Chapter 385

Chapter 385: The Voyage Plan Was No Plan

After hearing Zheng Zhi, Yu Sheng didn’t speak right away. He only stared toward the place where the rift supposedly was.

He couldn’t actually see any “rift,” but through the limited blood-link he’d formed with Zheng Zhi, he could faintly sense that something was there.

It was vast, strange, and endless. Even the rift his senses could reach felt like only a tiny extension of an even larger structure.

So what was it, exactly?

Irene reached out and poked Yu Sheng in the forehead. “Hey, Yu Sheng. Do you think this has something to do with the Emperor Lord’s legacy?”

Yu Sheng raised an eyebrow. “Why do you say that?”

“It all happened at once,” Irene said, like it was obvious. “Besides, last time our eldest nephew suddenly ‘fell’ into the Otherworld on the main peak trail of Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain. Now the great rift showed up near the main peak too. How could that kind of coincidence happen?”

Foxy, who had wandered over, nodded. “I think so too. Statistically speaking, when two extremely unusual things happen in the same place within a short time, the chance they’re connected is pretty high.”

Irene blinked at Foxy. A beat later, she poked Yu Sheng again. “What is Silly Fox even saying?”

“…The same thing you meant,” Yu Sheng said, shooting a glance at the illiterate doll on his shoulder. He rubbed his chin as he thought. “If this rift really was caused by the Emperor Lord’s legacy, then that’s even more unsettling.”

“Why?” Irene asked.

“Because the Emperor Lord’s legacy has always been there, but the Grand Void Spiritual Axis has been peaceful for all these years. That means it was dormant,” Yu Sheng said. “If a rift suddenly showed up now, then the legacy—quiet for so long—has started to move. And whatever’s behind that activity points to one thing: today’s trouble is only the beginning.”

Irene’s eyes went wide. She didn’t speak for a long time.

Foxy’s big ears twitched. “Then why would it suddenly become active?”

Before Yu Sheng could answer, everyone’s mind filled with the image of those masked shadowspawn—the Black-Robed Cultivator’s servants.

“Two possibilities,” Yu Sheng said with a shrug. “Either the legacy slept quietly for all these years and decided to wake up on its own, or someone is stirring trouble and trying to activate it. Which do you think it is?”

“Do you even have to ask?” Irene sprang to her feet. “Of course someone’s stirring trouble!”

She jabbed the air furiously. “I’m telling you, the people we caught in the Otherworld last time weren’t the only ones moving. There have to be more we didn’t catch, hiding in every corner and causing trouble—”

“We need to head to that planet called Shu Ji as soon as possible,” Yu Sheng said, pressing the wobbling Irene back down onto his shoulder. “We have to find the Yun Qing Zi hiding behind the scenes. Stop swaying around like that—don’t fall.”

Just then, Immortal Yuan Ling—who had been speaking with Omen Wandering Star—walked over. After hearing them, the old man’s expression turned even graver. “The flow of the earth veins here is still extremely unstable. You may be right. This is only the beginning. If we don’t find that old senior, Yun Qing Zi, and solve the issue of the Emperor Lord’s legacy, something will happen here again sooner or later.”

He paused, then said, “We should move quickly. I’ll arrange a long-distance celestial ship and send you to Shu Ji.”

Yu Sheng smiled like he’d been waiting for that. “No need. Hotel has a ship. Just get me the travel permits and the navigation coordinates.”

The moment Yu Sheng said it, Irene shot back to her feet. “Our ship can fly now?!”

“Of course it can. It always could.” Yu Sheng pushed her down again. “We waited because the ship was built by Holy Revere Hermitage, so it needed modifications, and the main control system had to be reflashed. The refit isn’t completely finished yet, but the exterior paint is done. There’s still some tweaking to do in the main control system, but the star chart and navigation are already usable. That’s enough for me.”

Irene blinked. “Then… what about the parts that aren’t finished?”

“We’ll keep modifying it while we fly,” Yu Sheng said casually. “All the outside work that needed the dock is done. What’s left is internal—adjustments to the subsystems. The technical team the Special Operations Bureau sent is living on the ship right now. I even opened a door on board that leads to the Special Operations Bureau. If they need to rotate shifts, they can just go through the D-2 passage door and return to Boundary City. Where the ship is doesn’t really matter.”

Irene stared at him, stunned. Even as a kid who’d basically done kindergarten correspondence courses, she understood enough to hear something was off.

“…That’s allowed?” she demanded. “I don’t even really understand what a subsystem is, but if all that isn’t done, you can really take off? And you’re going to fix it while flying? How does that not sound reckless? It won’t explode halfway, will it?!”

“Don’t worry,” Yu Sheng said confidently. “You know how I drive and how I operate. In theory, as long as the engine can still push forward, you could hand me a drum washing machine and I’d drive it to the edge of the star system. Subsystems just make it easier. Without them, I can still make it work through brute force.”

Irene stared, horrified. “…That’s even less reassuring, damn it.”

Clearly, she was the only one alarmed. Foxy’s eyes lit up, and her tail whipped so hard it kicked up dust. “I think Benefactor is right!”

Luna didn’t react as strongly, but she still nodded, slow and certain. “Mm. Right.”

Irene looked at Yu Sheng, then at Foxy and Luna. After holding it in for a long time, she let out a long sigh. “Fine. You did manage to bring that thing back before, after all…”

Immortal Yuan Ling had stood by without interrupting. He hadn’t seen the ship and didn’t know what things were like inside Hotel. When he saw them settle it, he stroked his beard and stepped forward. “Then I’ll arrange your travel permits and the navigation coordinates to Shu Ji.”

Yu Sheng nodded. “All right. Let’s go up first and meet up with your senior brother and Immortal Qian Ji.”

Immortal Yuan Ling nodded slightly and waved his hand. The floating round dais that had brought them down drifted back over in silence.

Between the towering demon-suppressing pillars and countless thick chains, Omen Wandering Star slowly turned its body. Its terrifying face watched Immortal Yuan Ling and Yu Sheng’s group return to the dais.

“Don’t move rashly,” Immortal Yuan Ling said flatly from the dais’s edge. “Move, and you die.”

“You’ve tried many times, but I won’t ‘die,’” the stone sphere said. It split into a grin, squeezing a mocking smile between jagged “teeth.” No one could tell what it was really thinking from that inhuman face, as if every expression was only a crude imitation. “But don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll stay down here and watch. To eternity, the brief rise and fall of mortal civilization means nothing. In the end, you will vanish, and this poisoned planet will vanish too. I can wait.”

It muttered on, then lowered its face, murmuring like it was speaking to itself. “Every struggling end is destruction. That is the world’s only truth, and it’s that pathetic.”

Before it could finish, a jet-black strand of spider silk snapped across dozens of meters and cracked against the stone sphere with a sharp smack.

Omen Wandering Star shut up instantly.

“What a mess. Ugly as hell and full of weird lines,” Irene said, hands on her hips atop Yu Sheng’s shoulder. She reeled in the spider silk and kept glaring at the sphere. “I’m telling you, if you talked like this in a game’s intro cutscene, you wouldn’t even survive past the opening. You’d get wiped in the rookie tutorial, at most.”

The floating dais rose slowly, picked up speed, and soon carried Yu Sheng and the others away.

Imprisoned between the demon-suppressing pillars, Omen Wandering Star stayed where it was. After Irene’s whip of spider silk, it froze completely. But it usually sat there like a rock anyway, so Immortal Yuan Ling didn’t pay attention to its sudden, prolonged stillness.

After who knew how long, Omen Wandering Star shuddered, like it had rebooted from a brief shutdown. The giant stone sphere trembled, and gray-white grit fell from its surface. Where the spider silk had struck, a hollow, pitch-black crack lingered—like absolute void.

Then the wound vanished in an instant. Within a few breaths, gray-white fragments floated back up from the ground and refilled the missing part of its surface.

Omen Wandering Star hesitated as it tried to rise. The chains binding its body rattled, and tiny sparks flickered across the talismans between the links. After a moment of confusion, a sleep-talking murmur came from its hollow mouth—

“…Ill omen?”