Alien Hotel.

Chapter 535 Development Progress of the Wonderful Tool

In the living room of No. 66 Wutong Road, Hu Li and the others, who had just returned from outside, were listening attentively to Li Lin recount his incredible experience.

The enormous phantom that appeared in the fog was like a black spider web covering the entire Fog City, and the chaotic and unsettling whispers emanating from the phantom that resembled the goddess of omens.

Then several pairs of eyes fell on the little doll on the coffee table.

"Why are you all looking at me like that!" Eileen sat on the coffee table, shrinking her neck. "I don't know anything..."

As soon as she finished speaking, Luna next to her nodded in agreement: "Short Lin, you're too short to carry such a big pot."

"Even C-Knot said so!" With someone backing her up, the little doll immediately perked up, tilting her head back with a smug look on her face. But then she frowned in confusion, turning to look at Miss Saintess. "C-Knot, your accent and stuttering seem to be getting worse, let me tell you..."

“I never thought you’d encounter something like this, Brother Li,” Zheng Zhi said with a sigh. “Luckily I wasn’t here just now, or I’d probably be dead by now—you stared at this kind of bizarre being for so long and you’re still alright.”

"To be honest, if I had a choice, I really wouldn't have wanted to see it, but I couldn't control myself at the time," Li Lin said, breaking out in a cold sweat as he recalled the incident. He felt a chill still lingering in his bones. "When that thing was staring at me, I felt like my body wasn't even my own anymore. I even felt that death was a given. Luckily, it suddenly sleepwalked away in the end..."

Just then, a soft click interrupted the conversation in the living room, and an illusory door suddenly appeared on the empty floor next to the sofa.

Yu Sheng pushed open the door and walked out, returning to the world of the living.

The fox, who had been lounging listlessly on the sofa armrest, was the first to jump up. In a flash, it lunged forward and headbutted Yu Sheng's arm—of course, it held back; nudging someone with its head was the fox's highest form of courtesy towards those it cared for. Then it began circling Yu Sheng rapidly, its tail wagging like a five-speed electric fan: "My benefactor, you're back! Li Lin just had a possession and said he saw a giant spider crawl across our roof. Eileen said she doesn't know anything..."

“Stop, stop, stop, you’re making me dizzy—and Eileen already told me what happened when I regained consciousness,” Yu Sheng said, struggling to catch the large fox that was excitedly circling him. He grabbed her tail and pulled her back onto the sofa. Then he rubbed his arm, which had been hit on the head by the fox girl, sat down, and sighed. “I need to rest for a bit. I left in a hurry in my past life, and my head is buzzing as soon as I open my eyes in this life… Where were we? Oh right, the 'Spider Goddess' that Li Lin saw…”

He paused, and his mind began to recall his experience at the Black Dot Space Station—the eerie spacetime corrupted by the power of the Goddess of Omens, the core area covered by spiderwebs, and the "Eileen" who was always engrossed in writing and drawing.

The doll Irene and the goddess of omens are indistinguishable in their states, their memories and words seemingly intertwined.

And then there was that blonde elf who seemed to have been corrupted by the goddess of ominous signs.

Inside that massive space station, who knows how many Alglades, like that golden-haired elf, have been corrupted, or even had their minds completely replaced—after all, in the core laboratory, where the most severe corruption was concentrated, minds were everywhere, captured by the Ominous Spider Web.

A rustling sound came from the side, and the little doll, like a thief, crawled along the back of the sofa and approached, looking up at Yu Sheng with its scarlet eyes: "Yu Sheng, what do you think is going on? The thing Li Lin saw..."

“What Li Lin saw, and what I saw in the Black Dot Space Station, might all be the ‘Goddess of Omens’—but none of them are complete,” Yu Sheng said, feeling a chill run down his spine from the sight of the dark, crawling doll. He reached out and lifted it off the back of the chair, placing it beside him. “Perhaps it’s some kind of ‘fragment’? Or maybe it’s an echo or something… After all, it’s a ‘god,’ and a deity that shattered in the descent accident three thousand seven hundred years ago. Its current state of existence may already be beyond our comprehension…”

He was halfway through his sentence when he saw Eileen, who was looking up at him with her little face, her eyes fixed on him. He felt that what he was saying sounded a bit strange.

Because in a sense, this silly-looking doll in front of us might also be a "goddess of bad omens".

She might even be the one in the best "preservation state"—although her primary self-identification is "doll Irene".

Yu Sheng shook his head, trying to dispel the mental confusion caused by the continuous resurrection in a short period of time.

“I need to go to the Secret Service,” he suddenly said. “That Black Dot Lab is in a very dangerous state right now. Their project may have gone out of control a long time ago, and the spacetime rifts that have appeared one after another in several alien realms of Boundary City give me a very bad feeling… I need to talk to Baili Qing about this.”

He stood up as he spoke, but then seemed to remember something, and his hand, which was about to open the door, stopped in mid-air.

Eileen curiously peeked out from the side and asked, "What's wrong?"

“Let Luna help me bleed out some blood first,” Yu Sheng said seriously. “I’ll send another batch to Mo Ran and check on her progress. I have a feeling we might be in for a big fight—better safe than sorry.”

Before he could finish speaking, Luna had already drawn her fingertip blade and started brandishing it at Yu Sheng's body...

Yu Sheng felt a chill run down his spine. Looking at the artificial saintess's eternally serene and gentle perfect smile, he always felt that beneath her veneer was a dark and treacherous place: "Veins! Veins! Don't poke at the arteries, or you'll accidentally kill her and all that blood will have been wasted..."

Li Lin and Zheng Zhi watched, trembling with fear. They already knew about Yu Sheng's situation; Zheng Zhi had joined the group back in Qianfeng Lingshan, and Li Lin had received a "blood transfusion" shortly after Yu Sheng's return (though mainly to make it easier for him to deliver packages). Facing these two "gatekeepers" sent by the Special Operations Bureau, who were also acquaintances they'd known for a while, Yu Sheng didn't hide anything from them. But knowing is one thing, adapting is another; the hostel's unique corporate culture wasn't something an ordinary person could grasp in a day or two.

“Brother Li,” Zheng Zhi nudged Li Lin’s arm, “is it normal to encounter this kind of situation while working at the Secret Service?”

"No, stop making noise," Li Lin said without thinking, "Watch carefully, learn carefully."

"Learn what? If it were me, I would have been stabbed to death by Luna..."

“I’m telling you to learn from Eileen—look at her, she’s still watching TV. That’s the kind of stable mindset you need in our line of work.”

"Oh...hey Brother Li, you know what, she's not very big, but she's very easygoing."

"...Holy crap, you're finished."

……

Outside the Jiqiao Pavilion, a torrential downpour was in full swing.

The protective formation shielded the city from the wind and rain, while the flowing true fire and spiritual energy dispelled the chill of late autumn. Mo Ran, dressed in a long black gauze dress, led several trusted retainers through the secret passageway with layers of restrictions, arriving at the most hidden place in the deepest part of the Ingenious Pavilion.

As the largest and currently best-preserved weapon-refining workshop in Mo City, the Jiqiao Pavilion has been under exceptionally tight security lately. Not only are there Mo family experts stationed at the external outposts, but the pavilion has also seen an increase in powerful cultivators directly transferred from Thousand Peaks Spirit Mountain and the Ten Palaces of Woyun. All of this is because the Jiqiao Pavilion now has a special group of... "experts and scholars".

Mo Ran's gaze swept over the several figures who were waiting for him in the secret room.

The leader was an old man with sinister eyes and a gaunt figure. He wore a purple robe and had no trace of life, yet he exuded a terrifying aura with every move he made.

A seemingly smiling young man, with a refined demeanor and gentle appearance, even possessing some feminine features, exuded an lingering aura of bloodlust upon closer inspection.

There was also a young girl in a blue cloth dress, with bright and curious eyes, looking harmless. However, the lower half of her face was covered by a heavy, cold iron mask, which seemed to be some kind of shackle, restraining the girl's teeth and tongue. When the surroundings were quiet, a slight creaking sound could be heard from under the mask, which sounded like sharp teeth chewing iron.

The withered old man, the blood prince, and the bone-devouring immortal.

Originally, the sentence would have started with the death penalty, but because of his significant meritorious service and active reporting of his colleagues, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. During the collapse of the Demon Suppression Tower, he did not run away (although he may not have been able to escape), which gave him the opportunity to continue to perform meritorious service.

There were actually several other people in the secret room who didn't look very respectable. They were all renowned experts in the Death Sentence Relief or Life Imprisonment Realms even if they were thrown into the Demon Suppression Tower. However, in front of the three experts present who had been "reduced from death sentence to life imprisonment for meritorious service and had been personally beaten by Yuan Hao Zhenren without being killed," they all dared not breathe loudly. They stayed in the corner as quiet as chickens, only lowering their heads to continue fiddling with a few crystal tubes containing blood.

"Greetings, Fairy Mo Ran," the handsome young man stepped forward and bowed to Mo Ran, a smile on his face. "We are currently studying the intricate mysteries of several blood samples, and we have made some progress. In time..."

“Enough with the nonsense,” Mo Ran frowned, interrupting the young man’s polite words. “Let’s talk about the progress—the True Lord just asked me if it’s possible to replicate and mass-produce this blood sample outside the body? If not, do you have any way to enhance its infectivity and range as much as possible?”

The gaunt old man and the girl in the blue dress exchanged a glance instinctively.

"Sister, this is so hard," a muffled voice came from beneath the girl's iron mask, accompanied by the suspicious sound of sharp teeth grinding together. "I don't understand it. I only touched a tiny bit, and I almost went berserk..."

“I’m ashamed,” the old man from the withered courtyard shook his head, the most straightforward and honest of the three. “We are ignorant and have never seen this kind of blood before. All the blood refining methods that I am so proud of have been completely dissolved by those few jars of ‘dead blood’ that have left the body. In my opinion, we cannot use conventional refining methods on it. In fact, it is simply unrefinable, unmodifiable, and uncontrollable. At most, we can use the methods of weapon crafting to make some auxiliary magical artifacts. This was also the original requirement of that ‘True Lord Yu Sheng’.”

Blood Prince and Bone-Eating Immortal, who were standing to the side, nodded in agreement, saying, "We think so too."

"The three of you actually say things like that?" Mo Ran subconsciously raised his eyebrows. "...Aren't you evil cultivators?"

Blood Prince subconsciously glanced back at the several transparent containers holding blood on the table, his lips twitching slightly: "Well, it's not that evil after all..."

(End of this chapter)