Chapter 426
Chapter 426: Piercing
The rain curtain stretched on, colder than it had any right to be. Chaotic wind threaded between the buildings, whipping the downpour into tangled, slanting lines. In the misty damp, distant neon blurred into broad patches of color, glowing with an unreal shimmer.
Canopy-boats drifting between pavilions—and the mechanized flower-boats that served as both transport and entertainment—received a navigation warning from the Control Bureau. One after another, they docked beside the nearest buildings to shelter from the worsening weather. An alert said a mass of cold air was moving south from the wilderness and would turn into a cyclone near the refining tower, sweeping a storm across the entire city.
Through the wide window, Xuan Che could feel the restless pressure building outside.
Something had noticed it—noticed the discordant “gaze” within Ink City.
He steadied his breathing and kept his expression calm as he faced City Lord Mo Ran across the table.
Mo Ran wore a pleasant smile while she reported on Ink City’s recent renovation and reuse projects for the surrounding refining towers. From time to time, she even turned her head to speak with the unseen “Elder Dao Heng” hanging in the air.
Ten minutes earlier, an attendant had entered the room and greeted “Elder Dao Heng” with formal respect.
Xuan Che had shown not the slightest reaction.
His divine sense swept the room again, then the entire City Lord’s residence. Mo Ran held no hostility. No one here did. They weren’t the black-robed cultivators. Even if Mo Ran had ill intent, she wouldn’t put on a farce this ridiculous—complete with an “invisible star warden.”
The problem wasn’t malice.
It was perception.
Xuan Che kept her company a little longer, then found an excuse to leave without revealing anything. Mo Ran and “Elder Dao Heng” escorted him all the way to the gate.
“A heavy storm is coming soon,” Mo Ran said, glancing toward streets that had already thinned to almost no pedestrians. Then she turned back and offered a slight bow. “Immortal Envoy, if you’re not in a hurry, I can arrange a celestial ship.”
“No need.” Xuan Che returned her salute with clasped hands. “A little wind and rain has its own charm. The Grand Void Spiritual Axis rarely sees weather like this, so I’d like to take a walk in the city. Thank you for your hospitality today, City Lord Mo. Please stay.”
They parted.
Xuan Che stepped through the manor’s protective array, and the wind and rain surged at him like beasts scenting prey. His protective spiritual aura flared at once, scattering the downpour into swirling eddies around him. Only a thin chill slipped through, and it sharpened his mind.
He walked into the storm. His pace looked unhurried, but within moments he had crossed several blocks.
A handful of passersby in rain capes and bamboo hats hurried across the street. One muttered that the sudden shift in weather was strange. The companion beside him shrugged it off, saying Ink City’s weather was always like this and a heavy rain every few days was normal for the season.
A drunk staggered out of a nearby tavern. The cold wind and rain hit him the instant he stepped outside, making him stumble. He squinted up at the sky, cursed, and lurched forward, his barely sustained protective aura wobbling in the storm.
As Xuan Che passed, he caught the drunk’s slurred muttering: “…I only drank for a while… since when did it start raining? Bad luck… who knows how many people will skip work at the mine tomorrow…”
Xuan Che sidestepped without a word.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a canopy-boat hung with lanterns, wrapped in drifting, illusory colors, gliding low between two nearby towers. Faint singing floated from its deck. A young woman in a gauze dress stood at the prow.
Strangely, she paid no attention to the storm. The boat showed no intention of docking.
It was as if the rain never touched her—never touched the canopy-boat at all.
Xuan Che narrowed his eyes.
He reached into his robe and took out the spirit-link mirror.
A message from Garrison-3 had already arrived. In it, Mr. Yu described the eerie crystal jungle, what happened when Yun Qing Zi fell a thousand years ago, and the truth buried deep underground.
The dark angels could parasitize planets. Garrison-3 had been the first victim. Shu Ji the second. The next target was likely the Grand Void Spiritual Axis.
Right now, that dark angel was almost certainly still hiding somewhere on Shu Ji. At the same time, there should be a “Yun Qing Zi duplicate” under its control hiding there as well. And those black-robed cultivators taking orders from “Yun Qing Zi” were, in essence, probably already transformed into the dark angel’s vassals.
As for the Hermitage Order cultists hidden even deeper… they might not be plotting against the Grand Void Spiritual Axis directly, but they would definitely act once the dark angel became active again.
Xuan Che skimmed the message, then—without changing his expression—sent his divine sense into the spirit-link mirror and relayed what he had just observed. He sent the report to his sect, to his elder senior uncle still on Immortal Conclave Isle, and to Mr. Yu, who had not yet returned from Garrison-3.
“Shu Ji’s star warden has likely met with disaster, and may have been missing for decades,” he wrote. “According to records pulled from the City Lord’s manor, Elder Dao Heng had close, normal contact and private visits with Shu Ji’s major cities when he first took office. Soon after, he quickly became a recluse.
“In the records, the star warden’s performance of duties is extremely regular—so regular it’s almost too perfect. And aside from the activities required of a star-warden elder, Ink City’s files mention almost nothing else about ‘Elder Dao Heng.’
“Mo Ran herself is clear-minded and speaks normally. The issue lies in perception.
“Everyone’s perception is off. Everyone.”
Immortal Yuan Hao frowned as he read Xuan Che’s message. He fell silent, thinking.
After a moment, he went to the window and pushed it open.
Wind and rain surged toward him—only to be stopped by the hotel building’s built-in protective screen, leaving just a thin, cold dampness drifting into the room.
On frontier colony worlds like this, most buildings came with environmental shielding. It was a “traditional feature,” even if it usually only blocked wind, rain, and temperature.
Immortal Yuan Hao watched the rain for a long moment. Then he reached into his robe, took out two jade-white spirit bricks, and tossed them out the window.
Zheng Zhi, who had been lounging beside him and scrolling through short videos on his phone, looked up at the movement and jolted. For a split second, he thought this handsome immortal was throwing objects from a height to smash someone’s window.
Then he saw the two square bricks lift back into the rainy night on their own, glowing with hazy spiritual light. They shot away into the distance and vanished.
Immortal Yuan Hao watched them go, his expression growing heavier.
“Daoist Friend Zheng,” Old Hunk said suddenly, turning his head as he sat up from the sofa, “look out there toward that refining tower. Do you see anything strange? Something feels wrong to me, but I can’t see through what’s going on over there.”
Zheng Zhi got up in confusion and went to the window. He leaned forward and squinted into the rain, forcing his eyes to focus.
He stared for a long time.
Then his breath caught, and his eyes widened sharply.
Pale crystal matter laced with eerie gray-black rose from the city’s edge like branches too vast to describe, wrapping around that refining tower. And the refining tower itself had somehow become a pitch-black shadow—as if a rift that pierced sky and earth had been sliced straight down at the boundary of Ink City.
They hadn’t just appeared.
It was as if they had always been there.
Zheng Zhi flinched and instinctively stepped back. But as he opened his mouth to tell Immortal Yuan Hao what he had seen, the terrifying scene at the end of the rain curtain vanished.
His reaction, though, had already been noticed.
“Daoist Friend Zheng,” Immortal Yuan Hao asked evenly, “what did you see?”
“Huge structures like tree branches, wrapped around that refining tower,” Zheng Zhi said, licking his lips. His voice came out shaky. “They looked like some kind of crystal…”
The moment the words left his mouth, a sudden chill ran down his spine.
It was as if an invisible gaze that had been roaming blindly suddenly found him—then snapped toward him with dreadful focus.
“It” had seen him.
The next second, everything changed.
The storm the Control Bureau had warned about arrived in full. In an instant, the rain curtain became a raging downpour. Cold wind howled. Dense rain fell like blades, easily tearing through the thin protective barrier outside the Immortal Conclave Isle building.
Wind and rain flooded into the living room. Everything near the window was soaked at once—and the rain carried an eerie power of devouring and erosion. Anything it touched looked as if it were being carved away by invisible knives, vanishing into the air—
And then, in the next heartbeat, it all returned. As if nothing had happened. Even the wind and rain that had surged inside rolled backward and spilled out through the window again.
The streets outside flickered. Tall buildings were wiped away at the waist, then restored. A mechanized flower-boat flew crookedly out of the storm with warning lights flashing along its sides. Its massive hull slammed into the roof of a nearby tavern, sending up a shocking surge as if a stone had hit water—
Within that surge, flowers bloomed in full.
And the flower-boat backed out again, perfectly intact.
Elegant music drifted from its windows. Graceful dancers moved behind the glass. A young lady with terror on her face appeared at the railing, as if she wanted to leap away from the ship that had just crashed—
Immortal Yuan Hao was just about to act when the entire boat vanished into the storm.
The whole city began to rumble low, like a behemoth about to awaken.
“Cognitive barrier?” Immortal Yuan Hao’s face remained as calm as still water. He turned his head. “Daoist Friend Zheng…”
There was only empty air beside him.
Zheng Zhi was gone.