Second Hall
After writing these four words, Chen Ling hesitated for a moment, added another line of small characters on the back, and tossed the letter paper away.
The letter paper gently swayed in mid-air and floated out of the picture frame's range. It turned back into a blood-stained white dove, flapping its wings and sweeping towards the horizon without looking back!
Inside the picture frame, Chen Ling's figure rapidly moved out of the Red Dust Main City along with Yang Muquan. In half a minute, they crossed a small half of the Main City, directly passing from the ruins-filled Gray Realm Convergence area back to the normal Main City area. Moreover, during this process, no pedestrians noticed his existence at all.
Right at this moment, a loud buzzing noise suddenly came from the Convergence area!
Boom——!!
Yang Muquan's brows twitched. His figure lightly landed on a rooftop and turned to look.
Under the leaden gray clouds in the distance, pieces of semi-illusory shapes were outlined out of thin air. Some were regular geometric bodies, and some were accumulations of color blocks with absolutely no shape to speak of. At first glance, it made people feel dizzy and dazzled.
But once their gazes touched those meaningless patterns in the sky, people could no longer move their gazes away from them. Their consciousness and cognition reorganized along with the bizarre shapes in mid-air. For a time, half the pedestrians in the Red Dust Main City froze in place like statues, maintaining a state of blankly looking up at the sky.
In his vision, a pile of shapes like triangles, rectangles, hexagrams, and ovals hung upside down in the leaden gray sky, gradually evolving into a grand and prosperous metropolis... That wasn't a city like the Red Dust Main City, but a truly "prosperous" city. He saw the Oriental Pearl Tower flashing within it, saw the World Trade Center standing tall and imposing, saw large areas of neon high-rises connecting into mountains, and saw red taillights flowing within like rivers, illuminating the entire sky as bright as day.
In contrast with that upside-down "city", the existence of the Red Dust Main City was dim and dull, like a ruins already lost in the long river of civilization.
"How is this possible..." Chen Ling stared fixedly at that city, his eyes full of disbelief.
He couldn't move his gaze away from that city. Even his thoughts had stalled, only feeling a faint swelling pain in his temples... He knew that a city from that era couldn't possibly appear here, but it just had to appear in this form.
Boom——!
The next moment, Chen Ling saw that city gradually disintegrate into pieces of fragments, filling in the surrounding Gray Realm Convergence Points, like a layer of folded silhouettes, completely sealing off the Convergence Points.
Only at this moment did Chen Ling abruptly snap out of his previous state. As he moved his gaze away from those silhouettes sealing the Convergence Points, his back was already soaked with cold sweat.
He blinked hard and looked at those silhouettes again, finding that the prosperous neon city was no longer there. There was only a pile of meaningless geometric shapes floating and moving within...
Following Chen Ling, the surrounding residents also reacted, looking at each other in astonishment.
"Damn... did you see that clearly just now?!"
"I saw it clearly. Countless Silver Coins appeared in the sky! Piled together like a tower, so spectacular!"
"What Silver Coins, that was clearly wine! A luxurious and spectacular champagne tower hanging upside down under the sky... I even opened my mouth and waited for a long time, why didn't a single drop fall into my mouth?"
"What's going on? Did we see different things? Why did I see purple sweet potato rolls? How did it know I wanted to eat purple sweet potato rolls?"
"Hmm... sounds like everyone saw something different... Brother, why is your face so red? What did you see just now?"
"I saw... uh... never mind, I didn't see anything."
"..."
The Anomaly that appeared in the sky attracted the attention of a large crowd. Their voices of communication reached Chen Ling's ears from all around, causing the latter's brows to furrow subconsciously.
[What... is this?] he muttered to himself.
"What? Are you very surprised?" Yang Muquan spoke leisurely. "The ability of the Second Hall is not something you can imagine... In his painting, people will see what their hearts desire. Some desire money and will see mountains of gold and silver. Some desire love and will see three thousand beauties... I am very curious, what does the painting you saw look like?
Is it a peak piled up from corpses, or an ocean surging with flesh and blood?"
In the eyes of the world, Six of Hearts was the symbol of disaster and bloodshed. For such an extremely wicked and evil guy, what beautiful things could he see besides Corpse Mountains and seas of blood?
Chen Ling fell silent.
That familiar neon city surfaced in his mind, and a faint sense of longing and bitterness welled up in his heart... In this world, perhaps he was the only one who could see that city.
What he saw was his unreachable "home".
Feeling Yang Muquan's gaze, after a moment of silence, Chen Ling still curled his lips and smiled:
[You're wrong, what I saw were 'Peaches'... a pile of fresh and tender, still beating 'Peaches'!]
Yang Muquan had witnessed the scene of Chen Ling "eating a Peach" with his own eyes, so naturally he knew what this guy was talking about. His face instantly became incredibly ugly. He coldly snorted, didn't say anything more to Chen Ling, and turned his head to continue running into the distance.
After that "painting" covering the sky appeared, all the Gray Realm Convergence Points in the ruins were sealed by the Scroll. The passages connecting the "Sighing Wilderness" and the Red Dust Main City were cut off, so there shouldn't be any new Calamities breaking in within a short period of time...
But even so, just relying on the massive amount of Calamities that had already broken into the Main City was enough to keep the Floating Life Painting busy for a while.
"However, what exactly is the background of this Second Hall, to be able to seal off so many Convergence Points with his own strength?" Chen Ling couldn't help but think in his heart.
Yang Muquan's figure leaped within the Red Dust Main City, and before long he arrived at the edge of the Main City. He directly jumped over the high wall and rapidly advanced in a certain direction of the Red Dust Domain. A few brushstrokes swirled by his side, seemingly hiding his figure completely. Besides Chen Ling, the surrounding pedestrians seemed unable to see him.
Seeing this scene, Chen Ling's brows furrowed tighter and tighter.
The reason he chose to Surrender Without a Fight and even took the initiative to offer providing intelligence to the Floating Life Painting was naturally to preserve his own life while finding the location of the Red Dust Base faster... They had done a massive amount of investigation before this, and he had even taken the initiative to go back and ask Su Zhiwei, but none had achieved breakthrough progress.
The location of the Red Dust Base had always been a mystery in his and the other Dusk Society members' hearts... And at this moment, seeing Yang Muquan actually jumping over the high wall of the Red Dust Main City, the astonishment in Chen Ling's heart grew even thicker.
Could it be that the Red Dust Base wasn't in the Red Dust Main City?
This thought rose in Chen Ling's mind, making him feel even more that Surrendering Without a Fight was the right choice... If he really followed the original plan and dug three feet into the ground in the Red Dust Main City, he probably wouldn't have been able to find the Red Dust Base in this lifetime.
But when Yang Muquan changed direction, advanced rapidly, and his figure finally landed in a certain familiar area, the shock in Chen Ling's heart overflowed his words.
"This is..."
"Willow Town???"