Lin Mu sat before the computer, the pale blue glow of the screen falling across his face, yet he remained motionless for a long while.
The mouse cursor still rested on that utterly empty search results page and had not moved so much as a hair since.
Not a single trace.
As though that novel which had changed his fate had never once appeared in this world.
Which side was the real one? Lin Mu fell into deep thought and confusion.
Under these unprecedented circumstances, he became exceedingly calm and cautious.
After turning the problem over several times, Lin Mu found that in truth only two possibilities lay before him.
First, that this was still an illusion realm created by the Black Bone King.
It could not only read the memories in the depths of his soul, but could also, based on those memories, seamlessly fill in a nearly flawless real world.
As for the second possibility…
The instant this second thought surfaced in his mind, it plunged Lin Mu into a long silence.
What if he had never crossed over at all?
What if the so-called university years, reading Reverend Insanity, transmigrating into that brutal Gu world, becoming a Gu Master of Black Blood Stockade, and even the Black Bone King's earth-shaking inheritance… what if all of it, every last part, was nothing more than an absurdly long, bizarre dream he had while dozing off one afternoon?
This conjecture was absurd to the utmost extreme, even somewhat laughable.
Yet what truly sent a chill down Lin Mu's spine was this — he could not actually prove the conjecture was wrong!
This world before him was simply too real.
He did not even know what he was supposed to use as an absolute standard for measuring "reality."
Thinking of this, a name suddenly surfaced from the depths of Lin Mu's mind.
Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable.
Likewise an Otherworldly Demon, likewise a stranger from beyond the Gu world.
But the difference was that the greatest obsession of Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable's life had been to go home.
In search of that vague, intangible road back, he had cultivated, grown, passed through ten thousand tribulations, and finally ascended to the position of a Rank 9 Demon Venerable.
He had nearly trodden across all Five Regions and Two Heavens, searching for the Space Door, painstakingly refining the Space Escape Gu, exhausting immense effort throughout his life, never truly setting aside the thought of returning home.
Lin Mu had at first merely thought of this figure whose circumstances resembled his own on instinct.
But as he followed the thought further, he gradually went quiet.
Because a question that struck straight at the soul was laid bare before him.
The thing Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable had poured out everything and exhausted his entire life to obtain…
Hadn't he himself already obtained it?
Lin Mu slowly rose from the chair, pushed it back, and walked to the window.
Outside, the night was enchanting.
On the city streets flickering with neon, traffic flowed like water.
In the residential compound below, elderly people strolled at their leisure, and in the densely packed apartment buildings in the distance, lamp after warm lamp glowed with the atmosphere of ordinary human life.
Here there were no Demonic Path Gu Masters who would slaughter an entire household over a single disagreeable word.
No desperados who would draw blades over a few Primeval Stones.
Still less those sky-blotting, terrifying beast tides, those meat-grinder wars, or that sense of powerlessness and suffocation at being stomped to death like an ant at any moment simply because one's strength was insufficient.
What was more, this world was not even that utterly unremarkable life of his past, whose end he could see at a single glance.
It had given him a better opening.
Better grades, better relationships, a fuller and sunnier youth.
Even that girl he had once liked but never dared approach was walking toward him bit by bit, with an adolescent smile.
So long as he was willing, so long as he continued steadily along his current life's track, he would most likely test into a very good university, hold a respectable and comfortable job, date, marry, have children, and in the end become an ordinary but happy person.
He would not shake the world with his name.
Nor would he fly through the heavens or burrow through the earth or live forever.
But by the same token, he would never again have to wake each day and calculate as though walking on thin ice, wondering whether he would even live through tomorrow.
Lin Mu stood at the window, looking at those ten thousand household lights, and for the first time asked himself, with exceeding seriousness:
"What's… wrong with this?"
The answer, in fact, was very simple.
It seemed there really was nothing wrong with it at all.
On the contrary, if he racked his brains and truly shattered this world, returning to that brutal Gu world, what more could he even gain?
A war was being fought out there.
The White Bone Alliance's army had already reached the foot of the stockade.
Though he had risked his life and used every scheme to reach Rank 3 middle stage, the lofty realm of Gu Immortal was still so distant as to be an unrealistic joke.
In that world, one wrong step meant a dead end beyond all salvation.
And here?
He needed to do nothing at all.
He only needed to go on living as things naturally unfolded — indeed, he only needed, as time went on, to gradually forget those matters steeped in blood and scheming.
The moment this exceedingly tempting thought took shape in his mind, even Lin Mu himself froze slightly.
He looked at his own young face reflected in the window glass, and a question he had never truly, seriously pondered before suddenly surfaced in his mind.
"What if this place… really is home?"
Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable had sought it his whole life, yet as far as the world knew, had never found a confirmed way back.
And if he himself had truly already returned, and had even been given a more perfect "home"…
Then why did he still have to go to such lengths to leave?
This question, in the quiet of this night, seemed to have no answer.
Nor was Lin Mu in any hurry to answer himself.
He merely stood silently at the window, gazing down at that seemingly peaceful bustle of the streets below.
A moment later, he turned around and calmly pressed the power button on the computer tower.
The screen went dark in an instant, and the room sank once more into quiet darkness.
...
"BOOM——!!!"
A thunderous roar shook the mountain range, the entire earth trembling violently.
Black Blood Stockade at this moment had already fallen completely into the quagmire of a war of blood and fire.
After the outer defense lines were all abandoned and the forces pulled back across the board, the White Bone Alliance's army, like a black tide, had pressed all the way to the outside of Black Blood Stockade's main walls.
With the immense Mountain Protection Grand Array raised, it was like a gigantic inverted bowl of light, shielding the entire core region of Black Blood Stockade within.
The situation had, for the time being, fallen into a deadlock.
Outside the formation, countless Gu worm Killer Moves in every color bombarded that flowing curtain of light as densely as a howling rainstorm, stirring layer upon layer of violent ripples.
But no matter how ferocious the offensive, they could never truly tear open a single breach.
Instead, Black Blood Stockade, relying on the formation's sharp counterattacks, sent the White Bone Alliance's casualties climbing in a straight line, while their progress remained exceedingly limited.
Li Mang, standing at a high vantage point to the rear, quickly called a halt to this meaningless frontal assault.
As a seasoned commander, he understood better than anyone that a Mountain Protection Grand Array built up over centuries was absolutely not something low-level Gu Masters could batter open with ease.
And so the White Bone Alliance quickly changed tactics.
They no longer concentrated all their troops and firepower in a single assault.
Instead they broke the whole into parts, dispatching multiple squads composed of elite Gu Masters to circle along the outer perimeter of the main stockade's formation, constantly roaming and probing like hunting hounds.
They were searching for weak points in the formation's Primeval Essence circulation, searching for sensitive zones where Black Blood Stockade's defensive forces suddenly increased.
Testing bit by bit.
Searching bit by bit.
Like maggots in the bone, seeking the path that could deliver a lethal, situation-shattering blow.
And within the formation, on the other side.
Rank 4 Patriarch Lin Cang understood the enemy's intentions just as clearly.
The Mountain Protection Grand Array could only buy time; it absolutely did not mean that huddling inside guaranteed safety.
Once the enemy located the core formation eye and destroyed it, the entire defensive system would collapse in an instant.
He swiftly reorganized every remaining force within the stockade.
The gravely wounded were pulled to the rear in large numbers, while those Gu Masters who still retained combat strength and could channel their Gu worms were assigned to garrison every key position inside the stockade.
This great battle had, for the time being, gradually shifted from the earlier head-on slaughter into a war of attrition.
And while the Internal Affairs Hall was urgently re-tallying the stockade's remaining Rank 3 Gu Master strength and assigning defense zones—
Lin Cang, roster in hand, swept those iron-hard, cold eyes down the long list, and very quickly noticed a problem with exceeding sharpness.
One person was missing.
"Where is Lin Mu?"
Lin Cang frowned and asked in a low voice.
Lin Zhen, standing to one side, was first slightly taken aback at the question.
Then he abruptly slapped his forehead, remembering what had happened earlier.
"Patriarch, in order to forcibly capture that Thousand Beast King using the Dragon Trap Gu, Lin Mu severely overdrew his Primeval Essence, and his condition had deteriorated to the utmost extreme. On top of that, the front lines were collapsing at the time and the situation was critical…"
Lin Zhen reported honestly, "So I personally gave the order then, having him carry the Dragon Trap Gu containing the Thousand Beast King and withdraw to the stockade's rear first to recuperate."
Hearing this explanation, Lin Cang's brows not only failed to relax, they furrowed even tighter.
He looked up and glanced at the color of the sky.
By his reckoning, at the pace of a Rank 3 Gu Master, even injured, he should have long since retreated back to the main stockade.
Yet now, there was no sign of him.
Lin Cang's expression sank, bit by bit.
That Rank 3 Dragon Trap Gu had been a trump card he had personally handed over to Lin Mu earlier in order to deal with the Thousand Beast King.
Now, Lin Mu, along with that Gu worm containing the Thousand Beast King, had vanished without a trace.
With an enemy army pressing down upon them, at such a critical juncture, a newly promoted Rank 3 Clan Elder had suddenly and inexplicably disappeared.
No matter the reason, this was absolutely not normal!
"Investigate it."
Lin Cang's gaze was cold and sharp as a blade, and he gave the order in a low voice without the slightest hesitation:
"Once you find him, no matter what he's doing, have him come to the main hall to see me immediately!"
"Yes!"
...
At the same time.
Exceedingly far beyond the Mountain Protection Grand Array.
Li Mang, leaning on that ghastly pale Bone Spine Scepter, stood with his hands behind his back atop a towering cliff, observing distant Black Blood Stockade with cold, gloomy eyes.
Yet in the depths of his mind, another matter lingered like a dark cloud that would not disperse.
Lin Mu.
Ever since the White Bone Alliance's army had begun its full advance from the front lines, he had never once seen that brat again.
Earlier, it could still be barely explained as Lin Mu having been wounded in the chaotic fighting and transferred to the rear by Black Blood Stockade's upper echelon to recuperate.
But now!
The whole of Black Blood Stockade had been driven into a desperate corner, and every last soldier had pulled back inside this Mountain Protection Grand Array!
Yet Lin Mu, like a drop of water evaporating into the air, still had not appeared!
Those eyes sunk deep in their sockets grew gloomier and colder as time went on.
The anomaly of the Black Bone King's incomplete inheritance being quietly activated somewhere within Black Blood Stockade's territory…
All the terrifying, defiance-of-reason rise and abnormalities displayed by Lin Mu, once an utterly unremarkable collateral branch member…
And now, at this most critical moment when both clans' survival hung in the balance and everyone was fighting for their lives, he had exceedingly strangely vanished without a trace…
Li Mang's hand clenched around the Bone Spine Scepter, his knuckles turning white.
The suspicion in his heart, like a poisonous seed buried deep within, finally began to take root and sprout beyond his control at this moment, growing heavier and heavier, more and more certain.
Lin Mu's disappearance was absolutely no mere coincidence!
Li Mang stood at the cliff's edge, silent for a long while.
Then he suddenly turned his head slightly and gave a light beckon toward the empty shadows behind him.
"Patriarch? What are your orders?"
An exceedingly indistinct figure instantly surfaced from the shadows, dropping to one knee, its voice low and respectful as it inquired.
Li Mang did not turn around. His gaze still fixed firmly on the distance, he gave his instructions indifferently:
"Pass down the order. The perimeter squads are to keep searching for a way to break the situation. Do not stop."
"Also…"
He narrowed his eyes slightly and spoke one word at a time:
"Find someone for me."
The subordinate kneeling on the ground was slightly stunned, clearly not having expected the Patriarch to suddenly issue such an order at so critical a juncture.
"Find… who?"
"Lin Mu."