Chapter 338

Chapter 338: Preparing for a Long Trip

Xuan Che’s Elder Senior Uncle was quite a character.

Before, Yu Sheng had only heard the man’s legendary exploits and already thought that. Now that he’d heard achievements from a completely different direction, the man somehow became even more legendary.

And with that feeling came a bold idea.

Yu Sheng glanced at Irene and said casually, “Want to take a trip?”

Irene didn’t react at first. Then, two seconds later, she understood what he meant, and her eyes lit up like fireworks. “Yes! That’s awesome!”

Yu Sheng turned to Xuan Che. “I want to meet your Elder Senior Uncle. Mainly, I want to talk to him face-to-face about the strange incidents he ran into—the ‘great void’ with no beacons, that ‘strange ship’ you just mentioned, and that fragment he got early on that seems to share the same source as the scrap of cloth I found.”

His tone hardened slightly. “And I’m also concerned about what those Hermitage Order cultists were doing on your side back then. Can you arrange this?”

Xuan Che froze, then looked pleasantly surprised. “You want to go with me to the Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain? That… that would be excellent!”

He straightened, as if already preparing to deliver the news. “My Master also very much wishes to speak with you in person, but considering you were stationed in the borderland, resisting angel and suppressing otherworld, he did not dare invite you rashly…”

Yu Sheng blinked, then laughed. “Stationed? The ones stationed in the borderland are Bai Li Qing and the Special Operations Bureau. I just happened to help them out a bit.”

He gestured vaguely. “And I opened this ‘Hotel’ in the first place because I wanted to run around and find things to do. There’s nothing tying me down.”

Xuan Che blinked, realizing his earlier assumption might have been off, but he recovered quickly. “All right. Then I’ll return and report to my Master. Tomorrow you’ll depart with me?”

He hesitated, then added, “From the borderland to the Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain, even the fastest shuttle along a jump route takes about three days…”

Yu Sheng waved his hand the instant he heard that. “Why bother? I can just open a door and go, can’t I?”

Xuan Che sat there and stared at him.

Some vivid memories surfaced in his eyes: a pill refining furnace, a roof beam, a copper headed belt… and then another copper headed belt.

Yu Sheng had never seen such fast, complex expression changes on a human face. In one second, Xuan Che cycled through trauma, caution, curiosity, and something that looked dangerously like reluctant anticipation.

“Last time was mostly an accident,” Yu Sheng said, awkwardly rubbing the tip of his nose. “This time, tell your Master in advance.”

Xuan Che took a breath like a man bracing for an incoming storm, then nodded solemnly. “All right.”

“So when do we leave?” Yu Sheng pressed immediately.

“…Tomorrow,” Xuan Che said after thinking. “Besides informing my Master, I also need to pack my luggage, and refund my shuttle ticket.”

“Okay. Tomorrow it is,” Yu Sheng said. “Once you’re packed, just come to my place. We’ll leave from there.”

Not long after, Xuan Che took his leave.

The moment the door closed, Irene climbed onto the windowsill facing the street, peeked out as if checking whether the trip could escape without her, then jumped down and ran to Yu Sheng, glowing with excitement.

“Hey, hey! Are we really going? Really going to the Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain? We’re going on a long trip!”

“If you want to buy new clothes, just say so,” Yu Sheng said, lifting the Little Doll as she zipped around him like a rocket and placing her on the sofa. “Also, for a ‘long trip’… it’s one door. Do you really need to be this excited?”

“Benefactor,” Foxy said, walking over with a thoughtful look. “Do you think we should bring gifts?”

Yu Sheng considered that. “Do you still have those iron lumps?”

“Yes!” Foxy nodded quickly. “Several pieces!”

“Then that’s fine,” Yu Sheng said. “It doesn’t need to be big. Take the standard block we usually give the Special Operations Bureau and cut it in half. It can be refined directly into an artifact spirit. It’ll be valuable on their side.”

Foxy nodded, then stretched both hands toward Yu Sheng with a sweet, shameless smile—begging for sweets.

Yu Sheng laughed, rubbed her ears, and pulled out a few “immortal spirit pill,” dropping them into her hands. Foxy crunched them like candy, rocking happily on the sofa.

“This trip,” Yu Sheng said, sitting down, “besides meeting that ‘character’ and learning about the Hermitage Order’s activities over there, is mainly about seeing more of the world. After staying in the borderland for so long, I’m getting curious what the ‘outside’ really looks like.”

“Me too!” Irene raised her hand. “I’m suffocating staying here all day! Boundary City has to maintain that baseline state everywhere. It’s such a hassle for me to even go out. A cultivation place like Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain isn’t going to have never seen a ‘doll,’ right?”

Foxy chewed her candy and swayed back and forth. “Over there, I can let my tail out. I heard Xuan Che say there are spirit fox there too. We’re a minority ethnic group…”

Only Luna stayed silent.

Yu Sheng looked at the “artificial saintess” and saw her lips moving slightly, as if she were sorting vocabulary like a system trying to load a language pack. So he spoke first.

“Going there won’t affect you coming back to farm,” he said. “I can open a door for you whenever you need it.”

Luna nodded immediately. “Mm, right.”

Right now, those two words were the ones she spoke most fluently. Her second-most fluent habit was calling Irene “shorty.”

Just as the living room buzzed with trip talk, footsteps sounded again from the stairs leading up from the basement.

Yu Sheng looked up and saw Little Red Riding Hood coming up from below.

There was a teleportation door in the basement that led directly to the valley, so it wasn’t unusual for a child from “fairy tale” to crawl out from there now and then. Yu Sheng had grown used to it.

But today, Little Red Riding Hood’s mental state was something else. An eighteen-year-old girl somehow moved with the tottering exhaustion of an eighty-year-old. Her expression held dead-eyed despair. The moment she reached the living room, she let out a sigh so heavy it felt heavier than even Rebar Irene.

“What long trip were you just talking about?” she asked bleakly. “Where are you going? How far?”

Yu Sheng hurried over. “Yeah, we’re going out for a bit—to the Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain. But what’s with you…?”

Little Red Riding Hood lifted her head, hopeless. “I want to live on a different planet…”

Yu Sheng stopped dead.

In his mind, the high-definition dark history recorded on his mobile phone began replaying itself.

He understood immediately.

Rapunzel, who always got carried away the moment she caught a little sunlight, had definitely shown off too hard and gotten exposed.

The next second, Little Red Riding Hood flung herself onto the sofa, buried her face in Foxy’s tail, and wailed muffledly, “Ah—I’m never drinking that stuff again!”

Irene stared, stunned. She tiptoed over and tugged Yu Sheng’s pant leg. “What happened to her?”

Yu Sheng kept a perfectly straight face, solemn and holy. “Growing pains.”

Foxy startled for a moment, then recovered. She gently pulled Little Red Riding Hood out of her tail, patted her back, hesitated, then pulled out a chicken leg and offered it.

“Do you want a chicken leg?”

Irene gaped. It was the first time she had ever seen Foxy share food with anyone besides Yu Sheng. “What’s going on now?!”

Yu Sheng stayed solemn. “Friendship among fox buddies.”

Little Red Riding Hood whipped her head around, face full of grief and outrage. “Forget it! Forget that!”

But as Yu Sheng watched her—so upset she looked close to tears—he suddenly laughed.

Something had changed.

After her eighteenth birthday, Little Red Riding Hood, who had been a lord for more than ten years, seemed to have finally become a child again. Even if that child’s anger would vanish soon, even if she would tuck it away again with forced seriousness… letting herself relax here, even for a moment, was a good thing.

Of course, another important reason Yu Sheng laughed was that the videos and photos he’d recorded had replayed in his head again, and he couldn’t help it.

At once, another bold idea rose up.

Irene, as if she had a spider sense for trouble, snapped her head around. “What are you planning now?”

Yu Sheng coughed. “I haven’t even said anything yet.”

“My spiritual intuition is already twitching!” Irene declared.

Yu Sheng scratched his hair, hesitating. Then he said, “So… what if we take this chance, and after we get settled at Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain, we try moving Wu Tong Road 66 over there too?”

Irene went completely still. After a long moment, she forced out, “Where did this come from all of a sudden?! You really mean it like ‘let Little Red Riding Hood live on a different planet,’ huh?”

“That’s not it,” Yu Sheng said quickly. “I’m thinking that since we’re going far anyway, we can update the coordinates for opening doors. And it’s a good chance to test whether Wu Tong Road 66 can be ‘moved’ as a whole the way I think it can.”

He leaned back. “Before, I only tested the house’s transfer ability in Mistbound City. But Mistbound City is an otherworld. The real universe is different.”

His tone turned practical. “We might not stay there for a short time. If we move the house over, it saves trouble. Living in our own home is more convenient than staying in someone else’s place. And if Luna wants to go back to the valley to farm, I won’t have to open a door for her every time.”

Irene stared at him for another long beat.

Then, slowly, wonder spread across her face. “Yu Sheng… you’re a genius.”