When he saw the urgency on the Great Sage’s face, Ye Zichen took out his phone. There were no new messages in the war prep chat, so the Great Sage was obviously talking about the Heavenly Court and Underworld’s Red Packet Server.
Barefoot Immortal: What exactly is this?
Wu Gang: I feel a pressure so intense, it’s making me shiver.
Immortality Peach Fairy: Wah, is this for real? I’m still in my peach garden, and I can’t see it at all.
Kitchen God: It seems something big is happening.
Lu Dongbin: What’s going on?
Iron-Crutch Li: What exactly is that coffin for?
God of Food: That’s a coffin? I thought it was a mountain!
Jade Maiden: I’m scared!
Golden Boy: Don’t be scared! I’ll protect you!
Immortality Peach Fairy: @ Queen Mother, My Lady, do you know what’s going on?
Barefoot Immortal: She went to welcome the people Emperor Ye sent, so even if you @ her, she can’t reply now. But this strange phenomenon appeared in the Immortal Region, so she’s sure to see it.
Lu Dongbin: Has the Buddha revealed anything?
Barefoot Immortal: He hasn’t! I’m afraid I can’t keep chatting with you either; it’s time for me to go back to the Buddhist Domain. When I receive instructions from the Buddha, I’ll be sure to share them in the chat.
Immortality Peach Fairy: Thank you, great immortal
When Ye Zichen read these messages, he felt baffled. Just based on their conversation, he had no idea what they were getting at. He could, however, sense the gravity on the situation.
“And here I thought something had happened in the war prep chat group.” Pu Jingwan pursed her lips. She wasn’t part of the Red Packet Server, so she naturally didn’t know what was happening there.
Yang Jian and the Great Sage didn’t respond. They simply read the messages in solemn silence. Ye Zichen scrolled up through the chat log. Only then did he see the source of everyone’s shock and confusion.
It was a video, or rather, a clip. An ordinary heavenly soldier had taken it and shared it in the chat.
When he opened it…
On screen, the daytime sky instantly went pitch-black, and winds howled like the mournful cries of vengeful spirits.
Lightning crackled in the sky, its low rumble like a hammer striking the viewer right in the chest.
After closing the clip, Ye Zichen took a deep breath, then stared at the closed video in silence.
It was just a video, and yet, he’d felt as if he were right in the thick of it.
It followed that, had he truly been there, the dense, suffocating atmosphere would have been even heavier.
There was another video after it. The first had already set the stage, so as he opened the second, Ye Zichen mentally prepared himself.
Crack!
The rumbling lightning struck the ground with a bang, and the sheer power of its electricity leveled the nearby mountains.
Afterward, endless streaks of lightning flowed forth. Soon, the entire vast mountain range had been reduced to nothing but rubble. The howling winds carried the fragments far away.
The once lofty and imposing mountains were now nothing but a patch of flat, blackened earth.
However, the mountains looked strangely familiar. If he weren’t mistaken, this was Howling Valley.
Howling Valley had once been a forbidden territory, but now, the heavenly lightning had obliterated it.
The video suddenly emanated the sound of extremely ragged breathing; this clearly originated from the heavenly soldier taking the clip. However, it was unclear what had startled him so badly. Soon, the video refocused on the skies.
It was then that Ye Zichen saw it: an enormous rift opened in the pitch-black skies.
The interior of the rift was dark; he couldn’t see its contents with his naked eyes. But he could see people among the darkness, all of them clad in memorial robes. It was hard to tell whether they were male or female.
After the second video ended, Ye Zichen frantically opened to the third, only to discover that it wasn’t a direct continuation.
This video’s contents focused on the group in memorial robes. Due to the angle of the recording, it was hard to tell how many there were, but at a glance, it looked like there were around eight of them.
There was a mountain hovering above their heads. A rough estimate put it at about the same size as the former Howling Valley.
One of the figures stood at the center. He wore a hat, and his head was lowered. He had a basket over his arm, but it was clearly empty. And yet, when he reached his hand inside, he pulled out a handful of joss paper, seemingly out of nowhere, then flung it, scattering it over the ground.
“It’s a coffin!” Ye Zichen’s brows knit together. He suddenly recalled what the Immortality Peach Fairy and the others had said in the chat.
At first he’d thought the thing hovering over the group in mourning robes’ heads was a mountain, but when he saw the scattered joss paper hit the ground, then took another look at their funeral garb, it was obvious. That was no mountain. It was actually a coffin!
The video came to an abrupt halt. Right before it ended, they saw the man who’d flung the paper turn his head around and look directly into the camera.
It seemed that the heavenly soldier who’d taken the video, upon realizing he’d been discovered, didn’t dare recklessly go on recording.
Ye Zichen closed the video and fell silent. Suddenly, he felt three gazes staring intently at him. He whipped around and saw his three friends staring at him. “What?”
“You don’t have any thoughts at all?”
“Wah, it’s like a science fiction movie! How cool!” said Pu Jingwan. It seemed Yang Jian and the Great Sage had shown her the video too.
“Perhaps, the unusual spiritual fluctuations in the Lower Realms are because of the thing in the video…” said the Great Sage.
They couldn’t learn anything specific from watching the video; a video was just a video, not a 3d hologram. They couldn’t really tell what it was like just by watching.
But a strange phenomenon of this level naturally caught their attention!
After a moment’s hesitation, Ye Zichen re-opened the Red Packet Server. The immortals were still discussing the contents of the video, and a few other heavenly soldiers were answering questions about what they’d witnessed.
But the soldier who’d first sent the video had been silent ever since.
Ye Zichen clicked his profile image, then sent a friend request.
In just a few breaths of time, the request went through.
“Emperor Ye!”
The heavenly soldier’s message was accompanied by several terrified emojis. It wasn’t unusual that he’d react like this; he was the most ordinary of heavenly soldiers; he didn’t even have an official immortal rank.
Ye Zichen was a publicly acknowledged great immortal. For him to take the initiative to add an ordinary heavenly soldier to his friends list naturally left him unsettled.
“I watched that video you posted, and I want to ask you…. Where exactly was the coffin taken? Was it by any chance Howling Valley?”
“I don’t know,” replied the soldier. “While recording the video, I could tell that they sensed me, so I hurried back to the Heavenly Court. I didn’t dare investigate any further.”
“I see.”
The soldier’s response was disappointing. After telling the soldier to return to his own affairs, Ye Zichen squinted and watched the three videos in silence for quite some time.
After playing them all a few times, he closed the chat. Suddenly, he discovered that his contact list had a new friend request. However, when he saw who it was, a long time passed without him adding them.
