CHAPTER 474: CHAPTER 474: A GLIMPSE AMID THE RIFT

The mirror remained quiet, and nothing strange emerged even in the latter half of the night.

After Hu Li returned to her room to sleep, Yu Sheng stayed seated in front of the mirror, holding the Omen Banner Fragment, staring at the opposite wall like someone eagerly awaiting a midnight ghost story. Eventually, he fell into a light sleep while still sitting there. He dreamed a lot of chaotic dreams with no clear details except seeing Erin wandering around. In the dream, the little puppet asked him why he wasn’t sleeping in his room, which startled him awake, and he had no choice but to head back to his room.

After that, he slept soundly until late morning.

Today Erin wanted to visit the city, but Yu Sheng had other plans. After some discussion, Yu Sheng decided to let Hu Li take the little puppet down the mountain to have some fun.

However, he was somewhat worried—after all, Hu Li seldom went out by herself, and Erin was quite a handful, mischievous as she was. It didn’t seem too safe to let them team up and go down the mountain...

So after much thought, he decided to send Luna along as well—despite the Holy Lady being quiet and slow in the real world, at least she was stable and honest. With her watching over the fox and the puppet troublemakers, hopefully, no incidents would occur that required him to visit the police department.

"Erin, don’t just tie people up with strings or insult them randomly after you go down the mountain, and don’t smash people’s windows with an Omen Wandering Star... Hu Li, remember to pay for your food, don’t fish in the park ponds, and most Immortal Birds flying over the city are claimed, so you can’t catch them... Luna, keep an eye on the two and contact me directly if anything comes up..."

Yu Sheng stood by the door, nagging like a father sending his naughty children away for the first time. Erin, nestled in Hu Li’s arms, rolled her eyes as she listened: "Alright, alright, alright, we’re not kids anymore. Besides, how do I look in your mind, that I would smash windows? I’m the dignified Alice Puppet..."

Next to her, Luna nodded: "Hmm, right."

Sometimes, Yu Sheng found it hard to judge what exactly Luna’s "Hmm, right" meant, and with her odd delays, he couldn’t be sure whom she was supporting.

...Wait, was her personality really stable and honest?

Yu Sheng suddenly questioned this, recalling how Luna had been in the Soul Wilderness, noisy and chaotic. Just as he was about to say something, the fox girl before him swiftly turned around and rolled, "Boom," transforming into a huge Nine-Tailed Demon Fox. Carrying off Erin and Luna in a streak of white light, she charged straight into the Cloud Sea...

Like a Samoyed unleashed.

Watching the fiery trail left by the Nine-Tailed Fox in the Cloud Sea, Yu Sheng shook his head with a wry smile. After a brief contemplation, he took out his phone and sent a message to Master Yuan Hao.

The message had barely been sent when he saw a stream of light rising from the direction of Queyun Palace. In the blink of an eye, the light landed on the Cloud Viewing Platform and transformed into an old, distinguished gentleman with snow-like hair, wearing flowing long robes.

Yu Sheng stepped forward to greet him, only to find that Master Yuan Hao, usually carefree and unrestrained, was looking anxious today. He was stunned: "What’s wrong with you?"

The old gentleman fiddled with a fan he’d pulled from somewhere, snapped it shut, and smacked it on his hand in distress: "My three-hundred-year-old Spirit Frost Brew!!!"

Yu Sheng: "...?"

Fortunately, Master Yuan Hao’s mind was still quite stable. After a moment of lamentation, he recovered and recounted his tragic experience after returning home yesterday.

Basically, his two junior brothers had found his stash of wine while he went down the mountain to run a stall. They went for the most precious jars and drank twelve of them in half a day...

"Those two who have no respect for their elders!" Yuan Hao sighed, "I feared they might find it and specifically dug a wine cellar under the Ancestor Hall, yet they weren’t at all intimidated by the Ancestor’s majesty. They forcefully pried open the cellar hatch behind the Ancestor’s statue..."

Yu Sheng listened, his cold sweat layering, not daring to say or ask much. He marveled at how bold and spirited these senior brothers were. They had cultivated immortality to a certain realm—this perseverance was real. Compared to them, Xuan Che’s cultivation was far inferior. In contrast, Xuan Che would be in agony trying to circle the roof beam...

Better not to ask how he managed to do that, specifically.

While his thoughts wandered, Yuan Hao quickly adjusted himself, the old gentleman taking a deep breath and setting aside the matter of his Spirit Frost Brew. He straightened up his expression: "Ahem, let’s not discuss personal matters now. First, take me to see that ’room’."

Yu Sheng quickly gathered his thoughts upon hearing this and turned towards the door: "Alright, follow me."

A few minutes later, Master Yuan Hao, led by Yu Sheng, arrived at the end of the hallway on the second floor of Wutong Road 66 and stood in front of the mysterious empty room.

This was his main purpose for coming today—to see firsthand from where exactly 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 hallway remained as it had been before.

Sunlight filtered through the slightly old and thin curtains, casting spots of alternating light and shadow in the room. The slightly faded wallpaper bore simple floral patterns, and a solitary mirror hung on the opposite wall, reflecting the figures of Yu Sheng and Yuan Hao.

"The ’focus’ of the rift should be this mirror. Occasionally, it reflects the scenery of ’the other side,’ but the timing of its occurrence and duration is irregular," Yu Sheng explained the room’s characteristics to Yuan Hao, pointing at the mirror. "Besides, the entire wall where the mirror is hung should be part of the rift. When anomalies appear in the mirror, the whole wall becomes ’weak,’ and then substances from the other side fly over here, such as wind and snow, metal parts—and fragments of the Omen Banner."

Yuan Hao listened while nodding his head, and his attention remained fixed on that mirror. After studying it for a while, he casually reached into his sleeve, pulling out... a stack of talisman papers.

Yu Sheng looked at him in surprise.

The old handsome was taken aback by Yu Sheng’s gaze: "Why such a look?"

"It’s the first time I’ve seen you pull anything other than bricks from your sleeve."

"I can use other magic too," Yuan Hao was slightly embarrassed, "in such detailed inspections, I can’t smash your treasure mirror with the Heaven-Flipping Seal, can I?"

Yu Sheng thought that he originally believed Yuan Hao might do just that and had mentally prepared himself for it...

And while they were speaking, Master Yuan Hao had already scattered the stack of talisman papers. The papers, depicting mysterious patterns, transformed into countless void illusions in an instant. These illusions connected end to end, and the papers vanished into thin air, leaving only runes emitting faint golden light forming veil-like streams in the air. Yuan Hao neither performed any complicated mantra nor burned incense in ritual prayer, yet the rune veils completed countless dazzling transformations before slowly covering the walls flanking the mirror.

The runes emitting faint golden light around it shot out many tiny sparks, like branding irons, slowly integrating with the wall.

"I’ve been preparing these talismans for a hundred years," Yuan Hao looked at the scene with a touch of emotion, "After leaving that ’Black Star,’ I recorded all traces related to time and space that could be deduced from the Immortal Boat and refined them into these ’Dao Marks,’ hoping to capture the Black Star the next time it appears. I never expected it not to appear again, but even more unexpected was that these talismans found a use here with you."

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

Yuan Hao shook his head truthfully: "I don’t know."

"Uh... you don’t know?"

"I’m not an ’expert’ like you. How should I know if these things can open the rift here," Yuan Hao spread his hands, "these are merely recorded coordinates, and quite a few were deduced estimations made afterward. It’s merely a trial to imprint them here to see if they can stimulate this unstable time-space structure, perhaps prompting the rift to open itself... if ineffective, I’m at a loss."

Yu Sheng was a bit speechless seeing how candidly the old handsome spoke. Then he stepped forward, ready to use his "door-opening" ability to perceive the veil composed of numerous runes, hoping to open a gateway to a distant place by borrowing these "Dao Marks," similar to how he once intervened in the Order Pillar’s transition process.

But just as he lifted his hand, an intense, almost marrow-piercing, soul-penetrating, mind-piercing cold and resistant feeling forcibly halted him.

In this indescribable discomfort, he paused slightly, his fingers just a few centimeters from the mirror.

Soon after, the reflected scene in the mirror dissipated in an instant, and a black mist as thick as pitch-dark sludge spread from the mirror’s edge, covering the entire surface in the blink of an eye.

The mirror surface undulated before his eyes, rippling with sticky and strange vibrations. These ripples quickly extended beyond the mirror frame, even spreading across the entire wall. The faint golden runes had unknowingly vanished, leaving only a whole wall of pitch-black "sludge" swelling before him—a dark abyss enticing him to fall within.

Yu Sheng was momentarily bewildered but did not pull his hand back.

Because that bone-chilling aura... was very familiar.

And just then, the mirror surface suddenly "rose." Though it swelled only a few centimeters, it was enough to bridge the gap between Yu Sheng’s fingers and the mirror surface.

He touched the black mist.

Endless darkness engulfed him in an instant—a biting frigidity converging from all directions. With a blurred vision, Yu Sheng fell into the abyss of blackness.

A mighty flood of information erupted from the depths of the darkness, directly sketching vast and boundless images in Yu Sheng’s mind. One illusion after another—or perhaps not illusions—cast their obscure and fearsome silhouettes in the dark.

A giant eye covering the sky, a towering suspended tree and jungle, a graceful beauty languidly seated upon a throne, a living planet with its surface filled with hexagonal grids, a silver ring emitting a holy soft glow, a pale purple mist wandering among the stars...

The Dark Angel surveyed the other shore, encircling the mortal world amid destruction.