Chapter 293

Chapter 293: Xuan Che’s Elder Senior Uncle Was Something Else

Stuck between two worlds?

When Yu Sheng heard that, his mind stirred at once. “Yes! That’s exactly it!”

Then he immediately caught himself. “Wait—you know what this is?!”

“I’ve never seen it,” Xuan Che said, shaking his head. “But I’ve heard my elder senior uncle talk about strange things he saw while traveling in his early years. One story made me think of what’s happening in your room.”

Yu Sheng perked up. “Tell me.”

Xuan Che recalled it and spoke slowly. “Elder senior uncle said that when he was young and seeking the Dao, he traveled among the stars. Because his celestial ship malfunctioned, he mistakenly arrived at an unnamed barren star. That planet wasn’t on any navigation chart. There were no beacons or stations set up by any civilization nearby, but the space around it was filled with strange howling—outsiders called it electromagnetic screeching.”

“To repair the ship, elder senior uncle had no choice but to make an emergency landing,” Xuan Che continued, “and he encountered many truly bizarre phenomena.”

“He said there was no life on the planet’s surface, but countless black megaliths stood there. Each one was thousands of zhang tall and hundreds of zhang wide—like mountain-high steles—arranged in neat rows across the ground. Between the stones were dry river valleys and cliffs, with stone pillars of all sizes lying toppled. Whether the steles or the fallen pillars, they were clearly man-made…”

“He landed on top of one of the giant steles,” Xuan Che said. “The landing site was on the planet’s dark side. On the second day, he saw a sun rise off the ship’s port side, golden-red and as large as a cartwheel. But on the third day, he saw… another sun.”

“What the hell? Another sun?” Yu Sheng had been listening intently, but now he froze. “Be clear—did an extra sun appear in the sky, or… was it replaced?”

“It was replaced,” Xuan Che said. “This one was orange-red, about the size of a fist. It rose from the same direction, hung in the sky all day, and because it wasn’t as bright as the previous day’s sun, the whole world looked dim and gloomy.”

“Then on the fourth day, the golden-red, cartwheel-sized sun rose again,” Xuan Che said. “And so it went, repeating in a cycle.”

Yu Sheng stared, jaw hanging open. A man who cultivated immortality was telling him a story that felt like it belonged in a cosmic horror novel, but Yu Sheng didn’t have the spare brainpower to care. All his attention was on the two clearly abnormal suns.

“Let me confirm something first,” he said at last. “How many suns were actually around that planet?”

“Just one,” Xuan Che answered quickly, as if he’d expected the question. “Based on elder senior uncle’s observations before the emergency landing, the golden-red sun was the one you could normally see from the surface.”

“Then the other little orange sun was…”

“It was real too, but it existed in the world on the other side,” Xuan Che said. “Elder senior uncle stayed there for a long time afterward, trying to unravel it. His final guess was that the planet beneath his feet existed in two worlds at the same time, orbiting two suns at once. The two suns overlapped at the same coordinates, each in its own world.”

“From outside the orbit, you could only see the sun on our side,” Xuan Che said. “But on the surface, the sky would alternate day by day between the skies of the two worlds…”

Yu Sheng listened in a daze. After a long moment, he nodded at Xuan Che with a complicated expression. “…Your elder senior uncle was really something.”

“I admire elder senior uncle greatly,” Xuan Che said with a smile, then looked awkward. “But my master has quite a few complaints about elder senior uncle always traveling and ignoring sect affairs. Please don’t tell my master I said that.”

Yu Sheng’s mouth twitched. He forced himself back onto the main point. “That barren star you mentioned—where exactly was it? Did your elder senior uncle ever go back to explore it?”

“Sadly, after elder senior uncle left, that planet and the sun it orbited seemed to vanish. No one could find them again,” Xuan Che said, sighing. “He returned several times using the old coordinates recorded by the celestial ship, but only found a few cold clouds of dust at the spot. He suspected the planet had completely fallen to the other side, and the sun went with it—dropping into another world.”

He paused. “Of course, it’s also possible the ship recorded the coordinates wrong, since it was malfunctioning then. If that’s the case, the planet might still be out there, though the hope is slim.”

Yu Sheng didn’t speak for a while. He walked to the mirror and brushed his fingers over the cold surface.

Xuan Che’s story was bizarre enough—a planet running in two worlds, suns switching day by day. It sounded unrelated to this small room, yet in the fine details, they shared a troubling common point.

Existing in two worlds at once.

…Was it really only two worlds?

Yu Sheng frowned.

The mirror hadn’t only shown that snowy cave. It had also shown ruins wrapped in black fog—and a dead blond doll, shattered and sprawled among broken walls.

If every scene reflected in the mirror represented a location overlapping with this room…

Then this room might be even more insane than the barren star Xuan Che’s elder senior uncle had found.

Yu Sheng’s imagination ran wild. After a long moment, he forced it back into a cage.

When he looked up, Xuan Che was still studying the wall around the mirror, touching here and there. Now and then he pulled out a talisman, murmured a few words, and the talisman lit up and vanished in his hand. Brief ripples spread through the air as if he were testing something.

Irene and Foxy stood not far away—between the two of them, they probably didn’t add up to an elementary-school diploma—whispering and guessing what Xuan Che was doing.

The Little Doll poked the fox’s tail. “Hey, look, look—this is what cultivation is supposed to look like. See the vibe? Sure, it’s still not totally right, but it’s way more normal than you.”

“I—I know this too!” Foxy was curious, but stubborn. “Back then we didn’t use these traditional talismans anymore. We just cast spells without talismans…”

“Sounds soulless.”

Foxy never won against Irene, so she started smacking Irene’s head with her tail—thwap-thwap-thwap.

Xuan Che couldn’t help glancing back at the doll and the nine-tailed fox roughhousing. Then he turned and walked up to Yu Sheng.

“I inspected every part of this room carefully,” Xuan Che said. “I found many things that don’t make sense, but as you said, they’re all closed. Can this rift open on its own?”

“No,” Yu Sheng said, shaking his head. “At least, I haven’t found a way to control it.”

“Then we can only wait for fate,” Xuan Che said, sighing. “We’ll have to wait until it opens again. In its current state, there’s not much more I can tell.”

“No problem,” Yu Sheng said with a smile. “The story you told just now already gave me a lot of insight. Let’s go back to the living room. I still want to hear you talk about Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain.”

“Of course.”

They left the strange room at the end of the second-floor hallway. Yu Sheng walked last. Before he followed, he made sure the door was properly shut, and only then did he relax.

They hadn’t gone far when his gaze dropped to Irene, hustling along on her short little legs right by his feet.

“Wait—I just remembered something!”

Several gazes snapped toward him at once.

Yu Sheng looked at the Irene who’d lifted her head, then at Xuan Che walking beside him.

Irene Pro Max lacked a way to replenish energy. Foxy, who’d grown up in a cyber-cultivation society as a student, didn’t understand the ancient method of cultivation at all. But right now, a standard old-school cultivator was standing right in front of him.

Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain might not be as fully cyber as Foxy’s world, but it was still a major force with a complete knowledge system. Maybe they had a way to solve Irene’s battery problem.

With that thought, Yu Sheng gathered his words and looked at Xuan Che seriously. “Let me ask you something first—you cultivators have that thing where you absorb heaven-and-earth spiritual energy, right?”

“Of course,” Xuan Che said at once. “That’s the foundation of cultivation.”

“Can it be taught outside the sect?” Yu Sheng asked. Then he hurried to add, “I mean the most basic kind…”

“Even the non-basic ones can be taught, as long as you can pass the relevant license exam,” Xuan Che said matter-of-factly. “The basic ones are even easier. Every sect recruits students every year. Anyone who reaches enrollment age has to sign up—not signing up is illegal.”

“Uh… even outsiders can learn?”

“Sure. Register and pay tuition. How far you get depends on your talent. In my memory, Ji Pu Luo exchange students have the best talent.”

Yu Sheng stared, then slapped a hand to his forehead.

So Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain hadn’t reached the insane heights of Foxy’s homeland—but it was clearly walking down almost the same road.

He cleared his throat, pointed at Irene, and said, “So here’s the thing. She might need your ‘absorb heaven-and-earth spiritual energy’ technique…”