Chapter 852: Chapter 852

The roaring sound of the train echoed through the quiet hall as the old train passed through space.

He Ao’s Hao Yi clone quickly passed through the somewhat aged waiting hall.

Now, just before sunrise, the sky was turning pale, and there weren’t many people in the waiting hall. Most of them were playing with their phones or napping, with only a few noticing the train that had passed through the entire hall.

But the Velora’s speed was so fast that their first reaction was to rub their eyes only to find that the train had disappeared.

When encountering something beyond their common knowledge, most people would first use ’illusion,’ a term that fits within their understanding, to explain.

As these people, who thought they were seeing things, rubbed their eyes, He Ao had already approached Song Xiao, who stood bewildered.

At that moment, Song Xiao was standing next to a chair, about to make a phone call, then felt a figure standing in front of her. She looked up, and as soon as she saw He Ao’s face, she instinctively shrank back.

However, she quickly regained her composure and hurriedly said, "Hao, Mr. Hao Yi, Chichi, she’s missing,"

She turned around and pointed to an empty seat beside her, "Just now Chichi was right here. I heard her take a call, then she vanished. I looked up, and she was gone, no sign of her anywhere..."

Do I look that scary?

Watching Song Xiao suppress her trembling, He Ao shook his head, "Don’t worry, it’s not your fault."

Then he shifted his gaze to the seat beside Song Xiao.

On the soft faux leather sofa, there was still a slight depression that hadn’t yet bounced back, showing that someone had just been seated there.

A laptop, still glowing, was placed beside the dent, its screen lit up with a chat box with ’Hao Yi.’

Below the chat box was a full-screen, still-in-editing interview draft.

He Ao scanned the surroundings and then asked softly, "Did you see Lin Chichi’s mobile phone?"

Song Xiao, who had just come to her senses and was preparing to continue making a call, paused. She glanced at her own phone, then remembered, "No, I haven’t seen Chichi’s mobile phone around here,"

She paused for a moment, then immediately dialed a number, "Please wait a second."

A beep from the phone followed, but the message that came through was: ’The number you have dialed is currently unavailable.’

Song Xiao looked up at He Ao, "I can’t get through."

After a brief interaction, she found that this powerful ’B-level’ before her was not as ferocious as she had thought, and her fear slightly eased. Looking at He Ao, she said, "Mr. Hao Yi, Chichi, I don’t know..."

Protecting Lin Chichi was her responsibility, but Lin Chichi had vanished right before her eyes.

"Don’t worry, this isn’t something you could have changed,"

He Ao said calmly, "Lin Chichi should be fine for now, at the very least, she’s still alive."

When he had seen Lin Chichi off earlier, he had placed a mark on her just in case. Lin Chichi had brought him dumplings, and he had escorted her a bit on her journey.

With that mark, if anything happened to Lin Chichi on her way to the Ruodan Kingdom, he would sense it.

He hadn’t expected that the unexpected would actually happen.

And at the moment Lin Chichi had said she was going to answer the phone, He Ao had activated his Super Memory sensory mark.

In his sensing, Lin Chichi first showed a clear ’surprise,’ then in that very instant, the ’connection’ between him and the mark became blurred.

It was as if some invisible force was obstructing the ’connection’ between He Ao’s true body and the mark.

By that time, Lin Chichi had perhaps already ’disappeared.’

He Ao could now only vaguely sense the emotions coming from Lin Chichi’s side, but not any of her thoughts, nor any information on her current location.

However, Lin Chichi’s current ’emotion’ was a little strange.

It was not panic or fear, but ’relief,’ even mixed with a touch of joy.

He Ao couldn’t sense her true thoughts and had no idea what she had gone through.

The ’mark’s’ connection being ’affected’ by his Super Memory was not a new experience for him; the Eye of Annihilation from the last Copy World could weaken the connection between the Super Memory and the mark.

But it was clear that Lin Chichi’s ’disappearance’ was sudden, and the mark He Ao placed on her had also been a seemingly incidental event.

The likelihood that the mastermind behind the ’disappearance case’ targeted Lin Chichi specifically to ’shield’ her was low; it was probably just a random ’barrier’.

If a simple barrier could weaken the connection of a B-level Super Memory, then obviously, the one behind this had to be at least an A-level ’Angel.’

Seems like the leisurely days truly won’t last long.

"Mr. Hao Yi, is Chichi really okay?"

Song Xiao looked up at He Ao, her gaze filled with anxiety.

"At least, she should still be alive."

He Ao shook his head, then turned his attention to Song Xiao, "Did you report Lin Chichi’s disappearance to the Research Institute?"

"Not yet, I was just about to contact them,"

Song Xiao suddenly grabbed her phone.

Just then, her phone rang with a water-drop type incoming call tone.

She glanced at her phone screen, paused for a moment, then reached out to answer the call.

Just as her hand was about to touch the screen, a gentle and calm voice suddenly sounded from beside her.

Song Xiao seemed to wake from a dream, her body shaking as she came to her senses and looked up at He Ao, "My, my grandfather, I don’t know why he’d call me now, he seldom does. There might be some emergency."

He Ao glanced down at the phone’s display screen.

The incoming call showed a contact noted as ’Grandfather’ with a regular Central Earth number, with options to accept or decline the call.

It appeared to be a normal call.

"Is your grandfather still alive?"

He Ao looked up at Song Xiao and suddenly asked.

"Yes, he is. I saw him when I went home for the New Year not long ago."

Song Xiao responded immediately, her eyebrows slightly furrowed, seemingly puzzled as she looked at He Ao, not understanding why he would suddenly ask this.

"May I take a look at your phone?"

He Ao asked softly, looking at the phone in Song Xiao’s hand.

Song Xiao glanced at her phone, which still displayed the incoming call, and after a brief moment of hesitation, carefully handed it to He Ao, "You can just hang up, I’ll call my grandfather back later."

He Ao reached out and took the phone.

And just as his hand touched the phone, the call, as if reaching its limit, naturally disconnected.

"It’s okay, I’ll just call back in a bit."

Seeing this, Song Xiao quickly said.

"Is your grandfather still alive?"

Holding the phone, He Ao suddenly asked again.

Song Xiao was taken aback, "My grandfather, he passed away during the New Year..."

She stopped mid-sentence as fine beads of sweat broke out from her temples. Pointing at the cellphone in He Ao’s hand, she suddenly lost her speech and it took a while before she could hoarsely say,

"That call just now... that call..."

The blood-colored glow cast onto the woman’s profile.

"Look at the sky, the sun!"

At that moment, someone finally noticed the abnormality in the sky, sat upright, and pointed out the window.

He Ao turned to look at the sky, where at the end of the clouds and heaven, a blood-red sun was rising high, its twisted crimson light spreading across the entire earth, dying everything a dim red.

This was a clone’s field of view, seeing a blood sun, while in the real He Ao’s eyes, influenced by the Eye of Truth in the northern part of Ruodan, what hung in the sky was a giant blood-colored ’eyeball’.

Various tones of ringing phones suddenly erupted throughout the entire waiting hall.

"Go to the broadcasting station, and instruct everyone not to answer their phones."

He Ao handed the phone back to Song Xiao and quickly said, "Use the Research Institute’s software for contact, temporarily avoid using phones."

Song Xiao nodded, trembling.

If it wasn’t for He Ao, she would have become one of the missing, too.

He Ao looked at her in her frightened state, gently nodded, and smiled, "The faster you are, the more people you save."

Hearing this, Song Xiao stiffened, immediately stood erect, and replied, "Yes!"

But the moment she straightened up, He Ao had already vanished from in front of her.

A nearly uncatchable illusion flashed through the hall; many people, whose phones were ringing, only reached for their devices when they felt them snatched away and then returned.

The noisy ringing of the phones also fell silent.

The voices in the hall quickly quieted down at a perceptible rate.

Seeing this scene, for some reason, Song Xiao felt her originally panicked and hollow spirit as if it touched some sort of support pillar and was propped up.

She nodded firmly and ran towards the airport service desk.

The roaring sound of a train passed through the hall, taking away the figure that had just stopped in this blood-illuminated place.

After passing through a dark ’tunnel’, the exquisitely antique train emerged from the void onto a tranquil seascape.

The blood-colored glow filled the entire sea, turning the quietly undulating surface into an abyss as if covered in fresh blood.

Standing at the train door on the staircase, He Ao looked up at the sky. The blood-red sun was rising slowly over his head, spreading its bloody light across the entire sky and the ocean.

He lowered his head, looking forward, towards the end of the blood-red sea, there seemed to be a bright, azure ocean.

The Velora rapidly reached the end of the blood-drenched seascape, passing through some boundary. When bright and warm sunlight fell on his cheek, he looked up at the sky.

Where the ’blood sun’ just hung, a blazing fiery sun was now illuminating the land.

The Velora came to a stop on the rolling sea, He Ao turned his head to look back.

Not far behind him, a clear ’division line’ separated the blood-colored ocean from the azure ocean.

Within this dividing line, the sun was blood-red.

Outside the division line, the sun was normal.

He manipulated the clone of Hao Yi to pick up the clone’s phone and tapped open a profile in the Research Institute’s communication software, sending a voice message over,

"I’m Hao Yi, what color is the sun over there?"

"The normal bright yellow,"

The profile labeled ’Li Cheng’ blinked rapidly twice, quickly replying with two voice messages, "What’s wrong?"

By now, Li Cheng had returned to Central Earth, where the time zone was a few hours ahead of this one, and it was already noon there.

But before He Ao could reply, Li Cheng’s profile started blinking again, and a new message came through, "Has a blood sun appeared over the capital of the Yika Republic, Mote City?"

Clearly, he had already received a report from Song Xiao.

"Not just Mote City,"

He Ao replied with a sentence, looking up at the seemingly endless region of blood-colored brilliance in his field of view. The Velora was continuously moving along the edge of the blood-colored radiance, "I’m afraid at least a couple of large regions are engulfed within it."

The Yika Republic was one of the top three powers in the Western Lands, with a population of over a hundred million. The country was administratively divided into regions, which were roughly equivalent to the provinces of Central Earth.

Normally, these regions had substantial populations, ranging from several millions, with those near the capital nearing ten million.

"The northern part of the Ruodan Kingdom bordering the Yika Republic has also experienced a blood sun,"

Li Cheng sent a new message quickly, "Ruodan is to the south of the Yika Republic, and Mote City is in the north. If this entire area is connected, I’m afraid the situation is worse than we imagined. It’s very likely that the majority of the Yika Republic is shrouded in it."

He Ao glanced at this new message.

In fact, he knew about this before Li Cheng did, as the news from the northern part of Ruodan was sent by his main body to Li Cheng, but this wasn’t something ’Hao Yi’ should be aware of.

Meanwhile, without waiting for a reply from He Ao, Li Cheng immediately sent another message, "It’s fortunate you’re here, otherwise, our response would have been delayed significantly, and we wouldn’t have been able to guard against the telephone issue promptly. I am already in contact with the World Tree."

The Yika Republic was a big country in the Western Lands, and the Western Lands were the territory of the World Tree, where they had the greatest mobilization strength.

He Ao raised his head to look toward the world engulfed by the blood-colored luminescence.

’Fortunate that I’m here... really?’

Why had he sensed an anomaly and arrived here so quickly?

Apart from the incident in Ruodan, it was because he had ’coincidentally’ placed a mark on Lin Chichi.

But was that really ’coincidence’?

Why had he suddenly taken a whim to mark Lin Chichi?

Was it a spur of the moment, or some sort of invisible crisis ’intuition’? Why hadn’t he had this ’intuition’ before? What was the difference?

The Eye of Truth could peek and deconstruct Truth, does that mean it is also very sensitive to the changes in the ’Truth’ that makes up the world?

At the moment, the power of the Eye of Truth was constantly affecting He Ao’s body and soul.

This was a force of true Angel Designation that He Ao had never encountered before.

That strange ’ringing of the telephone’ seemed to be interrupted after he got involved, and this was only a clone, not the main body.

Even though He Ao could momentarily control and use the power of the Eye of Truth, he had not fully understood the extent of its capabilities.

Ruodan Kingdom · Enke City

Under the blood-colored brilliance, He Ao, who was working with the gendarmerie to prevent the residents from ’answering the phone,’ stopped in his tracks.

He slowly turned around to look up at the sky above him.

There, as if hidden in the void, an inscrutable eye set within a triangle seeming ethereal and elusive, was casting its gaze downward, observing this world.