Chapter 341
Chapter 341: A Slip of the Hand
After watching Yu Sheng vanish into a door that appeared out of thin air, Zheng Zhi stood in the open ground and kept staring at the spot where it had been, dazed.
Li Lin laughed when he saw his face. “Surprised? You’ll be even more surprised later. They say once Wu Tong Road 66 transfers away, the whole spatial structure here will instantly ‘smooth out.’ See the houses around us? They’ll connect up afterward… Wait.”
He paused, alarm flickering across his expression. “You can’t see Wu Tong Road 66, can you?”
Zheng Zhi hurriedly waved his hands. “No, not that. I’m just curious how Brother Yu’s door appears.”
“Oh, good. You scared me.” Li Lin finally relaxed. “Even the Director can’t see that house. If you could… with your symptoms, you’d have to go find Dr. Lin and get your brain cut.”
Zheng Zhi blinked. “Who’s Dr. Lin?”
“An anomaly doctor working with the bureau. Lives nearby. Good at autopsies and cutting people’s brains—’cutting brains’ is just what we call it. It’s really a minor operation, and afterward you get extra psychic resistance.” Li Lin said it casually, then added, “Still, don’t think about it. That’s the last resort. After it, you won’t see weird stuff anymore, but you’ll drool when you try to do addition and subtraction under ten.”
Zheng Zhi shuddered and immediately decided he didn’t need to know anything else.
Even so, he couldn’t help looking again at the open ground.
A massive, nearly transparent shadow stood there silently, like a behemoth crouched on the earth, facing him without a sound. It was so faint you couldn’t make out its outline unless you stared straight at it.
Zheng Zhi decided this didn’t count as “seeing.” He really, really didn’t want to go find an anomaly doctor to get his brain cut.
“All right.” Li Lin patted him on the shoulder. “Go back inside and get familiar with the operation manuals. I’m going to the corner supermarket to buy a few things. Wu Tong Road 66 is gone. There probably won’t be anything happening here for a while.”
He started to leave, then threw one last warning over his shoulder. “Don’t stay so tense. Being too tense makes it easier to run into evil stuff.”
Zheng Zhi nodded quickly. “Oh. Okay.”
Li Lin walked off with a smile, muttering under his breath, “Finally, I don’t have to go on field duty every day like before…”
—
Back inside Wu Tong Road 66, Yu Sheng narrowed his eyes, recalling the information he’d recorded earlier on Cloud Viewing Terrace at Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain. He tried to convert those coordinates into a new “position” for the house.
This was his first time moving Wu Tong Road 66 in the real world—and he was moving it an absurd distance in one go. To be honest, he was nervous.
Mistbound City and the real Boundary City were basically upstairs and downstairs. But Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain and Borderland were across national borders.
Yu Sheng took a quiet breath, gathered his focus, let his spirituality spread, and completed the assignment in a single instant.
Outside the living room window, the scenery changed abruptly.
A storm of chaotic, dazzling light swept up, then calmed and retreated before a human could even properly react. It was as if the entire world beyond the glass had been compressed and folded. A twisted, piercing sensation of warped space flashed and vanished.
Then the familiar streets of Boundary City were gone—replaced by a misty, white-jade terrace, a rising sea of clouds, and green peaks layered through the haze.
Yu Sheng exhaled softly and released the handle.
“Done.” He turned, pleased, toward the Irene perched on the windowsill.
Then he pushed Door Opening and stepped outside.
Foxy, Irene, and Luna were waiting at the doorway.
A light breeze from the immortal mountain brushed their faces, and the crisp air felt like a clean rinse through the lungs. Yu Sheng grinned at Foxy. “I brought our home back. From now on, we can go home from here too.”
He took a few steps—then stopped.
Because Foxy and the others weren’t looking at him. They were staring off in another direction, stunned. Even Luna’s expression was rigid, as if she’d been carved.
Yu Sheng followed their gaze.
And froze.
A small house stood quietly in one corner of Cloud Viewing Terrace, facing Wu Tong Road 66 from a distance. It looked plain and unremarkable, but a sign hung over its door that read: “Stellar Express Wu Tong Road Pickup Point.”
Yu Sheng’s throat clicked. “…”
The next second, that door was shoved open, and Zheng Zhi ran out with a blank, confused expression. He stared wide-eyed at Yu Sheng and the others, like his brain had been dropped into boiling water.
The moment Irene saw him, she yelped, “Ah! Big Nephew!”
Zheng Zhi looked even more horrified than she did. “…Where the hell did this dump me?!”
Every gaze on the terrace turned and landed on Yu Sheng.
Yu Sheng looked left, looked right, and felt the corner of his mouth twitch. “Why are you all looking at me? I don’t know what happened either!”
“You don’t know?” Irene hopped over and headbutted his thigh. “Did you open the door too wide again? Can you stop improvising every time?!”
Zheng Zhi crept closer, trembling. As he walked, he kept scanning the surroundings. The immortal mountain, auspicious clouds, pavilions, terraces, and towers made his thoughts stutter. When he finally reached Yu Sheng, he blurted, “Brother Yu, this…”
“Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain,” Yu Sheng said, his face feeling oddly stiff. “When I moved the house, I might’ve overdone it.”
Zheng Zhi went silent all over again.
“Where’s Li Lin?” Yu Sheng glanced back at the little courier house in the corner, then asked, baffled.
Zheng Zhi swallowed. “Brother Li said he was going to the supermarket. He left, and right after that, I… came here. Along with the station.”
Yu Sheng opened his mouth to respond, but a streak of rosy light cut through the air before he could.
The light landed on the terrace. Xuan Che and Yuan Ling emerged from it as if they’d stepped out of a ripple.
Yuan Ling wore a bright, welcoming smile. “From far away, I saw spiritual light rising on Cloud Viewing Terrace. I thought you’d moved here, so I came to check on the situ—”
He stopped mid-sentence.
Cloud Viewing Terrace had expanded to more than twice its previous size. An ordinary person couldn’t possibly tell, but Yuan Ling could feel it clearly: a skewed spatial displacement spreading a wide swath of space across the terrace. Yet the center of that expanded space was empty—no matter how he looked, it was just open ground.
Meanwhile, in one corner sat an unremarkable little house with a courier pickup sign.
No matter how you looked at it, that little house couldn’t possibly be Wu Tong Road 66.
Yuan Ling pulled his gaze back and noticed the completely unfamiliar young man standing beside Yu Sheng.
He sized him up, then immediately confirmed something that seemed to surprise him: the young man really was a person. Flesh and blood, spirit and form—standard, inside and out.
The old immortal’s eyes widened. “And this is…?”
Zheng Zhi looked like he was about to sweat straight through his clothes. He was a bureau temp who didn’t even count as a full agent yet—he hadn’t passed probation. He’d never seen anything like this. When he tried to speak, his jaw cramped.
“I… I…”
He got stuck there for so long that Irene couldn’t stand it anymore. She shouted, “The door security guard!”
Yuan Ling froze, then glanced toward the courier house.
Irene immediately corrected herself, louder. “Security guard booth!”
Yu Sheng dragged a hand down his face. He had no idea how to explain that he’d moved his house and accidentally dragged a bureau outpost along with it, so he could only grab the nearest lie and run with it. “He’s… a sentry assigned to me by the Special Operations Bureau. Privately, he’s also my friend. That house is the bureau’s outpost—usually disguised as a courier pickup point.”
Zheng Zhi nodded so fast he nearly snapped his neck. “Yes. Our Captain arranged for me to stand guard for Brother Yu.”
“Oh, I see.” Yuan Ling stroked his beard, apparently accepting this with alarming ease. “Since he is your friend, then he is also a guest of Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain. A welcome banquet has already been prepared in the Immortal Dining Hall. Come with me.”
Foxy’s eyes lit up. “Food?!”
“Yes, food,” Yu Sheng said quickly, relieved no one was digging into the missing-outpost issue. “Let’s go, let’s go. Eat first. Moving really did make me hungry…”
Zheng Zhi looked like he wanted to say something, but Yu Sheng didn’t give him the chance. He grabbed him by the sleeve and steered him onto the stone path leading away from Cloud Viewing Terrace.
—
Deep in Wu Tong Road, beside the original coordinates of Wu Tong Road 66—now just a narrow corner at the end of an alley—Li Lin stood stiffly against a wall with a supermarket bag in hand.
He stared at the alley corner ahead, then turned and stared at the oddly out-of-place patch of open ground behind him, and began thinking very hard about life.
Where’s my workstation.jpg?
I just went to the supermarket for one minute. How did I turn around and come back to find even my workstation gone?!
He spun in place twice, plastic bag rustling, and after confirming it wasn’t his eyesight failing but that the entire outpost had truly vanished, Li Lin’s mouth twitched. He pulled out his phone and dialed his superior.
“Captain, it’s Li Lin… Uh, no, Zheng Zhi didn’t have any problem. Well, I can’t say there wasn’t a problem. He’s gone. Ah, don’t panic yet—it’s the outpost that’s gone too…”
From the other end came a single “What?!” at a volume that nearly split the line.
“I don’t know what happened either,” Li Lin said, voice turning tearful. “I just went to buy something, came back, and the outpost was gone. Wu Tong Road 66 was gone too…”
Not long after, Song Cheng arrived through a “shortcut,” looking as if his hair were on fire.
The two of them stared at each other.
A moment later, Song Cheng started making calls.
When he finally looked up, his expression was complicated enough to hurt. “Got it. Yu Sheng packed it up and moved it.”
“Why?” Li Lin asked blankly.
“He said he slipped his hand a little,” Song Cheng replied, grimacing like his teeth ached. “Just like the last time he dragged you into Nightfall Valley. Only difference is, this time you got lucky. Zheng Zhi is the one who got dragged over.”
Li Lin stared for a long time before he managed, “Then what do we do? My work report…”
“What can you do? Force majeure.” Song Cheng sighed and patted him on the shoulder. “Come on. Back to the bureau with me. We’ve got another task anyway. Until Wu Tong Road 66 comes back, you’re going back out on field duty with me.”
Li Lin said nothing at all.