Chapter 401

Chapter 402: In the Dark

Mo Ran pointed at several scrolls with pale gold cloud patterns on the table and said: “These record the cases of Cultivators falling into demonic madness and the disappearances in Ink City over the past few months.”

She then pulled a jade slip from the nearby shelf and set it before Xuan Che: “This one is the most recent incident. It happened just a few days ago.”

Xuan Che nodded and unrolled the jade slip.

Mist-like light rose from the slip and formed a detailed set of images and text compiled by the investigators. The records were very thorough.

He studied the data, frowning a little, then looked up through the floating projection at the woman across from him and said: “A Refining Tower manager? After finishing work and going home, his personality suddenly changed, his power surged, and he went on a rampage?”

Mo Ran nodded, her expression heavy: “Yes, and while the City Patrol Division was chasing him, he broke through three blockades in a row like he did not care about living. The last sighting was when he jumped into an Earth Veins rift at the base of the No. 10 Refining Tower. After that he vanished. We also sent people to explore that rift, but we did not find a body.”

Xuan Che stayed silent and kept reading. Across from him, Mo Ran went on: “So far, the people in these cases come from all walks of life. Their backgrounds and The Door sect lineages are different. There is no common point in their identities. The victims include the Human Race, Demon Immortals, Spirit Immortals, and even naturalized spirits and ghosts. It seems the ‘culprit’ that drove them into madness does not pick targets. It acts at random.”

She paused, then added: “But when many cases line up, we still find patterns. The biggest one is this: every victim’s cultivation was at Attuned Spirit or above. They already had the skills of Spirit Projection and Soul Roaming.”

Xuan Che’s brows tightened as he looked at her: “So they were likely influenced while sending out their Divine Sense, using the mind to observe?”

“This is our best guess,” said Mo Ran with a nod, “but we still do not know how the ‘madness’ happens. When a Cultivator learns Spirit Projection, the first step is training to protect the mind. Of course, some people lack skill or get careless and can be tempted during practice, but so many people falling at once in a short time is not normal.

“In addition, while we think most victims were infected while releasing Divine Sense, at least twenty percent lost control when they were not meditating at all. Some were only sleeping. These cases are rare, but they are the most unsettling.”

“No Spirit Projection, yet still polluted?” Xuan Che’s frown grew deeper. After a moment of thought, he said slowly: “You are right. Cultivators know how to guard the mind, and if they were not even projecting, they should not be infected. But if they are facing a crazed ancient powerhouse, that is different.”

Mo Ran’s expression finally changed: “A crazed ancient powerhouse?”

“Do not tell outsiders,” said Xuan Che. He warned her before he spoke further: “First, it would cause panic. Second, the person behind this may be so strong they have reached Mind-Linked Divinity. If the rumor spreads, and ordinary people of low cultivation keep thinking of that name in fear, it could draw his gaze.”

Mo Ran’s eyes shook, but she answered quickly: “I understand. Please speak, Immortal Envoy.”

Xuan Che steadied himself and said: “These events are likely tied to an ancient powerhouse named Yun Qing Zi. And this elder has very likely gone mad.”

…

A deep cave joined to a man-made passage, and the passage opened into crisscrossing rifts. Far out on the wasteland beyond Ink City, a hidden underground base lay like a huge maze woven from both carved works and raw geology, burying all secrets under thick layers of stone and soil.

On this old mining planet, far out on the Border and long since in decline, there are countless forgotten corners.

A thousand years ago, the pioneers built Outposts, gathering stations, and terraforming sites across the harsh alien land. Time passed. Many sites finished their purpose or were undone by changes in the environment. Whatever the reason, the abandoned facilities turned into one grave after another, swallowed by the endless rainy season of the Sentinel Silence, slowly growing moldy in cold and damp.

Now, in the depths of one such forgotten “grave,” something darker and more dangerous than mold had taken root.

Inside what had once been the Underground Palace’s Core Zone, later equipment had replaced ancient formations, traps, and artifacts that no longer worked. A dozen foreign-looking “outsiders” busied themselves among precise machines. In the center of the hall sat a black chair.

Pipes and cables ran to and from that chair like tangled roots, linking to devices all over the Underground Palace. Some vanished into the ceiling and floor, as if they reached even farther beyond. A stern-faced, middle-aged man in white robes sat quietly in the chair.

His eyes were shut, his brows pressed tight. Many cables slipped out from under his robes and latched into the chair’s ports. From the back of his head, something like living nerve tissue extended and fused into a socket behind the headrest, twitching now and then.

After a long time, when a high-level technical Cultivator of the Hermitage Order glanced for the third time at the black chair with worry, the man finally opened his eyes.

The nerve tissue at his nape broke contact with the chair and slowly drew back into his body. Not far behind the chair, several stasis-like growth tanks hummed softly, and one tank’s lights came on.

“Great Sage,” said the robed Hermitage Order technician, stepping forward with a slight bow, “have you recovered?”

“Somewhat,” the man called Great Sage replied with a nod. Though his bearing was commanding, a faint weariness still showed in his eyes: “I need a little longer to reach my best state, and to sort out my memory.”

He looked up at the busy Hermitage Order followers in the hall: “How is your progress? Did the return signal yield anything useful?”

“Only broken fragments,” the technician said, sounding helpless as he worked his device. “Your last Clone Body died too suddenly and too completely. It did not even finish copying its memories back. From what we can tell, the Black Box Chip in the brain vaporized in an instant. The protective shell around it did almost nothing.

“Also, the death site had heavy spatial interference. It is unlike any interference tech we have seen. It badly damaged the memory return from the Clone Body. Your current memory gaps and thought breaks come from that.

“These are the few fragments we could pull that have any meaning at all from the ‘final signal’.”

He tilted his device and activated the projector in front of the Great Sage’s chair.

The air flickered with a chaotic blur of light. Through it, one could barely make out sheets of rain, lightning, and a fierce battle. But the vision was upside down and twisted, very blurry, like a nightmare full of wrong guesses and illusions.

Missiles flew through the sky, but the dying mind imagined them as long tails spitting fire. People sat on those tails, flying back and forth, holding strange, brutal clubs. A sky-wide web of Spider Silk spread like a net, and at its center crouched a huge, terrifying shape.

The scenes were bizarre and confused, with no logic, like a dream on the edge of waking. Clearly, this came from a brain collapsing at the instant of death, memories and imagination spinning out of control.

At the end of all that madness came the last image from the Black Box Chip.

It was more blurred than the others, yet it burned with bright, complex colors from the recorder’s extreme fear. In that color storm, a figure raised a hand. It looked like a woman in a black, ornate dress. Her eyes were red like blood. She lifted her hand toward the viewer, and a beam of light gathered on her fingertip and swelled outward.

“This is the final image. From the timestamp, this enemy should be the one who killed your Clone Body,” said the technician. “But for some reason, the memory we extracted says the enemy was very small. Physically small. Only a few dozen centimeters tall. Like a doll.”

The man in the black chair sat with a face like still water. After a few seconds of silence, he said slowly: “You are telling me I got killed by a doll?”

“That may be an error caused by death and interference,” the technician answered, bowing his head fast. “You saw how wrong those visions were. The dying brain twisted many memories.”

The Great Sage said nothing. He only stared at the figure in the projection, that shape wrapped in frantic color, and kept staring for a long time.