I will now translate and polish the provided Chinese text into natural, fluent, and idiomatic English fiction, maintaining the original paragraph structure.
The girl in the crimson dress gazed into the distance, finally letting out a soft sigh after a long while. "When you meet it, you'll understand.
It's an absolute anomaly!" Ye Chen’s eyes flickered as he stared into the distant void.
After a brief silence, he murmured, "Too slow.
Accelerate!" The crimson-clad girl arched an eyebrow, casting one last look at Ye Chen.
She sighed again, guided her fingers, and the Red Lotus swiftly streaked toward the distant starry expanse.
Ten minutes later, Ye Chen saw the other side of the starry field—an absolute, lightless blackness, as if even starlight had been entirely devoured.
Seeing this dark glow, Ye Chen frowned.
This swath of space resembled a colossal black hole, terrifyingly grim like the maw of some great beast, exuding a chilling aura that made the scalp tingle. "That is the Heavenly Illusion Mirror," the crimson-clad girl said, raising her hand to point toward that abyssal sector of stars.
A faint melancholy veiled her brow. "Are you truly going? It’s a monster..." Ye Chen, his tall form standing atop the Red Lotus, his black robe billowing in the wind, looked out at the distant cosmos.
Though his hair and beard had been burned away by flames, the deep contours of his face were still clearly visible.
Without a word, his body suddenly shot forward, plunging directly into the inky blackness.
The girl in crimson cried out in alarm at his rashness, quickly halting the Red Lotus’s advance.
Seeing Ye Chen’s form already submerged within the dark domain, she frowned deeply, muttering, "Truly fearless.
This Heavenly Illusion Mirror can replicate everything.
If you wish to subdue it, you must first conquer yourself..." Few people in this world are capable of conquering themselves.
...
Within the pitch-black star domain.
The moment Ye Chen burst in, he felt it: black currents seemed to swirl through the surrounding space, carrying a tingling electromagnetic vibration that interfered with all his senses.
Ye Chen’s expression remained unchanged.
He swiftly released his divine sense, sending it shooting straight into the dark void.
Not long after, a cold, sharp voice suddenly rang out: "Human, this is not a place you should tread.
Advance one step further, and you shall be drowned in your own blood!" Ye Chen’s brow tightened.
He cast a cold glance at the black cosmos, then his body flashed away, crossing past the dark expanse to push deeper within. "Seeking death!" The cold voice held not an iota of emotion, as if read verbatim from a script.
Yet, as the words fell, the dark energy around Ye Chen began to churn violently.
Immediately, a bolt of black flame erupted from the chaos, slamming toward Ye Chen with savage force.
Ye Chen evaded it nimbly with a shift of his body.
Shielded by his own black flames, he looked toward the source of the attack.
He instantly saw a lean, compact man, clad entirely in black, slowly emerging from a mass of dark energy.
The man was engulfed in black flames, his eyes fixed on Ye Chen with icy sharpness, a cold, mocking smile playing on his lips.
Ye Chen’s heart settled heavily.
The man standing before him was an exact replica of himself—identical in expression and movement.
What weighed most heavily on him was that this figure possessed the same black flames as his own. "Could this be the function of the Heavenly Illusion Mirror?" Ye Chen let out a cold snort.
He suddenly spread his fingers, gathering his black flames into a fireball and blasting it toward his manifested self.
The mirrored Ye Chen also conjured a mass of black flame in his hand, driving it straight toward Ye Chen.
The two flames collided in mid-air, erupting in a violent explosion.
Ye Chen recoiled a few steps, looking up at the mirror image.
A fierce, savage light ignited in his eyes.
He clenched his hand violently, instantly activating the Yan Mysterious Canon.
From the world above his head, as flames billowed, a colossal aperture tore open, pouring forth a surging power that saturated every inch of his skin.
At that exact moment, the mirror clone opposite him also clenched its hand, opening a massive rift above its head, blasting forth the power bestowed by the Yan God to enhance its body.
Ye Chen’s expression shifted slightly.
He immediately executed the Myriad Heavens Smelting God Art, gathering the genetic power of ten civilizations into his palm, condensing it into a ball of pure white light, radiating a scorching, pristine brilliance.
This dazzling radiance illuminated the mirrored clone before him. "Hmph?" Within the vast black energy, a sound of surprise seemed to echo.
The mirrored clone’s face, however, changed.
His icy gaze showed bewilderment, confusion, and a flicker of terror as he stared at the Light of Civilization in Ye Chen’s hand.
While the Light of Civilization could not yet harm it, what truly frightened it was that it was fundamentally incapable of replicating this power! This pure white light seemed to be a singular, inimitable force across all creation, impossible to copy.
The Heavenly Illusion Mirror was, in essence, a device of extreme technological precision, capable of creating phantoms of all things, primarily because it could analyze everything thoroughly enough to replicate it.
This was much like how the God Emperor created humanity.
To forge beings, to create life within one's own Cosmic Universe, the first necessity was naturally to decrypt the code of life—to understand the structure of genes, the structure of consciousness, and the structure of the soul, only then could humanity be created.
The Heavenly Illusion Mirror operated on the same principle.
But the Light of Civilization in Ye Chen’s hand—it could not parse it.
Ye Chen noticed the shock in the face of the mirror clone and let out a cold laugh.
He knew that as long as there was one thing he could do that the clone could not, he had effectively won.
Otherwise, no matter how earth-shattering their battle became, victory would be elusive, culminating only in mutual annihilation.
As expected, the mirror clone violently dispersed like black smoke.
Immediately afterward, from the pitch-dark mist, an impossibly huge Red Lotus condensed, blazing with fierce flames.
Ye Chen paused, startled.
This Red Lotus was precisely the one that had brought him here.
Why was it now deep within this black star domain? As his consciousness stalled, this strange Red Lotus shot toward him like shattered light tearing through the void.
An image of the crimson-clad girl materialized atop the lotus petals, but her pupils were icy black, flashing with an eerie, demonic light.
She clenched her hand suddenly, causing the Red Lotus to erupt in blazing scarlet light, which surged outward like a furiously blooming flame, transforming into a gigantic fireball that enveloped the entire sky before smashing down toward Ye Chen.
As the fireball hurtled down, it rapidly shrank.
By the time it reached Ye Chen, it was the size of Earth, descending upon him like a meteor strike.
Ye Chen snapped back to reality, a cold light flashing in his eyes.
He fiercely concentrated the black flames all over his body into his fist and blasted outward.
The black flames rose skyward like the roaring head of a lion, challenging the fierce, crimson sphere.
The two, one large and one small, shot past each other like twin celestial bodies leaving trails of light.
BOOM!!! They collided violently.
The entire sky seemed to reverberate, and the star field shook violently as shockwaves of energy retreated outward.
Ye Chen retreated a thousand zhang, looking up.
He saw his own black flames behaving like a ferocious beast, clinging to the fiery red sphere and relentlessly devouring it.
Moments later, the black flames had completely consumed the massive fireball, growing significantly stronger themselves, and they surged like a monstrous gale toward the Red Lotus.
The crimson-clad girl atop the lotus gasped in shock.
She quickly flashed away, causing the entire Red Lotus to collapse into a cloud of pitch-black mist, dissipating into the air.
Ye Chen's eyes gleamed.
He raised a hand in a beckoning gesture, and the black flames descended like meteorites, flowing into his body through his palm, massively increasing his internal energy and making him even stronger. "Human, why have you come here?" The cold voice from before spoke, now laced with distinct anger.
Ye Chen looked up at the black cosmos. "I am here under orders from the venerable Fire Blood Phoenix to seek a Sky-Defying Grade weapon before I am allowed to depart." The cold voice was silent for a moment before replying, "You mean to say you will leave this place with the Sky-Defying Grade weapon you find?" Ye Chen’s eyes flashed. "Correct." The black starry domain suddenly turned utterly silent, as if all sound had vanished.
In the deathly quiet, the mist in the dark star field ahead of Ye Chen suddenly churned, revealing a youth in white.
His face was stern, his dagger-like eyebrows sharply slanted toward his temples.
He walked slowly forward. "I will accompany you." Ye Chen’s gaze sharpened as he stared at him. "You are the Heavenly Illusion Mirror?" "Indeed." The youth in white nodded slightly, flipping his hand.
In his palm appeared a mirror shimmering with flowing light, its surface as smooth as polished ceramic, reflecting the inky blackness of the star domain, suffused with an aura of profound strangeness.
Ye Chen focused his gaze for a moment, then nodded slightly, extending his hand. "Hand it over." "Hmm?" The youth in white frowned slightly. "Why?" "To establish allegiance, naturally.
Otherwise, if you leave here and immediately betray me, I would have to expend extra effort to subdue you," Ye Chen stated coldly.
The youth in white tilted his brows, giving Ye Chen a deep look, then waved his hand, presenting the mirror glowing with shifting colors.
The frame of the mirror was crafted from silver, inlaid with seven or eight different colored, beautiful gemstones that shone as brilliantly as distant stars.
Ye Chen cut his finger, letting a drop of blood fall onto the mirror’s surface.
As the blood landed, it sank in, sending out a ripple.
A moment later, Ye Chen felt an energetic resonance in his mind.
He knew that once the Heavenly Illusion Mirror absorbed the genes from his blood and established allegiance, this resonance would manifest.
However, to be safe, Ye Chen reached out and pressed his hand onto the mirror’s surface, examining it closely.
He immediately sensed that the internal structure of the Heavenly Illusion Mirror was unimaginably precise, with countless gears and electronic systems forming a vast, robust central processing core.
Currently, sealed within the chip slot of this main system was the drop of his blood.
Ye Chen nodded, turning his hand to slip the Heavenly Illusion Mirror into his sleeve. "Let's go." As the main core system of the Heavenly Illusion Mirror, the youth in white could only obey Ye Chen's command and followed behind him.