In the living room of No. 66 Wutong Road, Hu Li and the others who had just rushed back from outside were listening intently to Li Lin recounting his unbelievable experience.
The enormous phantom erging from the mist, resembling a pitch-black web covering all of Mist City, and the confusing, unsettling whispers from the illusion of the On Goddess.
Then several pairs of eyes fell on the small puppet on the coffee table.
"W-Why are you all looking at ?" Erin, sitting on the coffee table, shrank her neck, "I don’t know anything..."
As she finished speaking, Luna nodded beside her, "Erin, Eri, can’t bear the bla, for this big, pot."
"Even the C-type clip says that!" Having soone backing her up, the little puppet instantly perked up, tilting her head back with a smug face, but soon after, she furrowed her brows in confusion, looking at the Holy Lady, "C-type clip, your accent and stuttering seem to be getting worse, I’m telling you..."
"I didn’t expect you to encounter such a situation too, Brother Li," Zheng Zhi sighed with emotion, "Luckily, I wasn’t here just now, or else I might have been gone by now — you stared at such a bizarre entity for a long ti and still ca out unscathed."
"To be honest, given a choice, I really wouldn’t want to see it, but at that ti, I couldn’t control myself at all," Li Lin recalled his earlier experience, breaking out in cold sweat, and feeling that the sense of eerie chill still lingered in his bones, "Being stared at by that thing, I felt like my body wasn’t mine, and even felt that death was a matter of course, luckily in the end it suddenly sleepwalked away..."
At this mont, a faint clicking sound interrupted the conversation in the living room, and an illusory door appeared abruptly in the open space beside the sofa.
Yu Sheng pushed the door open and walked out from inside, returning to the world.
Hu Li, who was lying idly on the armrest of the sofa, was the first to leap up, rushing over and bumping into Yu Sheng’s arm — of course, she controlled her strength, using her head to rub against soone was this great fox’s highest form of etiquette towards close ones — then she started to circle around Yu Sheng at high speed, her tail wagging like a fan at full speed, "Savior, you’re finally back! Just now, Li Lin was possessed and said he saw a big spider crawling over our house’s roof, Erin said she didn’t know anything..."
"Stop, stop, you’re spinning dizzy — and when I regained consciousness just now, Erin had already told about the situation," Yu Sheng said while struggling to grab and hold the big fox excitedly circling him by her tail, finally returning her to the sofa, then he rubbed his arm that was just head-butted by the demon fox girl, sat down and exhaled, "Let rest for a bit, I left last life too hastily, now my head is buzzing when I open my eyes in this one... What were you guys talking about? Oh right, the ’Spider Goddess’ Li Lin saw..."
He paused, recalling his experience at that Black Spot Space Station — the bizarre ti-space eroded by the On Goddess’s power, the web-covered core area, and the "Erin" always engrossed in drawing and writing.
Puppet Erin, On Goddess, an inseparable state, mories and words seemingly "crossing over" each other.
And that golden-haired elf appearing to have already been tainted by the On Goddess.
In that huge space station, who knows how many Algredians were like that golden-haired elf, tainted, or perhaps their minds were completely replaced — after all, in the heavily tainted core laboratory, countless minds were captured by the On Web.
The rustling sound nearby made the little puppet crawl over sneakily along the sofa back, using her scarlet eyes to look at Yu Sheng, "Yu Sheng, what do you think it is? The thing Li Lin saw..."
"What Li Lin saw, and what I saw in the Black Spot Space Station, might all be ’On Goddess’ — but incomplete," Yu Sheng, feeling sowhat creeped out by the sneaking puppet, picked her up from the backrest and placed her beside him, "Could be so sort of ’fragnt’? Or perhaps phenona like echoes... After all, it’s a ’god’, fragnted during the Descent incident 3,700 years ago. Its current existence may already surpass our understanding..."
He said this halfway, noticing Erin gazing up at him with her small face, eyes unblinking, feeling this all sounded weird,
because in so sense, this naive little puppet before him might also be an "On Goddess."
She might even be the most "well-preserved" one — though her main self-identification was "Puppet Aileen."
Yu Sheng shook his head, trying hard to dissipate the ntal disarray caused by his consecutive resurrections in a short ti.
"I need to go to the Special Service Bureau," he suddenly said, "the current state of that Black Spot Laboratory is extrely dangerous, and their project might have been out of control long ago. Now, with ti-space anomalies appearing serially in several Exotic Realms of Boundary City, I have a very bad premonition... need to discuss this with Baili Qing."
He said as he stood up, but suddenly paused as if rembering sothing, his action of reaching out to open the door halted mid-air.
Erin curiously poked her little head out beside him, "What’s up?"
"Have Luna help bleed a bit first," Yu Sheng said earnestly, "I’ll send another batch to Mo Ran, and urge her about the progress there. I have a premonition, we might be heading for a big conflict soon — it’s better to be prepared."
Before his words had even fallen, Luna had already drawn out her Fingertip Blade, gesturing to Yu Sheng’s body...
Yu Sheng only felt a chill over him, watching the Artificial Saintess’s eternally serene and gentle perfect smile, he always felt that this girl’s shell, if cut open, would be black inside: "Vein! Vein! Don’t stab the artery, if you accidentally kill it’s all for nothing..."
Li Lin and Zheng Zhi watched from the side, trembling—they actually already knew about Yu Sheng’s situation. After all, Zheng Zhi had "joined the team" back on Qianfeng Ling Mountain, and Li Lin received "Blood Transfer" shortly after Yu Sheng returned (though the main purpose was to make it easier for him to deliver packages). Faced with these two "gatekeepers" sent by the Special Service Bureau, who were also old acquaintances, Yu Sheng didn’t hide anything from them.
But knowing is one thing, adapting is another. The unique corporate culture of the travel agency isn’t sothing ordinary people can grasp in a day or two.
"Brother Li," Zheng Zhi nudged Li Lin’s arm, "is it normal to encounter such situations working for the Special Service Bureau?"
"Don’t, don’t make a fuss," Li Lin spoke without thinking, "watch carefully, learn attentively."
"Learn, learn what? If it were , I’d already let Sister Luna stab to death..."
"I want you to learn from Erin—look at her watching TV in such a situation. In our line of work, you need this kind of steady mindset."
"Oh... Hey Brother Li, you really shouldn’t say, she may be young, but she has quite a broad mind."
"...Damn, you’re done for."
...
Outside the chanical Pavilion, rain poured down in torrents.
The array protecting the mansion blocked the city’s wind and rain, and the circulating true fire spiritual energy dispelled the chill of late autumn. Dressed in a long black gauze dress, Mo Ran led a few trusted family retainers through the corridors layered with restrictions, arriving at the hidden depths of the chanical Pavilion.
As the largest and currently best-equipped Artifact Refining Workshop in Mo City, the chanical Pavilion has been under extraordinarily strict guard of late. Not only are the external posts manned by Mo Family experts, but the pavilion also hosts many powerful Cultivators directly dispatched from Qianfeng Ling Mountain and the Lying Cloud Ten Halls. And all of this, it’s simply because the pavilion now hosts a group of special..."expert scholars."
Mo Ran’s gaze swept over the few figures who greeted her in the secret chamber.
Leading the group was an old man, with a sinister gaze and a gaunt figure, draped in a purple robe. He exuded no sign of life, yet his every move radiated a terrifying aura.
A young man, seemingly gentle and with an elegant deanor, even with feminine facial features, appeared smiling. Yet, getting closer, one could detect an unmistakable scent of blood around him.
A youthful girl dressed in a blue skirt-shirt ensemble, her gaze clear and curious, displayed an innocent facade. However, below her nose, she wore a heavy cold iron mask, seemingly so kind of restraint that locked her teeth and tongue—if the surroundings quieted, occasional subtle creaks could be heard from beneath that mask, sounding like sharp teeth chewing on iron.
Withered Court Elder, Blood Young Master, and Bone-devouring Immortal.
Originally, they all faced death sentences, but due to significant accomplishnts and proactive denunciations of their peers, they were given life sentences. During the Demon Suppression Tower collapse incident, they didn’t escape (though perhaps couldn’t), earning them this chance to continue proving themselves.
There were several others in the secret room whose appearances seed similarly dubious, strong even among Death Sentence Realm and Life Sentence Realm experts detained in the Demon Suppression Tower. Yet, before the scene’s three "death sentence commuted to life, personally struck but survived by Master Yuan Hao" experts, they too dared not even breathe heavily. Instead, they stayed quietly in the corners, diligently tinkering with several crystal tubes filled with fresh blood.
"Greetings, Mo Ran Fairy," the elegant young man stepped forward to greet Mo Ran with a smile on his face, "we are intensely studying the intricate secrets of several blood samples, making small progress. Given ti..."
"Enough with the pleasantries," Mo Ran frowned, interrupting the young man’s courteous words, "just tell the progress—did the True Monarch just ask if there’s any way to clone and mass-produce these blood samples outside the body? If not, do you have any thods to enhance their infectivity and range?"
The gaunt old man instinctively exchanged a glance with the girl in the blue skirt.
"Sister, it’s really difficult," ca a sowhat muffled voice from beneath the girl’s iron mask, accompanying a suspicious scraping sound of sharp teeth rubbing against tal, "I don’t understand it. I touched a little, almost succumbed to demon possession..."
"I’m ashad," Withered Court Elder shook his head, being the most straightforward and candid speaker among the three, "we have limited insight, encountering such... ’blood’ for the first ti. All my esteed blood refining thods were nullified by that extra-bodily ’dead blood.’ In my opinion, it cannot be refined or modified with conventional thods, nor can it be manipulated. At most, we can use Artifact Refining thods to create auxiliary magic artifacts, which was the ’Yu Sheng True Monarch’s’ original request."
Blood Young Master and Bone-devouring Immortal beside him nodded in agreent, echoing: "We also think the sa."
"The three of you can actually say such things?" Mo Ran instinctively raised her eyebrows, "...aren’t you all Evil Cultivators?"
Blood Young Master instinctively glanced back at the transparent containers filled with blood on the table, his lips twitching: "Not, not really that evil..."
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