Alien Hotel.

Chapter 474 A Glimpse Through the Rift

The mirror remained quiet, and nothing strange happened even in the latter half of the night.

After Hu Li went back to her room to sleep, Yu Sheng sat in front of the mirror, clutching a fragment of the ominous banner in his hand, staring at the opposite wall like a strange man anticipating midnight ghost stories. Eventually, he even drifted off to sleep in that chair-sitting position. He had many chaotic dreams that were incoherent but he had little recollection of them. In one of his dreams, he even saw Eileen wandering around. Finally, the little doll asked him in his dream why he didn't go back to his room to sleep, which jolted him awake. Helplessly, he went back to his room.

Then, I slept soundly until the sun was high in the sky.

Eileen wanted to go to town today, but Yu Sheng had other plans. After some discussion, Yu Sheng decided to let Hu Li take the little doll down the mountain to play.

But he was also a little worried—after all, Hu Li rarely went out on her own, and Eileen was a troublesome and mischievous girl. It didn't seem very safe to let the two of them go down the mountain together...

So after much deliberation, he decided to send Luna out as well—although the Saintess was quiet and slow-witted in the real world, she was at least calm and honest. With her watching over the two clowns, the fox and the doll, there shouldn't be any serious incidents that would require him to go to the police department to bail them out.

"Eileen, after you go down the mountain, don't tie people up with threads, don't curse at people, and don't use the Nightmare Star to smash windows... Huli, remember to pay for your food, don't go to the park pond to catch fish, and most of the celestial birds flying on the city walls have owners, so don't catch them to eat... Luna, keep an eye on these two, and contact me immediately if anything happens..."

Yu Sheng stood at the door, nagging on and on like an old father seeing his mischievous child off on a long trip for the first time. Eileen, nestled in Hu Li's arms, rolled her eyes as she listened: "Alright, alright, alright, we're not children anymore. And what kind of image do you have of me? Me, the dignified Alice doll, capable of smashing windows..."

Luna, who was standing nearby, nodded in agreement: "Yes, that's right."

Sometimes Yu Sheng really had a hard time figuring out what this saintess meant by her "yes" and, coupled with her strange delay, he couldn't even be sure who she was praising.

...Wait a minute, is she really that calm and honest?
Yu Sheng suddenly had this doubt, and his mind involuntarily recalled Luna's chattering in the Soul Wilderness. But just as he was about to say something more, the fox girl in front of him quickly turned around and rolled over, transforming into a giant nine-tailed fox with a "bang." Then, carrying Eileen and Luna, she shot straight into the sea of ​​clouds in a streak of white light...

Like a Samoyed that has broken free of its reins.

Watching the firelight streak across the sea of ​​clouds as the nine-tailed fox passed by, Yu Sheng shook his head with a helpless smile. After a moment's thought, he took out his phone and sent a message to Yuan Hao Zhenren.

The message had only been sent for a moment when he saw a streak of light rise from the direction of Queyun Palace. In the blink of an eye, the streak of light landed on the Guanyun Platform and transformed into an old, handsome man with snow-white hair and a flowing robe.

Yu Sheng stepped forward to greet him, but he was taken aback when he noticed that Yuan Hao Zhenren, whose face was usually carefree and unrestrained, looked worried today. He asked, "What's wrong with you?"

The old man pulled out a fan from somewhere, shook it, then slammed it down on his hand with a "smack," lamenting, "My three-hundred-year-old Spirit Frost Brew!!!"

Yu Sheng: "...?"

Fortunately, Master Yuanhao's Dao heart remained quite stable. After a moment of grief, he recovered and then told Yu Sheng about his tragic experience after returning home the previous day.

Basically, his two junior brothers found his wine stash while he was setting up a stall down the mountain, and then picked out only the rarer bottles, drinking twelve jars of wine in half a day...

“Those two have no respect for their elders!” Yuan Hao sighed. “I was so afraid they would find out, so I dug a wine cellar under the Ancestral Master Hall. Who would have thought they would show no fear of the Ancestral Master’s authority and actually pry open the cellar cover behind the Ancestral Master’s statue…”

Yu Sheng listened, breaking out in a cold sweat. He dared not say or ask any more questions. He was inwardly amazed at how powerful the old man was compared to his three fellow disciples. Their cultivation had reached a certain level; their minds were truly enlightened. In comparison, Xuan Che's cultivation was indeed much weaker. He would almost die after spinning around on the roof beam twice...

Of course, don't ask how it actually starts spinning yet.

While he was lost in thought, Yuan Hao quickly composed himself. The old man took a deep breath, temporarily setting aside his three-hundred-year-old Spirit Frost Brew, and said with a serious expression, "Ahem, let's not talk about personal matters for now. Take me to see that 'room' first."

Upon hearing this, Yu Sheng quickly gathered his thoughts, turned around, and walked towards the door: "Okay, come with me."

A few minutes later, Yuanhao Zhenren, led by Yu Sheng, arrived at the end of the corridor on the second floor of No. 66 Wutong Road and stood in front of that strange empty room.

This was precisely his main purpose in coming here today—to see for himself how the "fragment of the ominous banner" in Yu Sheng's hands "entered" the real world.

The door opened, and the empty room at the end of the corridor remained the same as before.

Sunlight filtered through the slightly worn and thin curtains, casting dappled patterns of light and shadow across the room. The faded wallpaper was adorned with simple patterns, and a solitary mirror hung on the opposite wall, reflecting the figures of Yu Sheng and Yuan Hao.

“The ‘focal point’ of the rift should be this mirror. It occasionally reflects the scenery on the ‘other side,’ but the timing and duration of this reflection are unpredictable,” Yu Sheng explained to Yuan Hao, pointing to the mirror and describing the room’s characteristics. “Besides, the entire wall where the mirror is hung should be part of the rift. When something unusual appears in the mirror, the entire wall becomes ‘weak,’ and then material from the other side flies over here, such as wind and snow, metal parts—and fragments of the ominous banner.” Yuan Hao listened and nodded, his attention always fixed on the mirror. After studying it for a while, he casually reached into his sleeve and pulled out… a stack of talismans.

Yu Sheng looked at him in surprise.

The old coach was taken aback by Yu Sheng's gaze: "Why the expression?"

"This is the first time I've seen you pull something out of your sleeve that's nothing more than a brick."

“I can use other techniques too,” Yuan Hao said, a little embarrassed. “I can’t just use the Heaven-Turning Seal to smash your precious mirror for something as detailed as this, can I?”

Yu Sheng thought to himself that he had genuinely believed the other party was going to do that, and he was mentally prepared...

As they were talking, Master Yuanhao casually scattered the stack of talismans. The talismans, each depicting mysterious patterns, transformed into countless illusory phantoms the moment they left his hand. Then, the phantoms connected end to end, and the papers vanished into thin air, leaving only the runes, emitting a faint golden light, forming flowing curtains in the air. Without Yuanhao performing any hand seals, incantations, or incense offerings, the rune curtains had already completed countless dazzling combinations and transformations, before slowly covering the walls on both sides of the mirror.

Numerous tiny sparks burst forth from around the runes that emitted a faint golden light, slowly adhering to the wall like branding marks.

“I have been preparing these talismans for a hundred years,” Yuan Hao said, looking at the scene before him. He sighed slightly, his expression filled with emotion. “After leaving that ‘Black Star,’ I recorded all the traces of time and space that I could deduce on the immortal ship and refined them into these ‘Dao Beacons,’ hoping to be able to capture its traces in time when the Black Star reappeared. But I never expected that the Black Star would never appear again. What I didn’t expect was that these talismans would find a use for you again.”

"...'Beacon'? You mean these things can open a passage to that strange space inside Black Star?"

Yuan Hao shook his head and answered honestly, "I don't know."

"Uh...you don't know?"

“I’m not an ‘expert’ like you. How would I know if these things can open the rift here?” Yuan Hao spread his hands. “These are just some recorded coordinates, and many of them were estimated by me afterward. I’m just ‘printing’ them here as a trial to see if they can stimulate the unstable spacetime structure here. Maybe they can make the rift that was originally here open on its own… If it doesn’t work, there’s nothing I can do.”

Yu Sheng looked at the composed old man with a bit of speechlessness, then stepped forward, preparing to use his "door-opening" ability to sense the curtain composed of countless runes, to see if he could directly use these "beacons" to open a door to the distance, just like when he intervened in the leap process of the pillar of order.

But just as he was about to raise his hand, a strong, chilling, and resistant feeling, as if it pierced his bones, penetrated his soul, and ran through his mind, abruptly stopped him.

He was slightly stunned by this indescribable discomfort, his fingers only a few centimeters away from the mirror.

Then, the room scene reflected in the mirror vanished instantly, and a thick, almost black, sludge-like fog spread from the edge of the mirror frame, covering the entire mirror surface in the blink of an eye.

The mirror surface undulated and writhed before his eyes, and thick, eerie ripples spread through the dense fog. Then, these ripples quickly spread beyond the frame and even across the entire wall. The pale golden runes had vanished without him noticing, leaving only a wall of pitch-black "mud" swelling and contracting before his eyes, like an abyss that tempted him to fall into it.

Yu Sheng was momentarily dazed, but did not retract his hand.

Because that chilling, bone-chilling aura... felt very familiar.

Just then, the surface of the mirror suddenly "swelled up," though only a few centimeters, enough to fill the gap between Yu Sheng's finger and the mirror surface.

He touched the black mist.

Endless darkness descended in the blink of an eye, and a bone-chilling cold gathered from all directions. In a flash, Yu Sheng was plunged into endless darkness.

A massive torrent of information surged from the end of darkness, directly sketching out a vast and boundless image in Yu Sheng's mind. One after another, illusions—or perhaps not illusions—revealed their hazy and terrifying silhouettes in the darkness.

A colossal eye covering the sky, towering trees and jungles hanging upside down, a beautiful woman lounging on a throne, a living planet with a surface covered in hexagonal lattices, a silver ring radiating a holy, soft light, and pale purple mist drifting among the stars...

Dark angels line up on the other side, lurking in the mortal world amidst destruction.

(End of this chapter)