Chapter 52: Chapter Fifty-Two: Going Home
Life never unfolds according to plan; change always comes suddenly.
Deafening dragon roars echoed throughout every corner of Water Mirror Peak.
Had it not been for the formation blocking the connection between the peak and the outside world, these dragon roars would have caused great unrest.
On the Great Expansion Pearl, a sharp hiss produced a crack.
Immediately after, high in the sky, a multicolored aurora flickered and swayed gracefully across the heavens.
Like glass shattering or ice cracking, the space around Lu Mingfei fractured with a cacophony of popping sounds.
A tremor arose from the depths of his soul.
Thump—
Thump—
What is that?!
Unconsciously, everyone’s mind flashed the same thought.
Before anyone could react, the image projected by the Great Expansion Pearl began to flicker rapidly.
“Lu Mingfei?”
“It’s not me—I didn’t do anything!” Lu Mingfei panicked; the radiance emanating from the Great Expansion Pearl in his hand grew even brighter.
“It just turned into this all of a sudden! You have to believe me!”
Ye Fan was about to speak, when suddenly a daze overcame him—he seemed to recall something.
His expression grew calm and detached as he surveyed his surroundings, then closed his eyes slightly, stepped in the gangbu pattern, and traced calculations with his fingers.
The others nearby did not notice Ye Fan’s change, for their attention had shifted entirely to the image in the sky.
Outside a palace, dark clouds gathered; seven-colored auroras appeared in the sky, and fierce winds howled—a scene of impending apocalypse.
Dressed in a golden dragon robe, Lu Mingfei stood on the palace steps, staring blankly at the sky, holding a strikingly extraordinary blue longsword.
"Hehehe!"
Suddenly, he laughed joyfully, as if he had achieved complete enlightenment.
“Hahahahaha—.”
A tear traced down his cheek, then tears poured like rain.
Laughing and crying at once, the longsword slipped from his hand and shattered the stone steps.
“Your Majesty!”
“Your Majesty!”
One after another, voices of concern arrived—black-armored soldiers, green-robed Daoists, silver-armored generals—all broke through the air, staring at the monarch who laughed and wept uncontrollably.
“So that’s how it is… So that’s how it is… hahahahaha.”
“So that’s it! Hahahaha!” Lu Mingfei shouted toward the aurora.
Shhh—
White light blazed across the body of the monarch Lu Mingfei; the radiance, as if drawn, merged into the aurora, and his figure grew dim and translucent.
“Your Majesty!”
“My subjects, I am going home! Transmit my imperial decree: the Winged King shall succeed me.”
No sooner had the words left his lips than the monarch vanished, leaving only the blue longsword embedded in the ground as proof he had once been there.
The scene shifted.
Again, dark clouds gathered; seven-colored auroras appeared in the sky, and fierce winds howled.
On a battlefield choked with smoke, a crimson mecha dozens of meters tall had just destroyed a military-green mecha using its surrounding floating cannons.
Lu Mingfei, synchronized with the mecha, manipulated its complex instruments; the readouts showed charging progress. As charging completed, the floating cannons locked onto hundreds of enemy units ahead.
As if sensing something, both man and mecha turned their gaze toward the aurora in the sky.
“So that’s how it is…”
“Hahahaha… it’s all fake…”
Through his headset, a silver-haired, blue-eyed commander called out in a commanding voice.
“Lu Mingfei! Cover completed—fall back immediately!”
“Fall back? Where to? Hahahaha!” Lu Mingfei’s manic voice echoed through the military comms.
“Lu Mingfei?”
“I’m going home. Goodbye, everyone.”
On the monitor of the Lianzhen’s cockpit, Lu Mingfei’s entire body glowed white; he stared at the direction of the aurora, then grew dim and translucent, vanishing.
On Water Mirror Peak, everyone stared in stunned silence at these unfolding scenes.
Lu Mingfei trembled violently, beads of cold sweat forming on his forehead, goosebumps covering his entire body, his heart pounding wildly with dread—afraid the next one to suffer this fate would be him.
Run?!
Impossible to run—none of the other versions of himself had escaped.
The aurora above, the increasingly shattered space around him—Lu Mingfei wanted to beg the others for help.
“Why are you all staring at me…?”
Seeing their strange expressions, Lu Mingfei quickly checked his own body—finding he had not grown dim and translucent like the images shown—he exhaled a sigh of relief.
“Above…” Han Li looked up at the aurora above Lu Mingfei’s head, a cross-realm talisman appearing in his hand, ready to retreat.
One after another, figures emerged from within the aurora.
From blurry to crystal-clear, it took less than a few seconds.
One
Five
…
The aurora in the sky resembled a mystical, dreamlike ocean, holding hundreds or even thousands of figures—each appearing from nothing, from void to substance.
They…
Were all Lu Mingfei.
Some possessed no cultivation at all, indistinguishable from ordinary mortals; some stood like the peak of a mountain, the absolute zenith of the world; others radiated an aura as deep as the ocean, unfathomable.
The images projected by the Great Expansion Pearl switched faster and faster, until finally, like a TV screen split into dozens of sections.
On each section, a Lu Mingfei looked up at the sky, whispering to himself:
“Go home.”
Lu Mingfei stepped back—and a voice identical to his echoed from above.
Dozens of varied Lu Mingfes spoke the same words simultaneously—male and female, old and young, childish and mature voices overlapping into a wave of sound.
“Go home.”
Their faces expressionless, they gazed down from the sky—at the Lu Mingfei below, precisely.
Su Lin wanted to say, “This is my home,” but the bizarre scene paralyzed him into silence.
“Brothers and sisters…” Lu Mingfei swallowed hard, his voice trembling with fear: “What’s our home address…?”
Lu Mingfei recited the address of his aunt’s house, thinking these brothers and sisters had simply forgotten which neighborhood, building, and apartment number they lived in.
Crip—
Another crack appeared on the Great Expansion Pearl in Lu Mingfei’s hand.
From the crack, the same aurora drifted out like delicate ribbons, flickering dim and bright, radiating colors of every hue.
The dragon roar echoed through heaven and earth once more—and this time, everyone clearly heard where the sound came from.
The Great Expansion Pearl!
As the piercing dragon roar erupted from the Great Expansion Pearl,
Crack—
The Great Expansion Pearl shattered; shards flew outward, and in that instant, a golden sphere engraved with dragon patterns expanded from the void and landed in the stunned Lu Mingfei’s hand.
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The aurora ribbons connected; the Lu Mingfes transformed into streams of light, flowing along the linked auroras into the golden sphere.
As countless streams of light entered, the golden sphere hummed.
Heaven and earth suddenly became nothing but boundless white.
Amid the dragon’s roar, Lu Mingfei’s consciousness gradually sank into slumber, falling into dreams.
End of Chapter
