Chapter 302

Chapter 302: Interference

When Yu Sheng abruptly announced “Plan B,” Xuan Che froze, because he had no idea what “Plan B” was.

Irene wasn’t surprised—she didn’t know when a Plan B had appeared either, but she was used to Yu Sheng pulling schemes out of thin air. Foxy was even simpler. She didn’t hesitate at all. The moment Yu Sheng said “tail,” she reached back and yanked one right off her own body.

Xuan Che froze a second time.

Only after the tail came free did Foxy seem to register what she’d done. She turned to Yu Sheng, eyes wide. “Benefactor! I’m going with you!”

“Not this time.” Yu Sheng hugged the tail to his chest. “We don’t know what it’s like up there. I’m not confident either. If you come with me, the risk jumps too high.”

Foxy stared straight into his eyes. Whatever she saw there made her swallow her protest. She nodded, obedient even as it clearly pained her. “All right. Where do I launch you?”

Yu Sheng’s plan was already set. “Aim for the top of the tower. That’s where it started flickering first. If it’s opening a teleport, the ‘crack’ should be up there.”

The silver tail trembled, foxfire gathering along its fur. Yu Sheng instinctively tightened his grip around the middle—aware, in a distant corner of his mind, that he probably looked ridiculous. Then he kicked both Irenes off his shoulders.

One of them yelped as she landed. “Hey! What are you going to do up there? Open a giant door and cut the whole thing in half so it stops?”

“I haven’t figured it out yet,” Yu Sheng admitted. “I’m going up to look first. If it comes down to it, I’ll use your idea. My door slices space directly, so in theory it could stop it. Anyway—if it doesn’t work, we’ll meet on the ground in half an hour.”

Foxfire flared.

The tail in his arms burst into bright flame, and the sudden expansion hit like an explosion. Yu Sheng yelped and clung to the giant, fluffy mass as it rocketed him toward the tower.

Down on the ground, Irene shaded her eyes, watching him shoot farther and farther away. She couldn’t help blurting, “He really looks like he got fart-blasted up there.”

Then she added, almost fondly, “At least this matches the style I’m used to. The ‘not worth saving’ kind.”

Off to the side, Foxy muttered, wounded, “Benefactor didn’t take me…”

Irene snapped back, “He didn’t take me either!”

Xuan Che didn’t even seem to hear them. From the moment Foxy pulled off her tail to the moment Yu Sheng became a flying projectile, he’d been busy stabilizing his dao heart. Now his dao heart was steady again, but his worldview still hadn’t recovered. He raised a hand, pointed at Foxy, then pointed at Yu Sheng, who was nearly at the tower’s tip.

“You… him… you two…”

Irene waved him off. “You’re inexperienced.”

Xuan Che let out a long, defeated sigh. He pulled a few pills from his robe and tossed them into his mouth, muttering, “…Yes. I am inexperienced.”

Irene jumped. “Hey! Just because you’re inexperienced doesn’t mean you have to poison yourself on the spot!”

“…This is the Stomach-Strengthening Digestion Pill,” Xuan Che said with flat dignity.

Up in the sky, Yu Sheng had no idea what was happening below. All his focus was on the rapidly approaching tower.

The flickering was accelerating. The upper half had slipped almost entirely into a transparent, unreal state. Incoming artillery struck the tower’s surface and passed straight through like it was hitting a ghost.

Yu Sheng didn’t understand the mechanics, but he could feel it—like a progress bar at the end of its crawl. Still, it was a building-sized target. Even Holy Revere Hermitage’s black tech couldn’t drag something this massive away instantly. There had to be a little time left before it fully vanished.

Clinging to the tail, Yu Sheng flew through a storm of firepower. Missiles and beams shrieked past in blistering streaks. At some point, the Bureau must have noticed the… unusual figure charging in while hugging a fox tail, because the barrage around him thinned. Attacks shifted to concentrate on the lower half of the tower instead.

The tail reached the tower’s tip and began circling at close range.

Yu Sheng tugged at the fur along its side, trying to guide it. Far below, the nine-tailed fox sensed the pull and adjusted accordingly, pressing the tail close to the tower’s uppermost point—so close it felt like it was brushing something that wasn’t fully in the same dimension anymore.

The sensation was bizarre.

Even in his most unhinged dreams—or the wildest things he’d ever written—Yu Sheng had never pictured a scene like this. Riding a fox tail through gunfire to intercept a cultist nest mid-jump… Without hundreds of thousands of words of setup, the sentence itself sounded insane.

But here he was.

He reached out and tried to touch the transparent mirage.

His hand met only slightly trembling air.

So what now?

How did you stop a building that was already halfway through teleporting?

If the Special Operations Bureau had been fully prepared, they might have had some kind of warp disruptor, a gravity trap generator, something built for this exact moment. If it were Xuan Che’s homeland, perhaps those immortals had huge arrays or treasure tools that could lock down space.

Yu Sheng had none of that.

He held his hand out in the thin air, time bleeding away—and yet his mind felt strangely calm.

He closed his eyes and started to sense. To think.

Thinking pointed a direction. Sensing kept his thinking from turning into pure nonsense.

He remembered what it felt like to open a door. He reached for that feeling and tried to open one inside the tower.

Even if the tower was no longer fully “here,” it had left a shadow behind. And where there was a shadow, there was still a connection.

A door was a connection made manifest—proof that two locations had linked. As long as even a thread remained, a door could be opened.

Yu Sheng found the “doorknob.”

He started to turn it—

And then he felt something else.

A tremor in space.

The tower was disturbing time and space itself. That disturbance formed an invisible ripple. Yu Sheng didn’t understand the theory behind it, and he couldn’t map it in his head like a diagram, but he could feel one thing clearly:

The stability of that ripple was tied to the living hearts inside the tower. To their breath and blood and panic.

Well.

That was interesting.

Yu Sheng “watched” the ripple spill outward. Using the same method he used when opening doors—assignment, connection, a little theft of rules—he slipped a noise into one of its waves.

Then everything went black.

In the top-level control zone of the high tower—Pillar of Order—dozens of Holy Revere Hermitage clerics stood rigid at their consoles, waiting for the tower to escape danger.

The exposure of Holy Sanctuary was a massive accident. No one had expected the artificial saintess to fail twice in a row. No one had expected the spatial concealment system to collapse for no clear reason. And the Special Operations Bureau’s reaction speed—along with the force they deployed—was a second accident layered on top of the first.

When the two Hunter Owl aircraft appeared on the early-warning radar, the Sage ordered an emergency jump. Even so, the tower had taken a solid beating in the first bombardment wave.

Luckily, the shield and hull held. Then phase conversion kicked in, and the phasing effect allowed the Pillar of Order to avoid most of the follow-up attacks.

The violent shaking eased. Fog visuals on the monitors were replaced by warped light and shadow as the jump system activated.

They were safe.

In the Control Hall, cultists exhaled in relief. The mission had partially failed, but salvaging the organization’s vital property loosened shoulders and steadied hands. A tall, thin old man in a short white robe sat among them, expression controlled as he prepared to order inspections and repairs.

Then a series of tearing booms ripped through the tower.

The shaking that followed was worse than the bombardment—like a chain of heavy bombs detonating inside the hull. People stumbled, some falling hard as screams rose, and shrill system alarms exploded from every direction.

“Jump interference! Warning, fatal error!”

“Jump interference!”

“Phase conversion failure… navigation offline!”

“Warning, navigation offline!”

“Jump interference!”

The alarms smeared into one another, followed by piercing static. Multiple systems cascaded into failure. Technicians at the consoles screamed as if being flayed alive.

A Hermitage Order Member lurched to his feet and stared at the old man. “Sage! We’re under attack! Jump interference of unknown origin!”

“Abort the jump!” the Sage snapped, composure cracking. “Now—before the Phase Engine goes critical!”

“Aborting! All personnel, brace for impact—we’re dropping out of hyperspace!”

A final thunderous boom slammed through the hall. The violent jolt knocked nearly half the room unconscious.

Those still awake sprawled across the floor, blood running from noses and mouths. Dazed, struggling to piece their thoughts back together after the brutal spatial dislocation, they all turned toward the windows.

Beyond the thick composite portholes stretched an unfamiliar, dark starfield.

The Pillar of Order’s jump parameters had been rewritten by an unknown force.

It had been thrown into a barren region between the stars.