Chapter 290

Chapter 291: The Polite Xuan Che

The sudden opening of the door hit both people hard. Whether outside the door or inside it, each was stunned for a moment.

The young man outside took it even harder. After the first shock, his face went through a whole slideshow of expressions. His life flashed before his eyes, and the memories were not pleasant: roof beams, the Copper Headed Belt, spinning like a top, a head inside an alchemy furnace.

As the person beyond the door fell into memory, Yu Sheng did too. His scenes were about the same, only he watched them from a third-person view.

They both snapped back at the same time and, with unspoken agreement, each took half a step back. They stood on either side of the door, serious-faced, sorting out their thoughts.

Yu Sheng did have the urge to shut the door right then. When Wicked Disciple 4000 said someone would come to visit, he had thought about many wild possibilities, but the eldest senior brother showing up at his front door first thing in the morning went beyond his mental prep. The urge lasted only a second, and he held it down with a mighty sense of duty, a stubborn will, a calm attitude toward life, and a total lack of fear of death. [Mostly the lack of fear of death.]

Things then went very differently from what he expected.

The handsome youth outside finally seemed to understand something, though it was hard to tell what. He stepped back a bit more, then lifted his hands, bowed, and offered a deep salute that left Yu Sheng blank all over again: “As a junior, I, Xuan Che, disciple of Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain under Immortal Yuan Ling, greet the… uh, greet the expert.”

He clearly got stuck on what to call Yu Sheng and settled on “expert,” a simple, straightforward, slightly odd choice.

Yu Sheng kept staring, still a little lost.

Thankfully, someone nearby recovered first. Irene, probably the one with the segmented lotus-root body, saw what was going on, poked Yu Sheng’s calf, and whispered: “Hey, I don’t feel any killing intent.”

He blinked and came back to himself: “Guest. Right. Xuan Che, yes? Your master mentioned that name. Well then, come in. Come in and talk.”

He also saw two more people standing outside the door, the two Special Affairs Bureau agents from the parcel station. The pair were staring with polite curiosity, sensing that something felt off but not daring to ask. Yu Sheng waved: “Do you want to come sit for a bit too?”

One agent waved both hands at once: “No, no, we still have work.”

The other added on the way out: “Yeah, our instant noodles are ready.”

They jogged off.

Irene poked Yu Sheng’s calf again and muttered: “Is the Special Affairs Bureau cutting their meal allowance? Why are those two always eating instant noodles?”

He answered under his breath: “How would I know,” then kept his polite smile and ushered the self-proclaimed Xuan Che inside.

The mood stayed a little strange, but at least the guest was in the house.

Yu Sheng soon noticed that this “Xuan Che” looked even more nervous than he was.

Xuan Che was nervous. The moment he stepped inside, he knew his polite attitude had been the right call.

A world unto itself.

Separated by what looked like an ordinary door, the space within was a self-contained domain. The divine sense he usually used to cover mountains and cities and to pierce illusion arts was cut off from the outside. Even the heaven and earth spirit energy he felt seemed to move here on its own, as if the small little house had its own circuit. Stranger still was the eerie air in every corner. Some doors looked close, but felt far as the sky when he shut his eyes. The hall looked small, but when he blinked, he felt he was standing in an endless plain, with no edge in any direction.

To be honest, the atmosphere reminded him of the Otherworld, but the completeness and independence here were not quite right. What bothered him more was something deeper.

He sensed that the visible cave residence was not all there was. Everything before his eyes seemed like the “tip” put forth by something much larger, a feeler stretching into the sight of his mortal eyes. There were greater structures, ones he could not understand, hidden right under his nose.

His master’s final warning before he left rang in his mind: “Xuan Che, you are gifted, but your cultivation is still shallow. When you reach the expert’s place, do not listen or watch carelessly.”

He jolted, lowered his gaze, settled his breath, and turned inward. His whole mind drew back, and he grew even more careful.

Yu Sheng set two cold cans of cola on the coffee table: “I only have these. I feel like I should serve tea to a ‘cultivator.’ Do you even drink this?”

Before he finished, the youth said thanks, pulled the tab with practiced ease, took a long sip, and showed a look of pure enjoyment.

“Master usually doesn’t let us drink much of this,” Xuan Che said, now quite steady. Seeing Yu Sheng so friendly, he also relaxed. “He says this kind of thing affects the pill path.”

Yu Sheng blinked: “Affects ballistics?”

“Pill path,” Xuan Che explained quickly. “It affects refining elixirs. You can’t drink before entering the pill room.”

Yu Sheng asked: “Why?”

“Because it makes you burp,” Xuan Che said, very serious. “Your hands might twitch at a key moment. I don’t think it matters much, but since it’s Master’s rule, we follow it when we do pill refining.”

The reason was so down to earth that the air in the room eased at once.

Once it did, Yu Sheng finally felt okay bringing up the awkward past: “Ahem, sorry about last time, with the alchemy furnace. Something went wrong on my side. I really didn’t think we’d meet again like this.”

The young man’s cheek twitched a bit, as if the Copper Headed Belt still haunted him.

But he steadied quickly: “You speak too heavily. Someone like you, an expert, must act for the sake of the people. As a junior, how could I hold that against you?”

That only made Yu Sheng feel more embarrassed.

“Don’t call yourself a junior,” he said, trying to shift the topic. “I might not be older than you. Let’s speak as equals, equals.”

To be honest, he felt like he was getting the better deal. The other was a cultivator. He looked a little over twenty, but who knew how old this old sir really was.

The “youth” was stubborn about it: “How can that be? You are a friend to my master. In front of you, I must behave as a junior.”

“Let’s each keep what we like,” Yu Sheng said fast. “I’ll call you Xuan Che, and you call me Yu Sheng.” Without waiting for a reply, he gestured around the room. “This is Irene. That one is also Irene. The one squatting on the windowsill and the one lying on the TV stand are both Irene too. These are her Clone Technique.”

Xuan Che had noticed the many Irenes earlier but had been too polite to ask. Now he bowed to the little dolls one by one. Just then footsteps came from the stairs. Foxy yawned her way down from the second floor. Halfway, she saw a stranger in the house, opened her eyes a little wider, and asked Yu Sheng: “Benefactor, do we have a guest?”

“Yes, a guest from Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain, the same Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain that helped look into your past,” Yu Sheng said, rising to introduce them. “His name is Xuan Che, a disciple of Immortal Yuan Ling. This is Foxy. You should know who she is.”

“I do, I do,” Xuan Che said with a smile, lifting his hands to salute Foxy. “Xuan Che of Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain greets the Immortal Elder from another world.”

“You’re this polite to everyone?” Yu Sheng finally could not help himself. “Relax a little.”

Hearing this, Xuan Che could only smile wryly in his heart. [How can I relax? I can’t see through anyone in this house.] Even those little automatons, smaller than a medicine jar, were clumps of cold, fathomless black mist in his divine sense. Foxy was a blaze of molten fire that he could not watch with divine sense at all. As for Yu Sheng, this expert was the strangest of all.

He could not “see” him.

His eyes could see him, but when his divine sense swept over, there was only a human-shaped black hole, as if a piece had been cut out of the world itself. A black hole with no life and no death stood there. There was certainly something inside it, but he could not see what.

And that black hole was chatting and laughing with him, telling him to relax.

He suppressed his divine sense again, doing his best not to “see” the true shapes behind these personlike beings. It was not easy. As the most gifted disciple of his generation at Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain, keeping his divine sense projection active had become a habit.

One piece of luck remained. These “personlike” beings were all friendly.

Just as his master had judged before he set out: anyone who could face the Dark Angels and win could not be human.

But they clearly stood on the side of humans.

[How lucky.]