"Sean, wait for me here for a bit. If we lose contact after I go down, just head back first. I have no idea how long it'll take for me to come up again," Lily Bai said.
Sean nodded.
So, the Fish took Lily Bai on a space-jump and brought her to a very strange place.
All around was pitch black, yet there were balls of all sizes scattered in every direction.
Some were fireballs, some were stone balls—big ones, small ones, all perfectly round.
Farther off, countless points of light glittered like stars in the night sky.
"Where is this place?" Lily Bai asked the Fish. "It’s so weird."
"This is the sky!" the Fish said. "Can’t you tell?"
"The sky? The sky... looks like this? It’s nothing like the sky we usually see."
"Yeah." The Fish sounded a little out of breath.
Lily Bai glanced at the painting in her hand. The Fish was glowing with three colors, wrapping her in its light—this had to be the Threefold Essence Yuan Force it talked about, shielding her from harm.
"Thanks, Eternal Wishfish." Lily Bai reached out and poked it.
"Don’t give me that! Hurry up! The less Threefold Essence Yuan Force I burn, the better for me!"
"You call yourself the Eternal Wishfish, but you’re afraid of dying? So, can you actually die or not?" Lily Bai asked.
The Eternal Wishfish shot her a look. "You’d better not ask too much! The more you know, the faster you die!"
"That’s totally a villain’s line!" Lily Bai said. "Are you secretly the bad guy in your world?"
"Cough, cough! Shut up already! Just hurry up!"
"Hurry up and do what, exactly?" Lily Bai asked. "I don’t see any runes around here!"
"If I could master the Law of the Void, would I still be stuck in this painting? You have to figure it out yourself!" the Fish said.
"So, what did Emperor Ray Quinn do when he came down here?"
"He just looked around for a bit, then meditated! After a while, he went back."
Lily Bai checked out the surroundings, then sat cross-legged. "Guess I’ll meditate too."
Fish: "Mm."
Eyes open, it was all stars; eyes closed, just darkness.
Maybe the rune was hidden somewhere in this strange starry sky, but Lily Bai had no clue where to start.
She remembered her Father God telling her stories about Emperor Ray Quinn when she was little.
The story went that he saw a Magic Talisman on the Genesis Array in Elderworld, and instantly mastered some supreme spell.
After hearing that, she and her siblings, plus Soren Lann, all went to see the Genesis Array for themselves.
The array was sealed off by a barrier, so they couldn’t get close, but at least they saw what the runes looked like.
But none of them were inspired by it.
Not even her—though she was supposed to be the gifted one.
So maybe the rune Emperor Ray Quinn grasped was just impossible for anyone else.
Suddenly, she felt something odd.
It was like someone was watching her…
Lily Bai jumped, snapping her eyes open. Her eyes grew wider and wider, and she shot to her feet.
Out there in the pitch-black starry sky, someone really was standing in the distance.
Too far away to make out a face, but that silhouette looked so familiar—like Soren Lann, but maybe not quite…
He wore a cloak vast as the starry river, long hair drifting behind him, as if every beautiful breath of the universe was woven into his presence—impossibly striking…