Dimensional Hotel
Chapter 416: Long Time No See

Chapter 416: Chapter 416: Long Time No See

The bizarre pale-purple sky covers the desolate land of the Alien Planet. The sunlight, distant and cold, renders the massive impact area with a pale and chilling hue. Standing within the circumference of the crater and looking towards the center point, one’s visual experience is as if the entire earth is slightly concave towards a point ahead.

The weak sunlight shines on the center of this "basin," creating a hallucination-like aura on the fused glassy earth.

Aside from that, this desolate Alien Planet remains almost silent— even the occasional breeze seems so faint that one might doubt whether it has truly brushed past their ears.

"Before we came, Xuan Che mentioned that a ’Deserted Star’ without geospatial veins is like this," Yu Sheng whispered to Erin in his arms, "Geological activities are almost nonexistent, even if there’s an atmosphere, it often remains stagnant. All material cycles are very slow, which is why ’Corpse Stars’ with ecosystems seem even more peculiar amid Deserted Stars."

"This area is so vast..." Erin whispered, "It’s hard to imagine this was caused by a mortal fight... Even for those ’Immortals,’ it’s quite ridiculous for them to self-destruct and create such a geological spectacle, right?"

"This indirectly illustrates the kind of formidable enemies Yun Qingzi faced back then," Yu Sheng slowly said, "What’s terrifying is not the fact that he caused such a vast crater, but that after such a shocking self-destruction... he still might not have defeated the enemy."

Hu Li remained in her Nine-tailed Silver Fox form, cautiously sniffing the surrounding scents, then proceeded along the impact folds on the crater’s edge, circling forward. Sometimes she moved slowly, sometimes briskly leaped over large fractured rocks. As she walked, she spoke to Yu Sheng: "Savior, there’s still some ’Spiritual Power’ remaining here, its aura permeated the rock layers below, seemingly the part ’cleanup personnel’ could not completely remove, but I can only sense this ’Spiritual Power’... without any other extraordinary aura."

"No remnants of the ’Dark Angel’ found... Well, that’s normal, can’t be that easy," Yu Sheng gently nodded, then turned to Luna beside him, "Anything detected on radar?"

"No," Luna slowly responded, "Currently scanning underground, complex structure, hard to manage."

"Is the ’dead energy’ still present?" Yu Sheng asked again.

"It is," Luna pondered for a moment and slowly spoke, "It’s everywhere."

Yu Sheng said nothing, only tightly furrowing his brow, thoughtfully surveying the surroundings.

After roughly exploring a small area of the periphery, Hu Li directly crossed the broad and barren flatland of the crater and arrived at the special "glassy" region in the center.

This was the energy explosion point during the final phase of Yun Qingzi’s battle with a powerful enemy. The terrifying explosion directly fused the earth here, refining it into a whole piece of "glass." As the molten ground rapidly cooled afterward, it underwent compression and cracking, ultimately leaving a landscape of ripples and fractures intermixed together— even after a thousand years, explorers can still imagine the earth-shattering impact of that battle long ago.

Yu Sheng’s attention quickly gravitated toward certain materials among the ripples and fractures.

They were curious crystal clusters, pale and mixed with gray-black, emerging from the earth’s folds and crevices like some living substance, jumbled and layered in stacks. They weren’t conspicuous from afar, but up close, they almost covered the entire central region.

Yu Sheng and his group jumped off Hu Li’s back, Erin curiously looked at the pervasive pale crystal clusters: "What is this... Ew, looks and feels somewhat nauseating?"

"Nauseating?" Yu Sheng raised an eyebrow, "I don’t feel that, but it certainly looks unpleasant... Unlike material that would naturally emerge from the ground."

Luna silently approached, equipping her Fingertip Blade from a thigh compartment, cautiously poking and knocking at the crystal clusters, then broke off a piece of the crystal.

"Very brittle," she raised her head and slowly said, "And light."

Yu Sheng took the crystal shard Luna offered, weighing it gently in his hand.

The thing was incredibly light, almost... giving him a sense of "missing mass," the weightless feel sharply contrasted with the crystal’s seemingly solid and dense appearance.

Yu Sheng furrowed his brow, and in the next moment, he suddenly experienced a slight feeling of daze.

He felt the crystal tremble slightly in his hand, a false warmth seemed to spread from his palm;

He seemed to hear some kind of indistinct whisper, the sound came from the crystal, from all directions, from beneath his feet, from the depths of the earth;

He sensed some kind of "connection," some undefinable... direction, guiding him—to look up.

Yu Sheng blinked, instinctively lifting his head following the "connection" feeling from nowhere, looking towards a corner of the sky.

That was the direction where Shuji was located.

Yu Sheng was not an expert in recognizing stars, nor could he remember which stars inhabited this distant and unfamiliar starry sky. Moreover, he had changed planets now, and the sky seen from Guard-3 should be utterly different from that of Shuji or the Taixu Spirit Hub—but he recognized Shuji instantly.

That planet released a strong sense of presence in his view, a point of bright starlight seemed to magnify rapidly, even effortlessly overshadowing the distant and faint sunlight in the sky.

He blinked again, and the already dim sunlight in the sky further weakened. The night’s curtain in a corner of the sky spread madly like a rapidly pulled-up stage curtain, and his vision grew dimmer, while Shuji, in the rapidly darkening sky, became increasingly brighter, increasingly obvious—countless stars wobbled in a corner of the sky, swirling around Shuji, like countless large and small vortices, spinning frantically around the entire sky!

And Shuji, the most intensely present star, resided at the center of this vortex-like frantic sky, beginning to emit a strong, ominous red glow, the edge of the red light pulsating like a heart, swelling and contracting violently, as if a creature about to undergo Feather Transformation was brewing within!

Guard-3 resonated from afar with Shuji in the dead silence of space, like a depleted nest cheering towards another nest about to be depleted—Yu Sheng felt his spirit seemed to peel away from his flesh, as though attracted by this tightly linked death across the star sea, to rush towards that star about to Feather Transform.

But just then, a voice came from the depth of his daze, a very familiar one.

"...Sheng, Yu Sheng, Yu—Sheng! Yu Sheng, you damn it, don’t just gaze at an alien stone and drop dead!"

A sharp pain hit his calf immediately afterward, a sour sensation from the Reinforced Steel Puppet kicking his shin bone directly.

Yu Sheng instantly awoke from his daze, howling loudly, nearly kicking the puppet away.

The next second, he retreated several steps on one foot, grimacing in pain from his leg while glaring fiercely at Erin: "Your shouting woke me up! That last kick was definitely on purpose!"

"How did I know how you’d wake up!" Erin placed her hands on her hips assertively, "You were practically brain-dead just now!"

"I just..." Yu Sheng instinctively began to speak, but as soon as he uttered a few words, he felt a slight prickling pain in his palm.

He looked down to see his palm had unknowingly been pierced by the pale crystal fragment, leaving a small wound from which blood was uncontrollably dripping along the crystal’s edges.

This sight dazed Yu Sheng.

Because the crystal’s structural strength was not high, although it had an exceptionally sharp edge, it theoretically shouldn’t have pierced his skin—he knew how tough his body was now, an ordinary kitchen knife might not even break his skin, so how did this piece of stone cut him?

Was it a coincidence? Or was there something tricky about this crystal? Or... was he subconsciously, instinctively "transferring blood" to this pale crystal?

Was the hallucination he "saw" just now related to the blood that was unknowingly seeping out?

Many questions suddenly rose in Yu Sheng’s mind, but before he could figure anything out, a continuous "crack" sound suddenly came from around, interrupting his thoughts.

Everyone instinctively looked towards the nearest source of the sound, and Erin was the first to notice where it came from—the puppet widened its eyes and pointed to a nearby Crystal Cluster: "Yu Yu Yu Sheng! This thing is growing, damn it! They’ve come alive!!"

The Crystal Clusters were growing!

Like some kind of organism in a state of suspended animation suddenly awakening, all the Crystal Clusters within the impact crater plain came alive at once, the large and small pale crystalline substances swaying violently in the rock’s crevices, growing, emitting spine-chilling crackling sounds, then surging out from the ground in sheets, and during the growth, they reassembled again to form more complex and chaotic crystal structures, starting to surge like a tide, spreading!

Hu Li’s fur stood on end instantly, a bunch of tails fluffing like a peacock displaying its feathers: "Savior! Something’s drilling up from underground!"

No reminder was needed from Hu Li, Yu Sheng also saw the thing emerging from underground—

He saw a section of the ground in the central area of the plain arching, rapidly rising at a speed far exceeding the surrounding Crystal Clusters’ growth, and the glassy surface of the ground burst open with a bang, revealing a huge fissure, from which countless pale crystals gushed out like frantically multiplying flesh, forming an astonishing conglomerate amidst teeth-gritting scraping sounds.

"Holy shit!!!"

Yu Sheng instinctively exclaimed, and almost simultaneously, the crystalline conglomerate that had emerged from the earth also turned its "body" toward him.

The chaotic mass, dozens of meters tall, formed the outline of a human upper body, vaguely resembling an elder among the tendrils of hair, and countless flat mirrors on the surface of the crystalline conglomerate reflected myriad images of Yun Qingzi, each looking at Yu Sheng, and then, a hoarse and chaotic voice entered Yu Sheng’s ears—

"Fellow Daoist... long time no see..."