Chapter 425

Chapter 425: Returning to Dust

At last, the scattered clues snapped into place, and so much of it finally made sense.

Plenty of mysteries still remained, but Yu Sheng could now piece together more than eighty percent of the truth—

A thousand years ago, unknown dark angels appeared in the Featherwing Star Field in the form of a crystal meteorite. They crashed into Garrison-3 on the border and tried to parasitize it. Yun Qing Zi happened to be stationed in the frontier at the time. He noticed and intervened, never expecting his enemy to be an “angel” that common sense couldn’t defeat. He died. His Dao was extinguished.

As he fell, Yun Qing Zi refined his final wisp of spirit and forcibly fused it with part of the dark angel, trying to suppress it deep beneath Garrison-3. Instead, that became the beginning of a thousand-year cycle of “iteration.” Everyone believed Yun Qing Zi had fallen a millennium ago, never imagining that the last remnant of that ancient powerhouse had become entangled with the dark angel in the depths—iterating again and again, resurrecting again and again, locked in a deadlock with no end.

Later, the seal Yun Qing Zi left behind was breached. The dark angel successfully iterated a “Yun Qing Zi duplicate” under its control and used it to escape Garrison-3’s cage, leaving behind only an “empty shell”—and a vast number of “Yun Qing Zi” trapped on this planet in a state of chaos.

The “Yun Qing Zi duplicate” that escaped had been altered by the angel. In essence, it had become the dark angel’s vassal. Whether he realized it or not, his choices began drifting toward outcomes that benefited the dark angel—and what he was doing now was searching for something called the Emperor Lord’s Legacy.

And given what that unknown angel had already revealed, its purpose was almost certainly to find new planets worth parasitizing. From there, the inference was simple: the “Emperor Lord’s Legacy” that “Yun Qing Zi” wanted probably wasn’t an “object” at all.

It was likely an entire planet.

The Grand Void Spiritual Axis was the most likely answer.

“Damn it—Xuan Che and the others are in deep trouble this time!” Irene cried out, voice sharp with alarm. “If that’s true, then that ‘bad Yun Qing Zi’ already sent people to the edge of the Grand Void Spiritual Axis… so they’ve already finished ‘locking on’ over there! Then won’t they make their move any moment now?!”

Yu Sheng was already pulling out his phone. “I’ll warn Xuan Che and Yuan Ling right now so the Grand Void Spiritual Axis can prepare its defenses.”

“But even if they prepare, they can probably only buy a little time,” Xu Jiali said. She didn’t really understand the Featherwing Star Field, but by now she had the gist. “Under normal circumstances, you can’t kill that dark angel thing. Back then, Alglade struck first and poured in several legions and still couldn’t take down the Beauty God. We need a way to stop it before it acts—or do what we did with Anka Aila. At the very least, we have to find it first, right?”

Yu Sheng turned to the “Yun Qing Zi” fused with the crystal heart. “Do you know where that ‘thing’ is hiding now—along with the ‘Yun Qing Zi’ it took?”

The old man embedded in the crystal had slipped back into muddled self-talk. Yu Sheng asked twice before he finally roused, sluggish as if waking from deep water. He lifted his head and stared straight into Yu Sheng’s eyes.

“Daoist Friend, that’s a strange question…” Yun Qing Zi’s lips curled faintly. “Haven’t you already seen it?”

Yu Sheng’s brow tightened.

“This ‘empty shell’ I’m inhabiting,” Yun Qing Zi went on, voice slow and granular, “its remaining instincts have been making it stare toward Shu Ji this entire time.”

“I suspected Shu Ji too,” Yu Sheng admitted. “But we went there and still couldn’t find ‘Yun Qing Zi.’ We didn’t see any signs of a parasite either. They seem to have hidden themselves somehow. We broke through their ‘barrier’ by accident once and found what looked like a rift at the edge of Ink City, but when we went back, it was gone. We couldn’t find it again.”

Yun Qing Zi frowned.

“I don’t know what to make of that… That evil thing’s strangeness is impossible to measure—especially after it iterated a ‘Yun Qing Zi’ under its control. At that point it gained ‘intelligence’ as help. Many things that used to be pure instinct have likely become deliberate ‘divine powers.’” He paused, then fixed Yu Sheng with a heavy look. “You’re saying you found absolutely no trace of a ‘parasite’ on Shu Ji?”

“None at all,” Yu Sheng said firmly. “We weren’t there long, and we didn’t search the entire planet. But Shu Ji is a heavily developed colony now. Even sparsely populated areas have people watching and monitoring them. And there’s a dedicated star warden who patrols the entire planet regularly. If a parasite had existed there for years, it should have left something behind—unless even those ‘traces’ were hidden.”

“…Hide it from every pair of eyes on the entire planet?” Irene muttered from Yu Sheng’s shoulder.

For a moment, no one had an answer.

Then a sharp cracking sound broke the silence.

As it echoed, Yu Sheng saw fresh fractures spider across the crystal heart—spreading even through “Yun Qing Zi’s” body. The life in the crystallized elder’s eyes faded at a visible speed.

Irene panicked. “Hey—hey! Old man, how can you be leaving already…”

“Not so fast. Not so fast.” Yun Qing Zi smiled slowly. “I’ve already held on longer than I expected.” Another crack ran through him, and his decline accelerated; his face stiffened by the second, turning more and more like dead stone. “You girl. Cold and eerie, yet you still care about people.”

Normally, if someone teased Irene like that, she would have started listing their family tree on the spot. This time she acted like she hadn’t heard a word. She whirled and shook Yu Sheng’s head. “Hey! Hurry and think of something! You said your divine powers are huge…”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer. He only pressed Irene’s arm gently, then stepped closer to Yun Qing Zi.

“Daoist Friend,” Yun Qing Zi said, raising his head with effort. All the life in the crystal cavern had gathered into that “heart,” but even so, the crystallized elder could only move from the chest up now. His voice was growing stiff, each word slower than the last. “Is there anything else you want to ask? My mind can stay clear for a little while longer. I can still say a few things.”

Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then shook his head.

“I’ve already asked everything I needed,” he said. “But if there’s something you want me to do, tell me. I can’t promise I’ll manage it, but I’ll do my best.”

“Now you’re tossing the hard problem to me.” Yun Qing Zi seemed to consider it, then smiled. “The real Yun Qing Zi died a thousand years ago. Everyone left here is nothing but an empty shell shaped by a looping obsession, and the body in front of you is the same. What wish could it have?”

His gaze softened, distant.

“Even if there was something you could call a wish, after a thousand years of grinding time, it would’ve lost its meaning long ago… Forget it. Forget it. I’m not that fussy anyway.”

He drew a slow breath, and his voice sank lower.

“But if Daoist Friend ever gets the chance to turn the tide—if you ever meet that ‘Yun Qing Zi’ who has already become the evil thing’s lackey…”

Cracks raced across the crystal heart’s surface. The faint light inside flickered like a candle about to go out. When the first fragment fell away, Yu Sheng heard the old man—who might not even count as “Yun Qing Zi” anymore—leave him one last request:

“…Don’t hold back.”

The final glimmer died in the crystallized body’s eyes. Death-gray spread from the crystal heart, racing over his surface, bringing countless fractures with it.

At the very end, “Yun Qing Zi” turned his head toward Foxy and smiled.

“Good. At my last moment, I can still have this brief spark of humanity…”

The next second, that smile shattered and fell in pieces.

The crystal heart collapsed.

The faint light drained away. The force that had held the crystallization intact vanished as the cycle ended completely. With a rapid series of sharp cracks, the massive crystal burst into countless fine fragments and poured down between pillars and crystal branches. Then came the deeper, heavier sounds—collapse spreading through the entire cavern, and onward through the underground cave system.

This whole space had been supported by those ever-present “crystal branches.” Now that all life had vanished, the unsupported structure could no longer hold.

“Boss!” Lingdang yelped. “This place is going to cave in, meow!”

She darted behind Xu Jiali. The mechanical ball in her hand lit up, and in an instant it raised a layer of spiritual shielding. But in her slit pupils—beyond the flicker of nerves—there was even more inexplicable excitement.

“So next is a tense, thrilling cave escape?” she babbled. “Like last time, when we blew up Katosh Hive? We start running now? Run, run?”

Before this “Ji Pu Luo young lady” could get any more excited, she watched Yu Sheng casually pull open a phantom door. On the other side lay the surface.

Foxy and Luna dashed through immediately to warn Engineer Sun—still directing the digging above—to get everyone to a safe area. Yu Sheng glanced back at Xu Jiali and Lingdang.

“What are you staring at? Move. Get up there and call Engineer Sun and the others. I’ll open another door straight to the Special Operations Bureau. Take the samples you collected back first.”

Only then did Xu Jiali snap out of it and hurry toward the door. Behind her, Lingdang’s eyes went wide.

“…Wait, no, at a time like this I should—hey! Boss! Wait for me, meow!”

Everyone returned to the surface through the door, leaving only Yu Sheng and Irene behind for a heartbeat longer in the collapsing cavern. Before stepping through, Yu Sheng turned back one last time.

Yun Qing Zi—over a thousand years, hundreds upon hundreds of Yun Qing Zis had finally returned to dust.

“Let’s go,” he breathed, and stepped through the door. “There’s still so much to do.”