Chapter 1213 — A Vision from the Other Side

Hidden behind the door, the old mage Mo Jin listened to the conversation drifting in from outside while carefully suppressing his own presence. The dream visions the "lady" described formed only broken, disordered impressions in his mind, and mortal imagination was too limited to assemble any clear picture from such abstract, fragmentary descriptions. He could only record those grotesque, bizarre descriptions word for word upon his parchment, while carefully shifting his gaze to search for any other figures that might exist in this world.

He was searching for the voice that had replied — searching for the source of the voice that was exactly like his own.

But before he could find it, the situation outside suddenly changed.

The wind wandering over the plain suddenly grew restless. Gray-white sand began to whirl and tumble around the ruined, toppled throne, and a low, indistinct murmuring came from the direction of those black silhouettes like city ruins in the distance. The murmuring sounded like the sleep-talk of many people layered together, rising from faint to loud, but no matter how one strained to listen, not a single word of it could be made out.

The instant the sound arose, Mo Jin behind the door immediately cast more than a dozen additional layers of mind-protection spells upon himself — his rich adventuring experience told him that vague whispering of this sort was often linked to mental corruption. Mind-protection spells were not always effective against such corruption, but a dozen or so layers of barriers were bound to do some good.

Though his past memories were fragmented, even in what remained he recalled digging up things that should not have been dug up from certain underground tombs and crypts — more than once. Timely mental protection and solid, reliable toughness were the keys to turning peril into safety.

As Mo Jin made his response, the two conversing voices outside fell silent at the same time. They too seemed to be listening intently to the low murmuring coming from the direction of the city ruins. After a long while, that slightly languid female voice muttered in a low tone: "Again... Still can't make out what they want."

"Probably they just want to chat with you? Or say good morning or something..."

"Are you serious, master adventurer?"

"Just in case. I'm merely proposing a possibility..."

"Then kindly put your possibility away, master adventurer," the languid, majestic female voice said slowly. "It is time I rose and stretched my legs — our uninvited guest seems to want to cross the boundary again. I shall go remind It who is master here. You stay on this side; if you feel your mind being corrupted, take a look at the star chart."

As the words outside faded, Mo Jin, hidden behind the door, suddenly widened his eyes.

He saw that the colossal figure seated on the throne or altar had finally stirred — the lady who might be a deity had risen from her throne! She rose like a swelling mountain range, a gorgeous robe flowing behind her like endless darkness churning and surging. She stepped down from the collapsed, ruined dais, and the whole world seemed to tremble beneath her tread. Those "living fissures" roaming across her body truly came alive as well — they shifted swiftly and reorganized, gathering ceaselessly into the lady's hand until they formed a staff half black and half white. In this world formed entirely of black and white, that half-black, half-white staff seemed like a ruler for measuring the entire world, seizing Mo Jin's gaze with overwhelming force.

And almost at the same moment, another vast and terrifying thing rose from the direction of that pitch-black city ruin in the distance — but compared to the "goddess," who for all her vastness and majesty at least had a female form, the thing rising from the city ruins was unmistakably more horrifying and indescribable.

It was a gray-white mass ceaselessly swelling and writhing, its surface covered in formless limbs and madly disordered geometric patterns. The whole of it seemed to be in a state of flowing, like an embryo not yet formed, or a lump of flesh melting. It rolled ever forward, now and then clearing obstacles from the ground with enormous tentacles that budded from its surroundings or with countless hands and feet, and as it rolled it gave vent to maddening, deranged howls, while parts of its surface turned translucent, revealing layer upon layer of enormous eyes within, or runes and figures that seemed to contain countless forbidden truths.

Mo Jin had merely glanced at the thing once when dizziness swept over him; a powerful sensation of being corroded, of having alien thoughts poured into him, surged up, and the protective spells layered upon him offered no help at all, as though they did not exist. The old mage bit down hard on his tongue at once, and as the taste of blood spread through his mouth, he briefly regained control of his body and forcibly dragged his gaze back from the monster's direction.

And as his gaze was withdrawn, it happened to sweep across the "throne" where the lady had been sitting before.

His gaze was instantly drawn to what had appeared on the back of the throne—it had been obscured by the lady's body before, but now it stood fully exposed, and Mo Jin saw that at the center of that archaic gray-white backrest there had appeared a vast pattern of the starry sky, and unlike the black-and-white world around it, that starry pattern possessed vivid, distinct color!

Mo Jin looked closer instinctively and at once discovered other details within the starry pattern: beside those glittering stars there seemed to be fine written annotations, and between the individual celestial bodies he could faintly make out connecting lines and directional light spots. The whole starry pattern did not appear static; near some of the light points at its edges, Mo Jin also saw geometric figures that seemed to be moving—they moved very slowly, but to an archmage possessed of keen observation, their movement was beyond doubt!

This had to be recorded at once!

The thought surfaced in Mo Jin's mind in an instant, and the quill and paper floating behind him began to move as well—but just then, a chilling, terrifying roar suddenly came from the distance.

It seemed that the enormous goddess had already clashed with that "terrifying alien god" drifting over from the ruins of the city.

Mo Jin felt a thunderous shock in his mind, and then the world spun, and he lost consciousness entirely.

(End of this chapter)