexpected, these talismans have found use here with you."

"... 'Waypoints'? Are you saying these things can open a passage to that eerie space inside the Black Star?"

Yuan Hao shook his head and answered frankly, "I don't know."

"Uh... you don't know?"

"I'm not a 'door-opening expert' like you. How would I know if these things can open the rift here?" Yuan Hao spread his hands. "These are just recorded coordinates, and many of them were estimated through deduction after the fact. I'm just 'imprinting' them here as an experiment to see if they can stimulate the unstable spacetime structure here. Maybe it will make the existing rift open on its own... If it doesn't work, I'm out of options."

Yu Sheng looked speechlessly at the old handsome guy's candor, then stepped forward, intending to use his own 'opening' ability to sense the curtain of countless runes, hoping to see if he could directly use these 'waypoints' to open a door to the distance, just like when he had intervened in the jump process of the Order Pillar.

But just as he was about to raise his hand, an intense sensation of cold and resistance, as if piercing his bone marrow, penetrating his soul, and running through his mind, forcibly stopped him.

He froze for a moment in this indescribable discomfort, his fingers only a few centimeters from the mirror.

Then, the room's reflection in the mirror vanished in an instant. A thick, nearly pitch-black sludge-like dark mist spread from the edges of the mirror frame and covered the entire mirror in the blink of an eye.

The mirror surface undulated and writhed before him. Viscous, eerie ripples spread through the dark mist, and then quickly spread beyond the mirror frame, even covering the entire wall. The faint golden runes had dissipated at some point, leaving only a whole wall of black 'sludge' that swelled and shrank before him, like an abyss tempting one to fall into it.

Yu Sheng was dazed for a moment but did not withdraw his hand.

Because that bone-chilling, piercing cold... was very familiar.

And at that moment, the mirror's surface suddenly 'bulged' outward. Though it only swelled a few centimeters, it was enough to close the gap between Yu Sheng's finger and the mirror.

He touched that dark mist.

In an instant, endless darkness assailed him, bone-piercing cold converging from all directions. His vision blurred, and he had already fallen into the boundless dark.

An enormous flood of information surged from the end of the darkness, directly outlining vast and boundless images in Yu Sheng's mind. One by one, phantasms—or perhaps not phantasms—revealed their obscure and terrifying silhouettes in the darkness.

A giant eye covering the sky, enormous trees and forests hanging upside down from the heavens, a strikingly beautiful woman sitting lazily on a throne, a living planet covered in hexagonal crystal lattices, a silver ring radiating holy soft light, a light purple mist drifting among the stars...

Gloomy angels arrayed on the far shore, encircling the mortal world amidst destruction.

(End of chapter)