Chapter 251

Chapter 251: Information on Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain

To be honest, Irene wasn’t wrong.

Right now Yu Sheng was very interested in “Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain.”

It was a place outside the Borderland, a faraway spot he clearly knew and could actually reach. He even had a friend there.

He also worried that going to meet that friend might get him killed.

Maybe killed by the friend himself.

Of course, getting killed wasn’t a big deal to him. The key was that the whole thing had started from a misunderstanding, and it was his fault back when he didn’t understand anything. Dying once or twice would be fine. Waking up after would be awkward. That part made him hesitate.

Yu Sheng figured he should first learn who exactly “Wicked Disciple 3000” was and gather more facts about Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain before deciding what to do next. The misunderstanding would have to be cleared up sooner or later. But he knew the quirks of his Door Opening. He knew that the next time he pushed the Door out, it would still be inside the eldest senior brother’s Alchemy Furnace. Without prep work, it would be too easy to cause another Door Opening kill.

With a crowd of thoughts spinning, Yu Sheng looked out at the street and let out a long sigh: “We need to take this slowly.”

Irene looked up at him from the windowsill and said: “You’re just afraid that once you go, people will chase you and beat you.”

Yu Sheng poked the little doll and almost flipped her over: “Look at you acting like you know everything.”

“Benefactor,” Foxy walked over, the Fox Maiden full of curiosity, and asked: “What were you two talking about? It sounds like you and that ‘Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain’ have some history?”

“It’s a long story,” Yu Sheng sighed and explained: “This goes back to before you came. I was trying to find a way to Night Valley, so I tried opening a lot of Portals. I wasn’t very skilled back then, and I didn’t think things through.”

He gave the short version, telling the Fox Maiden how he did Door Opening and accidentally crawled into someone’s Alchemy Furnace. He finished with: “Of course, I can’t be sure it was the same place. I’d just say the chance is high. The buildings in the news photo do look similar.”

As Foxy listened, her expression grew strange. Her ears drooped halfway, and her eyes turned red.

That startled Yu Sheng: “Hey, what’s wrong-”

Before he finished, Foxy pounced and hugged him: “Benefactor… so it was that hard for you back then.”

The Fox Maiden held him tight, all those fluffy tails wrapping around him, like she was afraid he would run away.

“You are so good, benefactor,” she said.

Warm and soft. Those two feelings lasted not even half a second. After that came the sound of a hydraulic clamp squeezing bone.

Yu Sheng struggled on the brink: “You’re… choking me…”

“Ah!” Foxy cried, and her tails popped open like a fan. “Sorry, benefactor!”

It took Yu Sheng half a minute to get his breath back. He quietly fixed the hairline cracks in his ribs and a bunch of minor injuries, then looked at the flustered fox miss and said: “I’m touched that you want to thank me, but next time remember I’m a squishy human. Also, it wasn’t that hard back then. I just opened a pile of doors. It was only tiring. If anything was hard, the Special Affairs Bureau had it rough. I still feel bad about that… huh?”

He cut himself off, like he had just remembered something, then glanced at the time on his phone.

“Speaking of the Special Affairs Bureau, that reminds me,” he muttered as he opened Border and scrolled through his private messages. “Bai Li Qing should be awake now. I’ll send her a message.”

Irene, who had been sitting on the sill watching the show, widened her eyes. Even she almost lost her cool: “You are too kind. Do you even remember what you just said? You’re sending someone an emergency ticket at breakfast time-”

“You don’t know how diverse humans are,” Yu Sheng said with a grin after hitting send. He had sent one picture of the cloth with one line: “Guess what I just found at home again?” Then he added, “She’s the kind of person who wants to finish all her work the moment her eyes open. If I wait till office hours, I’ll mess up her plans. Her whole-day schedule probably starts forming the second she wakes.”

The little doll blinked, stunned. After a few seconds she asked, hesitant: “Is… is that true?”

“Trust my read on people,” Yu Sheng said as he turned to head out. “Also, you reminded me. It’s breakfast time. I’ll make something to eat.”

Foxy lit up with a smile and followed.

He had only walked a few steps when he stopped again. His phone rang. Bai Li Qing was calling.

He lifted the phone to his ear. Before he could speak, the cool, crisp voice of the director came through: “The room that had snow before?”

“Yes,” Yu Sheng exhaled. “This time it wasn’t just snow. The wind and snow blew straight into the room, and I found this in the corner. Did you notice the patterns on it?”

“I did,” Bai Li Qing said, straight to the point. “Do you have time now? Come to the Special Affairs Bureau. Bring it.”

Yu Sheng was the one stunned now.

“Uh… right now?” he asked carefully. “I haven’t eaten.”

“The Special Affairs Bureau has a breakfast cafeteria,” she said.

“It’s not urgent. I can push the Door and arrive instantly. I can wait for you to get to the office,” he tried.

“I’m already here,” Bai Li Qing said. “I spent the night at the office dealing with follow-up on Angel Fall.”

“…”

Irene cupped her ear, listened, and clapped: “Oh ho.”

Yu Sheng’s mouth twitched. He kept a straight face and told the phone: “Alright. I’m on my way.”

“See? Your read on people is spot on. A workaholic runs at full power the moment she wakes,” Irene said gleefully. “It just means you have to keep up- ya!”

Yu Sheng grabbed the doll, slung her over his shoulder, and said: “Oh ho, huh? You’re coming with me.”

“Fine. I’ll leave two bodies here to watch TV and play games,” she said.

Yu Sheng was already pulling open a Door to the Special Affairs Bureau. He ignored the doll’s smug tone and turned to Foxy: “Come on. Follow your benefactor to the Special Affairs Bureau and mooch breakfast!”

…

A few minutes later, Foxy was sitting in the headquarters cafeteria of the Special Affairs Bureau, eating like a fox at a feast.

Yu Sheng and Irene were personally led by Bai Li Qing to the same High-Risk Laboratory as last time, and he handed the strip of cloth to the staff at once.

The handover was as strict as before, with personnel in heavy gear from head to toe. Even though Yu Sheng had casually stuffed the strip in his pocket and brought it over, the lab’s procedure did not relax one bit.

“Do we still have to be this careful?” Yu Sheng asked, watching the handover team vanish with the “sample” behind the lab gate. “Didn’t you confirm the Metal Component I brought last time had no contamination or hazard? I thought we could lower the alert level for this cloth.”

“A new sample must go through the highest ‘first-contact procedure.’ That’s the rule,” Bai Li Qing said evenly. “Lowering the risk grade can happen only after a full set of tests.”

“Fair point,” Yu Sheng nodded, then got serious and reported his exchange with “Wicked Disciple 3000”: “There’s something you should know about this ‘cloth.’ Like last time, I posted it on Border. Someone named ‘Wicked Disciple 3000’ has a similar item.”

Bai Li Qing snapped her head toward him and said: “What?”

Yu Sheng didn’t hide anything. He told the director exactly what had happened that morning.

Bai Li Qing’s face rarely showed much change, but her short silence told Yu Sheng she was taking it very seriously.

“What kind of place is Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain?” Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then asked carefully: “Does the Special Affairs Bureau deal with them often?”

“They are one of the most powerful forces in Featherwing-13b. Their headquarters is at FY13b-17c-1426-3. That’s the planet ID,” Bai Li Qing said. “They themselves call the planet ‘Grand Void Spiritual Axis.’ Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain sits near the north pole of Grand Void Spiritual Axis. With Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain at the core, Grand Void Spiritual Axis controls more than a dozen resource and colony planets. They rarely step outside their own territory and don’t pay much attention to places beyond Featherwing-13b, but our Special Affairs Bureau has fairly close ties with them. Some of our out-of-border sites also trade with them.”

She paused, then added: “When we asked many friends to search for Foxy’s homeland, Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain helped a lot.”

Yu Sheng listened with his mind blown.

[It felt like being grabbed from under the blanket and shoved in front of the starry sea.]

Luckily, dealing with Foxy had already taught him how big the world was. Compared to the Cyber Immortals from Foxy’s home, what Bai Li Qing told him only stunned him for a moment. The main reason he froze was because he had thought “Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain” was just a mountain and the sect on it. Now he knew the truth:

[That is actually the name of an interstellar civilization’s capital!]