Chapter 798 - 797: Tearing Point Expands

Chapter 798: Chapter 797: Tearing Point Expands

To be honest, Erin now had absolutely no idea what kind of path Yu Sheng’s freehand Alchemy Array was even supposed to be. She stood to the side watching him busy around for half the day, and her final conclusion was basically: if this thing really manages to run, it’ll only be thanks to the power of belief and wishful thinking—if it has even the slightest bit to do with Alchemy, that’s an insult to Alchemy.

Yu Sheng didn’t care at all about Erin’s judgment. He was already completely immersed in his own art, oblivious to heaven and earth. Ever since coming back from that Lost Home trip, it was like he’d flipped some switch; now he was overflowing with confidence and enthusiasm for his own "creativity."

As for Hu Li, she was even simpler. She just squatted down on the floor, happily watching Yu Sheng run around, her eyes squinting from how wide she was grinning—anyway, whatever her Savior did, she figured it had to make sense.

"I think this is about done," at last Yu Sheng capped the marker in his hand, stood up, wiped his forehead, then raised his head to look at the mirror on the opposite wall. "If the Beauty God actually contacts us again later, at least we’ll be able to give her a good scare..."

"I still think this whole thing is sketchy as hell..." The Little Puppet walked over, arms folded, pacing back and forth along the Array Yu Sheng had just drawn, muttering all the while. "You’re using a fixed Door-opening method, and then setting up a prefab Spiritual Array around the mirror? You want this thing to auto-activate when the Dark Angel re-establishes the connection, then forcibly stabilize the communication channel?"

Yu Sheng stared at the little thing in shock: "Wait, you can actually read this?"

"Read my ass! I purely deduced it from your usual half-assed idea patterns!" Erin said while rolling her eyes a bit. "If that’s the plan then hold up, I’ll see if I can add something to it..."

As she spoke she lifted her hand and flicked it, and a spatial crack twisted open in midair. A mass-produced doll with vacant eyes promptly dropped out of a valley and landed on the floor.

This mass-produced Puppet blankly walked to the mirror, sat down on the floor in front of it, and entered standby.

Then Erin flicked her other hand.

The Omen Wandering Star flew out from some random nook or cranny, zipped into the room, and started circling around Erin’s head over and over.

"Don’t circle me, circle that thing," Erin reached out, grabbed the grayish-white stone sphere, and casually tossed it toward the mass-produced Puppet in the middle of the room. "Circle here. If I don’t say stop, you don’t stop."

Yu Sheng stared dumbly at this whole string of operations from the Little Puppet, and couldn’t help asking: "...Is this even reliable?"

Erin shot back: "You need to believe in the power of belief."

Yu Sheng: "..."

So Erin folded her arms and rolled her eyes: "Anyway it’s gotta be more reliable than that pile of ghost-scribbles you drew, right? At least from a mysticism standpoint, this Omen Wandering Star is kinda like a half-colleague of that Dark Angel outside! Letting it orbit here might actually boost the signal strength a bit."

Yu Sheng thought about it and nodded: "...Fair."

Then he walked around the mass-produced Puppet sitting in the center of the Array, came up to that eerie mirror, and raised his hand to knock lightly on its surface.

Right now the mirror was cold, hard, and unremarkably reflecting the room’s interior scene, showing not the slightest hint that it might suddenly open a Rift or link up with some extra-dimensional signal.

But Yu Sheng couldn’t help thinking.

If No. 66 Wutong Road symbolized the grave where Bartok once slumbered, or was equivalent to the triangular gate at the bottom of the Fault as projected into the real world, then what did this room at the end of the second-floor corridor—and the mirror hanging in it—symbolize?

In mysticism, "symbolism" is a concept you can’t get around—the appearance of this mirror must have a source.

Yu Sheng stood in front of the mirror, lost in thought. He recalled that originally what hung in this spot was Erin’s framed painting—the frame should have symbolized the impact point from when the World Bridge struck 3,700 years ago. During the impact, Erin’s Puppet and the Omen Goddess fused and entered No. 66 Wutong Road in the form of an oil-painting seal.

And this mirror appeared after that oil painting was taken down...

As he pondered, Yu Sheng folded his arms and muttered under his breath: "...Could this thing correspond to the crater blasted out in the Boundary Land?"

Erin and Hu Li said in unison: "Huh?"

So Yu Sheng voiced the random thoughts he’d just had, and after finishing he added, "It’s not really a big deal. It’s mainly that I’ve suddenly gotten curious about a whole bunch of stuff: this house, and the things in it—I suddenly want to figure them out."

Erin came over with her hands on her hips, tilting her head back with a look that screamed "zero schooling": "What’s there to figure out? No. 66 Wutong Road is your grave mound, so this whole room is basically the crack on your grave mound. There used to be a bunch of fissures around the mirror too—what else could all that cracking mean?"

"...True. Guess I’m just bored."

Yu Sheng laughed, bent down to ruffle Erin’s hair, then turned to walk toward the door.

"I’m heading to the supermarket. We’re out of fruit at home. You two coming?"

"I wanna go too!" Hu Li raised her hand immediately. "I want peaches. And watermelon~"

Erin joined the shouting: "I’m going too, and I’m riding in the shopping cart!"

"Okay okay, we’ll all go..."

Yu Sheng spoke as he turned, giving the room one last glance.

The mass-produced puppet was still sitting obediently on the floor in front of the mirror, everything inside and outside the mirror perfectly quiet.

...

Li Lin looked with a slightly odd expression at the big yellow dog squatting at the courier station entrance. He was carrying a bag of cooking oil, salt, soy sauce, and vinegar from the supermarket at the corner in his left hand, and two bottles of beer in his right, hesitating for a long while over whether he should say hi to the big yellow dog.

He soon didn’t need to hesitate, because the big yellow dog took the initiative to stand up and greet him: "Yo, Xiao Li, you’re back? Hey, give me those things, I’ll carry them for you in my mouth..."

Li Lin sighed inwardly, but he’d more or less gotten used to this situation in front of him. He hurriedly refused: "No need, no need, it’s not much—just open the door for me."

The big yellow dog turned around to help him open the door, and at the same time, an old lady’s voice sounded from the side: "Drink less, that stuff does you no good. My old man died from drinking."

Li Lin, struggling to keep a straight face, glanced to the side and saw a toothless old lady emerging by the base of the courier station wall. She was standing there like a ghost: her upper body still looked vaguely like a human silhouette, but her lower body was nothing but a mass of white icy mist that kept spreading outward.

Li Lin kept his expression under control and nodded at the old lady, but before he could speak, another ghost-like shadow floated up from behind her—an old man with just as few teeth: "Xiao Lizi, don’t listen to her nonsense, I obviously died from smoking. If you..."

But Li Lin didn’t bother listening to the second half; as soon as the station door opened he hurried inside with the things, and saw Zheng Zhi sitting properly behind the table, eyes closed, meditating like he’d entered a trance.

"What are you doing?" Li Lin put the stuff on the table and asked.

Zheng Zhi opened his eyes and was quite happy to see Li Lin: "Hey, Brother Li, you’re back. I’m practicing Spiritual Energy Control. Let me tell you, I flipped through the textbooks the bureau sent us again today, and combined them with the tricks I learned back on Qianfeng Ling Mountain from those immortals, and I kinda had a bit of a breakthrough..."

"A bit of a breakthrough, my ass!" Li Lin was torn between laughing and crying. "Outside it’s your whole bunch of relatives again—your great-grandma and great-grandpa are in the middle of a fight. If you don’t get out there, the station’s going to auto-trigger an alarm in a minute."

"...Oh crap, my mom!"

Zheng Zhi let out a shout on the spot, scrambled up from behind the table, and ran for the door.

A few seconds later, Li Lin heard a lively racket outside—old ladies cursing, old men shouting, the big yellow dog trying to mediate, an old man playing the erhu at the door, and then the erhu playing the old man—this last one wasn’t something he heard; Li Lin actually saw it through the doorway.

Li Lin’s mouth twitched. He turned around and casually pulled open a cover plate next to the courier shelves; hidden underneath was a screen, on which strings of data and waveforms were flashing so fast they made your eyes blur.

The readings for detected Spiritual Power Shock were bobbing up and down at the center of the screen like a roller coaster, but at least they hadn’t reached the threshold for triggering an alarm.

Li Lin sighed, grabbed the things he’d bought, and walked toward the kitchen.

This courier outpost was tiny but fully equipped. Since it only served that single household at No. 66 Wutong Road, it didn’t need a big warehouse at all. Past the small front room and further inside, the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and all that were perfectly laid out. Li Lin and Zheng Zhi had been "stationed" here for so long that they’d completely turned this place into a happy den for two bachelors.

He entered the kitchen and started washing and chopping vegetables, while still paying attention to the noise outside the station.

He knew what had been going on with his partner lately. The day Zheng Zhi finished his observation, Li Lin had been the one who went to the bureau to pick him up.

How should he put it? The good news was that his partner was alive and kicking in perfect health—maybe because his Spiritual Vision had been too high for years and he’d been through countless incidents, tempering his nerves to be extra tough. Zheng Zhi hadn’t shown any serious backlash symptoms like those ordinary "halfway Spiritual Ability Users," hadn’t displayed any self-destructive tendencies, and his mental state was even particularly stable.

But the bad news was that Zheng Zhi seemed like he still needed a long time to practice his ability control—these days he could basically recall any Spiritual Energy Illusion he summoned at any time, and could ensure the illusions he summoned wouldn’t go berserk, but beyond that, Spiritual Energy Illusions would still occasionally pop up around him without him even noticing.

So now, most of the time, Zheng Zhi either stayed at the courier station itself (this outpost had its own Spiritual Protection Field), or went to the bureau for training classes, or headed into the valley to practice trance meditation with Yun Qingzi, and avoided going out to interact with ordinary people unless necessary.

Li Lin was chopping vegetables when he suddenly stopped.

The noisy racket outside had quieted down.

But he didn’t hear the sound of Zheng Zhi pushing the door open and coming inside.

"...You gotta be kidding me, it’s only been a few days of peace."

Li Lin muttered, set the kitchen knife down, quickly rinsed his hands in the sink beside him, then turned and walked swiftly out of the kitchen.

He came to the front of the courier station, and to his surprise, this time Zheng Zhi hadn’t lost control—he was just standing in the open space at the entrance, head tilted back, staring blankly at the sky.

Li Lin walked over quickly.

"What are you doing? It suddenly went quiet and you didn’t come back, I thought you’d..."

"Brother Li," Zheng Zhi cut him off, and for some reason there was a trace of tension in his voice, "guess what I just saw?"

Li Lin’s hand went to his gun instantly. "What did you see?"

"Boundary City, a Boundary City floating in the sky, upside down, and falling straight down..."