Chapter 904 - 903: Memories Beneath the Invisible Dome

Chapter 904: Chapter 903: Memories Beneath the Invisible Dome

Leaving everything else aside, Salt Roasted and White Cut were at least very obedient; right then and there they followed the direction Zheng Zhi pointed out and circled several more times in midair.

Zheng Zhi widened his eyes, staring hard at the places the two Bird Spirits flew past, trying to track those ripples and use them to determine where that gigantic thing that couldn’t be seen by the naked eye was, and where its boundaries lay.

Not gonna lie, this was actually pretty hard.

The main difficulty lay in the fact that those two dumb birds had way too many colors on them—especially once they were airborne, it wasn’t just their bodies; there was a whole load of light-pollution special effects around them. It was all multicolored rays and auspicious glow spam, a wingspan of four or five meters somehow trailing twenty meters of contrails behind them...

Yu Sheng had no idea what kind of aesthetic the Immortals back in Hu Li’s hometown went for on a daily basis, but over at the Taixu Spirit Hub, this already counted as "disturbing the patriarchs" tier ghost-fire disco. Just flying one circle outside the mountain gate would make seven or eight Security Immortals scramble into the air—and these two sisters were the hardest kind among all the ghost-fire discos, because you couldn’t impound their vehicle at all—they themselves were the vehicle, basically combining license plate and driver’s license into one...

While such sentiments rose unbidden in Yu Sheng’s mind, Zheng Zhi beside him already had his eyes so wide they were about to go blind, and he helplessly called out, "Can you two turn off those rainbow lights on you? They’re making my vision go full rave out here..."

What answered him was a string of clucks and crows; he couldn’t understand a word, but judging from the dazzling light trailing behind White Cut and Salt Roasted, it probably meant: can’t be turned off.

Even so, after some effort, Zheng Zhi still managed with difficulty to make out the general boundary of that patch of ripples, and even discovered a direction that made the ripples show up more clearly.

"Go a bit more over there," he stood up on the three-wheeler, pointing toward some direction far away. "Yeah, right there—hold it!"

Erin suddenly opened her eyes wide.

"Hey, Yu Sheng, Yu Sheng! I see it too!" The Little Puppet shouted excitedly, "There really is something over there!"

At this point Yu Sheng also saw that vague, blurry boundary—it might not have been as clear as what Zheng Zhi saw, but at the spot where White Cut and Salt Roasted were hovering, the air was indeed showing abnormal distortions and fluctuations.

Baili Qing flew over without hesitation, faint glow rippling in her huge, crystal-like dragon eyes. She looked around for a long moment, then abruptly opened her massive jaws and blasted out a breath toward a certain direction.

Pale breath carried fine particles of light, sweeping across the sky like a storm made of fog and radiance mixed together.

Under the scouring of this powerful Dragon Breath, a patch of structure that had originally been hidden away—unobservable, untouchable—actually revealed a faint outline in the airspace for a brief moment.

Yu Sheng saw a near-transparent crystal web structure appear there, spreading rapidly outward from the point where the Dragon Breath struck as its center. In just the span of a few breaths, that expanding crystal web flashed across the entire sky, revealing its full form in an extremely short-lived instant.

It was a crystal dome, or perhaps a huge floating island in the sky coated entirely in crystal. Its scale seemed somewhat smaller than the Plande Sky Island; its central section bulged high, as if something had once tried to swell and break free from there, only to be forced back under the dome again and again by ever-thickening layers of crystallization.

"Holy my Puppet Progenitor..."

The Little Puppet stood on Yu Sheng’s leg and let out a cry of shock—but before that cry even finished, that floating glow and shadow had already dissipated from the sky.

The "crystal Sky Island" only revealed itself before everyone for those few fleeting seconds.

Seeing this, Baili Qing didn’t hesitate at all. She immediately took a deep breath and once again blasted her Dragon Breath forward.

Yet this time, the duration for which the Sky Island showed itself was even shorter than before.

Yu Sheng raised his hand. "Lu..."

A black shadow flashed by, and his arm was instantly carved up like some aquarium exhibit, with the three largest bleeding cuts spurting fresh blood.

Yu Sheng didn’t have the luxury to marvel at how much Luna’s knife work had improved lately. He hastily controlled the blood, spreading it into mist, and when that invisible crystal Sky Island surfaced briefly again, he shoved all of it forward in one go.

The blood mist instantly permeated the crystal web structure, and in the very next instant, vanished from the sky along with it.

"Did it work? Did it seep in?" Erin immediately turned her head to ask. "Did you connect?"

Yu Sheng didn’t answer the Little Puppet.

Because right at that moment, continuous roaring and howling had already flooded his mind—he felt himself establish a brief resonance with a colossal Consciousness collective, felt himself dragged into some stream of time that had long since ended.

He lifted his head in a daze, seeing the sky drenched in blood-red; ominous Red light cleaved open the Universe.

He saw ancient, towering structures standing upon the highest mountain. Their jagged Towers were like the fangs and claws of giant dragons, thrusting unyielding blades toward that world-ending Red light and the stars constantly falling around it.

He also saw a banner, a massive banner flying high above the final fortress. On its ink-blue field was drawn a majestic golden double-headed giant dragon.

The earth beneath his feet was slowly splitting apart, molten magma and searing light surging from the fractured ground like the blood and soul of the planet. The entire planet seemed to repeatedly teeter on the brink of breaking apart, only to be forcibly knit back together again and again by the mighty power of the giant dragon. The sky burned in roaring flames, yet in a few fleeting instants, that scorched sky would eerily return to a clear, bright state, as if... the flow of time across the whole world was no longer linear.

"Knowledge" thundered in Yu Sheng’s mind.

He felt he saw a colossal phantom—though it might just be some intense intent coalescing into an illusion within his Mind.

"We... fought on, to the very end of the time-stream."

A voice was roaring in Yu Sheng’s mind. It didn’t sound like language at all, more like someone was directly blasting "information" into his Mind.

"We have dismantled the... structure of information..."

Under Yu Sheng’s feet, the homeworld that had held on till the very last moment of doomsday, collapsing and reshaping over and over at the end of time, finally caved in. He watched the land under him rapidly get ground flat into some strange Illusion, while the crystal formed by giant dragon remains grew in the air, as if right up to the moment their race went extinct, those remains were still resisting the collapse of the world itself, still propping up the structural order of spacetime.

In the end, a magnificent crystal dome stood before Yu Sheng, and all the secrets of the giant dragon civilization were buried inside this grand tomb.

After that, the tomb began to gradually hide itself.

Yu Sheng watched the dome fold and shrink, becoming something that could no longer be observed. It seemed to be some kind of "encryption" process he couldn’t comprehend, and the final stream of information was still flowing into his Mind.

"The end is now unavoidable... but we still have not disgraced our glory...

"If there are people who come after... our legacy is yours to take.

"We... do not stain the holy name..."

Yu Sheng heard the final roar, and then his Consciousness seemed to lose its restraints, beginning to fall endlessly through the chaos.

But right then, he saw black threads spreading out of the void, winding around his hands and feet.

Deceitful, cold, and yet carrying a familiar sense of reassurance.

The immense and imposing Spider Goddess let down threads from the edge of the web, hauling him upward while running her mouth nonstop: "All day long I’m just fishing people out... you think this is easy on me? I say two words and nobody answers, turn my head and you’re dying again, who the hell has half an hour to wait for you at a time like this... Hey, since you woke up, put some muscle into it!"

Yu Sheng jolted and snapped his eyes open.

The Little Puppet was lowering her head, bonking his ribs over and over with her tiny forehead.

Yu Sheng immediately bared his teeth in pain, reaching out to press down hard-headed, strong-armed Erin’s little head: "Ow, hey, cut it out, I’m up, I’m up, that hurts..."

Only then did the Little Puppet stop. Right after that Yu Sheng heard a giant dragon’s roar nearby. He hurriedly turned his head and saw Baili Qing not far away, repeatedly blasting the empty sky with her breath.

However, that invisible crystal dome was no longer responding. Dragon Breath dispersed into the sky; nothing else came out.

"Hold it, hold it!" Yu Sheng stood up on Hu Li’s back and waved hard toward the silver-white giant dragon. "No need to spray anymore! I’ve already gathered the intel on my side!"

Only then did Baili Qing finally stop. She turned her enormous head, stared at Yu Sheng for a moment, then flew over and opened her mouth—only to fail to squeeze out a single word.

Her jaw was basically jammed shut...

Seeing this, Yu Sheng waved his hand: "Hard to explain in a couple of sentences. Anyway, let’s head back first. Things here are pretty complicated; the whole ’Historical Fragments’ have been hidden. We can’t enter with conventional means... we’ll have to go back and study some other methods."

Baili Qing silently nodded.

"We’re leaving already?" Hu Li couldn’t help looking back, a bit reluctant. But she’d always trusted Yu Sheng’s judgment, so she didn’t say much. She just called out to the two Colorful Chicken Essence still flying laps in the distance: "White Cut, Salt Roasted, time to go back!"

The two shimmering Bird Spirit let out cheerful cries and immediately flew back from afar, circling around Hu Li again and again.

Yu Sheng gave one last deep look at the sky where the invisible dome had been, then withdrew his gaze and gently patted the fur on the big fox’s back.

The Nine-Tailed Fox set off at a trot, diving into the clouds alongside the silver-white giant dragon, flying toward the center of Plande Sky Island.

—Since Hu Li liked romping around, Yu Sheng didn’t just open a doorway straight home.

The trip back went without incident. Before long, the Angel Giant Tree at the center of Plande Sky Island appeared in everyone’s field of view.

Yu Sheng had his mind on various matters and barely spoke along the way. Erin, on the other hand, yammered nonstop the whole ride, all of it pure fluff. The silver-white giant dragon flying beside the Nine-Tailed Fox was even quieter than Yu Sheng—though it was hard to say whether that was because she had something on her mind or her throat still hadn’t recovered...

Only when the Angel Giant Tree’s towering canopy drew closer and closer did Yu Sheng hear Baili Qing mumble a call. Then he saw the giant dragon begin to drop altitude, followed by a series of perfectly executed slows and spirals, and the white-haired Dragon Lady smoothly hung herself onto a branch of the Angel Giant Tree, as practiced as ever...

Even though it wasn’t his first time seeing this, Yu Sheng still couldn’t help pulling a face that was hard to keep straight.

By then White Cut and Salt Roasted were spiraling down as well. The two iridescent show-offs dragged their flashy rainbow smoke effects around the crown of the Angel Giant Tree for half a lap, then deliberately parked themselves left and right of the branch Baili Qing was hanging from, each fixing its eyes, one pair aimed inward, one pair rolling outward. Watching the white giant dragon, they both tilted their heads: "You know how to land or not?"

There was no describing how punchable that scene was. Even the usually mild-tempered Hu Li couldn’t help letting out a roar in midair: "Wang-ao!!"

Seeing this, Yu Sheng quickly bent down, ruffling the fur at the back of the fox girl’s neck: "Easy, easy, save the beating for later on the ground..."