While Red and Kant were chatting, Baili Qing finally completed the flight preparations—The pure white giant dragon took two steps towards the edge of the earth, then spread its wings and leaped towards the direction of the rift.Yu Sheng sat on Baili Qing's back, fingers grasping the edge of a protruding scale, feeling a slight vibration beneath him. Baili Xue floated beside him in midair, with nothing but two large eyes, yet her overwhelming tension was still evident in her gaze.
"Sister, fly slower! Be careful not to overshoot! Don't get too close later; the rift shape is irregular, I suggest we stay at least 200 meters away..."
Baili Qing ignored her, while Yu Sheng turned with a slightly odd expression to gaze at the pair of floating eyes before him.
Perhaps his scrutiny became too obvious, prompting Baili Xue to finally snap, "Why are you staring at me all the time?"
Yu Sheng pondered and pointed at her, "You're floating in midair, so in a way, you're synchronously flying with your sister? You're actively heading towards the rift."
Baili Xue visibly stiffened, then in a flash, she pasted herself onto Baili Qing's scales, "You could've said sooner!"
Yu Sheng: "..."
He looked at the illusory eyes with some helplessness, holding back until he couldn't anymore, "Actually, I've been curious about something for a long time and haven't dared to ask."
"What do you want to know?"
"Your current state and sometimes your sister's attitude towards you," Yu Sheng chose his words carefully, "What exactly is going on with you two? Especially you... how did you become like this?"
He finally asked the question he'd been wondering for a long time—since he first met Baili Xue, he was curious about these things, but at that time, he wasn't familiar enough with the Baili sisters, so he couldn't ask. Now, after spending more time with them, Yu Sheng vaguely sensed something was amiss.
Baili Xue drifted between several scales before Yu Sheng.
"Actually..." her voice carried a hint of hesitation, "It's nothing much. Just an accident back then, hmm... an accident."
It was clear she didn't want to answer.
Yu Sheng lifted his gaze to see Baili Qing slightly turning her head back. He couldn't discern any expression on the majestic yet slightly fierce pure white dragon head, except for Yu Sheng's reflection in the crystal-like eyes, "… I can tell you about our sisters' story if there's a chance later, but not today."
"Sister?" Baili Xue's eyes almost floated away again, her voice clearly shocked, "You, you really intend to tell others?"
"... Anyway, Yu Sheng is a mutual friend of mine and yours."
"... Well, I guess it's true."
As they spoke, Yu Sheng felt a tremor beneath him—Baili Qing slowed down and shifted direction, starting a lateral glide.
They had reached the vicinity of the rift.
"Wow... this thing is huge up close," Yu Sheng extended his head for a glance and couldn't help but murmur, "And it extends downward so far."
Up close, the rift was much more spectacular than it appeared from the ground. The eerie glowing "solidified lightning" patterns extended several hundred meters, with numerous irregular branches. Its widest part seemed enough to allow Baili Qing in dragon form to fly inside it, indeed a grand sight.
Maintaining caution, Baili Qing glided in a circle around the largest branch at a distance of a hundred meters from the rift.
The rift seemed entirely forged from light, with eerie luminescence drifting deep within, its interior appearing more structured, yet unclear no matter how hard one looked.
"There's nothing distinguishable here," Yu Sheng said, frowning, "Can't tell how the Knight crawled out from here... If even that Lodaxim High Wall came out from here, shouldn't there be an obvious gap left?"
"Perhaps it healed?" Baili Xue remarked.
Yu Sheng thought that if Erin were here, she'd probably say something along those lines.
"The rift itself is calm," Baili Qing's voice finally broke through Yu Sheng and Baili Xue's fruitless exchange, "No signs of 'overflow' noticed, nor any significant energy fluctuations felt. No signs of growth or recession, all branch shapes and sizes are stable."
As she spoke, she cautiously edged a little closer.
A layer of faint gray-white glow shifted in her eyes.
Seeing this, Baili Xue quickly warned, "Sister! Be careful!"
"Just now, I felt something in the rift watching me..." Baili Qing murmured, her tone tinged with seriousness, "But when I looked back, the feeling of being watched vanished."
Listening to Baili Qing, Yu Sheng after a while suddenly stretched his head to look below.
His gaze skimmed a branch of the glowing structure extending downward from the edge of the rift, peering into the deep darkness below the Fault.
According to the fault, "The place where collapsed history layers."
In the endless Dark Chaos, seemingly lurked vast illusions beyond language and reason.
Some faint intermittent voices drifted into their ears.
Yu Sheng furrowed his brow, striving to discern.
Yet those voices mixed together, making content deciphering impossible—after listening for a while, he could only give up helplessly.
But at that moment, amidst the whispered entanglement, a somewhat familiar yet clear voice emerged.
"… I'm searching for my sister... do you know where she went..."
Yu Sheng shuddered, ready to call Baili Qing, but the next second, he found the pure white dragon along with the pair of illusory eyes had vanished before him.
He floated alone in the chaos of darkness, with the colossal glowing rift like frozen lightning just below.
Yu Sheng felt himself falling towards the rift, or perhaps the rift suddenly began to grow, with a swath of ethereal light rapidly expanding in his vision, instantly filling the surroundings.
"...?"
The feeling of standing on solid ground came abruptly, and then the surrounding radiance collapsed, colors reassembled in his vision, Yu Sheng's feet swayed a bit, and he found himself standing in a white corridor.
An illusion? Exotic Realm? Or was he transported to another space-time due to getting too close to the rift?
Several thoughts quickly flashed through Yu Sheng's mind as he cautiously observed the place.
The corridor was very quiet, the ceiling illuminated with steady and bright white light, along with some tightly closed doors, the signs on the doors marked with words like "Observation Room," "Sample Room," "Analysis Room."
The entire place emanated an atmosphere of a research facility.
Yu Sheng reached out to feel the air and found a door handle.
He breathed a sigh of relief, "The door" seemed like it could still be opened.
Just at this moment, several figures suddenly emerged from the corner ahead.
Yu Sheng's nerves instantly tensed up, and coupled with the suddenness, he did not find a place to hide—he was already within the field of vision of the others.
However, the next second he realized those figures seemed to completely not see him, still talking while walking slowly towards here.
As they got closer, Yu Sheng heard their conversation:
"...The condition seems quite stable, at least today those machines won't keep sounding alarms."
"...Isn't it a bit too quiet?"
"That's probably just the personality... anyways the appetite is indeed big..."
"...Growing up..."
"She bit into the controller... is teething..."
Several people who appeared to be researchers, both men and women, walked by while chatting, Yu Sheng instinctively stepped aside, but he found this action was really unnecessary.
The other party couldn't see him at all, one of them even brushed his arm against Yu Sheng's body as they passed, but went straight through.
Yu Sheng turned around, wanting to follow to see where these people might be heading, and to continue "eavesdropping" on their conversation.
But just in the blink of an eye, those figures again vanished from the corridor.
In the direction they left, a layer of mist rose at the end of the corridor, making the distance blurry.
Yu Sheng frowned slightly, deciding to walk in the direction from which those figures had come.
He walked along the corridor, passing rooms marked as sample and analysis rooms, trudging forward without knowing for how long, he suddenly stopped.
A room—while the doors of other rooms had plaques, here there was none.
Yu Sheng looked closely, and noticed some intertwined and scratched grooves on the white door, as if clawed by sharp talons.
After a slight hesitation, he reached out and pressed on the door.
The door opened.
The scene inside the room was beyond Yu Sheng's expectations.
It was not a cold laboratory, but a simply yet warmly furnished bedroom, with light-colored wooden flooring, a small white bed placed in the corner, opposite were a desk, wardrobe, and a large shelf filled with various shiny trinkets.
On the carpet with animal patterns, between the bed and desk space, a small figure lay with its back to Yu Sheng seriously occupied with something.
It was a little girl, wearing a white dress, barefoot, her grayish-white hair tied in a simple ponytail.
Yu Sheng frowned slightly, cautiously moving forward.
The girl was completely oblivious to his presence behind her, still engrossed in her doodling.
Yu Sheng moved beside the little girl, seeing her using a watercolor pen to draw on the carpet.
The beautiful animal carpet was covered with eyes drawn by her.
Various sizes and shapes of eyes, though child-like lines couldn't accurately define the shapes, each pair of eyes seemed incredibly... spiritual, as if something behind those eyes was truly scrutinizing the one looking through those hollow pupils.
Perhaps it was an illusion, Yu Sheng felt an inexplicable sense of danger and... restlessness from those eyes.
Just then, the little girl who kept her head lowered while drawing seemed to have sensed something, suddenly raising her head.
Yu Sheng saw a pair of faded-like, grayish-white eyes.
And a pair of small, sharp horns poking out from her hair.