Chapter 351

Chapter 351: Between Two Worlds

After Yu Sheng spoke, Luna seemed to understand at once. She accepted the situation with unsettling speed, as if she’d been waiting for someone to put a name to it.

Watching her reaction, Yu Sheng’s suspicion hardened into certainty. Something fundamental had changed in this “artificial saintess” after her resurrection.

“I saw the fight just now,” he said to the knight girl. “I mean your battle on the other side.”

As he spoke, he recalled what he’d glimpsed through the blood-link while those black-robed cultivators attacked.

When Luna fought, she didn’t fight on one battlefield.

In the living, material world, her enemies faced a ghostlike “artificial saintess.” But in the other world—the one that belonged to souls—Luna and her bronze knight squad struck at their spirits at the same time. The result was both strange and lethal.

No one could easily adapt to an attack like that. Ordinary people would never even imagine they could be hit in two worlds at once. Even powerful cultivators, whose souls and wills were far tougher than most, still struggled to react. Their senses tore in different directions. They couldn’t tell where they were, or which “them” was under threat, until either body or soul had already fallen.

And Luna’s ability hadn’t appeared overnight.

Long ago, when Yu Sheng first saw her by the bonfire in the nameless wilderness, she’d already been “over there.” Now it seemed she had never truly left that wilderness—not even while her “artificial saintess” body moved through the living world.

No one noticed, because Luna never said a word.

“I always felt like I was in two worlds,” Luna said slowly, fingers tightening around the holy sword. “One is dim but peaceful. Endless wilderness. Wind in tall grass I don’t recognize. A river-like flood of souls reflected in the sky. The other is bright and noisy, with new friends. You’re there, and Foxy, and that loud little shorty—”

“Careful with that last part,” Yu Sheng warned. “If Irene hears you, she’ll curse you out. You two fight eight hundred times a day.”

Luna laughed instead. Mischief lit her eyes—sudden, warm, and painfully human. “The little shorty is fun. Poke her and she bounces.”

Yu Sheng’s expression went faintly complicated. Studying her, he realized something. “So you provoke her on purpose.”

“Yeah,” Luna said, nodding. “She always bullies me for being slow.”

Yu Sheng glanced back toward the two Irenes standing not far away.

Both little dolls were frozen in the black-white-gray background, caught in the exact posture they’d held when the dead world descended. They stared blankly, like idiots carved out of ash.

Yu Sheng turned back to Luna, who was wearing a smug smile, and for a moment it all felt unreal.

He was used to her slow, occasionally crashing artificial body. Now her speech was quick, her expressions vivid, her movements smooth. It was hard to adjust.

“So you’ve been full of drama this whole time,” Yu Sheng said. Then he studied her more carefully, muttering as if to himself, “…What’s the principle here?”

“I don’t know,” Luna said, shaking her head. “When I woke from the holy coffin, the world was already like this.”

“Have those knights always been with you?”

“Yes. In that wilderness, I stayed with them. I protected the bonfire you left behind.”

“And the flood of souls you mentioned… what is that?” Yu Sheng asked after a moment, genuine curiosity cutting through his urgency. “Also in that wilderness?”

Luna looked at him as if the answer were obvious. “Yeah.”

Yu Sheng frowned.

He realized the world he saw and the world Luna saw were not the same.

Even if they stood in the same wilderness. Even if Luna had stepped into deadman’s vista with him now.

It didn’t even feel new. Over time, he’d come to believe this “difference in vision” was a rule of reality itself, as if the world simply refused to show the same face to everyone.

“…Yu Sheng?” Luna’s voice softened when he fell quiet. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Yu Sheng said, waving it away. The world was full of secrets, and strange things gathered around him like moths. But he didn’t have time to unravel this one.

His attention returned to the dead.

He walked to a black-robed corpse and nudged it with his foot. “Wake up. We’ve been talking next to you this long. You still don’t want to open your eyes?”

At first, the body didn’t move.

Yu Sheng waited. Not every dead person cooperated. Even the angel cultists had resisted him after death. But resistance always wore down.

A moment later, the cold shell twitched.

The dead man sat up with stiff, puppet-like motion. Beneath the mask, his eyes were full of confusion and shock.

He didn’t understand what was happening—until the knowledge of death flooded in, a tide washing over whatever scraps of mind still clung to the corpse.

A hoarse sound crawled out from behind the mask, half curse, half unconscious mumbling.

“Answer a few questions, and eternal peace will be yours,” Yu Sheng said, voice low, guiding the dead man’s muddled thoughts into focus. “Who are you? What do you want here?”

The black-robed man slowly raised his head. His eyes looked soaked in sludge, dull and heavy. He was still resisting. Something rasped in his throat. After several attempts, Yu Sheng finally caught a few broken words.

“…the Emperor Lord’s remnant… awakening… seeking opportunity…”

“The Emperor Lord’s remnant?” Yu Sheng seized on it. “What does that mean?”

The dead man rasped again, as if certain words had been carved into taboo. Even in death, the information felt sealed somewhere deep in what remained of his reason, impossible to speak cleanly.

Yu Sheng tried another angle. “This otherworld… it hides an inheritance. You came for that inheritance?”

The corpse trembled. It nodded with difficulty—then shook its head again, as if trapped between truth and compulsion.

“If he awakens… all under heaven will be destroyed…”

After that, the voice blurred into hoarse noise again. Yu Sheng pressed for more, but only caught fragments—delirious muttering and broken warnings.

A cultivator’s mind was stubborn. Even dead, this one fought the pull of conversation. That resistance burned away whatever remained of his soul. Hairline cracks began to spread across the corpse, as if it were coming apart from the inside.

Yu Sheng asked one last question, sharp and direct. “How did you get in? The entrance was sealed.”

The corpse shuddered violently. The shell split with horrifying fractures, dust and smoke spilling out. As it crumbled into ash, a final whisper slipped out from beneath the mask—thin, blurred, but unmistakable.

“…the Emperor Lord’s dream… more than one place…”

In the next heartbeat, the black-white-gray world shattered. The conversation ended.

Color rushed back. Wind returned. Sound returned. The golden-haired knight girl vanished from Yu Sheng’s sight. Not far away, the tall artificial saintess slowly turned and gave a small wave.

On her pale metal face, the smile looked almost warm.

Irene was the first to come sprinting over, grabbing Yu Sheng’s clothes and hauling herself up. “Hey, hey, hey—Yu Sheng! What’d you get out of him? Did the dead guy spill? There are more bodies here. Ask them too! The ones C Buckle killed look rough, though, not sure they’ll still work. And there’s one Foxy stomped on—he’s a bit flat, but he’s still got arms and legs—”

Little Doll’s voice hit like a sandstorm, yanking Yu Sheng out of the cold silence of deadman’s vista. He pressed Irene down onto his shoulder with one hand and looked at Xuan Che. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘the Emperor Lord’s remnant’?”

Xuan Che stiffened. “The Emperor Lord’s remnant…?”

He thought hard, then slowly shook his head. “I haven’t.”

“Then we ask your master,” Yu Sheng said, letting out a quiet breath. “That phrase is the most valuable thing I got from the dead. And I think I understand how they got in, even after you sealed the entrance.”

Xuan Che’s expression sharpened instantly. “How?”

“He spoke in riddles,” Yu Sheng said, “but if I heard him right… this otherworld probably has more than one entrance.”