Chapter 468 Beyond the Boundary

A vast ruin, shrouded in endless darkness, chaos, and black fog, stood a massive structure resembling a collapsed temple, with numerous stone pillars, connected by beams and vaults. And within the ruins, a gigantic shadow—a silhouette reminiscent of a human, but clearly not human…

Listening to the scene described by Master Yuan Hao, Yu Sheng only had a brief thought in his mind and instantly recalled a scene he had seen before!

In the room at the end of the corridor at No. 66 Wutong Road, deep in the image reflected by the mirror, he had seen such a scene before!

——And there shouldn’t be only these things in that picture.

"What about the others? What else did you see there?" Yu Sheng didn't hide his concern and immediately asked in a low and hurried voice, "Is there another doll next to that 'shadow'? Blonde, wearing a black dress, with eyes open..."

As he spoke, he looked up in Irene's direction - only to find that the heartless little doll was still with Hu Li and Luna. The three of them were studying the blessed gadgets on the stall and didn't pay any attention to what was happening here.

"How do you know?" Yuan Hao looked surprised. "Have you been to that place too?"

"I haven't been there, but I've seen it," Yu Sheng said frankly after a moment's hesitation. "There's a room on the second floor of No. 66 Wutong Road. It's very strange, and it seems to lead to another dimension..."

He then gave Yuan Hao a brief account of the strange room at No. 66 Wutong Road. After listening, Yuan Hao showed an expression of astonishment and confusion, and waved his fan, "...How does this work?"

As soon as he finished speaking, he immediately followed up with another question: "Can you let me see it with my own eyes later?"

"That's no problem—and I've taken Xuan Che to see it before, but he didn't see much significance then. He just roughly guessed it was a point of intersection between time and space," Yu Sheng said casually. "But now, tell me about your experience—what happened after that? What happened after you saw the ruins and the shadows?"

"My immortal boat crashed directly into the shadow of that humanoid silhouette..."

Noticing Yu Sheng's momentary look of astonishment, Yuan Hao Zhenren helplessly spread his hands and said, "I just said that my immortal boat is out of control..."

"Uh, I know, I know," Yu Sheng quickly waved his hands, "And then what? You bumped directly into that shadow?! Nothing happened?"

"What happened afterwards... was very strange," Yuan Hao's expression suddenly became odd, as if he was trying very hard to describe the scene in his memory. "The shadow and the ruins beneath it seemed like a mere illusion. There was no resistance when I collided with it, but a moment later, I felt like I had lost my body... as if my soul had left my body. Then even the immortal boat disappeared.

"I felt like a lonely soul, disconnected from the universe, drifting aimlessly in the chaos. After wandering for who knows how long, it was as if I suddenly bumped into a 'mirror'. Mr. Yu, have you ever experienced walking through a mirror?"

Yu Sheng: "Where else can I get this kind of experience?"

"Well, I guess it's hard to imagine," Yuan Hao sighed. "Anyway, it felt amazing, like I'd suddenly fallen into the 'backside' of the world. I only had one 'perspective' at the time, unable to do anything but watch the chaos before me reverse. Then, many things began to grow from the other side of that 'mirror'. Some looked like ruined cities, some like mountains, and some like groups of large ships frozen on the sea...

"I passed through those illusory illusions, wandering aimlessly. I even 'felt' like I had been wandering in that chaos for thousands of years, until my soul was weakened and my spirit was so weak that I had forgotten where I came from and where I was going...

"But suddenly, I was stopped by a 'person'."

Yu Sheng was shocked when he heard this: "...What the hell!? A person?"

"I'm not sure. At that time, I only had a wisp of consciousness left. I couldn't even remember if I was human. I only remember that something was blocking my way. The only remaining 'cognition' told me that it was something called 'human'," Yuan Hao said seriously. "That 'human' was holding a flag, a large, tattered flag.

"I still remember what they said to me, but I couldn't hear or understand it. Then they tore a piece of cloth from the flag. At that moment, I felt that the cloth almost covered the sky and the sun, instantly blocking out countless illusions around me. Then, the person raised his hand and wrapped me layer by layer in the piece of cloth torn from the flag. And it was at the moment that I touched the cloth that I understood the few words that person said to me:

"They said their name was Kongdaman and that they were a messenger. They also said the flag was called—'The Banner of Bad Omen'."

Yu Sheng took a deep breath. "The Ominous Banner... the 'Ominous' in the Ominous Planet?!"

"Yes, that's the word." Master Yuanhao nodded slowly.

"Did you ask Ominous Yusei about it later?"

"I asked, but to no avail," Yuan Hao sighed. "That ominous wandering star is adamant, insisting it knows nothing about the 'flag' or who 'Kong Daman' is. I even submerged it in the earth veins for seven days and seven nights, and it still refused to speak."

Yu Sheng: “…”

He briefly thought about what this Taixu Lingshu earth vein meant to Evil Omen Wandering Star, and suddenly coughed twice: "Well, then it might really not know."

"Well, thinking about it afterwards, I agree," Yuan Hao Zhenren nodded slightly, "so the clues to this matter were cut off. However, I have been traveling for many years, and I have experienced many strange and sudden cuts of clues. I am used to it."

Yu Sheng didn't know how to comment on the old man's carefree attitude towards adventure. He could only curl his lips in a helpless smile: "Okay, then what? After you understand what the other party said-"

Yuan Hao Zhenren's face was filled with reminiscence. "Then, I suddenly woke up on the Immortal Boat. Everything that had happened before seemed like a fleeting illusion. Not even the boat's malfunction was recorded in the spirit disk. Even the 'black star' had vanished. The only thing left was a piece of cloth that appeared out of thin air in my hand—the piece that the 'messenger' who called himself 'Kong Daman' had torn from the 'Omen Banner'."

Yu Sheng stared: "...That's it?"

"That's all," Yuan Hao said seriously, "or rather, this is all I can remember - perhaps I experienced something else after being wrapped in that 'cloth', but I have neither memory nor evidence."

Yu Sheng pinched his chin and frowned.

Yuan Hao on the other side thought for a moment and then suddenly said, "There's another detail."

Yu Sheng instantly became energetic.

"After returning to 'reality,' I carefully checked the records in the star disk," Yuan Hao Zhenren said seriously. "Although the artifact spirit didn't record the previous immortal boat malfunction and the situation when it passed through the 'black star,' the 'time' in the star disk still skipped 17 minutes out of thin air. Those 17 minutes disappeared from the star disk without any environmental parameters being recorded, and there is not even any record of the immortal boat's own situation.

"I immediately sensed something was amiss, so after docking the immortal ship at a star port, I immediately began a divination session, carefully inspecting the ship from top to bottom, inside and out. I discovered that the 17-minute skip wasn't just in the 'record' on the star chart, but... the entire ship, including myself."

Yu Sheng listened to the other party's story and vaguely understood something, but still frowned slightly: "What it means is..."

"For at least those 17 minutes, my immortal boat and I completely vanished from this world," Yuan Hao Zhenren said slowly, waving his fan. "To the outside world, it seemed I was gone for only a moment, but according to divination, the immortal boat had unexpectedly gained 17 minutes of 'blank' navigation loss, and I had unexpectedly lost a tiny bit of my 'life span.'"

Yu Sheng felt his heart pounding, and countless guesses came to his mind. He didn't expect that Master Yuan Hao's experience was so bizarre, and behind this bizarre experience... the amount of information contained was even more astonishing!

What did those 17 minutes of disappearance mean? What did Yuan Hao see and where did he go while passing through the "black star"? And what exactly is that strange "black star"?

What does all this have to do with "Eileen"?

Yu Sheng frowned and thought, but suddenly he remembered another thing.

In the room on the second floor of No. 66 Wutong Road, the mirror reflected not only the ruins shrouded in black fog - in recent times, especially when the "fragment of cloth" appeared and after that, the mirror reflected a snow-covered cave with heavy snow falling outside the cave.

...Could that snow-covered mountain and cave be part of the illusions that Master Yuanhao saw after passing through the "mirror"?

"I'm not sure either," after hearing Yu Sheng's description, Yuan Hao thought seriously for a long time before slowly shaking his head. "My soul was extremely weak at the time, and everything around me seemed like a veiled illusion. I couldn't discern the details, but I did see something like a 'mountain'. The 'cave' you mentioned might really be on one of those mountains."

After hearing the other party's answer, Yu Sheng seemed to be thinking about something and did not speak again for a while.

After a long while, he suddenly heard a slight sound of wind behind him, and then a small body hit his back and quickly climbed onto his shoulder.

A noisy and happy voice came into my ears: "What are you talking about?"

Yu Sheng looked up and saw Irene smiling brightly. The little doll had a lot of strange little gadgets hanging on its hair, body and arms, making it look like a colorful peacock. In its hand, it was holding a sachet that was almost half the size of her face, and it was swinging it happily in the air.

The ominous star floated beside her head, spinning slowly, round and round.

(End of this chapter)