Chapter 869 - 868: Dark Moon

Chapter 869: Chapter 868: Dark Moon

Yu Sheng still stood in the hall, gazing at the Queen of Dark Moon not far ahead.

He felt as if he had been standing there for only a dozen minutes, but it was as if centuries had slipped by before his eyes. At some unknown moment, the "time" in this place seemed to have malfunctioned. He felt everything around him accelerating, events that had once occurred here compressed and fast-forwarding continuously before his eyes.

He saw the equipment in the hall gradually start to malfunction; some successfully self-repaired, while others dimmed forever. He saw the dome slowly collapse, and the giant pillars supporting it slant at bizarre angles. He also saw the corridor at the end of the hall split into two, while the wall on the other side twisted into a whirlpool shape.

Clearly, these changes were not caused merely by the erosion of time, but also by some irrational, terrifying, and twisted force.

Yet regardless of how this place transformed, and no matter how many years passed, that slender and pale figure always stood silently by the crystal — a "Queen," the most powerful among her kind, guarding her fortress alone.

Hundreds of meters of rock, metal, and polymers covered her overhead. She could only understand what was happening outside her cage through a single crystal.

Initially, that crystal could reflect some distant starlight, but soon, all the stars disappeared from the sky.

The sun had extinguished at some moment in the past; before its end, it swelled to nearly cover the whole sky, then silently shattered like a soap bubble.

The entire world was becoming barren. Everything beyond the fortress turned to ruins, and even the fortress itself, under the so-called phase protection and various shields, was gradually twisted into an unspeakable shape.

...Or perhaps, everything here had actually been utterly destroyed, and the fortress along with the Queen within were merely collective illusions left by a doomed race in the informational ruins at time’s end?

After all, on the day when the apocalypse descends, anything is possible.

Some strange thoughts swirled in Yu Sheng’s mind. He didn’t even know why he made such associations, as if he had once truly witnessed similar events occur, or perhaps such events had happened to him.

Then many more years passed, even the queen at the fortress’s center began to be affected.

Different versions of "her" appeared in the hall - different timelines of her, different possibilities of her, different states, different ages, different mentalities... Shadows splintered off from her, many figures with faces identical or nearly identical to those of Red ran about around Yu Sheng, appearing and disappearing in an instant.

Now, the Queen of Dark Moon herself had finally become a part of this chaotic apocalypse.

The sensation of accelerated time was intermittent, Yu Sheng once again felt the surrounding time had restored to its normal flow. He saw seven or eight "Reds" sitting on the ground near him, heads raised, with expressions either blank, joyful, or uneasy, gazing towards the center of the hall.

At some point, the enormous and ancient crystal had turned into an irregular mirror, reflecting pure darkness and void.

"Any good news? Any good news?"

One of the Reds raised her head and spoke.

"No news... No news might also be good news..." Another Red mumbled.

"Bad news, bad news," a third Red shook her head, clutching her head in her hands, "It’s over, it’s all over... We’ll never wait long enough..."

All the other "Reds" then closed in, instantly tearing that despondent figure into shreds.

The shredded girl turned into fluttering foam, within which was a pair of terrified and despairing eyes slowly drifting past Yu Sheng.

What would happen next? How much longer would they have to wait? How was Hu Li’s side doing? And where exactly was the "Red" he knew?

Yu Sheng felt he had sunk into a state of numbness and dullness in the disordered passage of time, turning various thoughts in his mind as he watched the scene unfold before him.

Suddenly, he recalled the figure running down the corridor laughing and shouting madly —

"I am the Queen of Dark Moon, haha..."

Yu Sheng frowned.

Indeed, she was the Queen of Dark Moon...

Then where was the moon?

As soon as this question emerged from the depths of his heart, it could no longer be suppressed, Yu Sheng realized he finally grasped the critical issue. He quickly recalled everything he had seen on the "monitoring crystal" since being transmitted to this hall — and ultimately confirmed that he had never seen anything resembling a blood moon or even the moon itself in any of the monitoring images.

Yu Sheng paused momentarily in place, and just then, he suddenly heard a faint buzzing sound.

The buzzing was coming from the center of the hall!

He reflexively looked towards the direction of the sound — towards the massive "crystal."

Of course, it was now an irregular mirror, and it seemed to have lost its function to monitor the outside world many years ago.

However, now, the edges of the mirror were faintly glowing.

Yu Sheng immediately walked towards that direction.

Many "Reds" in the hall also lifted their heads, seated, standing, young, mature... Yu Sheng stepped forward among them, his steps carrying the wind.

A disheveled "Red" sat on the ground, wrapped in clothes obviously two sizes too large, looking about twelve or thirteen, dumbly lifted her head. Her gaze did not focus on Yu Sheng, yet as if addressing Yu Sheng she spoke: "Good news? Is it good news?"

Yu Sheng instinctively paused his steps, but the seated girl had already merged with another "Red" beside her.

And with the corner of his eye, he saw the large mirror before the Queen of Dark Moon was now glowing more and more unmistakably. Accompanied by a cacophony of distorted light and shadow on the mirror’s surface dissolving and reforming, a vague silhouette suddenly appeared upon the mirror surface —

Tall, with a complexion that seems to cast a dark red, and it appears to have horns on its head.

The voice coming through the mirror was hoarse and piercing, initially completely unrecognizable in terms of language, yet after several repetitions, Yu Sheng suddenly understood what it was saying—

"...trying to construct a Sanctuary... we need more information and mass... looking for survivors..."

...

The Flying Carpet continued ascending in the darkness, clusters of bright Fox Fire swirling around, but these could only illuminate a small area nearby.

Yet, as the phosphorescence in the "sky" brightened, the contours in the darkness began to vaguely reveal themselves.

There were enormous structures floating in the night sky, and they were getting increasingly closer.

"Feels like the body is suddenly light... suddenly heavy again."

Erin grasped Hu Li’s tail, speaking with some surprise.

"We are passing through an unstable gravity field... the gravity environment of this entire space is controlled artificially!" Lucrecia looked at the Crystal Ball floating in front of her, a serious expression on her face, "Wait, it’s not just the gravity environment..."

Hu Li poked her head out from the edge of the Flying Carpet, looking down at the distant "surface," seeing the earth rise in the distance, and the increasingly apparent curvature finally gave her a clue.

The Nine-Tailed Fox slightly squinted her eyes, her golden-red pupils emitting a faint spiritual light in the dark, her perception spreading throughout the space, eventually revealing a shocked expression.

"That... that doesn’t seem to be ’ground’!"

Erin immediately raised her head: "Huh? What isn’t ground?"

"Below, the ’earth’ rises from the edges, finally closing into a sphere above us, we’re inside the shell of the sphere..." Hu Li slowly opened her eyes wide, her speech quick, "Holy Realm Star! The structure is like Holy Realm Star, we’re inside a hollow planet—the place we were standing on earlier is the inner layer of the crust!"

Erin opened her mouth wide.

"...Did they hollow out their planet to build a Sanctuary?!"

Little Puppet exclaimed in shock, and then suddenly paused, her usually muddled head surprisingly quick to react this time, she then sharply looked up at the increasingly massive shadow in the sky.

An enormous spherical structure floated in the center of the darkness, with its surface faintly visible with some dark red patterns, and there seemed to be something pulsing on that sphere, like some sort of... living thing.

"It’s the Earth Core!" Hu Li stood up, "That’s the Earth Core! Floating in the sky above the Dark Moon Royal Court, the ’Blood Moon,’ is the Earth Core of their mother star!"

All around suddenly became silent, so silent that everyone seemed to hear a certain low, viscous swaying sound coming from that huge sphere in the sky.

An eerie and unsettling atmosphere spread through the depths of this dim planet, Erin subconsciously reached out again to grab Hu Li’s tail: "Wait, wait... we only confirmed this thing is floating in the center of the Sanctuary, but now it doesn’t look like the Blood Moon we’ve seen, I remember that thing..."

Erin suddenly stopped.

Some ghostly blue Fox Fire rose upward, the enormous sphere floating at the Earth Core now seemed less than a kilometer away from the Flying Carpet, Erin opened her eyes wide in the dark, suddenly noticing that the surface of that "dark" sphere indeed had color.

In the gradually drifting glow of the Fox Fire, it was a shade of vivid red slowly rippling.

More Fox Fire floated over, the Flying Carpet continued to approach forward.

Upon crossing a certain critical point, gravity completely reversed, directing fully towards the "Earth Core."

Lucrecia promptly adjusted the direction of the Flying Carpet, and at almost the same time, Erin’s eyes caught a hint of red light.

That sphere, originally the "Earth Core," was starting to glow—the light emerged from its depths, dyed with a shade of blood red as it penetrated its surface.

The sphere became increasingly radiant, the Flying Carpet passed over it at a height of several dozen meters, and in the ever-growing "moonlight," Erin saw those ancient cities, fortresses, and industrial structures located within the planet’s inner crust.

All these structures were illuminated by the moonlight, hanging upside down within the inner shell of the planet, exuding a suffocating solemnity and grandeur.

However, all this had long ceased to function over the ages, leaving only layers of debris stacked in the ruins of the ancient Sanctuary.

In the moonlight, slender shadows drifted over.

These seemed to be streams of blood flowing from the inner crust towards the Earth Core.

Zheng Zhi also heard some sounds—perhaps not even sounds, but merely some ancient and hollow echoes of thoughts reverberating within this celestial body.

"Kill the moon... kill the moon... shut down the loss of control... Moon Engine..."

Erin seemed to have heard something as well, leaning on the edge of the Flying Carpet, looking down, her crimson eyes wide open.

They were flying over the "Blood Moon."

They were flying over a slowly rippling sea of blood.

The ancient Sanctuary had long been overrun, twisted and aberrant forces reverberating within the planet’s hollow shell, beneath the earth, life had perished, leaving only an endless sea of blood... enveloping a power reactor transformed from the Earth Core, which had spiraled out of control years ago.