Chapter 447

Chapter 447: Blooming

At last, everything was clear.

In that curtain-space filled with gorgeous crystal light, Yu Sheng let out a quiet breath.

The crystalline veils around them had dimmed compared to before, and an unnatural noise was rising from every direction, faint but steadily growing.

Yet Yun Qing Zi seemed not to care. He stood there with a small smile, looking almost relaxed—the ease of someone finally freed from a thousand-year burden. And once that burden was gone, the world itself no longer seemed to matter to him. Every second, every breath, felt comfortable.

Yu Sheng asked the last question he had been holding back. “What if it failed?”

Yun Qing Zi didn’t answer right away.

“You lured Yanxing Entity to the Grand Void Spiritual Axis, trying to use this planet’s abnormality to kill It,” Yu Sheng said. “But dark angels are incredibly tenacious. It might not die quickly. This could drag on for years and years. Then—”

Yun Qing Zi nodded lightly. “Many people will die.”

Yu Sheng fell silent.

“I said this method was reckless, and it could fail,” Yun Qing Zi said. “But I had no other road left. Compared to that, this was at least the only workable path. And no matter what, once Yanxing Entity takes root on the Grand Void Spiritual Axis, It will never have a chance to leave. Rebuilding an ascension requires terrifying energy, and It will gain no supply on this planet. As long as the Grand Void Spiritual Axis can endure for a while, the world will permanently lose one calamity.”

His smile widened, sudden and sharp. “As for the price…”

He paused, then chuckled.

“These years, I merged with Yanxing Entity. Many things were not by my will, but if you look only at the results, I have long become a sinner beyond redemption. After falling stars, I would be cursed for ten thousand years anyway. One more sin—rivers of blood—changes little.”

Yu Sheng’s surprise faded into something heavier. He shook his head. “Right. You also took one of my lives.”

Yun Qing Zi’s expression stiffened. After a moment, he clasped his hands toward Yu Sheng, his gaze complicated. “To be honest, Daoist Friend, you truly frightened this old man back then. And I do owe you—”

“Let’s not talk about owing,” Yu Sheng cut him off with a wave. “Back then you were merged with Yanxing Entity. Most of your thoughts were influenced by that dark angel. It’s hard to sort out responsibility.

“Besides, my life isn’t worth much.”

Yun Qing Zi listened, dazed. His expression shifted several times. In the end, countless tangled feelings collapsed into a relieved sigh.

His figure flickered between the crystal veils. As the space around them dimmed, he dimmed with it.

“There truly are too many things in this world we cannot understand,” the old man said softly. “The path of the Dao is endless, but unfortunately…”

He smiled and shook his head. “Still, at least now I do not have to play that risky move. Daoist Friend, the disaster of Yanxing Entity has been resolved by your hand.”

Yu Sheng’s expression darkened. “Your condition—”

“What condition could I have?” Yun Qing Zi still smiled. “Yanxing Entity truly died this time. I became part of this drifting lone seed long ago, so now I will naturally go with It.

“In fact, this moment should have come the instant we left Shu Ji. I only…”

He stopped. Then he turned and looked through the hazy veil at the boundless emptiness beyond, past the layered defenses, to the distant, shining Grand Void Spiritual Axis.

“I only wanted to come back and take one last look.”

His figure dimmed again, then began to flicker as if the signal were failing.

Only then did Yu Sheng realize the truth. It wasn’t a complete body at all.

The Yun Qing Zi before him was an image formed by countless crystal veils, reflecting overlapping phantom light from every angle. Yun Qing Zi, who had traveled by teleportation from Shu Ji all the way here, could no longer maintain even a spirit body.

Yu Sheng reached out, but before he could speak, Yun Qing Zi—back still turned—stepped toward the endless void.

After that single step, the old man vanished into a ripple of crystal curtains.

In the next instant, the entire space convulsed. The crystal veils filling Yu Sheng’s vision fell into chaotic flicker, and then the flashing light rapidly collapsed. An irresistible force shoved him hard outward. As his vision tore away from this strange place, he felt as if he passed through a ragged rift of light and shadow—

That sunlit homeworld, shining with crystal brilliance. The mountain-like crystal vines and leaves. The flourishing garden. The noisy little creatures. Those interesting days. Thinking, awareness, observing, discovering. Creation. The stars that fell from the sky. The seed. The darkness…

Yanxing Entity’s last memory swept through the rift like foaming bubbles. In a blink it crumbled into countless faded fragments at the end of time. Yu Sheng fell out into reality and opened his eyes in the dimness.

The wreckage of the fortress torpedo was wedged between cold crystal branches. A weak flame flickered inside the torn shell. Twisting crystalline matter tangled and warped around him. Between crystal tendrils, the stars were cold, and deep space was pitch-dark.

Yu Sheng lowered his head and saw his body—battered and torn, pierced through by a sharp crystal branch. Blood soaked the branch, then drifted into space, freezing into tiny ice crystals that floated around him.

Gray-black crystal tendrils were silently breaking apart in the vacuum. There was no sound in space, yet Yu Sheng felt as if he could hear the seed tearing itself apart, bit by bit.

In the darkness, he slowly closed his eyes. He listened to that faint tearing, to the broken, weakening pulse coming from Yanxing Entity’s core, and he felt another life slipping away along with the cold touch of his blood as it cooled.

He didn’t know how much time passed before he sighed, silently.

In the next moment, he let his body crumble to ash. Countless drifting grains, guided by his will, floated into the depths of Yanxing Entity’s wreckage and seeped into the gray-black crystal.

In the vastness of space, a faint glimmer flashed.

At the defense node of the Grand Void Spiritual Axis, alarms suddenly blared aboard the large celestial ship “Taia.” A cultivator responsible for monitoring dark angel activity shouted, “Report—Yanxing Entity is heating up internally! Signs of reactivation!”

Alarms erupted everywhere. Everyone tensed at once. Cultivators rushed to battle stations. Yet Immortal Yuan Ling, standing before the star-disc platform, only lifted his head in silence and watched the black shadow in space.

Under his gaze, a patch of white light suddenly bloomed within those gray-black crystal vines.

In an instant, the ghostly white expanded violently. Magnificent crystal vines erupted from the seed and grew wildly. A plant structure larger than mountains spread freely through space. Within a few breaths it became a dazzling crystal mass like a newborn star, and a few breaths later, countless crystal leaves and enormous flowers—truly grand—burst into full bloom across that mass.

More majestic than mountain ranges, broader than oceans, the crystal flowers bloomed in the cold darkness of space. Brilliant sunlight of a foreign land poured over that sea of white, dazzling blossoms, as if lighting a fierce, radiant flame in the void. The glittering reflections even lit part of the night on the Grand Void Spiritual Axis, letting pure white light flow along the boundary between dawn and dusk—

And then, just moments later, that star-like sea of crystal blossoms abruptly lost all luster and shattered in silence, like a soap bubble pricked by a needle.

The crystal mass became countless fragments. The fragments blinked into weightless phantom dust with no form or entity. Tiny crystal debris evaporated in the sunlight in an instant. Everything happened so fast, like a dream at dawn you never have time to hold onto.

Several celestial ships, acting on instinct, activated their turrets. A few blazing spheres of light tore through the darkness, but they only passed through the dispersing dust. Before the other ships’ weapon systems could even react, that new star—blooming violently, withering in a heartbeat—was already gone from the Grand Void Spiritual Axis’s orbit.

Even the gray-black core wreckage of the ascension form was completely reduced to ash by that final outburst.

Cultivators aboard the celestial ships stared, stunned. They looked at each other, then began whispering tensely about what they had just seen. Someone hurried to the star-disc platform of “Taia” to ask the Sect Leader and the Vice Sect Master what to do next. Others stepped forward to report that Yanxing Entity’s signal could no longer be tracked at all—even the gravitational response a physical entity should have had was gone.

Immortal Yuan Ling and Immortal Yuan Hao seemed deaf to the noise. They only lifted a hand to calm the uneasy sect disciples, then let their gazes fall together on the spirit-link terrace not far away.

In the illusion projection above the spirit-link terrace floated the triangular emblem of the Otherworld Hotel, but the comms channel held only silence.

Time stretched.

So long that even Xuan Che’s expression began to tighten.

Then the triangular emblem trembled. Yu Sheng’s calm voice came through the channel.

“Angel fell.”

After a brief, delayed beat, cheers erupted.

Even Immortal Yuan Ling—who had been taut as a bowstring—relaxed at once. Amid the disciples’ shouts, he let out a long breath, then raised his head and looked beyond the misty shield.

Their homeworld hung there, safe and sound.

“Announce it across the domain,” Immortal Yuan Ling said, voice steady at last. “The angel fell.”