Chapter 439

Chapter 440: Living Star

Yu Sheng knew the Youth Form were what people called Dark Angels, but that was not what he really wanted to ask.

“Dark Angels” was the common name people used for all invaders from beyond this world: Heka Youth Form, the Goddess of Beauty, Tree Angel, Shadowless Skeleton, and others all got thrown into that same box.

But after meeting Anka Aila, Yu Sheng realized the truth behind these “otherworldly invaders” might be far more complicated than everyone guessed. “Dark Angels” was only a blanket label. Figuring out what they really were was the only way to solve this “invasion.”

On that point, “Yun Qing Zi,” who was already deeply symbiotic with the Youth Form, clearly knew something.

Sadly, “Yun Qing Zi” did not plan to cooperate.

He even sensed the “erosion” Yu Sheng had set in motion and noticed the blood that kept infiltrating deeper underground.

In a thousandth of a second, the Youth Form reacted.

An unsettling tremor rose from far below. The crystal structures connected to the cavern shattered in a chain, and the “Yun Qing Zi” image inside the mirror-smooth crystal vanished as the Illusion Arts flickered out. The whole cavern began to break apart and collapse. The ground split into a huge rift. In that crack, faint streams of light from the earth veins showed through, and a network of crystal branches crisscrossed between those glowing springs. The crystal masses that held traces of Yu Sheng’s blood were cleanly “cut off” and dropped along the rift toward the depths.

Yu Sheng felt a powerful force shake his mind. He felt trapped inside a crystalline cage that had been “abandoned.” He saw himself falling, and the end of that fall was a magma lake deep in the mantle. During the fall, inside that hellishly hot underground world, he saw the Youth Form’s vast limbs that had pierced straight through the planet.

A metamorphosis shell propped up the crust. Tube-like conduits carrying energy soaked in the magma and in the earth veins. Crystal megastructures like a behemoth’s bones shifted position with the tremors, as if making the last preparations for the Ascension Body to break free.

The next second, darkness descended. The chaos that comes after death wrapped everything.

In a vast cavity in the mantle, on one of the crystal branches hanging above the endless lava lake, Yun Qing Zi’s figure rose from a cluster of crystals. He looked toward that infernal sea and watched the section of “crystal pollutant” cut away from the main body fall into the lava and get devoured by terrible heat in an instant.

The pollution was stopped. The strange blood was held outside the immune barrier. The Ascension Body, protected layer after layer, had not been touched. Yet the unease in his chest would not fade.

[Yun Qing Zi frowned. Where was this feeling coming from? Not good. We need to start Ascension early. Too many things on this planet have slipped out of control.]

Thunder shattered the dark. Wind and rain raged across the wilderness outside the City Protection Array, and troubling ripples of spiritual power shook the air. Hot smoke thinned in the storm.

Two forces faced off in front of Ink City’s City Protection Array.

Mo Ran stood on a high tower with her sword gripped tight. The cold carried by the wind cut to the bone. She stared at the sky outside the city. Another bolt of thunder tore the clouds, and she saw large and small celestial ships in battle formation. Cultivators stood on sword flight, lined up in the storm-lit clouds.

Before this standoff, both sides had already clashed once in a brief but fierce fight. The lingering heat and turbulent aura in the air, and the scars gouged into the ground, were the proof.

The army outside had stopped not because they were free of the Youth Form’s control, but because of one person.

Mo Ran took a slow breath and looked with respect beyond the City Protection Array.

Dressed in white, with white hair, Immortal Yuan Hao stood above the clouds with his hands behind his back, quiet between the two sides. His calm eyes looked down on the rain-soaked world. Behind him, the powers of the four symbols and the five elements formed a ghostly array that cycled through heaven and earth. Hundreds of lights wove and circled within it, locking onto the army outside the city from afar.

At Yuan Hao’s feet, a long crack still steamed with heat, stretching between Ink City and the forces outside, running on and on into the distance.

A single strike from a master at the Supreme Unity Dao realm had cooled even the cultivators controlled by the Youth Form. None dared make a reckless move. After all, Lord Yun Shan and the others were under cognitive interference, not brainwashed into Yun Qing Zi’s puppets like those earlier black robed cultivators. They still had basic judgment.

Xuan Che stood behind Yuan Hao. He and his Elder Uncle kept their faces blank, staring at the far horizon at a forty-five degree angle.

They spoke by secret voice.

Xuan Che asked softly: “Elder Uncle, what do we do next?”

Yuan Hao’s expression did not change as he answered: “What can we do? I am nervous too. The people outside the city are trapped by a veil of wrong ideas. We cannot go on a real massacre, can we?”

Xuan Che asked in a whisper: “What if they charge us first? Can we win?”

Yuan Hao shot him a side glance and said: “No way. You read too many stories. How would we beat this many people, and there are so many warships too. If things fall apart, run into the City Protection Array. We came to buy time.”

Xuan Che muttered: “Uh, would that be embarrassing?”

Yuan Hao replied: “Silly child, your Elder Uncle has roamed the world for years and lived through countless disasters by being able to bend and stretch. Do not let your eyes wander. Keep the pose.”

Xuan Che answered: “Oh.”

Out on the clouds, on the deck of a large celestial ship, a cultured-looking middle-aged man had been staring at the two uninvited guests for a long time. At last he could not hold back. He stepped into the air, cupped his hands, and began: “Senior, may I ask…”

Immortal Yuan Hao lifted a hand and spoke calmly: “Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain, Yuan Hao, here to mediate. If you still obey the Grand Void Spiritual Axis, withdraw now.”

Lord Yun Shan narrowed his eyes.

A loud humming buzz filled his head. He could not hear the words from the other side, nor make sense of the few syllables that slipped clear through the noise. He did not find it strange, and he was not truly curious about who the person was over there.

In fact, he could not even see what the two people in the distance looked like.

The whole world was a blur in his eyes, and that “blur” had lasted his whole life. [This is normal. The world is supposed to look like this.] Only now, Ink City looked a little odd. Odd?

A daze washed over him. He felt as if he had forgotten something very important.

Startled, he looked up. The close attendants at his side were lifting their heads too, eyes just as confused as his.

Why had he come here? What happened? He seemed to have been fighting someone, but… who? Why were they fighting? Was that Ink City out there? The Ink Clan patriarch seemed to be standing over there. Why did he look so tense?

A strange roaring hum echoed through heaven and earth. It also seemed to echo in every person’s chest.

On a low hill at the city’s edge, Foxy’s ears twitched. She looked toward the Crystal Jungle outside the City Protection Array. Irene poked her head out of Foxy’s arms, glancing around in worry as she chattered: “What the heck is that noise? Is something else about to crawl up from underground?”

Foxy could not answer Irene’s rapid questions. She only hugged the doll tighter, then noticed the ground at the far end of the Crystal Jungle slowly rising, as if a new mountain were growing there.

A thunderclap boomed. For one eerie beat, the storm wind and rain froze in place, like the sky had skipped a count.

In the rain, Luna raised her hand. She seemed to be watching that “mountain” swelling at the far end of the plain. But no one could read the true focus behind the pale metal mask of this Artificial Saintess. The eternal rainy season of Sentinel Silence reflected off her smooth shell, and in that reflected storm there hovered the blurry image of a vast wild plain.

High outside the city, Xuan Che suddenly noticed confusion spreading through the ranks of the cultivators on the far cloud banks. He sent a message by Divine Sense: “Elder Uncle, their formation is starting to break. The leaders look strange.”

“I see it,” Immortal Yuan Hao answered without changing his calm face, even as he was ready to sprint for the city at any moment. “Do not move yet. Something is wrong underground.”

Out on the clouds, the battle lines formed by cultivators from several nearby cities began to split. People woke as if from a dream and stared about. Some turned and left. Some dropped out of the sky and shot into the living Crystal Jungle like they had heard a call.

On the far side of the plain, something amazing was forcing its way up from below. The land was changing. The weird hum from the deep turned into the terrifying crack of the earth tearing open. Plumes of dust shot up. Vast fields of pale crystal pushed out of the ground and rose like mountains.

Mo Ran sucked in a cold breath. Her sword hand shook. Just looking at that crystal mountain rearing up at the far end of the plain made her mind totter: “What is… that?”

Silence spread around her. Her retainers could not answer. Only shivering fear flowed from heart to heart. As a feeling of helplessness swelled, a voice rang out behind her.

A personal guard stumbled up the platform through wind and rain and shouted like someone screaming out of a nightmare: “The comms on the orbital platform are back! They said… they said there is a face on Sentinel Silence’s surface!”