Chapter 76: Signs of the Universal Fusion
The Central Region had never truly been peaceful.
But in recent days, something had changed.
The changes were subtle at first.
Clouds gathered where the sky should have been clear. Spiritual energy fluctuated without warning. Certain formations malfunctioned for no apparent reason. Spiritual beasts became restless, while some ancient Gu remained dormant for centuries suddenly began reacting to things no cultivator could see.
Most people blamed the disturbances on the unstable passage between regions.
Han Feng wasn't convinced.
He had seen too many coincidences.
And coincidences had become increasingly rare since he awakened the Celestial Diagram.
The Sacred Bones Mountain Range
Several days after leaving Baihua City, Han Feng arrived at the outskirts of the Sacred Bones Mountain Range.
The mountains stretched across the horizon like the ribs of some enormous dead creature.
White stone protruded from the earth in countless places.
Some formations resembled enormous bones.
Others looked like the remains of ancient beasts.
The entire region carried a faint deathly aura.
Even the wind seemed quieter here.
Han Feng stood beneath a cliff and looked upward.
Dark clouds covered most of the sky.
Occasionally, strange streaks of lightning appeared between them.
They weren't ordinary lightning.
One was green.
Another was deep blue.
Then, for less than a breath, a thin line of violet crossed the heavens.
Han Feng narrowed his eyes.
The violet lightning disappeared.
But the strange feeling remained.
"Again..."
He had seen similar phenomena in Baihua City.
The shared dreams.
The distorted spiritual fluctuations.
The strange lights in the sky.
The red star.
The fragments of ancient records.
Something was changing.
But Han Feng still didn't know what.
He refused to call it the fusion of worlds.
Not yet.
The white-robed stranger had warned him.
The worlds are not colliding. Not yet.
Those words remained in Han Feng's mind.
If that man had been telling the truth, then whatever was happening now was merely the beginning.
Perhaps the boundary between worlds was becoming thinner.
Perhaps distant laws were beginning to overlap.
Or perhaps something else entirely was approaching.
Han Feng didn't have enough information.
And that bothered him.
He continued deeper into the mountains.
After several hours, he stopped beside a cliff covered in ancient vines.
His eyes moved across the stone.
Nothing appeared unusual.
But his spiritual perception detected something hidden beneath the surface.
Han Feng raised one hand.
A faint spiritual light appeared between his fingers.
"Spiritual Observation."
His perception spread across the cliff.
Ancient formations gradually emerged.
Most had already been destroyed by time.
But one remained intact.
A small seal was hidden beneath layers of moss.
Han Feng crouched beside it.
The formation wasn't particularly powerful.
However, it had been designed to hide something rather than protect it.
That made him more interested.
He removed a small destructive Gu from his storage pouch.
The Gu crawled across his palm.
Han Feng fed it a controlled amount of Gu essence.
The beetle trembled.
Then flew toward the seal.
Boom!
A muffled explosion echoed through the mountains.
Golden fragments scattered across the stone.
The hidden formation shattered.
A thin crack appeared in the cliff.
Then the entire wall slowly separated.
A dark entrance appeared.
Purple mist flowed from inside.
Han Feng didn't enter immediately.
He waited.
Five breaths.
Ten.
Nothing happened.
He released a strand of perception into the cave.
The spiritual energy inside was strange.
Dense in some places.
Almost nonexistent in others.
Like two different environments were being forced into the same space.
Han Feng's expression became serious.
"This again."
He stepped inside.
The Cave Beneath the Bones
The deeper Han Feng went, the stranger the cave became.
His footsteps echoed.
But the echoes sometimes returned too quickly.
Other times, they arrived several breaths late.
At one point, he stopped completely.
He clapped his hands once.
The sound traveled through the darkness.
A second later, another echo returned.
Then another.
Then a third.
Han Feng frowned.
There should have been only one.
He looked around.
The walls were covered in thin cracks.
Not physical cracks.
Spatial ones.
They were almost invisible.
For a moment, he could see something through one of them.
A sky.
Not the Central Region sky.
Something black.
Filled with enormous stars.
Then the crack disappeared.
Han Feng remained motionless.
His hand slowly tightened.
"So it's not just spiritual energy."
The phenomenon was affecting space itself.
That was much more serious.
He continued forward.
The cave eventually opened into a large underground chamber.
At its center stood a dark jade altar.
Three compartments had been carved into its surface.
Two were empty.
The third contained a small object.
Han Feng approached cautiously.
A blue flame floated inside a transparent crystal shell.
It wasn't burning anything.
There was no heat.
Instead, tiny points of light moved within the flame.
Like stars.
Han Feng's eyes narrowed.
"A Gu?"
He extended his spiritual sense.
The flame reacted.
It moved toward him.
Not aggressively.
Almost as if it recognized his presence.
Han Feng didn't immediately contract it.
He had learned that ancient Gu were rarely as harmless as they appeared.
He inspected the crystal shell first.
There were no obvious formations.
No poison.
No defensive mechanism.
But there was something else.
A faint resonance.
The same strange celestial fluctuation he had felt outside.
Han Feng hesitated.
Then carefully touched the crystal.
The world disappeared.
The Blue Flame
He found himself standing beneath a black sky.
There were no mountains.
No earth.
No clouds.
Only darkness.
Countless stars covered the heavens.
Then one of them moved.
Han Feng stared.
The star grew larger.
And larger.
Until he realized it wasn't a star.
It was an enormous sphere of red light.
Something collided with it.
A second celestial body.
Purple.
The impact produced no sound.
Yet the entire sky trembled.
Cracks spread across the darkness.
Behind those cracks was something Han Feng couldn't understand.
Not another sky.
Not another world.
Something deeper.
Something beyond what his mind could properly perceive.
He saw enormous pillars floating in the void.
A river flowing upward.
A mountain moving like a living serpent.
Then—
An eye opened.
Han Feng's body froze.
The eye wasn't red.
It wasn't purple.
It was colorless.
Completely empty.
Yet the moment it appeared, the Celestial Diagram inside Han Feng's consciousness reacted violently.
The six points flashed.
The seventh point remained dark.
Then a voice echoed through the void.
"The boundary is thinning."
Han Feng's pupils contracted.
Another voice followed.
"Not yet."
The vision shattered.
Han Feng opened his eyes.
He was back inside the cave.
His breathing was heavy.
The blue flame floated inches from his palm.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then he slowly looked toward the Gu.
"That wasn't a normal inheritance vision."
The flame trembled.
Han Feng could feel something different from it now.
Not intelligence.
Not consciousness.
Resonance.
The Gu was reacting to celestial disturbances.
Perhaps it had been created for exactly this purpose.
He carefully released a thread of Gu essence.
The blue flame absorbed it.
A faint glow spread through its body.
Han Feng felt a new connection forming.
The Gu entered his spiritual sea.
The Celestial Diagram immediately reacted.
One of the six points briefly became brighter.
Then returned to normal.
Han Feng's expression became serious.
"You're not giving me power."
He understood it now.
The Gu wasn't an offensive weapon in the ordinary sense.
Its true value was more subtle.
It could sense fluctuations in the surrounding celestial environment.
And, under certain conditions, it could absorb traces of stellar energy to strengthen its flames.
But the ability was extremely limited.
If he forced too much energy into it, the Gu would destabilize.
Han Feng smiled faintly.
"At least you're not another shortcut."
That was reassuring.
He had enough dangerous shortcuts already.
Two Skies
Han Feng left the cave before nightfall.
When he emerged from the mountain, something immediately felt wrong.
He looked upward.
The clouds had disappeared.
The stars were visible.
But they weren't the stars he knew.
Han Feng's expression slowly changed.
He recognized several constellations from the night sky he had seen after arriving in this world.
But others were completely unfamiliar.
Three stars formed a shape he had never seen before.
Then another constellation appeared.
It looked almost like an enormous eye.
Han Feng stared at it.
His spiritual sense became tense.
The Blue Star Flame Gu trembled inside his spiritual sea.
"You're reacting to that?"
The Gu gave no answer.
Instead, the Celestial Diagram began rotating faster.
One point.
Two.
Three.
Then all six.
Han Feng's face became solemn.
He immediately activated the Art of the Celestial Veil.
His aura disappeared beneath layers of concealment.
He didn't know what was observing the sky.
And he had no intention of becoming an obvious target.
A moment later—
The strange constellation vanished.
The original stars returned.
Han Feng remained still.
He didn't relax.
Because he had seen something else.
For a fraction of a second, the stars had not simply changed.
They had overlapped.
Two different skies had occupied the same space.
Then one had disappeared.
Han Feng slowly exhaled.
"So that's what this is."
He looked toward the distant horizon.
"Not a collision."
"An overlap."
The distinction mattered.
If two worlds were already colliding, there was nothing anyone could do.
But if their laws were merely beginning to overlap...
There might still be time.
Time to prepare.
Time to understand.
And perhaps—
Time to stop whatever was coming.
The Celestial Corpse Sect
Thousands of kilometers away, beneath an abandoned mountain fortress, several cultivators gathered around a black formation.
The room smelled of blood and decay.
At the center of the formation floated a distorted spiritual projection.
The image was unstable.
It showed mountains.
A cave.
A blue flame.
Then Han Feng's figure appeared.
Only for an instant.
The projection shattered.
An elderly man in black robes slammed his palm against the stone table.
"Again."
The formation trembled.
A younger elder beside him shook his head.
"It failed."
"Why?"
"The spiritual flow changed."
The old elder's expression darkened.
"Changed?"
"It isn't following the laws of this world anymore."
Silence filled the chamber.
Another elder slowly raised his head.
"What do you mean?"
The younger elder looked uncomfortable.
"The spiritual energy around the target is becoming contaminated by foreign fluctuations."
The old elder's eyes narrowed.
"Foreign?"
"Yes."
He hesitated.
"Something else is interfering with the natural flow of Qi."
The room became silent.
Then someone laughed.
It wasn't a pleasant laugh.
"Could it be the same phenomenon recorded in the ancient archives?"
Nobody answered.
The old elder stared at the broken formation.
He had lived for hundreds of years.
He had seen sect wars.
Ancient ruins.
Spiritual beasts becoming mutated.
Forbidden Gu awakening.
But never this.
A world whose laws were beginning to behave differently was far more frightening than any enemy.
"Find the boy."
The order was quiet.
The other elders looked at him.
"The boy?"
"The one connected to the ancient resonance."
A distorted image of Han Feng appeared again.
This time, the projection showed his face clearly.
"The Demon of Shadows."
The old elder's voice became cold.
"He may not be the cause."
He paused.
"But he is connected."
Another elder frowned.
"And if he knows nothing?"
The old elder smiled.
"Then we will find out."
A Warning in the Wind
Back in the mountains, Han Feng sat near the edge of a cliff.
The night wind passed through his white hair.
The Blue Star Flame Gu floated quietly in front of him.
Its blue flames contained tiny points of light.
Han Feng studied it carefully.
It was weak.
At most, it could enhance his attacks under favorable celestial conditions.
It couldn't defeat a powerful cultivator by itself.
It couldn't save him from an overwhelming enemy.
But that wasn't why Han Feng valued it.
It could detect changes that his senses couldn't.
That made it useful.
Very useful.
Han Feng raised his eyes.
The sky was normal again.
At least for now.
He thought about the parchment from the ancient library.
When the three Eyes open, the veil will fall.
Then he remembered the red star.
The colorless eye.
The six points.
The seventh point that refused to awaken.
The white-robed stranger.
The crystal fragment.
The Black Urn.
The ancient formations.
Too many separate mysteries were beginning to point in the same direction.
But Han Feng still didn't know what waited at the end of that path.
He refused to guess.
Guessing was how cultivators died.
Instead, he would collect information.
One piece at a time.
A faint tremor passed through the ground.
Han Feng immediately stood.
The Blue Star Flame Gu flared.
He looked toward the horizon.
Nothing.
Then—
A thin red light appeared between the mountains.
Han Feng's pupils contracted.
It wasn't lightning.
It wasn't a star.
The light remained perfectly still.
Then a second light appeared beside it.
Purple.
For three breaths, both lights remained suspended above the horizon.
Han Feng's spiritual sense tightened.
The Celestial Diagram rotated faster.
Then the purple light disappeared.
The red one remained.
Han Feng stared at it.
Something was watching.
He couldn't see it.
But he could feel the attention.
A voice whispered through the wind.
So faint that he almost believed he had imagined it.
"Not yet."
Han Feng's expression became cold.
He looked at the red light.
Then at the Blue Star Flame Gu.
"Whatever you are..."
His hand slowly tightened.
"...you're getting closer."
The red light vanished.
The night returned to normal.
But Han Feng didn't move.
He remained at the edge of the cliff for a long time.
The world had not fused.
Not yet.
The boundary had not collapsed.
Not yet.
But something had begun to cross the distance between them.
And Han Feng finally understood the most terrifying part.
The phenomenon wasn't simply coming toward this world.
It was responding to him.
He turned toward the darkness.
"Then I'll prepare before it arrives."
The Blue Star Flame Gu flickered beside him.
Far above, hidden beyond the visible sky, something opened its eyes.
And somewhere between the stars...
Something answered.