bullyxtreme Chapter 395 The Rift in the Mirror Palace
Chapter 395 The Rift in the Mirror Palace
The floor tiles of the Mirror Palace made a soft, crisp sound under Lingyue's feet, as if the entire space was on alert for her every move.
The newly appeared crack was located beneath the dome, its edges gleaming with a faint golden light, like reality sliced open by a scorching blade.
As Lingyue took a half step closer, the jade pendant in her hand suddenly trembled violently. The light seeping from the cracks resonated with the golden light within the fissures, projecting a complex star map onto the ground—the very same star chessboard she had seen in the control room.
Each star on the star chart corresponds to a parallel universe, and they are either bright or dim, as if telling different stories of fate.
"Li Zhao?" Lingyue called softly into the crack, her voice filled with anticipation and worry.
The distant response suddenly became clearer, but it carried a harsh, metallic scraping sound.
"Lingyue, don't come in... This is a trap..." Before she could finish speaking, countless chains made of mirror shards suddenly emerged from the crack, coiling around her ankles like hungry venomous snakes.
The chains were incredibly sharp, slicing through Lingyue's skin. Blood dripped onto the ground, but upon contact with the star map, it transformed into specks of light and merged into the stars.
Lingyue staggered and fell, the jade pendant in her hand flying to the edge of the crack. The mirror-like shards and chains curled back into the crack the moment they came into contact with the light of the jade pendant, as if they were afraid of some kind of sacred power.
The moment Lingyue picked up the jade pendant, the golden light in the crack suddenly surged, forming a huge vortex that sucked her in.
When she opened her eyes again, she found herself in a tunnel made up of countless mirrors, each reflecting a different time and space, with images flowing and dazzling.
In some of the mirrors, Li Zhao is fighting side by side with the black-robed Ling Yue, their eyes are firm, and the weapons in their hands are gleaming.
In some of the mirrors, the first Guardians are building the Observer Loom, their faces filled with piety and anticipation.
In other mirrors, the perfect container kneels at the feet of the dream weaver, accepting the program being written, its eyes filled with helplessness and confusion.
These images flashed by like a revolving lantern, and Lingyue suddenly realized that this was the "mirror hub" connecting all parallel universes, the core where the observer controlled everything.
"Welcome to my backyard."
The voice of the perfect container came from all directions, and her projection appeared in the mirror wall. Her expression was calm, but with a hint of arrogant superiority. "You think you can escape by breaking into the control room?"
In fact, every universe is a greenhouse where I cultivate possibilities, and you…”
Her projection reached out and touched the mirror, and the sky of a certain universe suddenly cracked open, revealing the gears of the observer's loom. As the gears turned, countless threads extended to every corner of the universe, "the only seed that can provide nutrients for all greenhouses."
Every struggle you face, every awakening you experience, is part of my experiment.
Lingyue gripped the jade pendant tightly, feeling the cracks on it absorbing the light from the mirror and gradually healing.
She recalled the Dream Weaver's inscription in the control room: "Only by breaking all pre-set scripts can one touch true reality," and resolutely plunged the jade pendant into the nearest mirror.
The mirror shattered with a sound, but no fragments fell. Instead, it revealed the starry sky behind it—the star chessboard she had seen in the Paradoxical Space, where each star represented a universe manipulated by an observer.
Among the stars, countless threads crisscross, tightly connecting them like a giant cage.
"Foolish!" The projection of the perfect container shattered into countless fragments, only to reassemble itself within all the mirror walls. Her tone was filled with anger and disdain. "Without the shackles of the observer, these universes will only hasten their destruction! You think you're a savior? No, you're just a destroyer who will drag everything into the abyss!"
She waved her scepter, and the mirror wall began to spin rapidly. Lingyue felt her consciousness being stretched into countless fine threads, each connected to a different "self" in the mirror.
In the midst of intense dizziness, she suddenly saw Li Zhao's figure flash by in a corner of a mirror universe. His armor had three shocking cracks, and he was being chased by a group of mechanical guards. His eyes were full of exhaustion and resilience.
"Li Zhao!" Lingyue's shout triggered a resonance in the mirror wall, and countless voices of "Lingyue" echoed in the hub, forming a powerful force.
The deepest part of the mirror suddenly shattered, and Li Zhao fell from it. In his hand, he tightly gripped a cracked compass with the same yin-yang fish pattern as the Lingyue Jade Pendant engraved in the center.
"This is the navigator for the dream weavers..."
His voice was hoarse and weak, “We can pinpoint the blind spot of the observer… Only there can we have a chance of survival.”
The projection of the perfect vessel coalesced once more, this time her expression no longer cold, but filled with madness, as if her most vulnerable nerve had been touched:
"You think you can find the truth? All truths are relative! In the world I created, everything has a predetermined trajectory; only in this way can the universe maintain its balance!"
The lens at the tip of her scepter emitted a red light, and black viscous liquid began to seep from the mirror wall. The viscous liquid emitted a pungent odor and gradually sealed off the space, as if it wanted to completely devour Lingyue and Li Zhao.
Lingyue attached the jade pendant to the compass, and the two beams of light intertwined and merged into a bright bridge, opening up a passage in the viscous liquid.
At the end of the passage, there was a ray of hopeful light. Just as the two were about to step into the passage, Lingyue suddenly turned around and saw the true form of the perfect container walking out from behind the mirror wall. Her body was semi-transparent, and one could see the gears and data streams running inside. Each gear was engraved with complex runes, and each stream of data represented the fate of a universe.
“Remember, Lingyue.”
The perfect container's voice was no longer an echo, but carried a hint of bitterness and helplessness, as if emotions suppressed for countless years had finally erupted: "When you see the true reality, you'll wish you could live in a lie forever. We are all trapped in a giant cage, unable to escape, unable to change..."
Before the words were finished, the light at the end of the passage suddenly turned blood red, and the compass needle spun wildly, pointing to a dark spot marked "Zero Point." That dark spot seemed to be a huge black hole, emanating an aura that devoured everything.
Lingyue and Li Zhao exchanged a glance, their eyes flashing with determination.
They held each other's hands tightly and resolutely stepped into the light.
In the instant they vanished, they heard a deafening crash from the depths of the Mirror Palace, the sound of chains snapping, and the laughter of the perfect vessel, almost as if it had been released.
"Finally... it's my turn to break the script..." The laughter was filled with a longing for freedom and a resentment towards fate, as if a long-imprisoned soul had finally been freed.
When the crimson light faded, Lingyue found herself standing on a desolate land. The sky was a solidified leaden gray, giving her a feeling of oppression and suffocation.
The ground was littered with broken scepters, each representing a failed reign and a forgotten chapter of history.
Li Zhao's compass shattered in two, the pointer pointing to a floating island in the distance. Countless glowing cocoons surrounded the island, each containing a sleeping "spiritual moon." Their brows were adorned with triple yin-yang fish patterns, as if awaiting some kind of awakening.
At the top of the island sat a figure draped in a black robe. He slowly turned his head, revealing a face identical to Li Zhao's, but his eyes flashed with the red light of the observer's giant eye, a light filled with indifference and majesty.
"Welcome to the beginning of the universe," Li Zhao, dressed in black, stood up, toying with a silver chess piece in his hand, on which was engraved Lingyue's profile, "or... the end."
In this land of zeroing out, everything will begin anew, and everything will come to a complete end.
With a wave of his hand, a bottomless crack appeared in the ground, and a yin-yang pattern suddenly appeared beneath Lingyue and Li Zhao's feet, pulling them toward the crack with a powerful suction force.
Countless whispers echoed from the crack, like calls from countless parallel universes.
In the instant of falling, Lingyue saw all the cocoons on the island crack open, and countless "perfect containers" looked up at the same time. Their gazes pierced through time and space and converged on Lingyue, as if waiting for a crucial decision.
Beyond a more distant dimension, the giant, holographic eyes suddenly blinked, reflecting the falling spirit moon in their pupils, while countless tiny looms appeared in the whites of their eyes, each connected to the fate of a certain "spirit moon".
Just as Lingyue was about to fall into the rift, the yin-yang pattern on her chest suddenly resonated with the red light in Li Zhao's eyes. The entire world trembled violently and fell into eternal silence. Only the light of the jade pendant stubbornly flickered with a last glimmer of hope, as if to say that this multidimensional game was not yet over, and the real challenge had only just begun...