Chapter 313

Chapter 314: Homeward

Yu Sheng could barely describe how he felt.

After he fully took over the ship called the Pillar of Order, merging his mind with cold metal and trying to greet the vacuum as something not made of flesh, a strange mix rose inside him: endless vastness paired with sharp loneliness, yet also a quiet calm under starlight. The feelings clashed and surged together, and he could not settle for a long time.

This was nothing like when he took over the Night Valley.

He could not say why it felt different. Maybe because space was so vast, maybe because this steel body was special. Maybe both.

He did not resist any of it.

He stood in the Control Hall at the End Web, looking out at the endless deep space, and at the same time, through the ship’s own senses, he checked where he was and how he was doing. His awareness flowed through the living Giant Tower, “understanding” this new shell in a way only he could.

After who knew how long, his eyes fixed on a direction and he lifted his hand.

Like the first time he reshaped earth and stone in the Night Valley, he clumsily tested these new “limbs.”

Hidden grilles near the base and midsection of the Pillar of Order unfolded into space. Dark red lights came on. The main engines ignited, and the Giant Tower began to accelerate.

Auxiliary engines lit one by one and started trimming the ship’s course.

A few minutes later, Yu Sheng stopped and began checking other Systems.

He found many parts damaged or in poor shape. Some were wrecked when the ship fled Mistbound City and the Special Affairs Bureau hit it with heavy fire. Some were overload damage from the disrupted jump and the Phase Engine’s emergency shutdown.

The damage was already there when Yu Sheng took control, and he did not know how any of this worked, so he could not fix it now.

It looked like they would have to wait until they got back and let Special Affairs Bureau experts study it and try to repair it. After that, he could give the damaged sections another Blood Bestowal to refresh them.

His mind spun with ideas while he confirmed the ship’s readiness.

The good news was that the basics still worked. The systems used for jumping were in the worst condition, but that mattered least to Yu Sheng.

He could “make up” the missing key structures of the Phase Engine in his own way.

After testing a whole bunch of functions and thinking through many tricks, Yu Sheng drew a steady breath. He focused, fully synced with the ship, then spread his hands as if pushing open a Door.

The Phase Engine charged. Teleportation parameters formed.

With a tremor that ran through the hull and a deep rumble rolling across the decks, the floating tower turned unreal. It looked like several overlapping phantoms, far starlight piercing its huge, glassy frame. At the same time, a shaking crack opened inside the tower’s phantom, like a tearing Rift in space-time. The whole ship collapsed toward that inner crack and flipped.

At the same time, deep in the Valley.

A roar rose from the Open Ground by the Black Forest, startling a squirrel nibbling an acorn on a branch at the forest’s edge, a hunter chopping firewood, and Little Red Riding Hood, who had just gotten home from school, finished four sets of practice tests, one essay, and ten pages of classwork, and wanted to slip into the woods to find a quiet place to scroll videos in peace.

The squirrel screamed and leaped from the tree, springing onto a big rock at the forest’s edge to stare toward the sound: “Another big project? Another big project! Nobody told me!”

The hunter came out with his axe. At some distance from the Black Forest’s entrance, in the direction of the grave… the Hotel hub, a huge patch of ground was heaving and crawling.

It used to be wasteland, nothing but rocks. Now the wasteland was leveling at an amazing speed. Soil and rock “melted,” then hardened into a gray-white material, the same stuff Yu Sheng used to mold buildings. Next, the flattened ground changed again, forming a huge pit and high platforms, like a foundation for something enormous. Hard roads stretched from the edge of the reshaping ground to meet the little path that linked the Black Forest and Tong X Town.

Just then Little Red Riding Hood came out with her wolf pack, eyes wide as she stared into the distance.

The hunter rumbled: “Did Yu Sheng mention any big construction plan lately?”

“No,” said Little Red Riding Hood, just as confused, eyes round as saucers, “he just finished putting up that hub thing, the interior isn’t even done, so why build something this huge again?”

“What’s it for?” the hunter muttered.

“A giant water pit!” The squirrel bounced and hopped onto the hunter’s shoulder: “A pit this big with jumping platforms means a swimming pool. Maybe it’s for a mermaid!”

“Mermaids can’t swim,” Little Red Riding Hood said very seriously.

“Then she can sink in it,” the squirrel chirped, thrilled for no clear reason, “and you can cast lines from the platforms…”

Little Red Riding Hood opened her mouth, but another roar from the sky cut her off. She looked up, and so did the squirrel and the hunter, though the hunter had no face.

A twisted crack was widening fast in the sky. Then huge phantoms surfaced around it. In a blink, they flipped in a dizzying way and formed a floating phantom Giant Tower, hundreds of meters tall, solemn and fierce, with many secondary towers like Floating Pods circling its tip and linked to the main spire. It was eerie and magnificent.

Even the wolves by Little Red Riding Hood went slack-jawed.

The Giant Tower solidified, adjusted its posture, and slowly descended into the freshly finished foundation beside the Black Forest.

It settled into the pit with perfect precision, like two hands working in sync. The surrounding “rock” structures reshaped at once and locked the towering “building” in place.

The squirrel finally shrieked: “What is that! Hunter, do you know? Little Red Riding Hood, do you know?”

The hunter said nothing. Little Red Riding Hood, after she finally came back to herself, shook her head: “No idea, but it has to be something Yu Sheng made. Maybe to match Rapunzel’s tower to the north?”

“Rapunzel’s tower can’t fly,” the squirrel protested. “This thing flies!”

Just then, Little Red Riding Hood saw a phantom Door open near the tower.

She let out a breath. At last, something she recognized.

The Door opened, and Yu Sheng stumbled out.

Little Red Riding Hood rode a wolf over, reached him in a blink, and stepped up to steady his oddly weak and woozy body: “Hey, are you okay? What happened?”

Yu Sheng waved a hand: “Not now. Dizzy, so dizzy… urgh.”

He started dry heaving. After a long while nothing came up, which only made it worse.

The sound of it made Little Red Riding Hood queasy too, but she held fast to his arm. Almost a minute later he finally eased. He lifted his head and croaked: “Man… getting booted from a dream by Irene feels about the same. Why is a Long Distance Warp this dizzy?”

Little Red Riding Hood blinked: “Huh? What warp?”

Yu Sheng drew a long breath, forced a smile, and pointed at the ship standing next to them: “This. I brought it back from outer space. A local specialty.”

Little Red Riding Hood’s face went blank. Her senior-in-high-school brain understood the words but not the logic: “Huh? What specialty did you say?”

“I’ll explain later,” Yu Sheng said as the warp-sickness faded. He was still foggy but the buzzing in his head had stopped. He slipped his arm from her hand: “Let me pull Irene and Foxy over first.”

He felt around the air and pulled open a Phantom Door.

On the other side was the living room at 66 Wutong Road. After the Giant Tower’s Teleportation escape, Foxy, Irene, and Xuan Che had gone home. They had been waiting there.

Moments later, a few more stunned figures stood by the Black Forest.

The little doll planted her feet, craned her neck until it might snap, and stared up at the spire that pierced the clouds. After a long pause she blurted: “You actually hauled the whole tower back?!”

Yu Sheng said: “Hauled? It’s called a trophy. And I told you I’d bring back a local specialty.”

Irene was speechless: “So the local specialty from space is a spaceship?!”

Yu Sheng said: “Tell me it doesn’t make sense.”

Irene had nothing to say.

Just then Xuan Che turned, cupped his hands, and bowed with unusual sincerity: “An expert’s methods, thunder in their power.”

Yu Sheng scratched his hair, a bit embarrassed by the praise. Before he could be modest, Foxy trotted up, her tail wagging like a third-speed electric fan, eyes shining: “Our benefactor boarded the enemy vessel alone, cut down their leaders, and took their ship. Worthy of a Boarding Immortal!”

Yu Sheng: “…”