God

(This chapter is free.)

Yu Ci's gaze swept back and forth between the mirror surface and the sky, and finally he confirmed it without a doubt. He drew a long breath and stopped his wild, chaotic thoughts, leaping up directly. Using hands and feet like an ape, in no time he scrambled up the cliff and stood at the highest point of the peak. Yu Ci narrowed his eyes as sunlight pierced through the forest and shone straight down. His spirit was still somewhat dazed, but since he had woken up, the previous nightmare no longer gripped him with terror. Yu Ci was about to laugh it off, but his heart and mind were stirred once again. The feeling this time was solid and real, and it was one he was not unfamiliar with.

This was the reaction of the Five Directions Spirit Communication Talisman.

This talisman was one of the most complex talismans Yu Ci excelled at. It could detect the intense reactions of all nearby living creatures, feeding this information back into the caster's mind and heart to serve as a warning. He still had his memories; this was something he had forcibly drawn before falling asleep, and it had somehow miraculously succeeded.

The duration of this talisman was about two to three hours, and since it was still effective now, that meant his sleep time was not as long as Yu Ci had imagined... Wait, that wasn't right.

Yu Ci looked up at the sun again, confirming that it had risen to the zenith of the dome. Yet he clearly remembered that before he fell asleep, it had just been nightfall. With the sun rising and the moon setting, no matter what, seven or eight hours had passed, and the Five Directions Spirit Communication Talisman could not possibly sustain itself until this time.

Yet what leaped within his heart and mind was clearly the reaction of this talisman.

While he was lost in bewilderment, he suddenly felt something strange on his left hand. On the ground over there, twinkling with a hazy green light, wasn't that the Zhaoshen Bronze Mirror used for drawing talismans? Perhaps sensing his attention, the bronze mirror's green light grew increasingly eye-catching.

Yu Ci confirmed that he had not used true qi to stimulate the effects of the bronze mirror. His gaze fell upon the mirror surface, and astonishment instantly filled his face, leaving not a single trace of empty space.

Within the green light, inside the mirror, a goshawk was clearly flying. Yu Ci rubbed his eyes and looked again. There was no mistake: curved beak and grey feathers, marked heavily with transverse bars, yellowish hawk eyes, and long, pointed tail feathers. It was unquestionably a goshawk. At this moment, this fierce bird of prey from the mountains was circling at a low altitude, and right beneath the mirror surface, emerald green mountain peaks could even be seen.

He grabbed the mirror fiercely and raised it before his eyes.

Why would a goshawk end up inside his mirror... No, what he meant was, why would the bronze mirror reflect the image of a goshawk? It was as if this mirror that had followed him for many years had suddenly turned into a monster's eye, brimming with a power that made the heart throb.

As this thought arose, he whipped his head back, his gaze happening to sweep past the rock face behind him, as if an invisible pointer were guiding his line of sight straight toward the southeastern sky.

There, a black dot was circling in the air.

A goshawk! A goshawk identical to the one in the mirror!

From this position, his field of vision was much broader. The boundless jungles merged into one piece, stretching as far as the eye could see without a boundary. Yu Ci strained his eyes to the utmost, but instead of looking at the sky, he followed that earlier feeling, parting the sea of trees to search for his target among the foliage.

It was still that invisible pointer, moving in response to his will, pointing out the exact direction for him. This was the efficacy of the Five Directions Spirit Communication Talisman, yet its range of action was more than ten times greater than under normal circumstances.

Even so, despite the clear position, Yu Ci's eyesight was not enough to pierce through the obstruction of the branches and leaves, nor did he intend to do so. After confirming the general location, he lowered his head, his gaze nailed onto the bronze mirror surface that was still emitting green light. The image in the mirror was clearly distinguishable, and the sound of gasping breaths was like heavenly music. Yu Ci couldn't even tell whether he was deliberately exaggerating his posture to express his excitement.

Inside the mirror, a grey-haired wild hare appeared, pushing its speed to the limit as it sprinted through the trees and grass, constantly changing directions to shake off the fatal threat in the sky.

This was the scene displayed by the Zhaoshen Bronze Mirror, incomparably clear, incomparably real.

As Yu Ci's intent changed, the close-up of the wild hare in the mirror suddenly shifted. It was as if the monster's eye had moved away from it, and the range of heaven and earth displayed in the mirror expanded rapidly. In the end, the high-altitude goshawk, the wild hare in the forest, and even the mountain forest world encompassing them were all incorporated within it.

The green light grew intensely brilliant. Yu Ci clearly sensed that a force within the bronze mirror was eager to move. Immediately afterward, he saw that all the scenes displayed in the mirror stood up!

That's right, they stood up!

If the original image in the mirror had been a rolled-out landscape painting, then now, this landscape painting gave a shake, and the mountains came alive, the water came alive too. The mountain peaks were towering yet only an inch high, the flowing water murmured yet resembled threads of hair. Whether it was the goshawk circling in the sky ready to strike, or the wild hare fleeing in panic on the ground, they had all become the size of lice, yet their expressions and postures were vivid and no different from their prototypes, synchronously changing with the movements of the external living creatures without any delay.

At this moment, the living creatures of the mountain forest before his eyes had all been shrunk a thousand-fold, cast into the smoke-like green light hovering above the mirror surface.

Looking at this lifelike miniature world, Yu Ci's mind and heart were inevitably drawn into it. And when he did so, a wondrous thing happened once again. He seemed to merge into one with that formless, shapeless "demon eye" in the void, drifting within this world. With the shifting of his thoughts, he constantly changed positions and converted angles, taking into view not just the goshawk and the wild hare, but the activities of every single living creature.

He could see the yellow sparrows bouncing among the branches, he could see the venomous snake drooling beneath the tree trunk, he could even see the mole crickets poking their heads out of the fallen leaves, as well as the ants crawling in and out beneath the soil layer.

There was even more that he could see. He could see the bark splitting on the trunk of the green pine, he could see the delicate textures on the bare rock, he even saw the floating clouds drifting leisurely in the high sky, and beneath the earth's surface, the winding and twisting root systems of giant trees.

Yu Ci held the bronze mirror like a fool, with only a single thought remaining in his heart:

A treasure, a true treasure.

Stunned for a long while, he suddenly went mad, setting off at a run in a random direction and sprinting wildly all the way. He climbed mountains when he saw mountains, crossed waters when he saw waters, and changed his route multiple times along the way. By the end, he had completely lost himself deep within the boundless mountains and ridges, surrounded entirely by towering giant trees. The startled creatures chirped and squeawked, and the mountain forest seemed to have come alive.

The tiny world on the bronze mirror was equally alive.

Mountain peaks and stream springs, jungles and meadows, snakes, insects, birds, and falcons, eagles, wolves, and badgers—everything shifted like flowing water within the green light as he charged forward furiously.

Suddenly, he stopped without warning. In the green light, that tiny world also came to a standstill accordingly. Yet stillness was only relative; the living creatures inside were still flying and dashing, presenting the myriad poses and expressions of the jungle environment. And right in the center of this world, his own figure also appeared.

He stared at this tiny world, completely lost in fascination.

This was a vast region with a radius of fifty miles, extending ten miles upward and up to a hundred zhang downward, centered entirely around himself. If the presented region were expanded to the limit and floated above the Zhaoshen Bronze Mirror, that cluster of optical imagery would look like an inverted sea bowl. Its overall color was greenish-cyan, representing the boundless forest, while the countless tiny patterns in the middle were the rich colors presented by countless species.

The rock and soil layers reaching a depth of a hundred zhang occupied only the thin bottommost ring with a deep, heavy color, while the very topmost layer was light cyan to nearly colorless, which was the representation of the sky. These vastly different colors combined together did not look particularly pretty, yet they presented an incomparably detailed world, stubbornly one that a person could grasp in a single hand, perhaps not much sturdier than a bubble. In this way, the feelings of reality and illusion collided violently, making Yu Ci nearly go mad.

"Calm down, calm down!"

He truly needed to calm down. This miraculous function on the Zhaoshen Bronze Mirror felt as though it had dropped straight out of the sky, smashing right onto the top of his head and instantly knocking him dizzy, making him completely unable to see its origin.

Was this divine ability of manifesting heaven and earth within a square inch something inherent to the Zhaoshen Bronze Mirror, or was it attached from the outside? If it was inherent, why hadn't it been there before? If it had originally been there and was merely accidentally triggered by him, then how had it been triggered? After being triggered, was there a time limit? Could it be repeated? Could it be cancelled?