Another Dimensional Immortal Cultivation Tale: The Divine Doctor Against the Heavens

Chapter 264: The Spirit Feather Mystery and the Devouring of the Spacetime Rift

The moment the black crack tore open the sky, a stench of putrid sulfur mixed with the smell of rust assaulted his nostrils. Lin Yihai pinched his nose and yelled, "Holy crap! This smell is even worse than the rotten mandarin fish I stole from the mess hall three years ago!" Lightning crackled in his palm, but couldn't mask his trembling voice—the black mist churning within the crack was clearly the smell of the biological chemical bombs detonated by the enemy during the raid on drug traffickers in the Golden Triangle three years ago. He instinctively covered his mouth and nose, but the lightning illuminated the edge of the crack: grains of sand instantly carbonized upon contact with the black mist, like ants thrown into concentrated sulfuric acid, emitting a faint "sizzling" sound.

Ling Yu suddenly shifted half a step to the side, her golden robe brushing against Yun Hai's hand, carrying the familiar scent of pear blossoms from her tent—Lin Xiaowan's favorite incense from her past life, which she always said "smells like the pear orchards back home." The baby in Yun Hai's arms suddenly gripped her clothes tightly, a golden mark appearing on its little face, identical to the one on Ling Yu's neck, strikingly similar to the lightning-struck mural of the Mysterious Maiden in the Prime Minister's ancestral hall. Yun Hai remembered when she was twelve, Lin Xiaowan pointed at the mural and exclaimed, "Hai Hai, this fairy's birthmark looks just like the little red mole on the back of your neck!" At the time, she had been tickling Lin Xiaowan with a laugh, oblivious to the strange look in the other's eyes.

"Step back! This is a chaotic rift that will devour all matter!" Ling Yu's fingertips lit up with starlight, drawing complex runes in the void. Yun Hai's pupils constricted sharply—it was clearly the "Nine Revolutions Resurrection Array" on the last page of the *Qing Nang Mi Lu* in her medical space! The edge of the page still bore the annotation she had circled in red pen in her previous life: "Use with caution, requires heart's blood as a catalyst." At this moment, those vermilion characters were burning hot, making her palms ache. She suddenly remembered that when she was organizing medical books last night, this page's annotation had been changed in black pen to "Must Use."

"How could you...?" Before he could finish speaking, a giant tentacle with suction cups emerged from the crevice. The suction cups were covered with human eyeballs, and sticky fluid dripped onto the sand, sizzling and steaming. Hai Tian's War God Sword struck it, but it bounced back as if striking ancient rubber, causing his hand to bleed and the War God runes on the hilt to dim slightly. "This feel..." He suddenly remembered the ancient sea monster's corpse preserved in formalin on the third basement floor of the Time and Space Administration Bureau. At that time, Lin Xiaowan, as a researcher, had said, "This skin is tougher than a bulletproof vest."

"Use lightning to strike the suction cups!" Xiaoqian's wheelchair popped up with a laser scanner, and a 3D neural map flickered on the holographic screen. "Those eyeballs are the visual centers, and the purple glands behind them are the pain nerves!" Her voice trembled as the scanner showed that the rate at which the fissure was being devoured was increasing exponentially, expanding by 3.2 centimeters per second. Lin Yihai grinned and unleashed spiraling lightning bolts from his palms: "Take this! Old Sun's Five-Strike Lightning Whip!" The lightning precisely shattered three glands, and the tentacles curled up, spewing out dark green liquid that corroded deep, bone-revealing pits in the sand, emitting a sizzling sound similar to boiling live fish, mixed with a nauseating stench.

More tentacles surged from the crack, one of them wrapping around Lingyu's ankle. "Watch out!" Yunhai instinctively flung out seven silver needles coated with anesthetic—a modified version of the anesthetic powder from the "Thousand Gold Prescriptions," incorporating datura flowers and snow lotus, the proportions precise to 0.01 grams. But then Lingyu suddenly turned around, a cunning glint in her eyes—the same expression Lin Xiaowan had shown on Army Day in 2019 when she suggested, "Let me try out my newly developed fast-acting anesthetic for you." Back then, she was strapped to the experimental table, and Lin Xiaowan had smiled and said, "Sleep, you'll be fine when you wake up," but the anesthetic had worn off, and she had watched helplessly as the other woman took her blood sample.

A sharp pain exploded in her heart. Yunhai staggered backward, the baby's bead in her arms flying out, reflecting a clear image in the air: on the edge of a cliff, Lin Xiaowan's smiling face suddenly twisted. As she pushed her, the manicured nail of her ring finger grazed the mole on the back of her neck. The whistling wind mingled with the words, "I'm sorry, I need your chaotic bloodline." That shattered diamond manicured nail was the birthday gift she had given Lin Xiaowan last year. As the bead landed, it reflected the chipped jade pendant around Lingyu's neck—fitting perfectly with the fragment in her arms, the edges still bearing the teeth marks from infancy.

"Lin Xiaowan!" Yunhai's voice trembled, the silver needle hovering three inches from Lingyu's throat. The woman in the black robe chuckled, reaching out to stroke the baby's forehead, golden lines spreading across her entire body: "Good sister, only now do you recognize me?" She pulled open her collar, revealing half of her decaying right cheek, the injury from the fall off the cliff three years ago. "Do you know?" Lingyu's fingertips traced the notch in the jade pendant, "When you were born with it in your mouth, I was outside the delivery room. Your father said, 'This is the blessing of the Mystic Maiden,' but what I saw was a hand reaching out from the crack." Clamped in her fingernails was mud from the cliff edge, picked up when she pushed Yunhai three years ago.

Hai Tian's War God Sword pressed against Ling Yu's back, his voice icy cold: "Let go of the child." His sword tip trembled as he saw the black energy emanating from Ling Yu's fingertips—the very same shadow energy that had attacked the Time and Space Administration three months prior. Lin Yi Hai's lightning, however, trembled—he saw the cinnabar birthmark behind Ling Yu's ear, exactly the same as that of his comrade who had sacrificed himself three years ago. "So you knew the secret of the jade pendant all along..." Yun Hai's tears fell onto the jade pendant fragments, suddenly recalling the red scratches that appeared on Lin Xiao Wan's neck after she secretly wore her jade pendant on her twelfth birthday. At the time, she said, "I was scratched by a wild cat," but now it seemed clearly to be burns from the jade pendant recognizing its owner.

"A container!" Ling Yu suddenly screamed as a skeletal hand emerged from the rift and gripped her head. Yun Hai recognized the cloud pattern on the skeletal hand—the very pattern of the Prime Minister's ancestral breastplate, which his father had once described as "a life-saving talisman bestowed by the Mystic Maiden." Memories flooded back: when she was twelve, Lin Xiaowan stole her breastplate, crying, "I'll borrow it for two days." The next day, a scene of a spatial rift appeared in the mirror, its surface stained with blood, which she claimed was from "breaking." Now, the reflection in the mirror clearly showed Ling Yu plunging a dagger into her father's heart.

"Try this modified version of Mafeisan!" Yunhai flicked out seven silver needles, each wrapped with sheep intestines soaked in datura flower juice. Lingyu's smile suddenly froze, her muscles beginning to twitch uncontrollably—this was the effect of her deliberately amplified strychnine, capable of paralyzing an enemy's entire body within 1.2 seconds. "You..." Lingyu's pupils dilated, "You actually used the forbidden technique from 'Shennong Tasting Hundreds of Herbs'..." Her black robe peeled away, revealing the Yun family jade pendant at her waist, the very one her father had lost when he disappeared.

The moment Yunhai merged the two jade pendants, the infant suddenly spoke: "Mother, I am your primordial bloodline." In a burst of light, the infant transformed into a ball of light and merged into her body. War God runes appeared on its left hand, and a Healing Immortal Lotus Seal sprouted on its right. On its chest was the scar from its fall from the cliff years ago. "So that's why..." Yunhai touched her chest, finally understanding her father's dying words: "Hai'er, your blood can open all doors." The coughs her father heard in his study late at night all those years weren't lung disease, but the agonizing cries of being corrupted by shadows.

The spacetime rift suddenly swallowed Ling Yu, but at the last moment, Lin Xiaowan stuffed a yellowed piece of paper into her hand: "The Yun family ancestral graves..." The handwriting was stained with blood, it was her father's handwriting! The earth shook violently, and Xiaoqian's device went into overdrive with alarms: "Coordinates of the Spacetime Administration Bureau! 30°52' North Latitude, 117°17' East Longitude—below the Yun family ancestral graves!" Her voice was choked with sobs, because the screen showed that the spacetime fluctuations of the ancestral graves were perfectly synchronized with the baby's heartbeat frequency, and the heart rate curve was exactly the pattern of the Yun family's ancestral Xuan Nu Jade Pendant.

"So we've gone in circles, and the enemy is right at our doorstep?" Lin Yihai wiped his face, and lightning suddenly illuminated the sachet that Ling Yu had dropped—inside was half a breastplate, with "Yun Zhan, the first director of the Time and Space Administration" engraved on the back. Yunhai trembled as he touched the mirror, and his father's middle-aged image appeared: "Hai'er, when you see this, I have become a vessel for the chaotic shadows... Forgive your father, back then, to save you, I made a deal with the shadows..." His father in the image suddenly twisted in pain, and Lin Xiaowan's laughter came from behind: "Teacher, your chaotic bloodline will finally belong to me." That "Teacher" revealed the truth that Lin Xiaowan had been his father's last disciple.

Hai Tian gripped her hand tightly, the War God Sword resonating: "This time, I'll accompany you back to ancient times." His palm still held the warmth of Ling Yu's struggle—cold as ice, exactly the same as Lin Xiaowan's body temperature back then. Yun Hai gazed at the unified jade pendant, suddenly recalling the infant's last words: "Gathering the five jade pendants isn't for sealing, but..." Before the words were finished, in the instant before the rift closed, a black pillar of light rose from the direction of the ancestral grave, and the father's broken voice carried on the wind: "Run... Take your chaotic bloodline... Don't believe..." The last syllable was cut off like by a sharp blade, leaving only a piercing crackling sound.