Chapter 394

Chapter 394: Shadows in the Rain

In Shu Ji, in Ink City, several figures hurried through the rain curtain.

With preparations made in advance by Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain, Yu Sheng’s group changed into outfits that wouldn’t stand out as much after a short rest at the hotel.

Zheng Zhi dressed in the local style: a dark, raincoat-like jacket made of advanced composite material, plus a bamboo hat with silver-gray patterns. The outfit clearly suited Ink City’s weather. The faint force field around the hat fully blocked wind and rain, while the coat was light and warm, shielding him from the damp cold.

Yu Sheng dressed similarly, except his coat bulged in one spot—Irene hung inside it like a koala, only her head poking out at his chest, doing her best to look lazy and uninvolved.

Immortal Yuan Hao didn’t change much. A capital-planet cultivator look was actually fashionable in this border city. He simply put away anything that made his Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain affiliation obvious. In plain, clean clothes, he looked like an ordinary passerby… if you ignored his face.

Foxy changed into an airy, moon-white long dress with pale-blue flowing-water patterns along the hem. Ornaments at her waist chimed softly as she walked. She held a dark ink-blue oil-paper umbrella and stayed obediently beside Yu Sheng. Half of her nine tails hung outside in the rain; when they got soaked, she shook them hard.

And to be clear, she was letting them get wet on purpose. Shaking off the water was fun.

In her free hand, she held a chicken leg and took a bite now and then.

Luna was the most unusual one by Yu Sheng’s side. The artificial saintess was far too eye-catching—her perfect, cold face, her metallic shell, and her full two-meter height. Local clothing would only make her stand out more, so Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain arranged a different style for her:

A black robe-dress sprinkled with silver-white stars and ring-star motifs that looked almost religious, plus the black head veil she always wore. It gave her a full-on nun vibe. According to Immortal Yuan Hao, it actually resembled the star maiden style of the Alglade people.

Star maidens were the general term for Alglade women who listened to the stars and specialized in astrology.

Shu Ji’s border region was close to Alglade territory. A large star gate about a light-year away led directly into the deeper Alglade Starfield, so people in this city weren’t unfamiliar with similarly styled alien visitors. And because star maidens were mysterious to begin with—with distinctive habits of dress—so long as Luna wore this outfit, even a nonhuman trait or two wouldn’t draw much surprise.

The rain had eased compared to their first descent, but it still fell steadily. Fine lines of water slid aside around Luna, pushed away by an invisible field that formed a hazy veil beside her. Through it, she lifted her head, multi-frequency radar scanning rapidly and continuously.

“Multiple high-energy units,” she said slowly. “No hostility.”

“I sensed it as well,” Immortal Yuan Hao said with a nod. “Cultivators passing nearby. This area is far from the city center, but close to an ancient refining tower. The spiritual energy is rich—a good place for diligent practice.”

Yu Sheng thought for a moment and glanced at Zheng Zhi. “Do you see or feel anything?”

Zheng Zhi adjusted his bamboo hat and shook his head. “No. It’s pretty normal here.”

The moment he finished, Irene chimed in from Yu Sheng’s collar. “Can you even tell what’s normal and what’s abnormal? What if you’ve already seen something creepy but just didn’t realize it?”

“Uh… I can usually tell,” Zheng Zhi said awkwardly, hurrying to explain. “From experience, anything abnormal will feel obviously out of place compared to its surroundings. You can judge it by the vibe…”

He froze mid-sentence, then lifted a hand and pointed across the street. “Wait! Those two people over there look kind of off—”

Immortal Yuan Hao immediately pressed his hand back down. “Daoist friend Zheng, don’t make a fuss. Those are just kids dressed as characters. I checked before coming—there’s a comic con nearby.”

Irene stared. “…You have that kind of event in cultivation territory?!”

Immortal Yuan Hao looked genuinely puzzled. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“That’s so not serious,” Irene blurted. “It doesn’t match your airy immortal vibe at all…”

“That’s a stereotype.” Immortal Yuan Hao laughed. “Gathering in strange costumes has existed since ancient times. Irene, young lady, have you never heard of god plays and shaman dances?”

Irene blinked, totally lost.

Yu Sheng coughed and smoothly improvised, as if this made perfect sense. “If you think about it as freedom of form, ancient exorcist dances might count as the earliest comic con.”

Irene’s eyes widened. “I-is that so?!”

She was way too easy to fool. Yu Sheng almost felt guilty.

As they spoke, the group passed another checkpoint. Continuing toward the city outskirts, they found noticeably fewer passersby.

Immortal Yuan Hao began frowning from time to time, carefully using divine sense to feel the changes in the surrounding aura. Now and then, he slowed and looked toward the ancient refining tower looming through the rain curtain—a structure that already felt oppressive from this distance.

“That’s strange,” the old immortal muttered. “Why is it gone again…?”

Irene popped her head out. “Huh? What’s gone?”

“The places where I felt spiritual energy knotted and meridian flow sluggish,” Immortal Yuan Hao said slowly. “When we descended, I swept the surface with divine sense and did sense a few spots that weren’t right. Even earlier, at Immortal Conclave Isle, I could still feel the anomalies in those directions. But now that we’re getting close, the feeling is gone.”

“It noticed us coming and ran,” Irene said offhandedly.

“What I sensed was changes in the earth veins and spiritual energy, not a living thing,” Immortal Yuan Hao said at once, shaking his head. “How can a natural environment run?”

He paused, then added more uncertainly, “If you insist… the only explanation is that it was hidden. But hiding that kind of change from my divine sense isn’t something an ordinary person can do.”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer. He stared into the distance, thoughtful.

Rain mist hung in the air. At the city’s far end, the spirit-mining refining tower rose into the cloud base. Two transport rails extending from the edge of Ink City ran toward it like thick blood vessels connecting to that ancient mechanical megastructure. Lights blinked along the rails and the tower, all blurred by the rain. Now and then, lightning tore across the sky. In the brief flash, the sky-piercing structure stood out in sharp relief—then, in the flickering afterlight, it looked as if it might collapse at any moment, swaying under crushing pressure.

Nearby, Foxy suddenly stopped shaking water off her tail. She frowned, sniffing the rain as if she’d caught a scent.

“Benefactor,” she said, tugging Yu Sheng’s sleeve, “I smell blood.”

“Blood?” Yu Sheng jolted. “Where?!”

“It’s hard to tell in this rain,” Foxy said, sniffing again in every direction. Her silver fox ears twitched, catching tiny sounds in the wind. “But it appeared suddenly just now. It should be nearby.”

Immortal Yuan Hao’s brows tightened. He lifted a finger and lightly tapped the air. “Clear Tranquility—”

A ripple as light as a breeze burst outward from where his finger touched. Some invisible force covered every inch of space around them. A clear chime rang through the air, and the rain across the sky stopped for a brief moment, suspended as if time itself had frozen.

In the next instant, both Immortal Yuan Hao and Foxy lifted their heads and pointed in the same direction. “There!”

Yu Sheng didn’t have Foxy’s nose, but in that brief pause of the rain, he felt something else—life ebbing away. The presence of a powerful creature on the brink of death.

They moved at once, rushing toward the direction Foxy and Immortal Yuan Hao had sensed, running into a bleak district near the towering structure where the lights were dim and the streets looked abandoned.

The rain, briefly halted, started falling again. Low thunder rumbled in the distance. Somehow, the silhouettes of buildings blurred under the haze and repeated flashes, as if every structure had turned into an abstract outline in a crack of light and shadow—like a false background projected onto a spatial screen.

For a few fleeting moments, all the distant buildings seemed to vanish at once, turning into jagged wilderness, as if this planet had never been developed… never even been discovered.

Zheng Zhi couldn’t keep up with the superhuman pace around him. Just as he was about to fall behind, Immortal Yuan Hao glanced back. A light wind wrapped around Zheng Zhi’s ribs, and he suddenly felt weightless. It was like flying. He surged forward, easily catching up.

And in that moment of lightness, he looked ahead.

The massive ancient refining tower at the city’s edge was gone.

In its place was a pitch-black rift like absolute void, stretching from sky to ground as if it meant to split the entire planet—cutting clean through space itself.