Chapter 345
Chapter 345: Racing Through Space
Foxy ran across the open sky.
Blue foxfire blazed behind her like a meteor tearing a line through the heavens. The silver-white nine-tailed demon fox smashed through the cloud layers and kept accelerating through the thick atmosphere of the Grand Void Star. Her steps were light as a startled swan—graceful, wild, and somehow beyond heaven and earth. Each time she kicked off, she leapt farther, until her whole body was wrapped in a dense protective spiritual aura. Outside that aura, plasma flared from the violent friction, stabbing up from the atmosphere into space like drawn steel.
Beside the sky-splitting demon fox, the celestial ship also tore free—an immortal skiff as light as a feather, wrapped in flowing radiance. It cleared the top of the atmosphere and picked up speed, sending ripples of spiritual power as it hailed Foxy and Yu Sheng through secret arts.
“Immortal Maiden up ahead! Slow down a little! There’s an Immortal Alliance outpost at the top of the atmosphere… Immortal Maiden, you’re speeding!”
“Benefactor, back where I’m from, you’d have to go five times faster for it to count as speeding!” Foxy glanced back as she ran through space, bright with the joy of finally being let out after months cooped up at home. “Their speed limits are ridiculous here!”
“Slow down when I tell you to slow down!” Yu Sheng rode on Foxy’s back. Even with the protective aura around them, and Foxy blocking the wind with her big tails, he still clutched the silver-white fur beside him on instinct. “Isn’t first cosmic velocity enough for you?”
“Ah—fine!” Foxy finally reined it in, though she still darted over and looped the celestial ship several times, weaving above, below, left, and right. Only when the ship sent a stern protest through space-transmission did she behave and return to her “lane.”
She turned her head and grinned at Yu Sheng, baring her teeth in delight. “Benefactor, I’m happy~”
“I can tell.” Yu Sheng looked at the space fox twisting around to beam at him, half laughing and half crying. Then his gaze drifted helplessly toward the distance.
They had crossed the top of the atmosphere, passed the last faint glow overhead that felt like an “immortal realm barrier,” and left the sky’s dim light behind. Deep, boundless space rushed at them.
Yet this was nothing like the lonely void he had felt when he merged with the pillar of order—the other-dimensional Hotel. Part of it was the warm, noisy big fox beside him now. But more than that, this space was not empty at all. Centered on the Grand Void Spiritual Axis, a spectacle poured into Yu Sheng’s eyes along with endless starlight.
The softly glowing horizon of the Grand Void Star shrank behind them, quickly becoming a jewel-like planet. After they shot past low orbit, Yu Sheng saw massive shapes ahead, each shrouded in hazy light. The celestial ship guided them between glowing clusters, and only then did he realize what he was seeing: pavilions and palaces floating in space. Towering high towers. Long bridges of solidified light linking halls together. Broad stretches of artificial land—some of it covered by heavy ecological domes. Beneath those domes, he could vaguely make out shimmering lakes and thick green shade.
All those palaces and space islets floated around the Grand Void Star with nothing to support them. And between them, celestial ships of every size and streams of dazzling light came and went like a living network—part logistics route, part merchant flow.
Xuan Che’s voice crossed the void, transmitted directly from the celestial ship to Yu Sheng’s ear. “Those temple-halls we just passed are the spaceport hub built by Reclining Cloud Ten Halls.
“Reclining Cloud Ten Halls is the foremost sect of artifact refining and city-building on the Grand Void Spiritual Axis. They excel at mechanisms and craftsmanship. Reclining Cloud Ten Halls is both their sect’s name and the name for their ten drifting grand halls that float above the clouds—the earliest permanent floating complex on the Grand Void Star.
“About two-thirds of the spaceports and mechanical megastructures in the Grand Void Star’s orbit were built by Reclining Cloud Ten Halls.
“Those isles with ecological domes are mostly industries of Remote Mist Sect or Nethergloom Valley. They split mountains on Han Guang Star and Cold Spike, haul ranges rich in spiritual ore close to the sun, and refine them with the sun’s fierce power. Once the veins run dry, they melt the leftover slag into islands, drag them into orbit around the Grand Void Spiritual Axis, cover them with domes, and force forests and lakes into being to serve as settlements. In your borderland terms, they’re the Grand Void Star’s biggest mineral and real-estate developers.
“As for those celestial ships shuttling between the grand halls and the space isles, most come from Heng Xu, or from my Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain. Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain leads Grand Void in elixir and talismanic runes, but we have achievements in artifact refining as well. Our path values lightness and agility, unlike the heavy-industry school of Reclining Cloud Ten Halls, who casually build kilometer-long star shuttles and heavy star fortresses. We’re not on the same road.”
Yu Sheng listened and watched the halls, isles, and ships slide away behind them through Foxy’s protective aura. He was too stunned to speak.
“This is seriously massive,” he finally said. “Honestly, the first time I saw those special ‘floors’ inside the Special Operations Bureau building, I thought that was already impressive enough…”
“Mr. Yu flatters us,” Xuan Che replied. “These spectacles on the Grand Void Spiritual Axis were not built overnight, but condensed from the lifeblood of countless generations of Daoist friends. As for impressive… you probably haven’t seen the truly huge things the Special Operations Bureau has hidden away. If we’re talking pure grandeur, borderland didn’t earn the position of cosmic hub for nothing.”
Yu Sheng fell silent, imagining what kind of “big things” the Special Operations Bureau had hidden, and what the “councilor-controlled zones” Bai Li Qing had mentioned might look like beyond borderland.
While he was lost in that thought, the celestial ship and Foxy accelerated again.
With Foxy’s protective aura and some kind of otherworldly immortal art, Yu Sheng barely felt the discomfort of repeated bursts of speed—only a faint vibration beneath him. The orbital facilities around the Grand Void Spiritual Axis rapidly turned into scattered points of light and vanished into the starry background.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, something flashed by in the distance.
Even with Yu Sheng’s far-beyond-human dynamic vision, he only caught a shocking gray-white structure—a massive monument standing in space. Lights flickered around it, and at its base clustered many buildings that looked like later additions.
With nothing to compare it to, Yu Sheng couldn’t judge its true size. But the shapes of the structures around it made one thing painfully clear: that stone stele was beyond imagination.
“What was that just now?!” Yu Sheng blurted.
Xuan Che answered at once. “You mean the giant stele that just swept past nearby? That was the Qianyuan Monolith.”
Yu Sheng’s curiosity flared. “Qianyuan Monolith? What’s it for?”
“…I don’t know.”
“Huh? You don’t know?”
“We truly don’t,” Xuan Che said. “Qianyuan Monolith is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the Grand Void Spiritual Axis—perhaps of the entire Featherwing Star Region. No one knows where it came from, who built it, or how long it has stood in this void. Ever since the world was reshaped, when the cultivators of the Grand Void Star first stepped beyond the earth, that giant stele was already sitting in high orbit over the Grand Void Spiritual Axis.”
He paused, as if arranging his thoughts, then continued in a lower voice.
“Some believe it was made by ancient divine ones to record supreme truths from the dawn of creation. Others think it was once part of an ancient god’s tomb. When the great catastrophe that erased all things shattered the tomb of the divine ones, only the stele remained, drifting in orbit. People have guessed everything, but nothing has been proven.
“Qianyuan Monolith is extremely sturdy. Its surface is a nearly impenetrable alloy, and its interior holds powerful restrictions. Even the divine sense of top-tier experts cannot pry into it freely. For thousands of years, many on the Grand Void Spiritual Axis tried to unravel its secret, but none succeeded. The lucky ones returned empty-handed. The unlucky ones died and vanished from the path after prying carelessly. After that, no one dared to try again.
“Over time, Qianyuan Monolith became a kind of holy land near the Grand Void Spiritual Axis. People say it is an ancient bequest from the old world—a barrier formed when the divine ones sacrificed themselves to resist the annihilating catastrophe. Though the barrier still failed to stop the disaster that overturned every realm, the Ancient Holy Spirit restored it while reshaping the world as an act of respect. The stories vary. But whatever version you hear, everyone agrees on one thing: Qianyuan Monolith is Grand Void’s greatest treasure.
“And so, as you saw, we built many outposts around this lonely stele far from the Grand Void Spiritual Axis, turning it into a lighthouse beside the homeworld. To this day, it remains the most important beacon for celestial ships and star shuttles returning to the Grand Void Spiritual Axis.”
“So that’s how it is…” Yu Sheng murmured.
The tales stirred all kinds of thoughts in him. He turned, wanting to look back at the mysterious giant stele floating in space, but it was already gone.
Then he felt another faint vibration beneath him.
Foxy was still running through space, but she was clearly slowing now. Several tails adjusted the spray angle of foxfire, as if preparing for a course change.
A wash of silver light appeared at the edge of his view.
One of the three moons above the Grand Void Spiritual Axis—the largest natural satellite here, Nethermoon.
They had arrived.