Chapter 554 Corruption
Yu Sheng cautiously led Hu Li and Eileen to the vicinity of the broken staircase, looking up to observe the huge rift covering the end of the tower. Eileen nervously hid at Yu Sheng's feet, grabbing his trouser leg with one hand and the segmented limb fragment with the other, trying to poke at the unstable space near the rift.
...I don't know if she's being cowardly or reckless.
The enormous spatial rift shimmered with dizzying, disorienting colors, as if distant starlight, distorted through layers, was projected onto a broken piece of glass. Around the rift were countless tiny "fragments," with new fragments constantly separating from the larger rift, while others disintegrated and vanished into thin air. A low, hollow hum echoed in the air.
Hu Li thought for a moment, then plucked a tail and threw it towards the other side of the crevice.
A bright flame erupted from the silvery-white fox tail in mid-air, instantly whistling as it swept across the rift.
“My benefactor, the tail connection has been lost,” Hu Li turned to look at Yu Sheng, “but I set it to fly back on its own after ten seconds once the connection is lost—if it hasn’t been destroyed.”
Eileen was shocked: "What the hell?! Your tail can be programmed?! And it has an offline mode?! I thought that thing was just launched and that was it..."
The fox immediately put its hands on its hips: "How can a tail be such an inconvenient thing!"
Yu Sheng was about to complain, but before he could speak, he saw a flash of fire out of the corner of his eye, followed by a silver-white fox tail spewing propellant flames as it flew out of the crack again. It first wobbled and crashed into the nearby black wall, but it regained its connection with its master halfway through the flight, immediately stabilized, and returned to Hu Li's side.
The fox spirit girl reached out and grabbed the tail, extinguished the flame, blew on it, and casually stuck it back into the middle of her large pile of tails.
Yu Sheng stared blankly at this scene, finally unable to hold back: "...So if it doesn't explode after being fired, it can be put back in!?"
"Mmm~" Hu Li nodded vigorously, "It would be such a waste, one of those chicken legs is quite a lot."
Luna, watching this scene from the side, nodded approvingly: "Yes, that's right."
Yu Sheng: “…”
He slapped his forehead, forcing himself to ignore the small detail, and turned to look at the crack.
Putting the tail aside for now, at least Hu Li's detection indicates that the other side of the rift is relatively safe—at least not the kind of devastating environment where nothing exists.
With utmost caution, Yu Sheng carefully took a step forward, heading towards the end of the broken staircase, followed closely by Eileen, Hu Li, and Luna.
There was a brief feeling of weightlessness the moment he passed through the rift, followed by a short period of confusion and reorganization of all his senses. The whole process lasted only two or three seconds before Yu Sheng felt as if he had "fallen" directly from somewhere, and his body swayed and he almost fell.
The next second, the scene before Yu Sheng's eyes stabilized, and what he saw instantly made him gasp for breath:
He stood atop a high mountain whose entire peak had been leveled, and a magnificent yet crumbling ancient temple stood on the leveled peak. The temple had towering pillars that stretched endlessly, its shattered dome lying among the ruins, and its once magnificent arches and beams were broken into pieces, like jagged skeletons pointing to the heavens.
Everything was just as he had seen in his hallucinations and fragments of memory!
Yu Sheng looked up again and saw that there was no sun, moon and stars above. The vast sky was filled with countless chaotic clumps of all sizes. A dim, sourceless light filled the entire space. The "mountain" under their feet seemed to be the only place to stand in this space. There was no earth below it. From the mountainside down, there were only large and small rock fragments floating after the mountain had broken apart.
The huge crack connecting to the "Boundary Bridge" now stood crookedly in the air on one side of the mountain top, like a huge scar slanting across the mountain top.
"This, this is what the 'other side' of the Boundary Bridge looks like?" Eileen practically leaped onto Yu Sheng's shoulder in an instant. One hand was still tightly gripping the spider leg, while the other was wrapped tightly around Yu Sheng's head. Her small body was tense. For some reason, this place made her feel exceptionally nervous. A complex mix of nostalgia and fear almost filled her already not-so-bright little mind. "This place is the 'top of the tower,' right? Or have we been teleported to 'Black Star'?"
“The Boundary Bridge doesn’t have a fixed ‘other end.’ It’s essentially a spatial passage. Only when the connection is established will its end collapse to a specific location,” Yu Sheng gently patted the little doll’s leg, comforting her as he explained. “This is where it connected when it was last activated, so it’s still connected now. Three thousand seven hundred years ago, the Goddess of Omens set off from here. As for whether this is ‘Black Star’… I’m not sure. This place is a bit different from what Yuan Hao described to me.”
Just then, a low rumbling sound interrupted Yu Sheng's words.
Everyone's hearts tightened instantly. Luna switched to battle mode in the blink of an eye and teleported in front of Yu Sheng. Then she raised her hand and pointed in a certain direction in the center of the temple: "Radar, there's a response!"
Foxfire rose around Hu Li, and with a few buzzing sounds, eight tails rose into the air, burning with intense, ghostly blue flames that surrounded the group. Almost simultaneously, Yu Sheng also witnessed the change at the center of the temple—
Amidst the collapsed ruins, a massive, invisible veil is slowly tearing apart. The barrier erected by the ancient dolls 3,700 years ago has vanished, revealing the ancient remains hidden beneath it. It is a huge mass of black remains—lost its original form, lost all its former sacred and sublime posture, leaving only a bizarre mass of remains that seems to be a mixture of humanoid and deformed limbs, piled up like a mountain atop this high mountain!
That was the last fragment left by the shattered goddess of omens at this "starting point," the "remains" left here after Eileen merged with the alien god—all life and will had long since dissipated from this corpse, leaving only a pile of black shadows.
However, the moment Yu Sheng saw the pile of shadows, he realized the seriousness of the situation—his vision was distorted by the pile of wreckage, a huge buzzing noise filled his ears, and a vast amount of "knowledge" was filled into his mind before he could digest it. He saw the edges of the shadows flowing and dissolving, and the viscous, mud-like shadows kept peeling off the surface of the "divine corpse," spreading and seeping into the entire ruins.
Amidst the clamor stirred by "knowledge," Yu Sheng came to understand what was happening here.
God is rotting.
From the corpse of the gods, rotting pus fell to earth.
The viscous shadows that have eroded the Blackrock Space Station, and the monsters that are constantly falling into the boundary along the boundary bridge, all come from here.
Yu Sheng felt the arm that was holding his head was exerting force.
“Damn…” Eileen muttered, her small body tensing up even more. “This seems like a big problem. No, I, I really did fight this thing back then?!”
“Don’t bring up the past,” Yu Sheng’s unease grew stronger, and his spiritual intuition started pounding again. “I feel a murderous aura… It seems like this place is starting to disapprove of us!”
As if to confirm Yu Sheng's judgment, the moment he finished speaking, the huge remains in the temple ruins changed—the viscous shadows flowing down from around the god's corpse seemed to have suddenly smelled the scent of prey, and then the shadows spreading throughout the ruins began to writhe restlessly. Layers of low murmurs and noises rose from all directions, and then large swaths of shadows began to spread toward the direction where Yu Sheng and the others were standing!
“Here I come!”
Yu Sheng shouted, and the next second he heard a dense burst of foxfire explosions in his ears. The eight "Fox Cannons" floating in mid-air had already opened fire fiercely, and a series of dense foxfire barrages splashed towards the shadows that kept emerging from the temple.
In an instant, the eerie blue flames spread everywhere, and the rising walls of fire spread wildly across the ruins. The viscous, mud-like shadows, emitting billowing smoke and dust under the scorching heat of the foxfire, disintegrated and dissipated in large swathes. However, the whole process was only delayed for a moment, and more shadows crossed the thin gaps between the walls of fire and rushed straight towards them!
Countless twisted and chaotic shapes rose from that black tide of shadow.
Yu Sheng could barely distinguish what those things, distorted to the extreme, were, yet the noise of "knowledge" still echoed in his mind, and amidst the howling noise, information washed over him like a tidal wave—
These were artisans and scholars;
Those were soldiers and monks;
There are also trees, stones, the wind that blows past the temple every evening, and the clear springs flowing through the mountains;
There are also beautiful stories from ancient times, and the prayers of believers during their morning prayers.
A writhing, undulating mass floating in the air surged from the flames, carrying thick smoke, shrieks, and the stench of decay, hurtling straight toward Yu Sheng.
An elegant figure rushed forward without hesitation. Luna's figure spun lightly in mid-air, like a butterfly in flight, and in the blink of an eye, she cut the swelling and writhing thing into countless fragments. Burning fireballs and scorching dust scattered behind her, like a gorgeous long dress.
That was the blue sky above our home planet long ago—long, long ago, before the ominous signs appeared, before those dark red stripes appeared in the sky, people had seen such a sky, and later that clear and pure sky was passed down from person to person.
The young God heard about the blue sky from the stories of his believers and remembered it deeply—until those memories of the blue sky rotted away with Him, turning into the pus that is now being sprinkled on the world.
The pollution was spreading. The first batch of deformed, creeping things that emerged from the viscous shadows were destroyed, but their fragments scattered and merged into the mountain, flowing back to the center of the temple, where they condensed again on the surface of the god's corpse, hissing as they surged forth once more.
(End of this chapter)
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