Chapter 435 Another World

A desert mutant lizard raises its head alertly. It seems to have heard something.

The cyclone coming from the sky pushes the sand around. The mutant lizard runs fast on the sand dunes, and soon hides itself under the sand. It only reveals two eyes to observe the situation.

There appears a UFO-like airs.h.i.+p in the sky with cold and dazzling light of silver metal. The mutant lizard shrewdly buries its head in the sand and stops peeking.

The airs.h.i.+p has not landed on the ground, but the master has taken the lead in landing.

Previously in mid-air, Lin Luoran had a glimpse of the Kalahari Desert. Perhaps because this desert is barren by nature, it is different from other parts of the earth. Kalahari Desert has more mutant monsters and craters than it did more than three hundred years ago. That’s the only change that has occurred to it.

“Are you sure there is nothing underground?”

Lin Luoran is wearing a round earring. Since the stars.h.i.+p is too eye-catching, Xiaozhi remains in the troposphere and sends only an airs.h.i.+p to carry Lin Luoran down.

Lin Luoran cannot find the underground world with her spiritual mind. Neither can Xiaozhi with its scanning, which is beyond her expectation.

Lin Luoran doesn’t blame Xiaozhi for its conclusion that this seems to be a common desert. If the underground world could be easily detected, the treasure would have been seized by the Alpha Alliance during the past two or three hundred years.

“Scan again to see if there are any ruins in the desert.”

Xiaozhi agrees. Lin Luoran begins to use her spiritual mind. However, the desert thwarts her attempt to explore ways through the spiritual mind as it did three hundred years ago. It’s so strange. Xiaozhi’s scan makes no progress either. Suddenly, Lin Luoran recalls her previous experience. She realizes that the Kalahari Desert will open to the underground world only at a specific time.

Now they have to explore while waiting for its opening.

Xiaozhi uses the equipment on the stars.h.i.+p to constantly monitor the entire desert. It a.n.a.lyzes the temperature, moisture, and distribution of mutant monsters in small areas to see if any place is abnormal.

Lin Luoran laments as she walks on the sand dunes. When Qin Baojia, Wen Guanjing and she came here in the past, Baojia was possessed by the fake saintess. Wen Guanjing and she suffered a scorpion disaster and fell into a wonderful underground world. There was a cyan little fox which dug sealwort and gave it to Lin Luoran in exchange for her help… Now things have changed dramatically. Those around her have left one by one. Where Baojia has gone after she woke up? Where is Wen Guanjing at this time? Even the cunning little fox was missing in Weifang, Shandong, long before she headed to Penglai.

Lin Luoran has not found the underground world, but she decides to visit Weifang again before leaving the earth.

She flicks away two over-confident mutant desert scorpions and quickly flies between the dunes without stirring any dust.

She searches for dozens of miles but finds nothing abnormal. All of a sudden, a warning is given through the round earrings:

“Be careful. It seems a sandstorm is coming.”

It is not surprising that Xiaozhi can predict sandstorms. Its calculation is quick enough. When Lin Luoran hears about the sandstorm, she is happy rather than worried. Wasn’t it a sandstorm that opened the entrance to the underground world in the past?

“Xiaozhi, please check for me which areas are protected from the sandstorm!”

“Roger that!”

The place protected from the sandstorm is probably an entrance, which may be similar to a broken wall! Lin Luoran’s eyes light up. She changes her Taoist hand gesture. A Light Dome appears to s.h.i.+eld her whole body as she calmly avoids the restless sand under her feet.

The sky above the desert is already covered with yellow sand. The anger of nature daunts even powerful mutant monsters. They have to temporarily hide themselves. So, Lin Luoran is the only one braving the sandstorm in the desert.

“At nine o’clock, 6 kilometers off the Huaxia Unit, there is an area remaining intact during the sandstorm. At twelve o’clock, 13 kilometers off the Huaxia Unit, the sandstorm doesn’t hold sway… Wait. If I were you, I would choose the place at seven o’clock, 21 kilometers off the Huaxia Unit where there is a stone tablet. For when I was talking just now, the scanner caught an object which later disappeared under the stone tablet. ”

At seven o’clock, 21 kilometers off. Lin Luoran quickly focuses her attention on the keyword “stone tablet”.

Intuition tells her that it is the stone tablet which Bushmen called “The Demon’s Curse”. Nevertheless, it depicts how the Gathering Vitality cultivators disappeared more than 1,000 years ago.

Without hesitation, she summons the Bright Sword and flies to her destination with the sword as quickly as possible.

A moment later, she reaches the destination. A stone tablet stands quietly here with the sand as its decoration. It seems to be sinking and will not remain on the ground in ten seconds. Before she can think about it, Lin Luoran has jumped from the flying sword and grabbed the stone tablet.

Swirling around, Lin Luoran disappears with the stone tablet!

As the stone tablet plunges into the ground, the sandstorm dies down. Many mutant monsters rejoice to celebrate for their survival. The weather may be fine for the next few days in the Kalahari Desert.

Lin Luoran wakes up in a dark place.

Spitting out the sand she accidentally takes into her mouth, Lin Luoran finds it’s pitch dark all around. This is not the underground world, is it?

“How come there is no light… ” She mutters. Suddenly, there appears some light which hurts her eyes.

Lin Luoran is dumbfounded. Although she is a G.o.ddess governing the waters of an area, she is far from the legendary Creator who can create light when he needs it.

Before examining the surroundings, Lin Luoran has discovered something unusual.

What she wears is not the Protean Dress but clothes like those painted on the Fly Apsaras sculpture in the ocean of consciousness! Nothing is on her wrist. Where is her sacred pearl?

What happened?

Lin Luoran looks around. Her eyes are popping out of her head in astonishment.

It’s not because she is not calm or her concentration is poor during the Bearing Essence Period. It’s because this place is incredible.

What comes into sight is not the faint fluorescence of the underground world. The place where she stands at the moment is an empty street. It’s a street that seems to exist only in sci-fi. It even outs.h.i.+nes the Dongting City of the new era.

Shrouded in green light, the buildings, airs.h.i.+ps docked on the street and fountains are tinted pale green.

What astonishes Lin Luoran is not the strangeness of the scenery, but her nameless familiarity with this deserted street. The images of the street once flashed into her mind when she was oppressed by the fake saintess at the Tower of Babel in Babylon!

The man in robe suspends in the sky, overlooking the emerald-like planet.

He repeats the same words in a motionless electronic sound, like a ca.s.sette tape that has got stuck. The language he speaks is the interstellar standard language which is universally used.

A microcosm of the big universe era…

“Which planet are you from?”

Lin Luoran is apprehensive. Has she travelled to another era again? She hasn’t taken anything with her!

She couldn’t be so unlucky.

…

Lin Luoran walks carefully for a long time before she realizes that it’s an empty city. Actually, she has come to understand her situation. It seems that the Fly Apsaras painted sculpture in the ocean of consciousness has helped her enter the world within the stone tablet. Otherwise, how did she come here after she lost the sacred pearl and Protean Dress?

Strangely enough, the stone tablet engraved with the mystery about the Gathering Vitality cultivators has an alien landscape within it. It is very likely that all of these in front of her are an illusion, if she only relies on the power of Fly Apsaras painted sculpture and her spiritual mind to enter the stone tablet.

So, why does the stone tablet make its world resemble the emerald planet?

Lin Luoran suspects that someone else has been here before. Only human, the nostalgic creature, will arrange their new residences in the style of their former house. Is it possible that another alien has visited the stone tablet?

Lin Luoran walks through a deserted green city, and a jungle with species characteristic of a different planet. Behind the jungle, there are mountains and water. Waterfalls hang on the cliff. Except that there are no primitive monsters here, all of these are similar to the scene behind the man in a robe that she saw in her dream, after she treated Baojia and pa.s.sed out.

Is it a primitive landscape?

How did it transfer from the scene of the emerald planet to that of a primitive land? Since these scenes are all related to the man in a robe, Lin Luoran is a little surprised. Is it the man in a robe who has been to the stone tablet?

Perhaps destiny has, without her knowing it, connected her to the man in a robe and the little girl named Momo since her blood triggers the sacred pearl. Beneath her optimism is her anxiety about the way ahead. What will confront her when the truth finally comes out?

Feeling uneasy, Lin Luoran examines the area slowly. Her heart is restless. She can’t tell whether she is afraid of or looking forward to the result.

Lin Luoran sees a palace on the border of the primitive landscape.

The palace is supremely gorgeous. If the man in a robe had been here, he certainly would not have lived in such a place, Lin Luoran thinks. It’s more like a woman’s residence with every attention to details.

No one is in the huge palace. Nevertheless, Lin Luoran gets some clues in the side chamber.

Ink has been prepared on the long wooden table with a writing brush which is covered with thick ink. The master seems to have just left. In addition, there is a stack of paper for Chinese brush painting. The subject in the paintings is the same person. It’s a man standing in the air against the background of a mysterious starry sky. The man has an ordinary face but an impressing bearing.

The one who has been in the stone tablet is definitely not the man in a robe, Lin Luoran concludes.

That powerful man can’t be so narcissistic as to paint so much of himself. So, who lived here before?

Lin Luoran picks up the last piece of the paper, on which there is a golden wheel pattern. Though the lines are not smooth enough, it is definitely the golden pattern she has seen in her dream.

It’s the golden pattern made by the man in a robe to facilitate communication between heaven and the earth.

Holding the paper, Lin Luoran can’t help but take two steps backwards. Words fail her.