Chapter 213

Chapter 213: The Celestial Shuttle Crash Site

His mind sank inward. He connected to the distant coordinates, extended his perception, and treated the door in front of him as a mapped target. Following the familiar feeling of opening a door, he tried to turn the warehouse entrance into a passage leading to the valley.

Bai Li Qing and Song Cheng unconsciously held their breath, watching.

Behind Bai Li Qing, a pair of eyes quietly emerged in the air, studying what normal sight could not see with eager curiosity.

“Can you see anything?” Bai Li Qing asked silently.

A slightly mechanical, flat voice answered in her mind. “I can’t understand it, but I can observe two spatial coordinates overlapping. It’s… unbelievable. Normally, you’d need enormous energy to bend spacetime. But look—there isn’t even a gust of wind. It’s as if the structure of space was always capable of overlapping like this.”

A faint buzzing sound cut off the voice in Bai Li Qing’s head.

The next second, the center of the warehouse door shuddered.

Then a distant “scenery” appeared within it.

The passage formed, and the valley’s landscape filled everyone’s eyes—or rather, in that moment, the valley in the distant otherworld truly arrived here.

With one hand still on the doorframe, Yu Sheng looked up at the astonishing passage, surprised even himself.

“It actually worked?” he muttered. “What’s the principle behind this…?”

From near his feet, Irene’s voice shot up at once. “Huh?! You’re the one who opened it—why are you asking us?”

Yu Sheng ignored her and kept thinking. He glanced down at the frame beneath his hand.

It really did feel easy.

So as long as it was a door, it worked… but what was a “door,” really?

How did something get recognized as a door?

A warehouse entrance was a door. But what about a city gate?

A valve?

Bigger doors… and more abstract doors?

The roar of engines broke his thoughts. Yu Sheng looked up to see the heavy trucks, loaded with supplies and personnel, already starting up. Song Cheng was personally directing the convoy through the passage.

Bai Li Qing walked up beside him. Her expression stayed cold, but the way she looked at the passage had clearly changed.

“How long can you keep it open?” she asked.

Yu Sheng thought for a moment and nodded at the hand still pressed to the frame. “A few hours. Mostly because my arm will get sore. I have to stand here holding it. If I take my hand off, the passage closes.”

Bai Li Qing: “…So besides your arm getting sore, there’s no cost?”

“Maybe I’ll get a bit sleepy,” Yu Sheng said, sounding unsure. “Mostly because I’ve never kept one open this long. Usually I push a door and step through in a few seconds. Once the passage is built, it doesn’t need extra upkeep. I even set up a fixed gate in my basement at home—it can stay open forever.”

Bai Li Qing’s gaze turned subtler, though her face didn’t change.

After a moment, she gestured toward the opening. “Do you mind if I go take a look?”

Yu Sheng smiled. “Of course not. We’ll go in after the convoy. I have to be the last one through.”

With the passage this wide, it didn’t take long for the convoy to enter the valley. Soon after, Bai Li Qing and Yu Sheng’s group crossed over too, arriving in the pleasant valley where it was always daytime.

Song Cheng stared around, dumbfounded.

He took in the wide valley floor and the mountains under the bright sky and instinctively pulled out a cigarette. “I’ve heard about the changes here, but if I didn’t see it with my own eyes, you could kill me and I still wouldn’t believe the Nightfall Valley described in the files could become like this. Incredible. Truly…”

Irene ran up at once and held out her hand. “No smoking here. Fine: fifty.”

Song Cheng blinked, holding up the cigarette. “I haven’t even lit it.”

Irene said righteously, “Then light it quickly and pay me fifty.”

Yu Sheng waved helplessly. “Don’t listen to her. But smoking really isn’t allowed here. It wasn’t easy to get this greenery going. You have no idea how much work it took to restore the valley like this.”

Bai Li Qing didn’t speak at first. She just kept scanning the landscape, her faded light-gray eyes seeming to read every scrap of information and imprint it in her mind. After a long while, she said evenly, “Yes. Compared to any containment facility the Bureau could arrange, conditions here are better in every way.”

Yu Sheng chuckled and accepted the praise without shame. Then he began leading them along, explaining the preparations around the campsite.

The engineer in charge was a short, sturdy middle-aged man who looked dependable. He followed behind Yu Sheng, clicking his tongue in amazement as he took in the hub platform and the prepared foundations.

Yu Sheng introduced everything as they walked: the portal platform—even if it currently held only a single door; the vegetable patch, though they’d need a greenhouse later; the chicken area by the platform’s edge, where the chicks were currently being watched by a fox; the camp drainage and generator bases already laid out; the big building at the far end that could serve as a warehouse.

“And that ring of walls in front of it is a barbican,” Yu Sheng added quickly. “Don’t ask why there’s a barbican. I already said it’s meaningless.”

The engineer grinned. “Hey, this is way better than I expected. When I first heard we were building a resettlement site in a valley, I was ready to lay foundations in the middle of nowhere. Don’t worry—we’ll have modular housing and water and power solved within twelve hours. The children can move in first, and we’ll handle the rest gradually.”

Bai Li Qing nodded. Then she turned to Yu Sheng. “I’ve spoken with the Councilor Council. Most of the staff assigned to the orphanage will move as well—mainly the teachers who work directly with the younger children. Until the Dark Angels problem is resolved, they’ll live here with the children. Supply distribution will still run through the warehouse we came from, and when the time comes, we’ll need you to open the passage.”

Yu Sheng grinned. “It’s nothing. I’ll keep my phone on. If you need a door, just call me.”

After the handoff, inspection, and final confirmations, the engineering team launched into construction.

Prefabricated units were unloaded and unfolded onto the prepared foundations. Generator sets were dropped into their designated area, then moved into installation and testing. Yu Sheng watched for a long time and still didn’t understand half of it. Irene, on the other hand, stayed excited the entire time. She found a big rock near the work site, sat down, and watched like she planned to sit there forever.

Yu Sheng couldn’t help wondering if she loved construction sites because her current body was mostly stone and rebar.

Just then, Bai Li Qing walked over.

“Can you take me to see the crash site?” she asked.

Yu Sheng wasn’t surprised. Half the reason she’d come today was to satisfy her curiosity about the valley’s secrets, and this was something they’d discussed before.

He nodded. “No problem. The structure over there has stabilized a lot these past two days. It shouldn’t keep collapsing. Come with us, Foxy—you know that place best.”

“I’m not going!” Irene called from the distance without turning around. “I’m staying here to watch them build houses.”

“Got it,” Yu Sheng said, then added, “Don’t get too close. If a machine drops something, you’ll get smashed. At your size, you’re a blind spot everywhere on a job site.”

Irene bared her teeth in protest, but Yu Sheng ignored her.

The crash site lay a few hundred meters past the old grove, on a sunken slope in a mountain hollow deep within the valley floor.

It was the landing point from years ago, when Foxy and her family had crashed there in their ship—back when it was still Nightfall Valley.

The grand feast that had accompanied Entity-Hunger’s destruction had nearly reshaped the entire valley, gnawing and tearing huge sections of the mountains. Yet even that hadn’t destroyed the main body of the craft called the celestial shuttle. It had only buried it deeper and damaged the supporting structure beneath the crash site, leaving the whole area unstable.

After taking control of the valley, Yu Sheng had been slowly repairing the surrounding mountains and reinforcing the geology around the wreck. Over the past few days, he had even shifted it outward as far as he could. Now most of the wreckage had separated from the rock and lay firmly on the slope.

Yu Sheng led Bai Li Qing and Song Cheng close enough to see it clearly. From a solid stone platform, they looked down at the slightly warped structure.

A streamlined metal wreck, over a hundred meters long, lay quietly in melted, fractured rock. Deep within the debris, faint glimmers drifted now and then. The twisted, deformed frame looked like a gaunt skeleton staring hollowly up at the sky, as if still telling the story of that violent crash.

Yu Sheng pointed. “This is the celestial shuttle Foxy rode back then. There’s still residual energy deep inside, but according to Foxy, it’s just cooling afterglow. Nothing dangerous anymore. Still, I don’t recommend crawling inside. It isn’t safe.”