Chapter 394: Shadows in the Rain |
In Sentinel Silence, in Ink City, several figures hurried through the rain.
With preparations made in advance by Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain and a brief rest in the hotel, Yu Sheng and his companions changed into clothes that would draw less attention in this city.
Zheng Zhi dressed in the local style: a dark, rain-cape-like coat whose cut resembled a straw raincoat but was actually made from an advanced composite, along with a conical hat etched with silvery gray tracery. The outfit was clearly ideal for Ink City’s weather. A faint force field formed around the hat’s rim that kept off wind and rain, and the raincoat itself was light and warm, warding away the damp chill.
Yu Sheng was dressed much the same, except that the raincoat bulged beneath his chest. Irene hung there like a koala, her head poking out of his arms with all the lazy gusto in the world.
Immortal Yuan Hao hardly changed his style. The “Capital Planet” cultivator look counted as a fashionable “trend” in this frontier city. He simply put away anything that might reveal his Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain identity. In plain, clean robes he looked no different from an ordinary passerby, if you ignored that handsome old face of his.
Foxy, on the other hand, had changed into a moon-white gown full of ethereal grace. Pale blue water-pattern embroidery trimmed the hem; a ring of pendants at her waist chimed softly as she walked. She held a dark blue oiled-paper umbrella and trotted obediently at Yu Sheng’s side. Half of her nine tails were left out in the rain; once they were soaked she shook them vigorously. In the hand without the umbrella she clutched a chicken leg and took an occasional bite.
It was worth noting she was letting her tails get wet on purpose, because shaking the water off was fun.
Luna was the most distinctive presence beside Yu Sheng. The traits of an Artificial Saintess were far too conspicuous: not only the perfect, cold, pallid face and that metallic sheen to her shell, but also her full two meters of height. Dressing her in local garb would have made her stand out even more. So the Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain contingent had arranged a different look for her in advance.
She wore a black robe-dress dotted with silver-white stars and ringed with religious-looking circumstellar motifs. Together with the black veil she always wore, she now looked every bit a nun. According to Immortal Yuan Hao, the outfit closely resembled the Alglade People’s “Star Maid” attire.
The frontier region where Sentinel Silence lay was near Alglade territory. A large stargate stood only one light-year away, leading directly to the Alglade People’s Deep Layer Star Domain. The locals were therefore accustomed to “outland visitors” of similar style. Because most Star Maids were mysterious by nature and kept many idiosyncratic sartorial habits, even if Luna revealed some inhuman traits, as long as she wore this “nun’s garb,” she would not attract excessive surprise or attention.
The rain had lessened since their landing, yet still fell in a fine, unbroken curtain. Raindrops approached Luna and fanned away against the invisible field around her, forming a gauzy veil at her side. Behind that veil she lifted her head, multiband radar sweeping the surroundings again and again.
“Multiple high-energy units,” she said slowly: “no hostility.”
“I sense the same,” Immortal Yuan Hao nodded, “likely cultivators passing nearby. We are far from the city center but near an ancient refining tower. The aura is dense. It is a fine place to practice.”
Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then turned to his nephew: “Do you see or sense anything?”
Zheng Zhi adjusted the conical hat and shook his head: “Nothing. Seems normal here.”
Just as the words left his mouth, Irene poked her head farther out from Yu Sheng’s collar and piped up: “Can you even tell what’s ‘normal’ and what’s ‘not’? Maybe you’re looking straight at something freaky and don’t realize it.”
“Uh, well… most of the time I can tell,” Zheng Zhi said, a bit embarrassed, then rushed to explain, “By experience, the abnormal things clash with their surroundings. One can judge by the overall vibe…”
He broke off mid-sentence, then suddenly raised a hand to point across the street: “Wait! Those two look off…”
Immortal Yuan Hao immediately lifted his head to look, then quickly pressed Zheng Zhi’s arm down: “Fellow Daoist Zheng, do not make a fuss. Those are just kids dressed as characters from a play. I checked before I came. There is a convention nearby.”
Irene, listening, was taken aback: “You cultivators have conventions here?!”
Immortal Yuan Hao looked puzzled: “Why not?”
“It is so unserious,” the little doll blurted, “doesn’t fit your whole ethereal aesthetic…”
Immortal Yuan Hao laughed: “That is a stereotype. People gathering in strange guises has existed since antiquity. Young Lady Irene, have you never heard of divine theater and shamanic dance?”
Irene looked utterly baffled: “…?”
Yu Sheng coughed twice and, going along with Immortal Yuan Hao, improvised: “In terms of free-form expression, ancient spirit-invocation dances might as well be the earliest ‘conventions’.”
The little doll thought it over, then gaped in shock: “R-right, isn’t it?!”
[This little thing is far too easy to fool. I feel bad keeping up the bluff.]
They spoke as they walked and soon crossed another junction. The farther they went toward the city outskirts, the thinner the foot traffic became.
Immortal Yuan Hao began to frown from time to time, carefully extending his divine sense to read the shifts of aura around them. Now and then he slowed, lifting his gaze toward the ancient refining tower rising in the rain, whose oppressive bulk at this distance felt almost crushing.
“Strange,” the handsome old man murmured to himself, “why did it vanish again…”
Irene poked her head out of Yu Sheng’s arms: “Huh? What vanished?”
“The knots where aura congealed and the sluggish flows of the ley lines,” Immortal Yuan Hao said slowly, deep in thought. “When we descended, I brushed my divine sense across the surface and did feel several wrongnesses. Even a short while ago back on Huixian Continent I could still sense anomalous directions. Yet now that we are near, the feeling is gone.”
“Did it sense us coming and run?” Irene said without thinking.
“What ran were my perceptions of the earth-veins and aura, not some living thing. How can the natural environment run?” Immortal Yuan Hao shook his head. “If anything, it has been covered up.”
He paused, then added uncertainly: “But to hide such changes from my divine sense is not something ordinary people can do…”
Yu Sheng said nothing. He gazed into the distance, pensive.
The rain drifted like mist. The spirit-ore refining tower at the city’s edge stabbed up into the cloud-bottom. Two transport rails rose from Ink City’s perimeter like thick blood vessels, connecting the ancient, mountain-like mechanical megastructure. Lights blinked along rails and tower, all made dim and hazy by the rain. Now and again lightning tore across the sky. In that instant of stark glare the world-high tower stood out in stark silhouette, then in the next flicker seemed about to topple, trembling and unsteady.
Foxy, in the midst of shaking water from her tails, suddenly stopped. She frowned in confusion, then sniffed at the rain as if catching a scent.
“Benefactor,” she tugged Yu Sheng’s sleeve, “I smell blood.”
“Blood?” Yu Sheng snapped to attention at once: “Where?”
“It is hard to tell in the rain,” Foxy said, sniffing the air in several directions, her great silver-white fox ears flicking as if to catch subtle threads of sound in the weather, “but it cropped up just now. It should be close.”
At her words, Immortal Yuan Hao’s brow knit. He lifted a hand and pointed lightly into the air, speaking in a calm, resonant voice: “Clear Quiet.”
A ripple as soft as a breeze spread from his fingertip, and an unseen, intangible power covered every inch of space around them. A clear tone rang through the air. The rain halted for a heartbeat, poised in midair as if time itself had paused.
The next second he and Foxy lifted their heads together and pointed in the same direction: “There.”
Yu Sheng had no leisure to admire that stunning trick of the handsome old man, because in that brief stillness he sensed something else. It was not the reek of blood; his nose was nowhere near as keen as Foxy’s. [What I feel is life ebbing away, the breath of a powerful creature on the verge of death.]
They sprinted toward the point Foxy and Immortal Yuan Hao had indicated, into a dim, oddly desolate district near the tower.
The briefly stilled rain began to fall again. In the trailing curtains of water the low grumble of distant thunder rolled from time to time. In one peal after another, and through that gauzy rain, the silhouettes of city buildings blurred, as if every structure had become an abstract cutout wedged between light and shadow, a false background projected onto a spatial screen. For fleeting instants the far-off buildings were simply gone, replaced by a wilderness of jagged rocks, as if the planet had not yet been developed, even discovered.
Zheng Zhi could not possibly keep pace with a squad of superhumans. Just as he began to fall behind, Immortal Yuan Hao glanced back. A clear wind wrapped under Zheng Zhi’s ribs. He felt himself lifted, agile and light, and keeping up became effortless. In that instant of relief, he looked ahead again.
The colossal ancient refining tower at the city’s edge had vanished.
In its place yawned a fissure black as final void, a rift cleaving sky and earth, as if to split the planet itself, running from the heavens to the ground and shearing through space entire.
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