Chapter 291
Chapter 291: Polite Xuan Che
This door opening hit the people involved hard—whether you were outside the door or inside it, you were stunned all the same.
In fact, the handsome young man outside reacted even more strongly. After the first shock, his expression turned downright colorful, like his life was flashing before his eyes. It was obvious he’d fallen into memories, and they weren’t good ones: a beam, a copper-headed belt, spinning like a top, a head stuck in a pill furnace… that sort of thing.
Once the young man across the threshold started flashing back, Yu Sheng started flashing back too.
The scenes were basically the same, except Yu Sheng was watching from a third-person angle.
Then they both snapped back at the same time and, in perfect sync, each took half a step back. They stared across the open doorway with grave faces, trying to sort out their thoughts.
To be honest, Yu Sheng had the urge to close the door. Even though Four Thousand Wayward Disciples had said he’d send someone to visit—and Yu Sheng had pictured all kinds of ridiculous possibilities—having this “senior brother” show up at his doorstep first thing in the morning was still beyond anything he’d prepared for.
The urge only lasted a second, though. With immense responsibility, iron will, a calm attitude toward life, and complete fearlessness, he managed to hold back.
Mostly the fearlessness.
But what happened next didn’t match what he expected at all.
The handsome young man finally seemed to reach some understanding—though who knew what he’d actually understood. He took another half-step back, then suddenly clasped his hands, bowed, and performed a deep salute that left Yu Sheng stunned.
“This junior, Xuan Che, disciple of Immortal Yuan Ling of Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain, pays his respects… um, pays his respects to the expert.”
He clearly hesitated over how to address Yu Sheng, as if unsure what title to use. In the end, he settled on “expert”—simple and direct, and somehow still a little weird.
Yu Sheng’s reaction was simpler. He just stood there, stunned.
Luckily, someone nearby had already reacted. Irene—probably the lotus-root one—poked Yu Sheng’s calf and whispered, “Hey, hey, hey—he doesn’t seem murderous!”
“Oh. Ohhh.” Yu Sheng snapped out of it. His thoughts raced, but his mouth was already responding. “Xuan Che, right? I’ve heard your name from your master. Uh… come in first. Let’s talk inside.”
Only then did he notice the two people still standing outside—the two Special Operations Bureau agents manning the courier station. They were staring at the scene, curious and confused, like they sensed something off but didn’t dare step forward to ask.
Yu Sheng waved at them too. “…You want to come in and sit for a bit?”
One agent waved frantically. “No, no, no. We’ve got things to do.”
“Uh, right. Our instant noodles are ready…”
With that, the two agents hurried off.
Irene poked Yu Sheng’s calf again. “Does the Special Operations Bureau dock their meal allowance or something? Why are those two always eating instant noodles in there?”
“How would I know!” Yu Sheng shot back, then forced his face into something that almost looked like a smile as he ushered the ridiculously handsome guy who called himself Xuan Che into the house.
The whole atmosphere was weird, but at least the guest came inside.
And then Yu Sheng realized something else—Xuan Che looked even more nervous than he did.
Xuan Che truly was nervous. The moment he stepped through the door, he knew his polite attitude earlier had been the right call.
A world unto itself.
Just beyond a doorway that looked completely ordinary, the home inside was a separate, independent domain. His divine sense—which normally could cover forests and cities, and pierce illusion arts—was cut off from the outside world here. Even the spiritual energy he sensed seemed to circulate in its own closed loop within this little house.
And that wasn’t even the strangest part.
This place was full of eerie wrongness. Some doors looked close enough to touch, but when he closed his eyes to sense them, they felt as distant as a horizon he could never reach. The living room looked like a small space, yet in a blink he felt as if he were standing in an endless wilderness, with no boundaries in any direction.
To be blunt, the atmosphere reminded him of an otherworld. But the completeness and independence of this otherworld felt wrong—too perfect, too sealed. What unsettled him even more was something deeper, something he couldn’t name.
He vaguely sensed that this visible cave dwelling wasn’t the whole thing. Everything in front of him felt like nothing more than a tentacle—an outward projection of something vastly larger, shown to his mortal eyes in a form they could endure. Beneath it all, a huge structure he couldn’t understand was hiding right under his nose.
A warning from his master echoed in his mind.
“Xuan Che, your talent is outstanding, but your cultivation is still shallow. When you reach the expert’s place, don’t listen, and don’t look around.”
He jolted. Eyes on nose, nose on mouth, mouth on heart—he pulled his focus inward and became even more cautious.
Yu Sheng brought two cans of soda from the fridge and set them on the coffee table.
“This is all I’ve got,” he said, putting one in front of Xuan Che. His expression turned a little awkward. “Uh… to host a cultivator like you, I should probably have tea or something, right? Do you guys usually not drink this kind of—”
Before he could finish, Xuan Che thanked him, popped the tab with practiced ease, and took a big gulp. His face immediately lit up.
“My master usually doesn’t let us drink much of this,” Xuan Che said. With Yu Sheng being friendly, he relaxed a little too. “He says this kind of thing affects alchemical work.”
Yu Sheng blinked. “Soda can affect ballistics?”
“It’s alchemy,” Xuan Che said quickly. “It affects pill-making. You can’t drink it before going into the pill room.”
Yu Sheng stared. “…Why?”
“Because it makes you burp,” Xuan Che said solemnly. “At a critical moment, your hands slip and the operation deforms. This junior thinks it doesn’t matter that much, but since it’s my master’s teaching, you still have to listen when you’re refining pills.”
Yu Sheng hadn’t expected such an absurdly practical reason, but the moment he heard it, the tension in the room finally eased.
Once it did, he dared to bring up a certain awkward past event. “Ahem. So… sorry about that—the last time, with the pill furnace, it was my mistake. I really didn’t expect we’d meet again like this…”
Before he could finish, he saw Xuan Che’s face twitch slightly.
Like the memory of the copper-headed belt still hadn’t faded.
But Xuan Che quickly smoothed his expression. “You’re too kind. An expert like you must act for the greater good of all living beings. How could I, as a junior, take offense…”
He really shouldn’t have said that. It only made Yu Sheng more awkward.
“Stop calling yourself junior, junior. I’m not even sure I’m older than you,” Yu Sheng said, trying to steer the conversation away. “Let’s just treat each other as equals, as equals…”
He honestly felt like he was the one getting a bargain, since the guy across from him was a cultivator. Xuan Che looked like he was in his twenties, but who knew how old he really was?
But Xuan Che took it seriously. “How could that be? You and my master are friends. In front of you, I must observe the etiquette of a junior.”
“Then let’s each go by our own. I’ll call you Xuan Che, and you call me Yu Sheng,” Yu Sheng said quickly. Before the other man could argue, he raised a hand and started introducing. “This next to me is Irene. This one is Irene too. The one squatting on the windowsill and the one sprawled on the TV cabinet are also Irene. It’s her… ‘clone technique.’”
Xuan Che had noticed the pile of Irenes earlier, but he clearly hadn’t dared to ask. Now he hurriedly greeted the Little Doll with careful politeness.
Just then, footsteps came from the stairs. Foxy yawned as she came down from the second floor. Halfway down, she saw a stranger in the living room and widened her eyes, looking at Yu Sheng.
“Benefactor, we have a guest?”
“Yeah. A guest from Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain—the Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain that helped investigate your background,” Yu Sheng said, standing again to introduce him. “This is Xuan Che. He’s a disciple of Immortal Yuan Ling. This is Foxy. You should know her…”
“I do, I do,” Xuan Che said with a smile. He raised his hands to Foxy in greeting. “Xuan Che of Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain pays respects to the otherworldly immortal elder…”
“Why are you so polite to everyone?” Yu Sheng finally couldn’t hold it in. “Relax a little.”
Xuan Che could only smile bitterly inside. What choice did he have?
There wasn’t a single thing in this house he could see through.
Even the little mechanical dolls—smaller than a medicine jar—were, in his divine sense, masses of bottomless, icy black fog. Foxy, coming down the stairs, was a blazing molten sun he couldn’t look at directly with divine sense. And as for Yu Sheng…
Yu Sheng was even more outrageous.
Xuan Che could see him with his eyes, but when divine sense swept over him, it was a black hole. A human-shaped black hole, like someone had carved a piece straight out of the world and left an absence standing in its place. Lifeless and deathless at once. There was definitely something inside it, but he couldn’t perceive it at all.
And this black hole was chatting with him, offering him soda, telling him to relax.
Xuan Che suppressed his divine sense again and tried not to look at what these humanoids might be behind their masks. But that wasn’t easy. As the most talented young disciple of Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain of his generation, he’d long gotten used to keeping his divine sense extended at all times.
The only lucky thing was that these beings were genuinely friendly.
Just as his master had judged before he left—
Anyone who could face dark angels and defeat them could not possibly be human.
But they were clearly on humanity’s side.
A blessing.