Chapter 292

Chapter 292: And He Even Brought Gifts

Yu Sheng also felt blessed.

He figured he probably wouldn’t have a bloody disaster today. Irene’s earlier “divination” was clearly unreliable.

This senior brother Xuan Che from Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain was friendly—maybe out of respect for his master, or maybe because the Anka Aila incident had scared him. Either way, he didn’t seem interested in settling old scores for being hung from a beam and whipped with a copper-headed belt. Yu Sheng finally breathed a little easier.

And while he was relieved, he also decided it was better not to ask what happened after that misunderstanding.

After a bit of small talk, Xuan Che rummaged around on his person, then pulled a delicate wooden box out of thin air and handed it to Yu Sheng.

“This is a small token of my master’s goodwill,” the talented young man said politely. “Please don’t refuse. It’s just an ordinary local specialty from Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain.”

The moment Yu Sheng saw the box, his heart jumped. He felt an unreasonable surge of excitement, like he’d stumbled into one of those scenes he’d only ever written. A gift from a cultivator. Sure, cultivators in this world had a slightly odd vibe, but judging by how refined the box looked, whatever was inside had to be impressive.

He thanked Xuan Che, took the wooden box, and opened it carefully—already imagining heavenly treasures.

Inside was a full box of pale-purple pills, beautiful and perfectly round, lying quietly in neat rows.

On the surface of each pill, faint, mysterious patterns shimmered with flowing light, brightening and dimming like slow breathing.

Yu Sheng’s eyes lit up. Two hundred thousand words of worldbuilding flashed through his mind. He looked up at Xuan Che. “This… is an immortal pill your Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain refined?”

“My master made them by hand,” Xuan Che said with a smile. “Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain has three main peaks: Spirit-Nurturing Peak, Divine Armament Peak, and Beast Taming Peak. Spirit-Nurturing Peak is the leading one, specializing in pill refining and talismans. My master is a grandmaster of that path. The elixir crafted by his own hand is famous even among the stars…”

Yu Sheng was already grinning. Foxy’s usual chaotic stews might have all kinds of weird divine powers, but they were also… visually cursed. This, at least, matched every stereotype he had of an immortal pill. He didn’t even know what it did yet, but it looked like it belonged behind glass.

The moment Xuan Che finished speaking, Yu Sheng asked eagerly, “So what do they do? For the Foundation Establishment stage? Body tempering? Boost cultivation and all that?”

“Uh…” Xuan Che hesitated. After two or three seconds, he continued carefully, “…Mainly, they taste good. This box is grape-flavored. It’s my master’s proud work.”

Yu Sheng’s expression froze. “…What?”

Two seconds later, Xuan Che added, “That’s what the export version is like. Of course, it has a few other effects too—regulating hormones, calming the mind, helping digestion, and so on. Effective for most carbon-based species. Also, forest folk are not recommended to eat it. They tend to get kidney stones.”

Yu Sheng’s face stayed frozen.

It sounded both perfectly reasonable and completely ridiculous. He couldn’t tell which part bothered him more, so he had to ask again.

“So… I have a question,” Yu Sheng said at last. “I don’t travel much, so I don’t really understand the outside world, and I’ve never been to your Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain. But based on what I understand—and what I looked up on Border Comms—you guys are all about cultivation and seeking the Dao. The purpose of elixir should be…”

He pointed at the box of grape-flavored immortal pills, eyes full of confusion. “Shouldn’t it at least boost cultivation, steady the mind, gather qi, and rebuild the bones?”

“What you’re talking about exists, but we don’t dare let outsiders eat it. We can’t get the permits,” Xuan Che said with a shrug. “Mainly the foreign food-safety permit and the general bio-ingestion distribution permit. The second one is especially hard. You have to submit a whole stack of cross-species toxicology and hazard assessment reports. Regular immortal pills from our side will never pass…”

He paused, as if searching for the simplest possible explanation. “In short: if you’re not a common local species and you haven’t had professional training, you’ll die if you eat it.”

Yu Sheng fell silent.

He suddenly remembered seeing “Alien Canned Food” on the front page of the Stellar Express app.

This world really was like that—ridiculously reasonable.

Yu Sheng let out a breath and nodded helplessly. “All right. I get it. So you specifically have an export version… no wonder it’s a local specialty.”

“It’s very famous,” Xuan Che said proudly. “Featherwing-13b is mysterious to many outsiders, so a lot of people are interested in our elixir and talismanic runes. My master is open-minded. He’s always wanted to take another step in external outreach, and he’s led many cultural-creative projects…”

So it was the flagship product of Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain’s cultural-creative line—handmade, personally produced by the local boss.

By now, Yu Sheng’s expression didn’t even twitch. He looked calm, like his mind had become still water.

For some reason, Irene got excited instead. The Little Doll scrambled onto the coffee table and pointed at Yu Sheng as she told Xuan Che, “Hey, you could bring the real, authentic immortal pills next time. This guy can eat anything. Even if he dies, you won’t have to pay…”

Xuan Che blinked. His expression froze again.

Yu Sheng, on the other hand, suddenly became generous. He leaned forward, patted the handsome young man on the shoulder, and said with deep sincerity, “First-time cross-worldview outreach is like this. Both sides get stunned by a single sentence from the other. Don’t mind her nonsense. I really like this gift.”

As he spoke, he took one pill from the wooden box and popped it into his mouth.

Honestly, it really was grape-flavored.

He stuffed one into Foxy’s mouth too as she stared at the box like a starving cat, then promptly put the rest away. He had to. With that look in Foxy’s eyes, if he blinked, the entire box would vanish.

After that, the conversation finally drifted toward the real business.

It was also the main reason Xuan Che had been sent here by his master, Four Thousand Wayward Disciples—to “meet an online friend,” and to figure out where the strange foreign object in the weird room on Yu Sheng’s second floor had come from.

Xuan Che placed another small wooden box on the coffee table.

“This is the thing elder senior uncle brought back when he traveled the world back then,” Xuan Che said. “My master found it in elder senior uncle’s treasure pavilion.”

Yu Sheng, Foxy, and Irene immediately leaned in, staring at the plain rag scrap lying in the box.

“Yeah, the patterns on the edges match,” Yu Sheng said, pulling out his phone and comparing details carefully. “The fabric itself is a bit different in material and color, but it looks like it came from the same source. And this edge has a fairly neat cut, like it was trimmed with a sharp tool. The piece I found looked more like it was torn off.”

“May I take a look at the room you mentioned?” Xuan Che asked. “This junior has some crude skill in mystical techniques and otherworldly domains. Maybe I can see something.”

Yu Sheng stood at once. “Of course. It’s upstairs. I’ll take you.”

He casually picked up an Irene and set her on his shoulder, then brought Foxy and Xuan Che upstairs.

They soon reached the strange room at the end of the second-floor hallway.

“This is the room,” Yu Sheng said, pointing at the door. “It’s always been a bit weird. Sometimes scenery shows up inside that doesn’t belong to this world. This door is weird too—the first time I opened it, it took a ton of effort…”

Xuan Che’s mouth twitched.

A bit weird?

Most of this whole house didn’t feel right.

But he was here on his master’s orders. He steadied himself, quietly added a few protective spells to his body, crushed an elixir in his palm and refined it, then followed behind Yu Sheng and stepped into the room as the door opened.

To the naked eye, it looked completely ordinary. Plain and normal, like every other room inside Wu Tong Road 66.

But the instant he crossed the threshold, Xuan Che felt a subtle wrongness.

Unlike the rest of the house, this wrongness wasn’t about warped distance or twisted direction. The room itself simply felt… off.

The most off thing was the mirror on the wall opposite them.

Yu Sheng noticed Xuan Che’s gaze go straight to it and raised an eyebrow. “Looks like you felt something?”

“This mirror is a little strange,” Xuan Che said, walking up and carefully touching the surface. “But… this junior can’t quite say what it is.”

“It definitely has a problem, but right now it’s in a closed state,” Yu Sheng said. “When it opens, it reflects scenery from somewhere else—sometimes ruins wrapped in black fog, sometimes a cave where wind and snow howl.”

He tapped the frame lightly. “In the second case, snow actually drifts through this whole room.”

He hesitated, searching for words. “And sometimes I feel like this room is being torn in half. Not physically torn in half, but… it’s like the whole room is in two places at once. Inside the room you can see with your eyes, there’s also an overlapping other side you can’t see.”

Xuan Che thought for a moment. “…Like it’s stuck between two worlds?”