Chapter 415: Garrison-3 |
Immortal Yuan He waved a hand to scatter the illusion floating before him. The final frame before it faded was precisely what the Serpent Princess saw when she looked upon the Dread Omen Wandering Star.
“The thing at the bottom of the Demon-Suppressing Tower has been restless these last two days,” Immortal Yuan He said, unusually stern, “I had the Serpent Princess probe it today. It seems it really has learned something.”
“The Dread Omen Wandering Star devours ley lines, but it also possesses a power of portent,” Immortal Yuan Ling stood to the side and nodded slightly at the words, “or, more precisely, the ability to foresee ‘dread omens.’ During the many years it has been suppressed on the Grand Void Spiritual Axis, it has predicted several major disasters on this planet with accuracy. Its words cannot be fully trusted, yet they cannot be dismissed either.”
The senior and junior brothers stood beneath the veranda of Queyun Palace facing the sea of clouds, gazing into the rolling mist with their own thoughts.
“I have wondered many times: that Dread Omen Wandering Star has no goodwill toward us at all, yet every time some great calamity is about to befall this planet it insists on giving a warning, though always with vile words,” Immortal Yuan He said, puzzled, “if it only wanted to watch a joke, wouldn’t keeping silent be better?”
“That is what I cannot figure out,” Immortal Yuan Ling shook his head, “I asked it before. It obviously dodged the question. It is clear those ‘warnings’ are intentional, but not entirely voluntary. I have therefore speculated that this, perhaps, is the ‘Dao’ that demon bears. What shape that Dao takes, however, I cannot see.”
“The Dread Omen Wandering Star following some Dao of its own? That is indeed interesting. I truly never considered it from that angle before.”
“It is only idle speculation, not reliable. That extracosmic demon has roamed the starry river for untold ages. Who knows its background,” Immortal Yuan Ling said offhand, then changed the subject, “that said, I still think sending the Serpent Princess was unwise. She is not exactly well-behaved.”
“I actually know best that her nature is not bad,” Yuan He shook his head gently, “I know you all think she is mad and stupid beyond saving, but she has been improving all these years. She understands reason at heart; she simply cannot control herself. This time when I asked her to help, she cursed fiercely, but in truth she was delighted, and when dealing with the Dread Omen Wandering Star, we need precisely her half-mad, shameless way.”
“Seventy years ago, five hundred and forty households in Baiquan Village knelt by the roadside and begged me to spare that snake demon. I had no choice. I knew then I had taken on a burden,” Immortal Yuan He said, sighing helplessly, “who would have thought that in the interstellar age we could still find such a simple village on the Grand Void Star, and find within it such a guileless Mountain God. I truly do not know what Nethergloom Valley was doing with population censuses and immortal registries in those years.”
Immortal Yuan Ling laughed and said nothing more. He only stroked his beard and looked out over the clouds, lost in thought.
[How are things with the ‘expert’ now? Is everything going smoothly for Xuan Che?]
…
Seen from space, Garrison-3 was a drab, gray-black rocky world mottled with large dark-red patches. Against the pitch backdrop of space, it had a dusty texture and drifted alone along a cold orbit.
The planet had no large natural satellites, only a few small rocky bodies that were at best big stones moving in several unstable tracks around it. Two of the satellite orbits had already shifted noticeably from the gravitational perturbation of nearby bodies and would likely depart from Garrison-3 entirely in tens of thousands of years, to be flung into deep space as comets or one day captured by the sun.
Drawing on the dossiers reviewed before departure and the sights before his eyes, Yu Sheng’s first impression of Garrison-3 was genuine backwater. Even in this interstellar age, with the Featherwing Sector dotted everywhere with colonies and development sites, this was a barren world still not scheduled for development.
The silver fox slowed in space, traced an elegant fox-curve, and began to orbit above Garrison-3’s equator, seeking a landing zone while surveying the planet.
“Ugly as sin,” Irene poked her head out from under Yu Sheng’s arm, peered past the silver fox’s back, and muttered, “no wonder no one lives here.”
“Whether a planet is inhabited has nothing to do with its looks. Open an eco-dome and people can live anywhere. This one wasn’t developed simply because it has no ley lines. It is a barren star. For the Immortals of the Featherwing Sector the cost of terraforming is not worth it,” Yu Sheng explained, knowing Irene likely had no patience for such things, “planets without ley lines usually have thin spiritual energy, and their ecosystems are prone to mutation and pollution.”
Irene thought for a moment and delivered her conclusion: “Ugly anyway.”
Luna silently watched the little doll for several seconds, then offered a single line: “Shorty Irene, shallow.”
Irene considered this and said: “C-clip, your accent is really heavy, I’m telling you…”
Luna pretended not to hear. She joined Yu Sheng in observing the surface below, clearly thinking. After a while she broke the silence with one word: “Death.”
Irene tilted her head: “Huh?”
Luna said no more, only raised a hand and pointed at the gray, desolate world under them.
“She says this planet is wreathed in a layer of death,” Yu Sheng translated. Though he often could not directly parse Luna’s halting, terse sentences, the blood-bond between them let him “hear” the ideas riding her words. Upon grasping Luna’s meaning, a new gravity entered his expression.
Irene did not immediately understand. She scratched her hair: “Of course. It looks dead.”
“No. Looking dead and being wreathed in death are two different things,” Yu Sheng shook his head, “Luna means the planet has the atmosphere of death.”
“…Is there a difference?”
“Yes,” Yu Sheng said slowly, “for the most part, death presupposes that something once lived.”
Foxy began to descend, having found the battlefield ruins Xuan Che had mentioned.
From orbit the impact crater was plain to see, a dark circle where a vast force had permanently altered the terrain. Its rim was jagged, showing folds and fractures formed by strata wrenched and heaved in a short, violent moment. The crater’s center had a gray-black, glassy sheen. A wide swath of melt had cooled into crystalline forms that preserved ripple-like undulations as they solidified, and the distant sunlight scattered across that glass with a fine glimmer.
Through all of this, Yu Sheng never actually saw the “death aura” Luna spoke of. Strangely, though many of Luna’s “new skills” seemed to derive from his influence, he himself lacked the corresponding abilities. He could not, for example, drag people into a soul wilderness to beat them up, nor scan for death with a glance. He could not fathom how she did it.
Even so, he dimly felt the planet’s strangeness.
He felt, in truth, as if he were drawing near a colossal corpse.
In a flicker, the feeling reminded him of something else. After a moment’s effort he realized where the familiarity came from.
It was when he first approached Sentinel Silence.
Back then, he had felt Sentinel Silence’s weakness, felt that world in a strange subhealthy state.
Irene noticed Yu Sheng tighten his arm slightly around her. She looked up and studied his face.
“You are headed for bloodshed,” the little doll suddenly declared.
Yu Sheng started at her shout and jerked his head down: “What are you yelping about?”
“You are headed for bloodshed again,” the little doll said proudly, repeating herself though there was nothing to be proud of.
Yu Sheng chuckled: “You make it sound like I don’t usually bleed enough. How about you for once predict something good. For example, tell me when my next single pull will hit the jackpot.”
“No way. If I could predict that I would use it on myself first,” Irene said with conviction, “I can only predict misfortune. Especially yours.”
Yu Sheng: “…”
At that moment, a sheath of fire wrapped Foxy. The nine-tailed fox had entered atmosphere.
Garrison-3 was desolate but possessed an atmosphere of nontrivial density. It was poisonous to ordinary carbon-based life, but that was no issue for Yu Sheng, who could brazenly hold his breath in vacuum, for Irene, who did not need to breathe, or for Foxy, who could cross space in the flesh.
Like a meteor, the silver fox traced a burning scarlet arc through the sky and finally came down inside the inner rim of the crater’s ring wall.
“We are down.”
Yu Sheng sent Xuan Che a quick message, then patted the nine-tailed fox’s back to signal her to move toward the crater’s center.
Meanwhile, his gaze swept slowly around the surroundings.
[Would there be any trace of the Dark Angels left here?]
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation
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