Chapter 473: Late Night, Quiet

Yu Sheng led a puppet with unlimited energy, a fox with an insatiable appetite, and a sleepless artificial saint, and wandered around the big city at the foot of the mountain for a whole day until night fell and the lights came on.

"So beautiful..."

The little doll sat on Yu Sheng's shoulder, with her head tilted back and her eyes wide open. She saw the lights and illusions between the pavilions and towers lighting up one after another, and a huge flower boat decorated with flowers slowly flying across the sky. There were small buildings built on the flower boat, with carved beams and painted rafters, and lights like a river, rising from the distant streets and flowing through the entire city - all of this was beautiful, far better than the Mo City on Shuji.

Yu Sheng carried Irene on his back and sat on a guardrail by the roadside, looking up at the night view of the city. After a long moment, he breathed a sigh of relief and couldn't help but sigh, "Awesome."

The little puppet reached out and tugged at his hair: "You're a novelist, after all. How can you hold it in for so long and end up musing about this?"

"Nonsense! I'm almost dead tired. How can I even think of choosing words and sentences?" Yu Sheng rolled his eyes and looked up at Luna and Hu Li, who were standing on either side like guardians. "You are all non-human..."

Irene immediately burst into laughter, and was so happy that she seemed to want to flip over Yu Sheng's shoulders.

Yu Sheng was too lazy to pay attention to this little thing.

Hu Li thought about it, then sat down next to Yu Sheng and reached out to hammer the latter's legs - there was no special technique, but the force was so strong that it seemed as if he wanted to nail Yu Sheng to the earth... An ordinary person would have suffered a powder fracture here.

Yu Sheng bared his teeth, letting the other party hit him a few times, then quickly stopped this silly fox with strange strength. Then he thought seriously: "...How about you wait here for half an hour while I go to recover? Anyway, if I accompany you guys to the nightclub like this, I will die suddenly in this city."

Irene didn't react immediately, but Hu Li pricked up his ears and looked at Yu Sheng blankly: "My benefactor, isn't your method of 'recovering' a little wrong..."

Irene finally reacted at this time, and the little doll looked at her with a surprised expression: "...Are you going to die?"

Yu Sheng thought about it and rubbed the doll's head casually: "I was just joking and you believed it."

The little doll was a little dazed by the rubbing of its head. After two seconds of hesitation, it raised its arm to block Yu Sheng's big hand while muttering, "What are you talking about? I saw your Blood Disaster flash, and you took it back... Can this thing be taken back?"

Yu Sheng laughed and looked at the little guy in the night, who was covered with colorful and shiny little gadgets.

Either hairpins or shiny jade beads, even the ominous star floating next to her head was hung with several strings of protective jade that were said to have been blessed by a master. No one knew how she hung the ball securely - but this was only part of it, at least half of the remaining fragments were stuffed into the fox's tail.

Moreover, the fox's tail was also stuffed with various kinds of food, as well as a set of farm tools that Luna had taken a fancy to.

There was also a bag of seeds that he bought while buying farm tools. The stall owner swore that they were seeds of magical herbs picked from the foot of Qianfeng Lingshan Mountain, and that they could be used to grow seven or eight kinds of magical medicines.

...But considering that the thing was converted into the currency of the transaction area at 9.9 per pack, Yu Sheng didn't really believe it.

But it doesn’t matter, I’m just growing it for Luna for fun.

Hu Li sat on the railing next to him and rubbed against this side again. His tail was wagging happily behind his body and patting Yu Sheng's back.

Because it was just an unconscious shake, Yu Sheng was not knocked unconscious.

Luna suddenly raised her head and looked at the junction between Lingshan and the city.

With bangs, a few bright lights suddenly flew into the sky from that direction.

The next second, the flaming star exploded and the light spread everywhere.

The flower boats flying across the sky and the high-rise buildings in the city dimmed their lights at some point. In the clear night sky, huge fireworks burst out like a river of stars, lighting up almost half of the city.

The bright fireworks were reflected on Luna's smooth alloy shell and in Hu Li and Irene's eyes.

"Oh, awesome." The little doll looked up and exclaimed happily.

Yu Sheng glanced at her and said, "Isn't that the extent of your vocabulary?"

As soon as he finished speaking, Hu Li beside him said, "That's different. She graduated from prenatal education and went to kindergarten through correspondence courses..."

Ailin yelled and jumped over Yu Sheng's shoulder: "Silly! Fox! Raccoon! I'm going to fight you——"

Yu Sheng quickly hid to the side to prevent the two people who had not graduated from elementary school and the one who took correspondence courses in kindergarten from fighting and contaminating him, a college graduate - Luna, who had a degree from the small church at the entrance of the village, stood there without moving, probably busy recording the video at this time.

"Oh, that's great," Yu Sheng said casually as he sat on the guardrail, his back against a streetlight pole in the middle of the guardrail. He turned his head and said to the air beside him, "Right?"

A translucent shadow suddenly appeared in the air, it was Yun Qingzi's appearance.

The old man looked stunned: "...How did you see me? I should have hidden myself well."

"Nonsense! You've already made me bleed, and you're still able to hide it from my perception?" Yu Sheng raised an eyebrow and said casually, "Don't you think you can't tell it?"

Yun Qingzi laughed awkwardly, "That's what I was thinking, but I couldn't help myself and sent out a wisp of my divine consciousness to see what the Taixu Lingshu would look like a thousand years from now. My original spirit body is still in the valley."

"That's good." Yu Sheng nodded with a smile.

Then Yun Qingzi gradually lost his spirit, probably going somewhere else.

Yu Sheng stood up from the railing, stretched vigorously, and turned to look at the fox and puppet still fighting. It was mainly Irene who was being beaten. Her small arms and legs were no match for the nine-tailed fox without the power of "black spider silk". "Alright, alright, stop it. Still going to the nightclub?"

"No more wandering around," Irene said as she instantly jumped out of Hu Li's tail formation and nimbly climbed onto Yu Sheng's shoulder. "I'm sleepy!"

…

Irene seemed to be really sleepy - although the reason was unclear, the little girl who seemed to have unlimited energy throughout the day almost immediately fell asleep after returning home. The puppet body that obviously did not need rest showed real fatigue. This time, without anyone urging her, she crawled into the box in the corner of the master bedroom and fell asleep quickly with the other bodies.

Of course, this time she still left one body sleeping on the bed - as if she was very determined to declare her "territorial rights" in the bedroom in this way.

She threw the Ominous Star onto the bedside table again and used a leather ring to cushion it to prevent it from rolling around.

Yu Sheng didn't sleep.

After confirming that the doll was asleep, he tiptoed out of the bedroom and went to the empty room at the end of the corridor on the second floor.

The empty room still looked as normal as usual. The old wallpaper seemed to be covered with dirty shadows in the night. Where Irene's oil painting used to be hung, a lonely mirror hung on the wall, reflecting the dim scene in the room.

Yu Sheng brought a chair from outside, sat in the middle of the room, and then casually took out the piece of cloth.

The fabric, made of unknown craftsmanship and raw materials, has mysterious and complex patterns on the edges. The edges of the torn pieces of cloth are jagged, and it seems that there is still a little... cold touch left.

Yu Sheng silently stroked the fragment and fell into deep thought in the empty room.

Fragments of the ominous banner.

Although there are still many mysteries, at least now he finally knows what it is.

The Black Star. Deep within the Black Star, a strange "space" like the other side of a mirror. A figure wandering within this strange space, holding a flag of ill omen, calling himself "Kondaman," a messenger...

A mess of things were tangled up in my mind until very light footsteps came from behind, interrupting those headache-inducing thoughts.

Yu Sheng turned around and saw a pair of bright, golden-red eyes staring at him in the dim light, and a pair of big furry ears twitching.

"You haven't slept either?" Yu Sheng said casually, reaching out to rub Hu Li's tail.

The fox girl squatted down beside him, rubbed her head against his arm, then raised her eyes and looked curiously at the piece of cloth in Yu Sheng's hand.

"So this thing is a fragment of the ominous banner." She muttered.

Yu Sheng raised his eyebrows. "While I was chatting with Yuan Hao, weren't you and Irene discussing those blessed amulets?"

"I have very sharp ears," Hu Li squinted his eyes proudly, his two big furry ears flexibly turning in the air, facing different directions, "and I can hear in two directions at the same time!"

Yu Sheng: "...Okay, that makes sense. So you heard everything? What I talked about with Yuan Hao..."

"Yeah, I heard them all," Hu Li nodded. "Black Star, the Messenger, Kong Daman, and so on. Luna should have heard it too—her sensors are very sensitive."

Yu Sheng's eyes twitched. "You were so calm the whole day, playing and joking with Irene. I thought you weren't paying attention to anything except eating."

Hu Li said nothing, but stared at the "Ominous Banner Fragment" for a long time before whispering, "Benefactor, Irene may not be an Alice doll."

Yu Sheng said nothing.

"Irene is very concerned about this matter," Hu Li continued, casually pulling out a piece of cake from his tail, breaking it in half, giving half to Yu Sheng and chewing the other half himself. "Also, I saw her staring blankly at the Omen Wandering Star for a few minutes this morning... Do you think she's starting to doubt herself?"

"...She's not really that stupid," Yu Sheng sighed, but then he touched his chin. "Okay, maybe she is a little stupid, but probably not that stupid. But you, it turns out you care about her quite a bit—don't you two fight all the time?"

"That's because she provoked me!" Hu Li puffed up her cheeks. "She also called me stupid—I'm much smarter than her!"

Yu Sheng didn't say anything, but after a few seconds he couldn't help laughing, and raised his hand to rub the fur behind the fox girl's ears.

"Don't worry, I'll figure out what that black star and that 'bad omen' are all about. As for you guys, just eat and sleep. The sky isn't falling."

(End of this chapter)