Chapter 52: Going Home

Life can never unfold according to plan; change always comes suddenly.

A deafening dragon roar echoed through every corner of Water Mirror Peak.

If not for the formation blocking it, severing the connection between the peak and the outside world, this dragon cry would surely have caused a great commotion.

On the Dayan Pearl, with a hiss, a crack appeared.

Immediately after, high in the heavens, a multicolored aurora flickered in and out of view, swaying gracefully across the sky.

Like glass shattering, like ice cracking, the space around Lu Mingfei developed fissures, the crackling sounds of breaking shells terribly noisy.

From the depths of his soul, a tremor arose.

Boom—

Boom—

What is that?!

The same thought flashed through everyone's mind.

Before anyone could react, the image the Dayan Pearl had projected began to flicker continuously.

"Lu Mingfei?"

"It wasn't me! I didn't do anything!" Lu Mingfei panicked, the radiance blooming from the Dayan Pearl in his hands growing ever more dazzling.

"It suddenly became like this! You've got to believe me!"

Ye Fan had just been about to say something when a wave of dizziness struck him, as though something had surfaced in his mind.

The expression on his face gradually calmed; he surveyed his surroundings with cool indifference, then gently closed his eyes, stepping out the Gang Steps, fingers pinching in calculation.

The others nearby did not notice Ye Fan's change, because at that moment their attention had all turned to the image in the sky.

Outside a palace, dark clouds pressed low, a seven-colored aurora appeared in the sky, a gale raged, a scene of doomsday.

Lu Mingfei, clad in a golden dragon robe, stood on the palace steps, staring blankly at the sky, a rather extraordinary azure longsword held in his hand.

"Heh heh heh hahahahaha!"

Suddenly, he laughed with great joy, as if having achieved a sudden enlightenment.

"Hahahahaha—."

A tear slid down from the corner of his eye, and then the tears fell like rain.

Laughing and crying at once, the longsword in his hand dropped to the ground, shattering the stone steps.

"Your Majesty!"

"Your Majesty!"

One after another, voices of concern came; black-armored warriors, blue-robed Daoist Priests, silver-armored officers all tore through the air, gazing at the sovereign who laughed and wept.

"So that's how it is, so that's how it is, hahahahaha."

"So that's it! Hahahaha." Lu Mingfei stared at the aurora and shouted aloud.

Whoosh—

A white light flared on the sovereign Lu Mingfei's body; the radiance, as if drawn, merged into the aurora, and his figure began to grow dim and translucent.

"Your Majesty!"

"My lords, I am going home! Pass on my decree: the Wing King shall succeed the throne."

The moment the words fell, the sovereign had already vanished, leaving only the azure longsword thrust into the ground, proclaiming the trace of the sovereign's existence.

The scene shifted.

The same dark clouds pressing low, the same seven-colored aurora in the sky, the same raging gale.

On a smoke-choked battlefield, a red mecha dozens of meters tall had just used its surrounding drones to blast apart a military-green mecha.

Lu Mingfei, his consciousness synchronized in resonance with the mecha, manipulated the complex precision instruments; the gauge displayed the charging progress, and as charging completed, the drones began locking onto several hundred enemy units ahead.

As if sensing something, man and mecha both looked toward the aurora in the sky.

"So that's how it is…."

"Hahahaha, it's all fake…."

In the earpiece, a silver-haired, green-eyed commander called out in a spirited voice.

"Lu Mingfei! Cover is complete, retreat now!"

"Retreat? Where to, hahahaha." Lu Mingfei's somewhat frenzied voice spread through the military comm channel.

"Lu Mingfei?"

"I'm going back. Farewell, everyone."

In the cockpit surveillance feed of the Lian Zhen, Lu Mingfei's whole body lit up with white light; he stared toward the sky, then grew dim and translucent, and vanished.

On Water Mirror Peak, the crowd stared dumbfounded at these unfolding scenes.

Lu Mingfei's whole body trembled; beads of cold sweat seeped from his forehead, goosebumps rose all over his skin, his uneasy heart pounded wildly, terrified that he might be the next to suffer such a thing.

Flee?!

He couldn't flee—his other selves from other worlds had not escaped either.

The aurora in the sky and the increasingly fracturing space around him made Lu Mingfei want to ask the others for help.

"Why are you all looking at me like that…."

Seeing the look in everyone's eyes, Lu Mingfei hurriedly checked his own body, found he had not grown dim and translucent like the figure in the projection, and felt slightly relieved.

"Up there…." Han Li looked up at the aurora above Lu Mingfei's head, a cross-world talisman appearing in his hand, ready to retreat.

Within the aurora, one figure after another suddenly appeared.

From blurry to clearly visible took less than a few seconds.

One.

Five.

……

The aurora in the sky resembled a mysterious, dreamlike ocean, holding within it hundreds and thousands of figures, these figures emerging from nothing into existence, from void into solid form.

They…

Were all Lu Mingfei.

Some had no cultivation, hardly different from mortals; some seemed like a mountain peak, the absolute pinnacle of the world; some had auras as deep as an abyss, impossible to fathom.

The scene reflected by the Dayan珠 switched faster and faster, until finally, it was like a television divided into dozens of regions.

In every region, a Lu Mingfei looked up at the sky, muttering to himself:

"Go home."

Lu Mingfei took a step back, and at this moment the same voice came from above.

The many varied Lu Mingfeis spoke the same words at the same moment, voices—male or female, old or young, childish or mature—overlapping into a wave of sound.

"Go home."

Expressionless, they gazed down from the sky, more precisely, they gazed at the Lu Mingfei below.

Su Lin very much wanted to open his mouth and say this is my home, but he was so awed by this bizarre scene that he didn't dare speak.

"Brothers and sisters…" Lu Mingfei swallowed a mouthful of saliva, his voice somewhat fearful: "Our home address is…"

Lu Mingfei stood aside reciting his aunt's home address, thinking these brothers and sisters had simply forgotten which neighborhood, which unit, which house number they lived at.

Sizzle—

Another crack appeared on the Dayan珠 in Lu Mingfei's hand.

The same aurora drifted out from the crack in the Dayan珠 in his hand, like ribbons floating lightly, flickering between bright and dim, emitting light of various colors.

The dragon's cry once again shook heaven and earth, and this time, everyone heard clearly where this sound came from.

The Dayan珠!

At the same moment the lofty dragon's cry rang out from the Dayan珠.

Crack—sizzle—

The Dayan珠 shattered, and the instant its fragments shot out, a golden sphere inscribed with dragon-shaped patterns expanded from the void and fell into the hands of the dumbfounded Lu Mingfei.

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The aurora ribbons connected, and those Lu Mingfeis turned into streams of light one by one, falling along the connected aurora into the golden sphere.

As the many streams of light entered, the golden sphere hummed.

Between heaven and earth, suddenly only vast whiteness remained.

Accompanied by the dragon's cry, Lu Mingfei's consciousness gradually sank into slumber, entering dreamland.