Chapter 442

Chapter 442: Flying Toward the Stars

Inside and outside Ink City, countless eyes witnessed a scene they would remember for the rest of their lives.

A mountain-sized ascension form tore through the earth, bursting from the planet’s interior and rising into the sky beneath Shu Ji’s world-drenching downpour.

Crystal dust fell like waterfalls. Mountains shattered. The ground split open.

Without a core controller, the crystal tentacles fell into their final frenzy, ripping open trench after trench across the planet’s surface. Thick cloud layers were churned by the tentacles and the rising ascension form, twisting into spiraling vortices overhead. The atmosphere charged under the violent turbulence, and storm and thunder raged between heaven and earth.

Far to the north, the plain had been hollowed out. As underground crystal structures collapsed, the land began to sink. South of Ink City, a distant mountain range snapped straight down the middle. A terrifying flash erupted from within, and crystal clusters squeezed up by the shifting crust became a magnificent, horrifying fountain—visible even from space.

Mo Ran surged into midair and watched another refining tower collapse with a thunderous roar.

Below her, the entire city screamed on the edge of failure, wobbling at the brink of disintegration.

Ink City had been built atop a massive spiritual ore vein. In a sense, its foundation was a single fused mining platform. That special structure made it sturdier than any other city—able to withstand disasters that reshaped the land itself.

But as the No. 6, No. 7, and No. 12 refining towers collapsed one after another, the ancient platform beneath the city reached its limit.

For a heartbeat, Mo Ran thought the city had tilted past the point of no return. She thought everything was over.

She even suspected the planet itself might break apart in the next second.

Yet then she noticed the collapse slowing.

The tearing land began to steady. The out-of-control giant tentacles twitched in the wind and rain—then one by one, they went still. The deep tremors settled. Even some of the most dangerous fissures began to close, the cracked earth knitting itself back together as if forced.

Mo Ran lifted her head slowly.

Rain poured like it meant to scrub the entire world clean. High in the clouds, the ascension form hung at the center of the storm, and the blood-threaded rain seemed to move with intent—rushing at the massive crystal, wrapping it layer after layer, endlessly soaking it.

“Rain…” Mo Ran whispered.

She couldn’t imagine what kind of power could use rain to halt a disaster like this. But then streaks of light flashed at the edge of her vision, snapping her out of her daze.

Several celestial ships tilted as they forced their way through the rain curtain. Cultivators from other major cities leapt from their decks and dove straight toward the nodes of the city-protection array.

Streams of spiritual light wove through the storm and sank into Ink City’s barrier. The array—nearly dark after the collapse of the refining towers—brightened visibly. The tottering city stabilized.

Lord Yun Shan leapt down from a ship’s deck as well. He no longer looked refined. His hair and beard were tangled, his robes torn and soaked, and a bloody gash marked his forehead.

He flew up before Mo Ran. His lips moved twice before he finally managed words, cupping his fists and bowing.

“I can only leave these people here,” he said hoarsely. “The rest must return to support Tan Yuan and White City. Mo Family Head, just now, just now—”

“Don’t talk,” Mo Ran cut him off. By generation, this man really did count as her uncle. She drew a shaking breath. “First… we survive.”

Lord Yun Shan nodded once, hard. Then he turned and left on sword flight.

Mo Ran watched a rainbow glow slip beneath the clouds. It landed before her and became a familiar young man.

“Immortal Envoy,” Mo Ran said, bowing immediately to Xuan Che. Questions swarmed her mind, but the sight of this envoy from the Grand Void Spiritual Axis steadied her more than she wanted to admit. “What do we do now? This rain—”

Xuan Che didn’t answer at first. He only raised a hand, then turned, watching with her as the massive crystal in the distance continued to climb through the storm.

“That is the ascension form,” he said softly. “What comes next isn’t something we can interfere with… Mr. Yu will handle it.”

—

From within an impossible viewpoint—formed by the entire rain belt gathering into a single, vast sight—Yu Sheng stared at the ascension form, glowing with eerie light.

If he hadn’t trained his senses back in the valley and the Black Forest, he doubted he could have adapted to this perspective so quickly.

Now his connection to that crystal was strengthening like never before, and with every second it grew tighter.

He could even hear the roar from deep inside it—though to ordinary ears it would be nothing but noise, the kind that shattered sanity in an instant.

“This is a trap!” a frantic voice howled. It sounded like Yun Qing Zi, and also like the screaming of countless people layered beneath him. “You lied to us!”

Yu Sheng laughed.

Even now, he didn’t have a body, yet his grin still surfaced directly in the storm. His face appeared in the clouds, teeth bared, smiling brighter than ever.

“Yeah,” he said. “So what?”

His voice rode thunder, circling the ascension form, echoing through the atmosphere in rippling waves.

He had spent a long time setting this trap. For it to work, he needed Shu Ji’s endless rainy season—and he needed to borrow the Yanxing Entity’s own power.

He let it swallow him.

Then he let it destroy him.

He even copied Yun Qing Zi’s method, turning himself into part of the Yanxing Entity’s internal cycle, all to map the structure of this “angel” from the inside.

The ascension form was protected by a thick metamorphosis shell, heavier and tougher than any sane estimate. If Yu Sheng tried to force blood infiltration the normal way, he would never reach the core before this dark angel tore the planet apart.

So he needed the ascension form to shed its protection.

He needed it exposed—its relatively fragile core laid bare to the rain.

Shu Ji’s rain had been falling for a very, very long time. This rainy season that swallowed most of each year was a normal, accepted “natural phenomenon.” Even a dark angel would struggle to notice the tiny abnormality hidden inside it.

The only place the plan could fail was Yun Qing Zi.

As the Yanxing Entity’s “brain,” Yun Qing Zi had intelligence. He could have noticed the change in the rain. If he’d been alert early, none of this would have worked.

But Yu Sheng’s judgment had been right.

Yun Qing Zi’s perception of the surface world wasn’t sharp enough, and his thinking wasn’t clear enough.

Yun Qing Zi and the Yanxing Entity existed in a chaotic symbiosis. Every time an “accident” happened on Shu Ji, the Yanxing Entity’s instinctive response to crisis overpowered whatever rational planning Yun Qing Zi might have managed. In the end, it chose the simplest solution.

Ascend early. Abandon the nest. Run.

The crystal shell on the ascension form began to fall apart in the storm. Wherever blood rain touched, the crystal seemed to rot in an instant—as if countless years had passed in a heartbeat—turning into fragile, porous gray matter that washed down under the downpour.

Minutes later, smoke began seeping from within the massive structure, as if acid had invaded its depths. Dead gray patches spread rapidly through the core.

Even so, the “mountain” climbed stubbornly through the atmosphere, like a tough seed refusing to die—pushing upward through blood rain that should have melted it to nothing.

Then, at some point, the roar from inside vanished.

Through the blood-built connection, Yu Sheng felt only an unsettling, absolute silence.

And then he realized the “seed” was accelerating.

It was burning everything it had left—centuries of stolen energy—on a single burst of speed.

With a string of rift-like booms, the outer shell finally vanished completely. Large sections of the inner structure crumbled away as well. It stopped trying to maintain any neat organization and threw everything unnecessary into the rain clouds.

That second “shedding” briefly blocked the torrential rain overhead.

From the heart of the dying structure, a hideous lump of gray-black crystalline matter tore free—like withered roots tangled into a knot—and burst through the cloudline.

Yu Sheng’s heart clenched.

“Damn it.”

There was no rain above the clouds.

He watched the ugly seed shoot out of Shu Ji’s thick atmosphere. The Yanxing Entity’s final core basked in harsh sunlight. In the vacuum, surface moisture flash-dried instantly. A moment later, the gray-black root-like structures curled within the core began to unfold.

Unsettling black fissures appeared around them, linking together into a massive whirlpool.

Deep inside it, the hazy light-and-shadow of a hyperspace corridor flickered into view.

Then the seed plunged into the whirlpool.

And the corridor closed.

For a brief time, the world went quiet.

The destructive geological activity on Shu Ji’s surface settled. All crystalline matter stopped moving.

The storm outside Ink City weakened, and the wind and rain returned to the season’s normal rhythm.

The fighting ended. Survivors stared around in confusion, terrified of what might come next.

Then the calm broke.

Docked in Shu Ji’s high orbit, Hotel released a highest-level emergency broadcast:

“Yanxing Entity has entered hyperspace—Grand Void Spiritual Axis in danger!”