Dimensional Hotel

Chapter 742 - 741: Situation Has Changed

The Puppet Progenitor spoke seriously, one point after another, and Erin listened seriously beside her, one sentence at a time.In a daze, she seemed to recall that she'd once had moments like this too—someone instructing her like this, teaching her all sorts of things.

Although she couldn't remember any of the details now, she felt she must have learned pretty well.

The little puppet had always been super confident.

Then, the Puppet Progenitor finished saying those most important things.

Her figure had already thinned to nothing but a fragile shadow; even the words she spoke became a bit blurry by the time they reached Erin's ears.

"Are… are you leaving?" Erin spoke without thinking, reaching an arm forward. "Is time up?"

"I'm not leaving, I'm right here," Alice said with a smile on her face. She crouched down, using the last remnants of light from the Brass Lantern to illuminate herself and Erin. "I'm on this ship. In a bit, even if you can't see me, I'll still be here—we're just going to be separated again for a short while, but we'll very soon get back in touch."

"O-okay…" the little puppet replied, but watching that faintly wavering light, she still couldn't help showing a slightly anxious expression. "Th-then is there anything else you need to tell me? M-my memory isn't so good right now, how about you tell me a few more times?"

The elegant puppet before her laughed. She reached out and gently stroked Erin's head. "There's no time."

The phantom touch landed on the top of her head, bringing only a faint, illusion-like warmth.

Erin subconsciously opened her mouth again. "Then…"

Alice stretched out both arms and gently hugged the little puppet.

"But I can still give you a hug."

The voice at her ear grew more and more indistinct, but Erin truly felt a slight warmth—though the sensation was like an illusion, it was enough for her to believe that all of this was really happening.

So after a brief moment of dazedness, the little puppet broke into a happy smile.

"Okay…"

That warmth disappeared along with the lamplight, and boundless darkness and distant illusions once again surged into her vision from all directions.

Erin felt her body suddenly become light, and an indescribable emptiness and chill welled up inside her—but this feeling lasted only an instant before a new warmth wrapped around her.

Yu Sheng and Hu Li's big tail, along with that Protective Spirit Qi, had all returned.

The little puppet instantly felt grounded, and immediately twisted around to look at Yu Sheng.

Yu Sheng seemed to have sensed something too, turning his gaze over at the same time.

"Yu Sheng, Yu Sheng! Listen to me first!" Erin shouted in a hurry before he could speak. She knew her memory wasn't great, so she had to pour everything out before she forgot the important stuff. "I just saw the Puppet Progenitor! The Lost Home really is trying to contact us! We can't keep using the Black Star as a communications antenna; this thing is a World Gate that can't be closed for now, and the other side of the gate is full of monsters and freaks. The Puppet Progenitor told me to go activate a Garden Network node…"

The little puppet immediately rattled off a torrent of words on the spot, her tongue slick as if she'd chugged half a bottle of WD-40. Yu Sheng had only just noticed that instant of "Heterogenization" in Erin a moment ago; he'd been about to ask what was going on, but suddenly got smacked in the face with this huge lump of intel, almost knocking him senseless.

Fortunately, he'd been through countless battles these past two years, and it wasn't rare for him to zone out for a second only to have crucial intel slapped in his face. So by the very next second he snapped back—pulled out his phone, and first thing turned on the recording function.

Erin chattered on for almost ten minutes, with plenty of jumbled, broken-off bits mixed in between; but she really hadn't forgotten the important parts. Yu Sheng quickly understood about eighty or ninety percent of it (the parts he didn't get were basically just the weird side stories about someone's head falling off and so on), and his expression promptly turned serious.

"I think there was still a bit more," Erin said, scratching her head hard. "Like, before I met the Puppet Progenitor, I think I saw something else—but that part I really can't remember."

"No rush, you can think about it slowly when we get back," Yu Sheng said as he began guiding the fox tail to slowly turn and fly toward the surface layer of the Black Star. "Let's pull out of this place first, find somewhere with a signal, and I'll send that recording to Baili Qing."

"…If I were Baili Qing I'd totally blow up at you, you know. I'd tie you to a flagpole and blast you with Dragon Breath for two hours straight…"

Yu Sheng didn't pay any attention to the little thing's trash talk. After the fox tail beneath him sped up, they quickly drew close to that "Horizon Shell" layer of the Black Star.

Before fully leaving this chaotic region, Yu Sheng couldn't help glancing back toward that direction where the constantly changing illusions lay.

The illusionary stone pillars that had once stood in the distance had disappeared, replaced instead by a stretch of broken, overlapping outlines like pavilions, hazy as the shadow of another world cast here.

"A World Gate, huh…"

Yu Sheng muttered softly. He blinked, and the starlight from the real Universe once more filled his field of vision.

Then he saw a flash of white in the distance suddenly accelerate this way, and when it got a bit closer, he could tell it was a huge fox sprinting madly through space.

"The silly fox is heeere~" Erin immediately sprang up in delight and waved hard, but after two swings she suddenly reacted, changed her tone, "Holy shit the silly fox is coming—"

Cold sweat burst out all over Yu Sheng's head on the spot; he practically jumped up off the fox tail he was standing on: "Brake! Brake! Slow down—"

Halfway through shouting, he lowered his head to look at the little Puppet in his arms: "Didn't you say I wouldn't have any bloody disaster on my head today?!"

The next second, he saw that big white fox rampaging through space start to decelerate—the Great Demon Fox kicked out with all four legs like doing a foot-brake, the mass of tails behind her suddenly fanned open like a peacock and at the same time swung their tips around, nine plumes of propulsion flame abruptly reversed, long jets of fire blooming violently in Yu Sheng's direction.

For a moment there, Yu Sheng felt he was about to unlock a brand-new way to die—he just didn't know whether getting headbutted to death by a fox going at second cosmic velocity or being burned to ash by nine-tailed flames would be more creative.

But in the end, those nine jets of flame only swept past in a ring around him.

The fox girl adjusted her angle with pinpoint precision.

To be fair, she really had made quite a bit of progress these past two years.

The gigantic Nine-Tailed Demon Fox came to a steady stop in front of Yu Sheng, pretty golden-red eyes full of delight, then leaned over and, without a word, slapped a tongue right onto Yu Sheng's head and started frantically licking.

"Stop, stop, quit licking, you're gonna strip the skin off, hey my hair—stop!"

"Savior!" Hu Li finally stopped, rubbing Yu Sheng's head with one big paw as she spoke happily, "You scared me half to death. The moment you went in all signals cut off, even Erin said the interference was really strong, she couldn't really be sure how things were inside…"

"Didn't I tell you there was nothing dangerous inside!" The little Puppet hopped out of Yu Sheng's arms, hands on her hips, eyes bulging, "And I even told you ahead of time just now that we were coming out."

Hu Li said, full of confidence, "Didn't hear you."

"Let's go back first, go back first," Yu Sheng waved a hand, texting on his phone as he spoke, "Call in Master Yuan Hao and Luo, the situation's changed, we need to make some adjustments to our previous plan."

"Oh."

Thirty minutes later, at the Star-picking Tower.

A group of people were gathered together, Luo and Master Yuan Hao sitting on the opposite side of the table, with Erin and Hu Li flanking Yu Sheng's left and right. On the table in front of everyone sat two small mirrors with an antique design, faces up, projecting the holographic images of Baili Qing and Red.

Luna and Freyia weren't here; they were over on Pasture Star overseeing the debugging of the Saintess and Knight Order production lines, and also guiding those Knights and Saintess Mind Bodies without physical bodies in the Soul Wilderness to adapt to and test their new bodies, so they couldn't get away for the moment.

…Yu Sheng was actually pretty doubtful how much help Freyia could really be over there, seeing as that Miss Angel's main job in the Wilderness Great Cathedral right now was basically lighting, and there was no way a high-tech task like testing the production lines was something she could wrap her head around.

But she seemed very invested in it, so Yu Sheng just let her go.

"…So you're saying, this thing that looks like a planet is in essence some sort of teleportation channel?"

After listening to the intel Yu Sheng and Erin laid out, Red, who had kept her eyes closed the whole time, was the first to break the silence.

She was currently still leading the fleet in a corner of the Hidden Monastery's old turf, wiping out the remaining cult stragglers; she wasn't actually here in person.

"I think the mechanism of this thing is definitely way more complicated than a so-called 'teleportation channel,'" Luo said, frowning in thought, "but it's not wrong if you want to understand it in simple terms that way."

"Mm. Whatever the underlying principle is, the core issue is what's on the other side of this 'door'…" Baili Qing spoke slowly, "If the intel Erin brought back is real, then the other end of the Black Star is actually connected to something outside our world… So those illusions the probes observed earlier were actually the world remnants drifting around our Universe after the Great Annihilation?!"

Yu Sheng rubbed his chin, expression grave: "Out 'there' they're world remnants, but once they drift in, they turn into Dark Angels."

"Can we plug this door?" Baili Qing looked at Luo, her tone serious.

"How could it be that easy? We still don't even understand how the Black Star works," Luo shook her hand vigorously, "and if it really could be blocked, the Ancient Saints on the other side of the border would have sealed it long ago—yet according to Erin, even the 'Captain' can only set up some safety measures near the door to prevent large-scale surges of remnants coming through… he can't even guarantee a hundred percent interception."

"And there's another more important point," Yu Sheng said, "Dark Angels didn't only appear after this Black Star in front of us showed up. Even before this Black Star appeared before our eyes, Master Yuan Hao had already run into another Black Star…"

"…The loophole appeared long ago, maybe even back when that World Bridge showed up 3700 years ago," Luo nodded, following Yu Sheng's line of thought, speaking slowly, "The most likely scenario is that the Descent of the first World Bridge caused the initial breach in the world Barrier, and when the Bridge later collapsed, that breach effectively lost its Anchor and started 'moving' randomly through the Universe. Every time it intersects with the real Universe, a Black Star forms at the point of contact, and then Dark Angels come through…"

She paused here, raising her eyes to sweep over everyone present, starlit, shattered-pupil gaze weighted with gravity.

"This is a door that can't be shut. And right now, the only good news is: at least this door is currently right under our noses."