Distant Mountain Battle Song

Chapter 7: Reality or Delusion? I don't know.

Dragons move effortlessly, breaking free from Earth's constraints. There's no explosive acceleration, only an indescribable smoothness, like a finger popping a balloon, or a swimmer lifting their head to the surface.

After leaving the blue planet, Long led Yun Ce into the dark space.

Yun Ce didn't understand. Stars in space should provide light, but here it was pitch black, like an eternal night. He felt that leaving Earth meant leaving the light.

Once in space, Yun Ce no longer harbored much resentment towards that old scoundrel Yun Linchuan, because resentment was futile at this point.

In fact, space is unfamiliar to humankind on Earth. Even scientists who study space know little about this world, mostly from calculations and guesses.

Yun Ce knew he could do nothing now, like a speck of dust in the light, not knowing where he would go, like a mayfly that is born in the morning and does not know that it will die at night.

The dragon herd seemed to be slowly gliding through space, while Yun Ce was a traveler in space.

It was an extremely novel experience, and at that moment, he seemed to forget the imminent threat of death, greedily gazing at the beautiful scenery in space.

Behind me was a huge, azure planet, and in the distance, stars twinkled in the black, satin-like space. Although the stars were not as dense as they appeared on Earth, they twinkled and seemed particularly lively.

The dragon ran through space for a while longer, and the azure Earth appeared smaller, while the moon grew larger and larger, gradually changing from a hook shape to a crescent, and finally becoming a full moon, silvery-white, hanging on one side of the Earth, incomparably beautiful.

At that moment, Yun Ce forgot the fact that he had been abandoned, and he also forgot Yun Linchuan's ruthlessness. He only wanted to enjoy the beautiful scenery that others could not reach in the last moments of his life.

Even the most beautiful scenery will eventually bring your thoughts back to reality if you look at it for too long.

During this time, none of the leap methods that Yun Ce had imagined occurred. They were like a school of fish swimming in the ocean, except that the earth behind them grew smaller and smaller, eventually becoming an inconspicuous dot.

Travel is often extremely boring, but Yun Ce, who is the kind of person who will exert a hundred times the will to survive as long as there is a glimmer of hope, will naturally not waste his precious time.

He dug around with his knife, hoping to get some skin or scraps from the dragon's claws. He always felt that even eggshells were a form of energy, so there was no reason why dragon skin would be useless.

The dragon claws were so black and clean, as if made of iron, that Yun Ce couldn't understand it, because he hadn't even gotten a dead skin.

The world outside the dragon claw was pitch black, while the inside of the dragon claw remained dry and warm. Yun Ce leaned his body against a large dragon toe and looked up to see a huge fireball.

This is a very strange thing. There is a huge fireball burning, but if you don't look at the fireball itself, the universe is black, and it is pure black.

The beam of light from the giant fireball suddenly shot into Yun Ce's eyes, and then he saw the beam of light from the fireball turn the jet-black dragon claws into gold.

The fact that the sun in front of him was much larger than it appeared on Earth proved that the dragons were leading him toward the center of the solar system.

With Yun Ce's meager knowledge of space, he only knew that the solar system used to have nine planets, but Pluto was later removed, and now there are eight planets. According to their distance from the sun, Earth is ranked third.

If there is another life-bearing planet in the solar system, that planet should be located at a similar distance from the sun as Earth, only then could the temperature there be suitable for human survival.

Too far away is too cold, too close is too hot.

However, Yun Ce doesn't believe that such a planet exists behind the sun. If it does, with the advancement of science today, it cannot be hidden.

He didn't see any planets suitable for human habitation, but he did see a lot of dragons. He used to think that there weren't many dragons, but now that he saw several thousand dragons with his own eyes, he suddenly felt that dragons weren't so rare after all.

The sunlight was so intense that it turned each dragon golden, and then Yun Ce realized that his left hand had left his body...

To be precise, it wasn't that the left hand left the body; rather, it was that many more left hands appeared outside the left hand, with the outermost left hand drifting outwards, seemingly about to leave Yun Ce.

Yun Ce waved his arm, trying to hold onto the elusive phantoms, but more phantoms left his body, the furthest of which had already run more than a meter away.

Human nerve conduction speed is actually very slow. When Yun Ce saw the phantom, he knew that his movement speed had long exceeded the reaction speed of his nerves.

Out of sheer boredom, Yun Ce was eager to know if those dissipating phantoms were his departed lives, and if so, how long his twenty-eight years of life could be wasted.

When Yun Ce turned his gaze back to the sun, he found that the round fireball was evolving into an ellipse. In just a moment, the sun turned into a long red line.

It wasn't just the sun that turned into long lines; many bright stars in space also quickly transformed into long, silvery-white lines. The scene was incredibly beautiful: a fiery red line cut through the universe, stretching directly from our eyes to the horizon. On either side of the red line were countless silver meridians. Soon, the red line transformed into a quadrant pattern with intersecting lines, and those silver meridians became countless lines of latitude and longitude within the quadrant.

These lines of latitude and longitude formed a giant net, sweeping down upon Yun Ce's eyeballs. Once inside, the net dragged his eyeballs backward, and his body was pulled away from that moment's form, forming a new form two meters away. Until the dragon's claws were filled with Yun Ce figures in various poses, the original Yun Ce cried out, trying to pull the closest body, but was tightly held back and quickly merged with it. This continued, one pulling another, until they formed a ring within the dragon's claws. However, this ring was writhing, and the Yun Ce figures within it became increasingly dense, making it impossible to distinguish which was the original Yun Ce.

As the ring formed by Yun Ce gradually melted and was eventually stretched into a beam of light that radiated outwards, it was always blocked back by the cage formed by the dragon claws. Thus, Yun Ce became a beam of light within the dragon claws.

Not knowing how long the beam of light bounced in the dragon's claw, Yun Ce suddenly realized that his thoughts seemed to have reappeared, no longer a chaotic beam of light.

Before him were clusters of seven-colored light, which seemed like phantoms yet also like real objects, crashing down on him like a tidal wave, then quickly breaking free from his body's restraints and disappearing in an instant.

With each ray of light hitting him, Yun Ce felt as if something was missing. He remembered what Ao Bing had once said: "For space travel, time, which is life itself, is the fuel that propels us forward."

It's obvious that the dragon is very fast, and its previous travel speed may have exceeded the speed of light. The line segments I saw earlier were undoubtedly light traveling with it. At that speed, everything would turn into light. This is the true meaning of being one with the light.

As soon as Yun Ce finished thinking, what he was thinking disappeared, and his thoughts even turned into fragments. After he thought about it, nothing was left.

He felt as if he were inside a basket of light, which was likely the claw of a dragon. These creatures must have adapted to or transcended certain laws of the universe and could control the light themselves.

As soon as he finished thinking about it, he couldn't remember what he had thought about, or even his recent thoughts, unlike just now, when he at least remembered some of them...

It seemed like a long time had passed, yet it also felt like only a moment had gone by.

"Bang bang bang... Bang bang bang... Sizzle, sizzle..."

Yun Ce was certain that he had heard some sounds.

Although hearing sounds while traveling at the speed of light is absurd, he was certain that some voices were echoing in his mind.

Yun Ce categorized these sounds as death.

He knew he couldn't survive; these voices were perhaps time's way of showing kindness to death.

"I'm going to die."

Yun Ce said so.

It was a mysterious feeling; for some reason, Yun Ce knew he was going to die.

Death is a feeling of falling, a feeling of freedom with the wind at your sides, a feeling of freedom to stretch your limbs as much as possible.

It's the kind of long fall that feels like plummeting from the highest heavens to the ground.

The feeling of falling only paused for a moment.

An immense gravitational force suddenly arose, pressing Yun Ce's body firmly onto the dragon's toes. He not only heard the cracking sound of his bones breaking, but also felt the pain of his skin tearing. Blood had just begun to flow when it was pressed onto the dragon's toes by gravity. Some drops of blood falling from above even pierced through his palms and eventually landed on the dragon's toes.

His skull cracked and popped, his eyeballs seemed about to pop out of their sockets, and even his heart seemed to be pressed against the dragon's toes by gravity. The difference between life and death was just a piece of skin.

The overwhelming pain made Yun Ce want to open his mouth and shout, but his lips were pressed firmly against his gums by gravity. Not to mention opening his mouth, he even thought that his lips would crack his gums in the next moment.

Yun Ce desperately wanted to faint, but his nerves were unusually active. Although it felt like hundreds of chainsaws were cutting into his skull inside his head, the brain protected by his skull kept him awake.

Pain is incredibly draining, so Yun Ce's clear mind brought back memories of his parents and grandparents: his mother's smile, his father's caresses, his grandmother's kisses, and his grandfather's tenderness. These gave Yun Ce a bit more energy. Unfortunately, when Yun Linchuan's bald head finally appeared, Yun Ce's lips could finally open. He roared with all his might, "Yun Linchuan, I'll curse your ancestors for eighteen generations!"

Perhaps Yun Linchuan heard the curses, for Yun Ce's body actually left the sturdy dragon claw, tracing a graceful parabola through the air...

If the initial power is sufficient, even a stone can soar freely.

Yun Ce is that stone, a stone thrown out by a giant dragon.

The biting wind once again covered his mouth and nose, preventing him from even letting out a scream. However, Yun Ce quickly dismissed the thought of cursing Yun Linchuan because he saw a tree while flying in the air.

(End of this chapter)