Alien Hotel.

Chapter 666 Reflection
To be fair, there have been far too many strange occurrences in this room at the end of the corridor on the second floor of No. 66 Wutong Road. Yu Sheng has gotten used to it to some extent, so he is not really surprised by anything that appears in this room. He could accept it if he opened the door to find it snowing, or even if he opened the door to find two magnetic field experts fighting Darth Vader—as long as they help clean up the room after they're done.

But even if a powerful magnetic field expert were to fight Darth Vader in this room, the impact on Yu Sheng would probably be less than the crack in the mirror at this moment.

The crack was very fine and shallow, and against the dark background, it was difficult to see with the naked eye even when you got close. Only from a specific angle could you see that the thin crack ran from bottom to top through the entire mirror.

Yu Sheng recalled the loud crash he had just heard downstairs.

Is that the sound of a mirror cracking?

Hu Li followed and moved closer to the mirror, her pointed ears twitching slightly in the air. When she saw the crack, the fox-spirit girl's golden-red eyes showed a hint of seriousness and tension for the first time: "Um, benefactor, the mirror is cracked... what should we do?"

Yu Sheng didn't speak, but instead took out a small knife from his pocket—a bloodletting knife made from Luna's blade.

He made a cut on his palm with a knife, and then tried pressing his hand against the mirror.

Eileen and Huli watched this scene with bated breath.

Blood smeared on the dark mirror, as if it had been thrown into some kind of solution. Ripples of black and red spread across the darkness, and then faint noises appeared in the ears.

Yu Sheng felt a blur before his eyes. Before he could even hear what was happening, he felt darkness suddenly fall around him—everything around him disappeared. He felt as if he was falling into an endless void. This "fall" lasted for an unknown amount of time before he felt himself regain control of his body and stop falling.

As the dazed feeling gradually faded, Yu Sheng shook his head and looked around.

He saw distant and distorted starlight—the darkness was not empty; in the far distance lay an endless array of stars, giving the feeling of being in space. But the starlight was so far away that it was almost "embedded" in a curtain at the edge of the world, and all the starlight was distorted and elongated, with a swirling and twisting phantom, like an unreachable vortex, like the "convergence" of the entire world.

At the same time, all these starlight points were concentrated behind Yu Sheng—he only saw the "converging vortex" formed by the stars when he turned around, while in front of him there was only endless darkness.

Yu Sheng frowned and subconsciously reached out his hand into the endless darkness.

The next second, he realized that it wasn't endless darkness.

It was a high wall, a "barrier" as smooth as a mirror, infinitely high and wide in all directions.

This scene should have been incredibly oppressive: an almost infinite "high wall" stood before him, while the starlight of the entire world swirled and converged on the other side of the wall. Under such circumstances, a tiny individual would undoubtedly feel a suffocating pressure—yet at this moment, Yu Sheng felt a strange, inexplicable comfort and ease that welled up from the bottom of his heart.

He felt as if he had come home, lying in a familiar, eternal, and peaceful "resting place."

He even unconsciously stretched and actually "lay down" in front of that endless high wall, looking comfortably at the darkness before him, and then turning his head to look at the swirling starlight.

He saw streams of light moving within the starlight, and some shadows that seemed to burn like flames flowing through the galaxy. Some stars were being born, and some stars were being corrected. New parameters were being injected into the cosmic microwave background radiation, and then modified again.

After an unknown amount of time, he saw some "reflections" appearing on the boundless "high wall"—certain "knowledge" quietly flowed into his mind, allowing him to understand what was happening before his eyes.

Some new cosmic laws are taking effect, and the mapping of information among all things in the universe is gradually becoming complete.

Yu Sheng saw something familiar in those projections—the “information megastructures” he saw at the bottom of the world when the Alien Hotel first entered warped space and the ship performed a faster-than-light jump. The astonishing laws of all things supported the operation of the real universe, and the Creator Equation recorded the footnotes left by the creator of this world for the stars.

"One bug is a bug, but a bunch of bugs can work..."

"Don't move this if you can run... You can fit two balls in this spot..."

"How much sorrow can one have? Alone, I ponder the universe."

"...What's that noise outside?"

Yu Sheng suddenly sat up, as if awakened from an eternally peaceful dream—his scattered thoughts once again converged into a complete self-awareness. He stood in front of that "high wall," looking at the things on the wall with some astonishment.

The massive information structure that supports the real universe is still reflected on that high wall, and the laws governing the movement of stars run in the trajectory defined by the structure. However, Yu Sheng's mind is filled with the messages from the Creator that he "saw" in his daze just now, especially the last sentence of the message.

He subconsciously moved closer to the high wall, as if trying to see something from the flood of information reflected on it, but in that instant, the flood of information on the wall vanished completely, and endless darkness covered the curtain once more.

Yu Sheng blinked and slowly took a few steps back—in the darkness, he saw some new things reflected on the "wall," but they were blurry and unclear.

He stepped back a little further.

It was a hazy, indistinct image, Yu Sheng's own shadow—reflected in the "mirror".

A strange sense of vigilance rose from the bottom of his heart, and Yu Sheng subconsciously continued to back away.

The hazy reflection disappeared from his sight. Then he continued to retreat, moving further and further away from the "high wall mirror".

After moving away from it several times, Yu Sheng suddenly noticed that the edge of the "high wall" had a slight curve.

The curvature gradually transformed into the distinct edge of a sphere.

Yu Sheng felt his heart pounding. He then realized that it wasn't a "high wall" at all, but a smooth, mirror-like sphere—only it was so huge, and he had been too close to it.

He continued to back away quickly, as if trying to get a clear look at the sphere—behind him, the stars swirling like a vortex.

His rapid departure was as if he were deliberately falling into a vortex formed by the stars.

After an unknown amount of time, Yu Sheng stopped at a certain point of equilibrium between the stars and the darkness.

He stood at the edge of the vortex where the stars converged, silently gazing at the spherical object suspended in the endless darkness—

Black Star.

Or rather, it was a kind of "projection" formed by Black Star in his world of consciousness.

"...What exactly are you...?"

Yu Sheng frowned, looking at the dark star and muttering to himself.

However, Black Star did not respond. This pure black sphere simply floated silently in the infinite void, bathed in the starlight of the entire universe, yet silently guarding all its secrets.

A sudden sensation of falling washed over him, and Yu Sheng felt himself lose control of his body, beginning to fall towards the endless starlight behind him.

However, in the instant the feeling of losing control came, countless golden threads appeared at the edge of his vision—the golden "threads" that appeared out of thin air instantly wrapped around him, accompanied by Eileen's clamor: "Hey, can't you just not mess this up once! I told you not to touch this weird thing... It's so heavy!"

The next second, the senses of the real world suddenly descended, and the surroundings instantly transformed back into the familiar room. Yu Sheng stumbled while standing in the snow, but just as he fell, a warm and soft touch enveloped him—he leaned back into a bunch of fluffy tails.

Then came the sound of the little doll ruffling her hair: "Are you awake? Are you awake? Are you awake?..."

Yu Sheng frantically tried to pry the little creature's paws off: "Wake up, don't pull on my hair, I'm prone to hair loss from writing books..."

"You're kidding me! You've only managed to squeeze out two sentences in three hours, and then you delete one and a half of them," Eileen slapped Yu Sheng's head with her little paws. "Besides, you'd rather give up on treatment and commit suicide than be reborn just because you have paronychia on your toenail, and you're afraid of losing your hair?"

Yu Sheng knew he couldn't win an argument with the little thing on his shoulder, so he gave her a few perfunctory words and then ignored her. His gaze then fell on the mirror on the wall.

The previously pitch-black mirror has returned to normal. After the darkness receded, the scene in the room was reflected normally in the mirror again—and the small crack had healed.

“My benefactor, it recovered the moment you pressed your hand on it,” Hu Li said, looking at Yu Sheng with some concern. “But you were still standing there motionless, looking like you were in a daze. Then Eileen sensed something was wrong and pulled you out…”

"How long was I stunned?" Yu Sheng asked casually, rubbing his forehead.

“Five or six seconds? No more than that,” Eileen counted on her fingers. “The main thing is that you suddenly lost consciousness… well, I wouldn’t say you lost it. Your consciousness seems to still be there, and you’re not brain dead, but I feel like your mind suddenly went to a very, very far place.”

Yu Sheng slowly frowned: "...As far as the ends of the world and time?"

Eileen thought for a moment: "What do you mean?"

Yu Sheng didn't explain anything, but simply raised his head thoughtfully.

As the mirror returned to its original state, the snowfall in the room had stopped, leaving only lingering snow and a chill that filled the room, with no one knowing when it would completely dissipate.

"...I saw Black Star."

He suddenly said.

Eileen and Huli were both stunned for a moment, then exclaimed in unison, "Huh?!"

"Black Star, but it's very likely just a projection in my consciousness—it floats at the edge of the universe, and somehow, when I was next to it, I felt...exceptionally familiar and at ease for a moment, and I almost fell asleep there."

Eileen: "...Holy crap!"

(End of this chapter)