Chapter 430

Chapter 430: The Mountain of Focus

Deep inside the Special Operations Bureau building in Boundary City, Bai Li Qing let out a quiet breath. She rubbed the thigh she’d just smacked into the desk, then walked to the broad floor-to-ceiling window.

Beyond the glass, an invisible mist that somehow felt solid began to flow. Under her gaze it reshaped itself again and again, turning into scene after scene. Most of them were recordings Xu Jiali had captured in Garrison-3: the surface sampling work, and the “Crystal Husk Heart” buried deep underground. The rest were reconstructions drawn from her own mind—data on the “Yanxing Entity,” fresh intelligence from the Featherwing Starfield, and countless inferences woven together into the planet’s possible futures.

Vast crystal structures surged up from the world’s depths. Crystal clusters bloomed like flowers across a torn crust. A colossal ascension form forced its way out, and with its “core” missing, the runaway crystal matter grew without restraint. Cities drowned beneath glassy tides. Hundreds of millions sank into a dream of a planet cracking its cocoon and blooming into something else.

The drifting fog churned and rose. The images assembled, collapsed, and reassembled, over and over. Only after a long while did the mist finally still. From deep within it, a pair of pale gray eyes surfaced.

“Sister,” the eyes watched Bai Li Qing in silence, “trying to reason out endless possibilities from what little we know about dark angels is meaningless—especially when the variable this time is Yu Sheng.”

Bai Li Qing exhaled. “I know.”

“What are you thinking about right now?”

She paused, then tugged faintly at one corner of her mouth. “Mostly that I’ve found that overtime feeling again.”

“And?”

“And my leg hurts.”

“Then there’s nothing I can do. I don’t have hands right now.”

“…I know.”

…

Yu Sheng skimmed the materials Bai Li Qing had sent to his phone, and along the way learned even more about the Yanxing Entity.

Just as she’d said, the strangest and most dangerous part wasn’t its physical form. It was the cognitive interference—growing stronger as the parasitism deepened—and the “reality reconstruction” built on layer after layer of that interference.

Beneath the surface of “everything is normal,” the Yanxing Entity’s crystal had probably covered the entire planet long ago. It had seeped into every corner of Ink City. Abnormalities sat right under everyone’s eyes and still stayed hidden, tucked into blind spots in the subconscious.

In theory, if it were only the cognitive interference released by the Yanxing Entity itself, a barrier like this wouldn’t have fooled Immortal Yuan Hao. It wouldn’t have fooled Xuan Che’s divine sense, either. But Shu Ji still had hundreds of millions of residents—ordinary people caught in the interference. Through their shared observation, they directly rewrote the structure of reality on the planet’s surface.

That kind of cover had already gone beyond traditional illusion arts. Even someone as unusually gifted as Zheng Zhi could only see through the Yanxing Entity’s cognitive screen for a short time. Even Yu Sheng could only rip open a brief “crack” above the city, like he had during the encounter with the Hermitage Order Great Sage. It still wasn’t possible to pierce the entire veil.

Because the shared cognition of countless dream-entry users across the planet would immediately repair any damage, correcting the world back into what their subconscious insisted was “normal.”

The only good news was that this veil—airtight as it had seemed—was clearly malfunctioning. The planet-wide dream built from collective disorder was colliding with reality. The two squeezed and tore at each other, producing the twisted, eerie Ink City in front of Yu Sheng’s eyes. And within this absurd, distorted city, there was very likely a rift that could tear the veil open for good.

As for how the conflict had started… Yu Sheng didn’t know.

Was it because of the battle in Garrison-3?

Or because Zheng Zhi and Immortal Yuan Hao had done something while they were still on Shu Ji?

Or both?

Either way, it was an opening.

Yu Sheng put away his phone and looked into the curtain of rain ahead.

At the edge of his vision, crooked city buildings were piled like collapsed frosting, gathering and bulging in the same direction. Countless structures stacked into a bizarre peak. The surface of that “mountain” rose and fell slowly under the rain, almost like it was breathing. Warped neon and flickering projections flowed over it like water, and in the shifting glare he could just barely make out the outlines of familiar landmarks and major roads.

Again, soundless lightning rolled in from that direction, rumbling across the sky.

Ever since they’d left the hotel room, that same thunder had been coming from the mountain.

Yu Sheng didn’t know where Immortal Yuan Hao and the others had gone, and he hadn’t found any traces near Immortal Conclave Isle, but that rolling thunder felt like a guide. It kept nudging him, reminding him which way to go.

With Bai Li Qing’s information, Yu Sheng could now roughly judge Shu Ji’s state.

The Yanxing Entity’s parasitism had reached the late stage of metamorphosis, only a step away from becoming an ascension form. At this point its cognitive interference had already spread across the entire planet—so in theory, all of Shu Ji should have been twisted.

But the distortion wouldn’t be evenly distributed. The source was the Yanxing Entity, yet what sustained it was the minds of countless ordinary people trapped in the interference. That meant the planet-wide dream had countless “support points.”

Every densely populated place was one.

Ink City was the largest city on the planet.

And the densest part of Ink City was the “support point of support points.”

That mountain… had to be it.

Foxy transformed again, becoming a huge nine-tailed silver fox. A protective spiritual aura pushed the wind and rain away from her fur. Yu Sheng and Irene sat on her back, while Luna flickered in and out like a ghost through the shadows of the storm, keeping close.

Now and then, hazy phantoms of the bronze knights appeared in the rain.

In this “boundary” layer formed by the crushing conflict between dream and reality, the line between the unreal and the real had blurred to the point that even the knights around Luna could project into the world more easily than usual.

“There’s noise everywhere,” Irene said, huddled beside Yu Sheng. She clenched a fistful of fox fur and frowned. “Did you notice those human-shaped outlines that flash past on the roadside sometimes? And those colorful afterimages hanging in midair… they’re all minds lingering at the edge of the dream. My head’s going to explode.”

Yu Sheng nodded. “I noticed. The closer we get to that mountain, the more there are. We’re headed the right way… Ink City’s reality-reconstruction focus is up ahead.”

Irene blinked, then suddenly seemed to notice something. She lifted her head and stared straight at him.

“You look like you’re walking into another bloody disaster,” Little Doll said.

Yu Sheng hadn’t expected her to stare just to say that. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You… fine. A bloody disaster is a bloody disaster. I’m used to it.”

“This time the blood loss is huge.”

Yu Sheng stared. “Wow. Thanks for the blessing.”

“Mm-hmm~”

“…”

Just then, Foxy crossed the last broken stretch of road along the city’s central axis. The nine-tailed silver fox leapt over a plaza structure floating in midair and finally reached the foot of the “mountain.”

It seemed taller again. Buildings on its surface had fused into shapes even harder to understand, more chaotic than before. A broad structure that looked like it had once been an elevated rail line drooped across the slope, winding toward the top.

A swarm of buzzing, rumbling noise rose around them. Foxy slowed on instinct.

Yu Sheng saw countless shadowspawn—translucent, colorful human outlines—gathered at the mountain’s foot like passersby from another dimension. Some walked along the road. Some lounged on winding benches. Some floated in the air, frozen in the posture of reading newspapers. Others sat cross-legged as if cultivating in meditation.

These were mind-bodies wandering at the dream’s edge. In the real Ink City, they might still have been living their daily lives—chatting with friends and family, buried in work. Yet their subconscious had begun to sense the wrongness buried deep in their cognition. Instinctive self-protection had made part of their minds drift here, and they naturally clustered toward other drifting minds.

A huge outdoor display screen had been jammed crookedly into the buildings at the base. A flickering hologram hovered above it.

“…Sleepwalking phenomena are spreading across the city. Qi deviation cases have surged again… Residents are advised not to approach the city outskirts at night…”

“Shadows wandering around the old refining tower have been confirmed to be caused by a collective hallucination. Residents who see abnormal scenes need not panic…”

“The storm has arrived as scheduled. A new wave of cold air is entering the south… Wind and rain in the city are expected to intensify further. Civilians who have not yet reached Qi Inhalation should not remain outdoors for long periods…”

“This city is fine. This planet is %$#… Everything is fine. Everything is %$# fine. Everything is %$# fine…”

Yu Sheng’s eyes locked onto the projector half-buried in the buildings. He watched the text tremble and change. Between the lines, strange scenery—almost like Ink City, yet not—flickered in and out, as if the broadcast couldn’t decide what reality it belonged to.

Up on the steep “mountain,” more and more billboards lit in sequence. Illusory projections swayed in the rainy night like an endless chain of welcoming banners.

“Welcome to Ink City, the most prosperous great city on the border.”

“Today Ink City is safe and sound.”

“Today Shu Ji has had no incidents.”

“Welcome to Ink City. Welcome to Ink City. Welcome to…”

Boom!

A thunderclap detonated overhead, and the sky roared.

The hazy figures at the foot of the mountain seemed to sense something. Many lifted their heads in a daze and looked up, while the holograms on the mountain shook violently. Text scattered and dissolved into the air.

Yu Sheng followed the sound with his gaze. With eyesight far beyond any normal human, he saw a cool, distant woman standing on the peak. She wore a black dress. Her Rapunzel-black hair was tied high in a bun. A sword rested in her hand, and she looked down toward the mountain’s foot with faint indifference.