Dimensional Hotel

Chapter 740 - 739: Signal Connected?

Yu Sheng looked up and surveyed his surroundings, seeing only floating dark shadows. Just like the images brought back by those previous exploration devices, this dark celestial body's interior wasn't pitch black; instead, one could vaguely see many bizarre "sceneries" amid the darkness. Among those dark shadows, he saw some pillar structures of varying heights, like weathered stone pillars, arranged at a distant place.But other than that, he heard no sound, only silence around.

Moreover, beyond the Fox Tail's Protective Spirit Qi was a vacuum environment, making it impossible for sound to pass through.

The "whole bunch of voices" Erin heard clearly wasn't from reality.

"What kind of sounds are they?" Yu Sheng asked with a serious face.

The mass-produced puppet reacted sluggishly, with limited bandwidth and environmental interference making each of her words seem rather slow: "Can't hear clearly... like a whole bunch of people talking, but not quite... human language, all mixed together. Annoying..."

The little puppet spoke slowly, tilted her head, lifted the Omen Wandering Star from her arms, and leisurely placed it in front of her eyes, showing a silly grin on her face.

"This seems to be quite useful... some of the sounds... seem to be transmitted through this."

Transmitted through the Omen Wandering Star?

Yu Sheng was stunned upon hearing this and couldn't figure out what the little thing meant — however, Erin herself seemed unable to explain the principle, and when Yu Sheng asked further, she only said her intuition told her.

The little puppet seemed to have an instinct-level connection with this ugly stone sphere, a connection stemming from the remnants of the Omen Goddess, whose state on her Yu Sheng was aware of. It was much like being scattered after her soul vanished, only to be gathered again by Erin's intuitive power, with her current persona as complete as Yu Sheng's nonexistent second uncle — Yu Sheng has no second uncle.

Hence, he quickly abandoned the idea of figuring out the problem from the little puppet and continued to pay attention to the surrounding environment, full of guesses and thoughts.

At the same time, the fox tail continued to float forward slowly within the buffer layer at an extremely low speed.

Yu Sheng had used the portable Bloodletting Knife to cut his finger, letting the blood soak into the fox tail and carefully controlling its flying posture.

Truth be told, it was his first time doing so — although he previously flew on the fox girl's tail, at that time, the main control of the fox tail was still in Hu Li's hands, and he could only communicate simple instructions to the fox girl via the blood connection. But now, the connection between the fox tail and its body was severed, leaving all control to him.

The good news was it actually wasn't that difficult for Yu Sheng — after all, he even managed to open the Star Gate using the power of intuition, let alone a fox tail with only a single propulsion flame.

One must trust the power of intuition.

After floating forward for a bit, Yu Sheng touched the small device that Luo had given him before departure.

The silver-white device casing flickered with a few lights, and the screen on the front indicated the current distance to the dangerous depth inside the Black Star.

300 meters, which was just a thin layer on such a gigantic celestial body. Coupled with the dim environment inside the Black Star and the absence of stable reference points, a moment of carelessness could easily surpass this thin safety buffer.

All those exploration devices that went beyond the 300-meter buffer layer disappeared deep inside this dark celestial body. Although Yu Sheng had the "Door-opening" power, he didn't intend to rush deeper before gathering more intelligence.

In his arms, the mass-produced puppet occasionally turned her head slowly, seemingly still capturing those "noises" transmitted into her ears.

At some point, a somewhat tense and anxious expression appeared on the little puppet's face.

She looked into the depths of darkness, her gaze seemingly passing over those distant, never reachable illusions formed by the unevenly arranged weathered stone pillars. She "saw" massive outlines moving behind these stone pillars, like illusions projected from outside the Universe.

A female stone statue sitting upon a throne cast a glance over this way, inquiring, "…Succeeded? How is our World Bridge?"

Again, a sprawling vine extended from deep within the Black Star, shaking its leaves: "The window period is about to end... more and more... losing control..."

She saw a fragment of light, like a phantom left after a star field from another world faded: "No other chance... the central zone is collapsing... we've observed some flashes at the edge, but the remaining... is already insufficient..."

Erin opened her mouth, but before she responded, those shadows had already disappeared in the darkness.

The spatial order inside the Black Star changed again, and the space-time mapping below the 300-meter buffer layer pointed elsewhere.

Erin felt the Omen Wandering Star buzzing in her hand, and the brief illusions she saw earlier rapidly faded from her memory.

Then, she saw a warm light.

It was a lantern, one that looked familiar.

Soon after, the lantern approached, its gentle glow spreading in the darkness, revealing a figure within the light.

It was an elegant and beautiful puppet, wearing a deep purple court gown, with flawless skin like perfect white porcelain, her silver-white long hair draped down her back, and spherical joint structures clearly visible on her hands.

The puppet held the lantern in her hand, standing in the chaotic darkness, her posture dignified and graceful, while her body leaned slightly forward, as if using the light to illuminate and search for something.

Erin suddenly widened her eyes, and in that moment, she even felt that her mind had broken through the powerful interference of the Black Star, and all her threads of thought became active, making her stiff and sluggish body suddenly sit up.

In the next second, Erin realized that Yu Sheng, who had been holding her, was gone, the fox tail beneath her was gone, even the Omen Wandering Star, which she had been clutching tightly, was gone.

Erin found herself floating in a chaos, as if the entire world had vanished, leaving only this small area illuminated by the lantern existing.

But she couldn't care to think about these things.

"Lady Alice!" she happily shouted, perhaps it was the power of the lantern, or maybe her threads of thought really had temporarily broken through the interference of the Black Star, but now she was speaking very quickly again, "I'm here, I'm here!"

Indeed, it must be—Erin was sure in her heart, though her memory was already blurry and so many years had passed, the figure before her holding the lantern was the Puppet Progenitor.

The creator of Alice's Cottage and the Garden Network, the source of all Alice Puppets, the last assistant who accompanied the creator at the birth of this universe—the Ancient Saint, Alice.

At the moment Erin made a sound, the elegant puppet holding the lantern seemed to finally notice the small figure standing in the dark, her gaze immediately fell on Erin.

Erin was now using her mass-produced shell, this body looked completely different from her original one: long black hair, scarlet eyes… all features left by the Omen Goddess.

But the ancestral puppet, named Alice, smiled in an instant, then quickly approached.

"Finally found you, finally found you… The moment you stepped out the door, there was no news, we searched the entire known universe…"

The Puppet Progenitor bent down to Erin, appearing so excited that she seemed a bit at a loss—if not seen in person, probably no ordinary people in this world would believe that the legendary Ancient Saint could look like this.

"Are you okay? I heard from Agatha that we suddenly contacted the internal universe... but the interference at the void border is too strong, and the Captain said direct return is very dangerous, the engine is unstable, it might break through the world barrier… Let me see you, let me see… huh?"

The Puppet Progenitor suddenly stopped mid-sentence, as if she finally noticed something amiss.

She looked at the little puppet in front of her with confusion, holding the lantern to shine up and down, with her other hand resting on her own head, tilting it thoughtfully before hesitatingly speaking: "Hey, you're Erin, right?"

"It's me, of course it's me!" The little puppet bounced around excitedly, finding it a bit overwhelming upon suddenly seeing the Puppet Progenitor, "You created me with your own hands, and everyone on the ship taught me so much… though I don't remember a lot of things, it really is me!"

"…But the puppet I crafted back then wasn't this small."

The Puppet Progenitor Alice frowned, freeing the hand that was resting on her head, to gesture the height in front of the little puppet.

"It should be about this tall, I molded it to Luni's height."

Erin: "…"

"Why are you crying?"

Erin suddenly burst into a louder wail.

"Why are you crying even harder?!"

The Puppet Progenitor became even more at a loss, placing the lantern mid-air while flustering to reach out to comfort the little puppet before her.

But whether it was due to too large a motion or too much force, there was a light click as if something loosened, followed by a "pop," and a head with silver long hair detached from the Puppet Progenitor's neck and did a remote headbutt, knocking the 66.6 cm tall Erin to the ground.

The noise Erin made while crying was quite loud, and being startled by the flying head now, some inexplicable instinct deeply buried in her memory seemed to be activated again. Unconsciously, she raised her hand and grabbed the silver-haired head about to roll away, while crying loudly, lifting the Puppet Progenitor's head up: "The head, the head, it fell… again…"

In the depth of the darkness, there seemed to be a sigh, along with some other chaotic noises, all muffled as if separated by an impregnable curtain, leaving Erin unable to see or hear clearly.

Anyway, in the blink of an eye, the only two puppets present made the scene as lively as a fairy tale kindergarten playground at three-thirty in the afternoon…