Chapter 343

Chapter 343: A Strange Otherworld

The banquet ended with host and guests all delighted—Foxy the most delighted, followed by Big Nephew, who ate like his life depended on it, and then the inner disciples, who barely spoke at all and simply kept eating.

Yuan Ling watched the aftermath with a long-suffering sigh. “I wanted these useless brats to broaden their horizons, but it’s like their eyes are covered in lamp oil.”

He waved a hand sharply. “Go, go, go. Now that you’ve eaten and drunk your fill, go back to your rooms and do your coursework. I assigned one furnace of soul-calming pills. Half a month has passed and not one of you has refined it. If there’s no progress this month, I’ll punish you by having you scrub every cauldron on Spirit Infusion Peak!”

The young cultivators jolted as if they’d been struck by lightning. They hurriedly bowed to Yuan Ling, then cupped their hands to Yu Sheng and the others, and flew back into the mountains to complete the end-of-term assignment their master had just reminded them existed.

Yuan Ling even shouted after them, “Don’t forget to check the herb plots you’re each responsible for at dusk! Your spirit-plant credits are too low this year!”

Yu Sheng watched with a grin. “You feel like an advisor leading students at a Borderland university. It’s not the immortal grandmaster vibe I imagined.”

“Why do you think my name on border comms came to be?” Yuan Ling sighed. “I have to take care of these dull-witted fools, manage sect affairs, and every few days clean up after my troublesome senior brother. I even have to deal with his ‘beloved confidantes’ who come knocking from time to time. When I’m busy, I need to send out seven or eight avatars at once.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Thankfully Xuan Che is diligent and can share some of the burden… Sigh. Enough, enough.”

Yu Sheng chuckled, then remembered something and straightened. “Oh, right. I almost forgot. I brought you a gift when I came.”

“A gift?” Yuan Ling paused and waved repeatedly. “Oh, you and I are friends without profit or status. Why be so poli—”

A heavy chunk of Spirit Fox Black Iron landed in front of him with a solid thunk.

“…But then again, a friend’s gift must not be refused,” Yuan Ling said smoothly, his tone turning reverent mid-breath as his eyes locked onto the black metal. “This is the item Xuan Che mentioned?”

Yu Sheng laughed. “Yes. This is Spirit Fox Black Iron. It’s a specialty from Foxy’s hometown. It can be used as the core of an artifact spirit. I figured it should be useful here too.”

“Good, good!” Yuan Ling clapped his hands, openly delighted. “Truly good stuff. Then I’ll accept this generous gift—and you should stay at Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain for a while longer. I’ll show you the scenery of the Grand Void Spiritual Axis properly.”

He leaned in, enthusiasm bubbling. “I’m not boasting. Grand Void has hundreds and thousands of wondrous sights. Even across the vast galaxy, it’s a treasure land with a real name…”

Then he sighed with a hint of regret. “Truth be told, I’ve always wanted to build the Grand Void Spiritual Axis into a proper cultural tourism industry. It’s just that those other old fogies only know how to bury their heads in cultivation. Every one of them is stiff as a board.”

Yu Sheng immediately thought of the “Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain tourism flagship product” Xuan Che had shown him before.

Just then, Xuan Che cleared his throat and brought the conversation back to the real reason he’d been called home. “Master, why don’t we talk about the new ‘uncanny secret realm’ that appeared on the Grand Void Spiritual Axis? What exactly is going on with it?”

Yu Sheng remembered it too. He looked at Yuan Ling with fresh curiosity. “Right. I’m curious as well. You probably already know that recently Boundary City also suddenly had a Mistbound City appear, and both Borderland and Featherwing have had Hermitage Order activity.”

Yuan Ling’s expression turned solemn. After a moment, he said, “That uncanny secret realm is not on the Grand Void Spiritual Axis. It is on the satellite beside it—Nethermoon.”

Yu Sheng blinked. “…On a moon?”

“The Grand Void Spiritual Axis has three moons circling it: Nethermoon, Everbright, and Everdark. Nethermoon is the largest. It is also the first alien world the cultivators of Grand Void stepped onto after they first transcended heaven and earth,” Yuan Ling explained. “Many mines, factories, and immigrant sites were built there centuries ago. But later, as we expanded into other places in the Featherwing Star Domain, the ancestral land centered on Grand Void was protected. Naturally, the ancient moon Nethermoon was protected as well.”

He continued, “Now, most mines and factories on Nethermoon have been sealed, and the old immigrant sites have been fully evacuated. Many of what remain have become memorial sites for later generations to visit and pay respects.”

“An otherworld at depth L-3?” Yu Sheng said, frowning. “If it’s an otherworld, shouldn’t that be… pretty common? L-3 isn’t even that deep. When I heard ‘uncanny secret realm,’ I thought—”

He cut himself off, because Xuan Che and Yuan Ling were both looking at him like they didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“What?” Yu Sheng asked.

“…This isn’t Borderland,” Xuan Che said flatly. “Otherworld isn’t common here.”

Yu Sheng went silent.

Even Irene muttered, arms crossed, “In Borderland, it’s normal for a bus route with eighteen stops to have eleven otherworld along the way. Even the little shop by the farmers’ market can be an otherworld entrance. But outside? A single otherworld popping up can shake the top of the authorities—let alone one that shows up already at L-3.”

Yu Sheng felt a wave of shame wash over him—mostly because he was getting a lecture on common sense from Irene, a brainless doll.

Yuan Ling coughed twice and continued, tone turning heavy. “Outside Borderland, otherworld truly isn’t common. But the Featherwing Star Domain is vast, and we cultivators often have higher spirit vision, so we are not completely unfamiliar with it. This time, the otherworld that appeared on Nethermoon is called ‘uncanny’ for a reason.”

Yu Sheng leaned forward. “So what’s the situation, exactly?”

Yuan Ling’s voice lowered. “…Every group that enters sees different things. Even the same group, entering at different times of day, sees different scenes.”

Yu Sheng froze.

That wasn’t like the “normal otherworld” he knew.

His mind started moving fast, trying to map Yuan Ling’s description onto the experience he’d collected so far. The first thing he thought of was the anomalous otherworld Fairy Tale—and the various subsets within that “story collection.” That kind of otherworld, which could shift its stage based on different subsets, was the only one he knew that could present different scenes to different explorers.

He voiced his guess and explained Fairy Tale’s general situation to Yuan Ling.

“Different scenes based on different subsets?” Yuan Ling stroked his beard, considering. “It does sound somewhat similar, but the situation is still different. That otherworld has a clear entrance and exit, and its interior is an entity space. By classification, it should be a wilderness or kingdom type, not an anomaly.”

His brows knit. “In my view, this uncanny secret realm is more like it keeps changing itself. Each time it opens, its interior fully reconstructs once.”

“So what did people actually see in there?” Irene asked, unable to keep quiet.

“Some only saw a strange mine with altered structure. Some saw an endless underground cavern. Some even saw large stretches of surface land, with sun and moon overhead, and weather changes like wind, rain, clouds, and mist.” Yuan Ling’s eyes darkened as he spoke. “The strangest cases saw a town covered by night—sometimes the town had lights, sometimes it was pitch black. Sometimes you could hear voices inside houses, sometimes everything was dead silent. Sometimes the smell of blood spread through the town.”

He paused. “But no matter what, you never see any residents actually moving in the town.”

“All of this appears without any pattern,” he added, “and the probability seems completely random. We tried entering at different times of day, or sending in cultivators with different personalities and different items, but we still couldn’t find any underlying pattern.”

He sighed. “Of course, that’s also because exploration so far has been conservative, and the sample size is still too small. After all, what’s down there is truly uncanny—and it’s on a special place like Nethermoon. We have to be cautious.”

Yu Sheng waited a beat, then asked the question that had been sitting like a stone in his throat. “What about the entity inside?”

Yuan Ling’s gaze sharpened. “That’s the other extremely uncanny part… There is no entity.”

“No entity?” Yu Sheng echoed, stunned. “An otherworld at depth L-3, and not a single entity inside?!”

“That’s right. At least so far, the exploration teams have not found any entity appearing in the mine.” Yuan Ling nodded slowly. “At most, in that town, they heard some strange human voices and saw puppet-like shadows under lamplight. But as for a real entity—able to move on its own, attack, or communicate—not once.”

Yu Sheng looked down and met Irene’s eyes.

The Little Doll folded her arms, face grim. “That really is kind of evil. Sure, not every otherworld generates an entity, but the deeper the otherworld, the higher the chance it does. Depth 1 or 2 is still understandable—the ‘peaceful’ probability is pretty high. But at L-3? Even rocks should be flying up to smash people on their own.”

Yu Sheng breathed out slowly, then looked back up at Yuan Ling. “Can we go take a look?”