The Portal of Wonderland

Yan Luo looked at the Fallen Angel Desk, her eyes flashing silver before they turned almost ethereal.

The Fallen Angel Desk shuddered a little and escaped her hand, floating upwards into the air before spinning around slowly.

At the same time, a voice as mellifluous as an angel’s harp drifted through the air and echoed into the ears with a chant.

“When beings come into the cosmos,

The Celestial gifts all with a soul

Return to the void when the soul expires,

To eternal rest the body retires…”

Yan Luo was reciting the verse from the Fallen Angel Canon!

The silver mask covering half of her beautiful face had vanished at some point, laying the belle’s exquisite beauty bare for the world to see.

As she recited the verses, her body rose into the air, her eyes embroidered with silver sparks until they amassed into two silver vortices, as if they were synchronized with the Fallen Angel Desk.

Her raven hair was disheveled and undulated in the wind as the black lotus-like mark in the center of her forehead started to glow.

Shi Mu was already covering himself with a glowing red barrier as he tried to stave off the encroaching yin energy from the surroundings. He wanted to say something, but his mouth closed the instant something else came to mind. Instead, he watched Yan Luo silently.

“… Land of the Living, Land of the Dead, in one’s bloodline all beings connect, From Bi Luo[1], the highest of planes, to Huang Quan[2], the lowest of realms

In the Heavens, the sun and the moon reverse To the Boundless, the sky and the earth invert Amidst Chaos, Qi becomes exiguous

In the Welkin, the path becomes nebulous; …”

The beginning of the Fallen Angel Canon was well-known to Shi Mu by this point, but Yan Luo seemed able to recite beyond the meager verses he knew. She continued her incantation without a moment of rest.

His eyes flashing, Shi Mu did not interrupt but put his effort into remembering the verses she had spoken.

When Yan Luo had reached the final word, her eyes were scintillating with a silvery gleam. She raised her arm and a single silver spark shined out of her fingertip before darting into the floating Fallen Angel Desk.

As the silver light melted into the Fallen Angel Desk, it started to pulse as the golden glyphs carved on its surface brightened. These glyphs were originally tenebrous and hidden in the black surface, yet now they jutted out of the surface unevenly, forming an unidentifiable image on the entire black brick-like object in the backdrop of blinding, golden aura.

Illuminated by the aura, Yan Luo looked as if she was being draped with a gilded shroud. With her radiant skin, her silver eyes and the mystical black lotus mark on her forehead, the previous countenance of a delicate waif had now been completely displaced with an indescribably exalted mien.

All around the Darkwater Lake, the sounds of bones hitting the pavement echoed one after the other as thousands of undead creatures prostrated themselves to her.

Shi Mu was taken aback by the scene, his eyes darting everywhere before finally returning to Yan Luo hovering in the middle of the sky once more.

She used another handsign and projected an arc of light into the Fallen Angel Desk, which stopped it from vibrating and instantly returned to being static while the floating gilded glyphs once again melted back into its opaque surface.

Yan Luo opened her mouth and the Fallen Angel Desk turned into a single trail of gold disappearing into her mouth.

As Shi Mu watched, the maiden slowly floated back down to the earth before him, the silver glow in her eyes gradually receding.

“Y-you knew about this Fallen Angel Desk all along, Yan Luo?” Shi Mu blurted out to the bewitching beau before him.

“I see, so this is its name,” she replied, opening her mouth again and retrieving a trail of golden light before the light revealed it to be the same black brick from before.

Hearing her admitting to not knowing the thing she had just activated made Shi My speechless.

Before he managed to come up with something to say, Yan Luo had automatically tossed the black brick to Shi Mu. He reflexively caught it, and his eyes were filled with confusion as he looked at Yan Luo.

“I’ll help gather the necessary materials to build that altar. In the meantime, you’ll be guarding this object,” Yan Luo said, turning away from him without giving him the time to reply. She raised her hand, and her eyes once again emanated silver light.

A cacophony of clanking erupted.

Thousands of prostrating skeletons and undead creatures stood up simultaneously before turning around and walking to an unknown direction in silence.

Ten days later…

On a clearing next to the Darkwater Lake, a white, misty pillar of light was suddenly blasting into the stratosphere. Around the pillar, water-like ripples coursed through the air on all sides, obscuring the view.

The light beam was being shot out of a black altar about several yards-wide in diameter. Around the altar were laid a ring of pearly-white bones.

Suspended above the altar was the Fallen Angel Desk, its gilded glyphs visible as it spun slowly and showering a sizable territory around the altar with its golden light,

Standing within this territory was Shi Mu, his body basking in the golden light.

His brow raised a little as he turned to face a voluptuous figure in silver armor standing close by.

At the same time, Yan Luo turned to stare at him.

Their eyes met, but none of them said anything.

A few moments later, Yan Luo broke the silence.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes,” he nodded.

Shi Mu’s feelings were, in truth, complicated.

A long time ago, he journeyed into Dead Spirit World under Young Master Ju’s guidance, and with his help, sealed a contract with Yan Luo while still confused about the entire process. Now his own Subjugated Spirit’s powers and speed of cultivating them had far eclipsed his own, and here she was, creating a flesh body for herself—revealing herself to be a ravishing belle at that!

All of this was just borderline insane.

He did try to ask Yan Luo about her past over the last couple of days, but whenever he did, she would suddenly wrap her arms around her head, her face wrought with some sort of pain. She acted exactly the same as when she first roused from her transformation, letting out an ear-splitting, blood-curdling shriek that would knock Shi Mu out cold.

After going through that a few times, even the most determined man would learn to stop asking.

As he mused, there was a silver glint in Yan Luo’s eye as she raised her hand, shooting out a quick trail of silver light into the Fallen Angel Desk hovering in midair.

When the light melted into the black brick above, the altar below it was starting to ebb with a huge torrent of white light, drowning Shi Mu’s silhouette completely.

When the tide of white had receded, he was gone.

Yan Luo’s eyes returned to their original state as she summoned the Fallen Angel Desk hovering in midair as it zipped to her in a trail of golden light before vanishing in her mouth.

Her footsteps were dandy and light as she approached the black stone altar, her hand gently caressing its edge. She turned her attention to the nearby Darkwater Lake.

Her almost ethereal eyes may have rested on the Darkwater Lake, but it seemed that she was seeing through the lake and into somewhere beyond.

A few moments later, she closed her eyes. Streams of silver sparks illuminated her body as the air started swirling and orbiting around her, causing her raven-black hair to billow.

A few seconds later, her eyes bolted open and two rays of silver shone out from her pupils as the energy around her spiked exponentially.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

A series of eruptions screeched through the air as the previously calm Darkwater Lake suddenly exploded into several dozen water spouts shooting into the air a few hundred yards above. When the spouts died, the water returned downward as a storm of blood-colored rain pelting back into the lake.

Yan Luo stood at the side of the lake quietly, doing nothing as she allowed the crimson rain to fall.

The raindrops were densely packed without much space in between as they plummeted back to the earth, yet not a single drop landed on Yan Luo—as if an invisible shield had deflected all of them away from her.

The air orbiting around her slowly formed an outline of themselves as blasts of grey mist gathered close to her. They united into a single grey vortex of fog.

Yan Luo put her hand before her chest, her middle finger and thumb locking, and performed a single handsign.

Boom!

The silver vortex was spinning faster and faster until a cyclone of some kind formed within the perimeter of a few miles on the Darkwater Lake. Silver mist spun and merged in the air to form larger and larger currents of grey fog. Then, like a pack of grey dragons, the air streams twisted and swirled their bodies into the eye of the vortex until it had become a tornado with a diameter larger than ten yards shooting into the dark nimbus hanging low in the sky.

The graphite-colored clouds broke away the instant the gust was shot upward into it, creating a large schism and exposing a large, pitch-black space behind it.

Yan Luo stood in the eye of the vortex, her face cold and unfazed while her silver armor dazzled with silver light.

She looked like the consort of a god, or perhaps an immortal goddess in her own rights. Her beauty was so overwhelming that it bordered on ethereal indifference as if she was a proud immortal looking down on the lowly mortals beneath her.

She raised her arm, her fingers closed together like the tip of her sword and pointed at a single mountain a few hundred miles away from where she stood. A shot of white light instantly blasted out of her fingertips.

The light was only visible for a millisecond before disappearing, yet it seemed to have broken out of the grey tornado as it instantly appeared before the mountain.

Kaboom! With a racket, the lofty mountain tumbled instantly, reduced to a pile of scattered rubble.

Yan Luo withdrew her arms, her eyebrows creasing a little as if in discontent.

She performed the handsign of cessation and placed her hand at the side, her eyes once again cast toward the Darkwater Lake.

Without Yan Luo’s command, the ten-odd yards wide grey tornado started fading away.

Meanwhile, thousands of skeleton soldiers accumulated around her into a formation before they knelt.

Half of Yan Luo’s face was once again covered by a silver mask.

She eyed the skeletons around her. Her left hand gently rubbed the storage ring on her right index finger, retrieving a set of bones as transparent as jade.

It was Wu Ye’s remains.

She eyed the pile, and with her a flick of her palm, a few sparkling black powders had appeared in her hand. She then cast the powder evenly around the remains into an oval, encircling Wu Ye’s remains.

She pressed her hands together in a series of handsigns as arcs of silver light shot out of her fingertips and slowly formed pearls of glowing orbs onto Wu Ye’s remains.

As the silver orbs melted into the bones, the already luminous bones suddenly blazed with bright lights. A single wisp of green light lit within the eye sockets before quickly melting into the silver light.

Yan Luo’s beautiful eyebrows furrowed a little, as if in deep thought. She opened her mouth and retrieved the Fallen Angel Desk in a flash of light before they hovered at her side.

She made a handsign and pointed at the Fallen Angel Desk.

The gilded glyphs once again brightened up and slowly spouted a wisp of grey smog, forming a vague unidentifiable face before disassembling back to a throng of grey snaking into Wu Ye’s remains.

The pile of white bones trembled violently. Like a man alive bearing a grave wound, the skeleton started to convulse.

The black powder that Yan Luo had scattered before exploded into black smog, encasing the skeleton in the middle like a ball.

A few moments passed. The black ball of fog suddenly tumbled and burst, and a silhouette leaped out of it and landed before Yan Luo, instantly prostrating before her. It was a skeleton warrior in black armor.

In its hand was a long sword as black as ink, while its black armor had covered only its torso, chest and limbs, barring its black skull glowing with crystalline luster.

Yan Luo looked at the black-armored warrior before her and said coldly, “Remember. From now on, you’re Wu Ye.”