CHAPTER 468: CHAPTER 468: BEYOND THE BOUNDARY

The vast ruins, shrouded in endless dark chaos and black mist, resembled large collapsed temple structures, with standing stone pillars and connecting beams, arches, and the colossal shadows in the ruins—bearing partial human outlines, yet clearly not human...

Listening to the images Master Yuan Hao described, Yu Sheng’s mind sketched them briefly and instantly recalled a scene he had once witnessed!

At the end of the corridor in the room at No. 66 Wutong Road, deep within the scene reflected in that mirror, he had seen such a sight!

—And in that scene, there should be more than just these things.

"What else? What else did you see there?" Yu Sheng did not conceal his interest and promptly whispered an urgent follow-up, "Was there a puppet beside that ’shadow’? Golden-haired, wearing a black dress, with open eyes..."

As he spoke, he glanced toward Erin’s direction—only to find the carefree little puppet still huddling with Hu Li and Luna, the three of them engrossed in examining those little magical trinkets on display, oblivious to the happenings over here.

"How do you know?" Yuan Hao looked surprised, "Did you visit that place too?"

"I haven’t been there, but I’ve seen it," Yu Sheng pondered briefly and spoke openly, "There’s a room on the second floor of No. 66 Wutong Road that is quite peculiar, seeming to lead to other dimensions..."

He then gave a rough description of the peculiar room at No. 66 Wutong Road to Master Yuan Hao, who after listening, wore a bewildered and confused expression, shook his fan, and asked, "...What principle is at play here?"

Just as he finished speaking, he immediately added, "Could I have a chance to see it for myself later?"

"No problem with that—besides, I’ve taken Xuan Che to have a look before, but he couldn’t make much sense of it, only roughly deducing it as a spacetime convergence point," Yu Sheng said casually, "But for now, tell me about your experience—what happened after that? After witnessing those ruins and shadows?"

"My Immortal Boat headed straight into the humanoid outline of that shadow..."

Noticing Yu Sheng’s brief expression of surprise, Master Yuan Hao spread his hands helplessly, "I told you my Immortal Boat was out of control..."

"Uh, I know, I know," Yu Sheng quickly gestured with his hands, "And then? Did you crash right into that shadow?! Nothing happened?"

"The ensuing situation... was quite bizarre," Yuan Hao’s expression suddenly turned peculiar, seemingly struggling to articulate the scene from his memory, "The shadow and the ruins beneath it seemed like nothing more than a void illusion, offering no resistance upon collision. But an instant later, I felt myself... as though my Primordial Spirit had disembodied, losing my physical form, and then even the Immortal Boat vanished.

"I felt like a lone soul, severed from the heavens and earth, drifting aimlessly through the uncharted chaos, unknowingly colliding with a ’mirror’—Mr. Yu, have you ever experienced traversing a mirror?"

Yu Sheng: "Where would I have that experience?"

"Alright, I suppose it’s quite rare," Yuan Hao sighed, "Anyway, that sensation was marvelous, like tumbling into the ’reverse’ of the world. I had only one ’perspective,’ able to do nothing but watch the chaos invert, and then things began to emerge from the ’other side’ of the mirror—some like ruined cities, mountains, or fleets frozen on the sea...

"I drifted through those illusory scenes, aimlessly wandering, at times feeling I’d drifted for centuries in that chaos, til my spirit waned and my primordial essence weakened to the point of forgetting my origin...

"But suddenly, I was stopped by a ’person’.

Yu Sheng startled upon hearing this, "...What!? A person?"

"I’m not sure. At that time, I only retained a trace of my mind, barely remembering if I had ever been human, only recalling something blocking my way, and my last ’cognition’ told me, that was considered a ’person’," Yuan Hao remarked seriously, "That ’person’ held a banner—a large, tattered flag.

"I remember ’they’ said something to me, but I could not hear or understand, then they tore a piece of cloth from that banner. In that moment, I felt that piece nearly masked the heavens and veiled countless illusions around, and the next moment, that ’person’ waved a hand, enveloping me in layers of that torn cloth piece. Upon contact with the cloth, I understood the few words that ’person’ said to me:

"They stated their name was Kongdaman, an envoy. They also said the banner was called the ’Omen Banner’."

Yu Sheng subtly inhaled, "Omen Banner... the ’omen’ of the Omen Wandering Star?!"

"Yes, precisely that term," Master Yuan Hao slowly nodded.

"After that, did you ever find the Omen Wandering Star to enquire..."

"I asked, but got nothing," Yuan Hao sighed, "That Omen Wandering Star is so stubborn, it insists that it knows nothing about the ’Banner’, nor does it know who ’Kongdaman’ is—I even submerged it in the Earth Veins of the Taixu Spirit Hub for seven days and nights, still it wouldn’t open its mouth."

Yu Sheng: "..."

He briefly imagined what the Earth Veins of the Taixu Spirit Hub could mean to the Omen Wandering Star, immediately coughed dryly twice: "Well, perhaps it really doesn’t know."

"Hmm, thinking back afterward, I also believe so," Master Yuan Hao nodded slightly, "Thus, the clue broke off. However, I’ve traveled extensively, and experiences of this strange and bizarre nature suddenly ending with no clue are not few, I’m used to it."

Yu Sheng found himself at a loss for how to evaluate the old handsome man’s free-spirited adventure attitude and could only tug at the corners of his mouth with a mixed expression: "Alright, and then? After understanding the other party’s words—"

Master Yuan Hao’s face showed a look of recollection: "After that, I suddenly woke up on the Immortal Boat, and everything before seemed like an illusory bubble; even the malfunction of the Immortal Boat left no record on the Spiritual Disc, and that ’Black Star’ has since disappeared without a trace. The only thing left was a strip of fabric that appeared in my hand out of nowhere—it’s a piece that the self-proclaimed ’Envoy’ Kongdaman tore off from the ’Omen Banner’."

Yu Sheng stared, wide-eyed: "...That’s it?"

"That’s it," Yuan Hao said seriously, "Or rather, that’s all I can remember—perhaps I experienced something else after being wrapped in that ’fabric’, but I have neither memory nor evidence."

Yu Sheng pinched his chin, furrowing his brow.

Opposite, Yuan Hao, after a brief contemplation, suddenly spoke again: "There’s one more detail."

Yu Sheng became spirited immediately.

"After returning to ’reality’, I carefully checked the records in the Star Disc," Master Yuan Hao said with a serious face, "The Artifact Spirit did not record the previous malfunction of the Immortal Boat or the circumstances passing through the ’Black Star’, but in the Star Disc, the ’time’ in the navigation log skipped forward by 17 minutes—the 17 minutes vanished out of thin air from the Star Disc, with no environmental parameters recorded and no record of the state of the Immortal Boat itself.

"At that time, I felt something was off, so after docking the Immortal Boat at a Star Port, I immediately set up a platform and consulted the omens, carefully inspecting the entire Immortal Boat multiple times, only to find it wasn’t just the Star Disc ’records’ that skipped 17 minutes, but... the entire Immortal Boat, including myself."

Listening to the other’s account, Yu Sheng vaguely understood something but still frowned slightly: "You mean..."

"At least in those 17 minutes, both I and my Immortal Boat completely disappeared from this world," Master Yuan Hao shook his fan leisurely and said, "To the external world, it seemed merely a momentary disappearance, but the result of consulting the omens was that the Immortal Boat gained an additional 17 minutes of ’blank’ voyage wear and tear, and I lost a slight amount of ’life essence’ out of thin air."

Yu Sheng felt his heart pounding, countless conjectures rising in his mind, he didn’t expect Master Yuan Hao’s experiences to be so bizarre, and behind this bizarre experience... the information contained was astonishing!

What does those lost 17 minutes mean? What did Master Yuan Hao see and where did he go during the passage through the ’Black Star’? What on earth is that eerie ’Black Star’?

How is all this related to ’Erin’?

Yu Sheng contemplated with a frown, suddenly recalling something else.

In the room on the second floor of No. 66 Wutong Road, the reflection in the mirror not only showed the ruins amidst that black mist—in recent times, especially when that ’piece of fabric’ appeared and thereafter, what the mirror reflected was a snow-covered cave, with heavy snow falling outside the cave.

... Could that snow-covered mountain and cave be part of the illusions Master Yuan Hao saw after passing through the ’mirror’?

"I can’t be sure either," after hearing Yu Sheng’s description, Master Yuan Hao thought it over carefully for a long time before slowly shaking his head, "At the time, my Primordial Spirit was extremely weak, and everything around me seemed to be veiled in a real-and-illusion fabric screen, making it truly difficult to discern those details, but I indeed saw something like a ’mountain’, and perhaps the ’cave’ you mentioned is indeed somewhere on that mountain."

Hearing the reply, Yu Sheng was thoughtful, and for a moment, he did not speak again.

After a while, he suddenly heard a faint sound of wind behind him, and then a small body smashed into his back and quickly climbed onto his shoulder.

A lively and happy voice reached his ears: "What are you guys chatting about?"

Yu Sheng looked up to see Erin beaming with a sunny smile, her puppet-like hair, body, and arms adorned with an array of strange and curious little trinkets, making her look like a flamboyant peacock, while in her hand she clutched a sachet almost half the size of her face, swinging it happily in mid-air.

The Omen Wandering Star hovered beside her head, spinning leisurely, round after round.