Chapter 430

Chapter 431: Meeting and the Clear-Minded

Seeing the woman in black on the peak, Yu Sheng and the others stiffened in surprise.

A normal person. A “clear-minded” one, someone who obviously did not fit this crazy, twisted place.

But just as the woman parted her lips to speak, a shadow flashed behind her. No one had time to react. The shadow speared through her. She only had time to glance back in shock before life left her eyes and she slumped onto the slope.

Irene yelped, eyes wide, and said: “Hey… what the heck? That’s not how you start a scene!”

Yu Sheng grabbed a handful of fox fur and said: “Go. Check it out.”

Foxy bounded up the mountain made from warped buildings and heaped roads.

The next second, the mountain seemed to wake. The buildings and pavement on its skin rose and writhed like an unsteady dream. They rushed to change shape. Foxy tried to take off, but the instant she leaped she somehow shot into a sealed garage. Walls slumped like melting wax. Holes opened in the ground. She scrambled over them and burst into a stairwell. The stairwell tilted upward like a ladder, but The End Web ahead snapped off. A rusted staircase dangled over the road across. The pavement under her paws felt like loose stacked bricks and began to shake hard.

Foxy cried out and sprang forward, but she lost her footing. No matter how she tried, she could not jump high, and she could not fly. She skimmed over a building lying flat on the ground and found herself back on the weird slope. The road stretched without end ahead. On both sides, half-made shells of buildings loomed, their empty doors and windows stuffed with random stairways and corridors.

Right when everything around them slid into this dream-born disorder and every road was starting to fall, a fast-spreading web of Spider Silk flashed into the storm.

Irene scowled at the chaos and said: “What a mess.”

Without hesitation, she raised her hand and flung out her threads. Those cold black lines moved like living things, dove into the rain, and spread in a rush across the area woven by scattered minds. As the Spider Silk grew, the heaving mountain froze.

A thought stirred in Yu Sheng. He glanced back on instinct.

He saw that the swaying human shapes at the base had also thinned by more than half.

Foxy seized the moment. In a blink she crossed the slope and burst onto the peak.

Where Irene’s Spider Silk spread, the mountain that had looked impossibly tall and was still “growing” suddenly turned into a small hill. The huge Nine-Tailed Silver Fox needed only a few long strides to hop onto the summit. The twisted buildings and endless roads seemed to be “skipped,” shrinking behind Foxy into a tight little backdrop.

Strange giant pillars stood on the peak. They ringed a wide, darkened open ground at the center.

Yu Sheng did not look at the pillars first. He searched for the woman in black who had fallen a moment ago.

He did not find her.

Wind and rain swept the peak. Where she had dropped there was only bare, washed stone.

Yu Sheng frowned. Then he heard a sharp swish growing near.

He snapped his head up and saw the same woman in black who had just died diving straight at him with her sword. Her face was cool and empty. The blade shimmered with a misty glow. Wind and rain seemed to part for the strike. Without any force driving them, the raindrops pulled back from the sword’s edge.

But a ghostlike figure met her in the air.

Luna moved with the grace of a dance. She stepped lightly through the rain. Her Fingertip Blades chopped the woman’s sword power aside in an instant, then drove straight for her throat. Forced down, the black dressed woman skidded back several paces and tried to rally, but twelve Bronze Knights burst from the rain and, with no honor at all, rushed her from every side.

The woman gave ground again and again. A dazed look flickered across her face. In that instant, a sword shining with Chilling Light thrust from behind and pierced her chest.

Even Luna and the Knights froze.

The woman jerked, then crumpled. Another woman with the same face and dress stood behind her. She slowly drew her sword back, wiped it on her sleeve without expression, and muttered softly: “The thirty-seventh.”

The Bronze Knights’ shadows faded into the storm. Luna returned at once to Yu Sheng’s side and eyed the sword-bearing woman standing not far away.

The “dead” woman melted into a writhing shadow in the rain, then ran like liquid and washed clean away.

Yu Sheng’s eyes narrowed. He motioned Luna back and set his gaze on the swordswoman. He tested a question: “You’re the ‘city lord Mo Ran’ Xuan Che mentioned?”

Mo Ran lifted her head, squinting through the rain as she studied this group of strangely dressed people.

A Nine-Tailed Silver Fox as big as two cars. A “nun” dressed like a Youth Form Maiden. A human man who looked ordinary but whose depths were unreadable. And a tiny doll with a very smug face.

The features were obvious.

She nodded and said: “I am.” Then she pointed toward the ring of pillars and added: “There’s someone else here. He should be your friend.”

Yu Sheng blinked, turned, and saw a familiar face peeking around a pillar, waving at him with a tense grin. The newcomer said: “Brother Yu, hey, you finally showed up…”

Irene stared and said with surprise: “Big Nephew, why are you here?!”

Zheng Zhi’s mouth twitched and he said: “That’s a long story…”

As he spoke, Mo Ran walked closer. Her eyes moved between Yu Sheng’s group and Zheng Zhi. She nodded slightly and said: “So he is your friend. He described your looks to me. He was quite accurate.”

Yu Sheng pointed at Zheng Zhi and asked: “What happened to him?”

Mo Ran answered with a tired, wry tone that was three parts sigh, seven parts confusion, and ninety parts when-will-this-ever-end: “He was wandering in the city and drew a pack of roaming ‘shadows.’ He ran here in a panic. I was trapped on this ‘mountain,’ so I could not help at first. I have no idea how he made it all the way here with no fighting power. I only saw him somehow run straight up from the base, slip past the ‘Heart Demons’ near the peak, and then I had a chance to shelter him inside my formation.”

While Mo Ran spoke, Yu Sheng and the others turned to stare at Zheng Zhi. He scratched his hair and said to Yu Sheng with an innocent face: “I don’t know either. I was in the Hotel room. I glanced out the window and saw a Refining Tower near the city edge suddenly get covered in crystal. Before I could figure it out, I was trapped in the city…”

Yu Sheng’s eyes went wide and he said: “Wait. You saw a Refining Tower suddenly covered in crystal?”

Zheng Zhi said: “Yeah. Gray white, like branches. Looked like there were some in the city too. But I didn’t have time to see clearly. The whole place went weird, and even Immortal Yuan Hao was gone.”

Yu Sheng and Irene traded a look and saw at least two hundred words’ worth of complicated feelings in each other’s eyes.

Yu Sheng turned to Zheng Zhi and said with a sigh of awe: “So you really are the Breach Point. It sounds crazy, but it also makes perfect sense. Your luck is massive.”

Irene shook her head and said: “I don’t think luck covers it. There has to be some psychic factor. He saw through the Youth Form’s cognitive screen, even if it was only for a moment, punched a real hole in it, then got thrown into this Nightmare Border and somehow stayed alive.” She paused, scrunched her face, and added: “But forget the wandering shadows chasing you. We didn’t provoke them, and who knows why they chased you. How did you slip past the ‘Heart Demons’ Mo Ran mentioned? Even C Buckle went blow for blow with those.”

Zheng Zhi spread his hands and said: “I don’t know. They chased, I dodged, and then they stopped. You know my fighting level. I haven’t even passed probation.”

Yu Sheng stared, then could only sigh inside: [A few days of this guy’s internship already match a lifetime of legends for many Investigators. I can’t imagine what it will be like after he’s permanent.]

Mo Ran had been listening in silence. She heard them mention “Breach Point,” “Youth Form,” and “cognitive screens,” and finally frowned and broke in: “So you do know something. Can you tell me what happened to Ink City? Why did one moment of my distraction turn it into this?”

Yu Sheng studied Mo Ran for several seconds. He chose his words and said slowly: “It’s not just Ink City. It’s all of Sentinel Silence. Your planet has been taken over by a Dark Angel called the Youth Form.”