Chapter 356
Chapter 356: Rapunzel Had Her Own Idea
Sometimes, when you opened too many messy doors, something completely reasonable would happen—and still catch you off guard. The big nephew who got dragged to Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain on his first day of work was like that. Rapunzel, chased by Little Red Riding Hood through the valley, sprinting out through Wu Tong Road 66’s door and looking up at a sea of clouds and an immortal mountain, was like that too.
“I thought I smacked my head when I pushed the door open,” Princess Rapunzel said, sitting behind the couch and chugging her drink. She finally lifted her head between gulps. “I even thought, wow, the scenery I’m seeing after knocking myself out this time is pretty nice. All Yun Shan and misty, like one of those Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain promo videos people repost on border comms… and then it turns out it’s actually Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain?!”
Yu Sheng didn’t answer. He just watched her with a half-smile, because she was genuinely too entertaining.
Princess Rapunzel didn’t care whether anyone responded. She tipped her head back for another gulp, then turned to him. “Bro, you moved house?”
“…Your acceptance is impressive,” Yu Sheng said, laughing helplessly. “Didn’t it occur to you that I might’ve just redirected the door?”
Princess Rapunzel stared, then jabbed a finger toward the living room window. “The view outside changed!”
“You’re pretty observant,” Yu Sheng said with a laugh. He waved his hand. “I’m only here for a few days. Meeting a friend, and handling some… business.”
“Huh? Oh.” Princess Rapunzel held her drink bottle and sat cross-legged on the couch like she’d figured out the entire universe. “So this is the ‘Hotel’ business model. A moving office also counts as remote work… Great. I thought it was because Little Red Riding Hood said she wanted to live on another planet, and you came early to scout the place for her…”
The moment she brought up Little Red Riding Hood again, Yu Sheng couldn’t help himself. “By the way, why are you still getting chased by Little Red Riding Hood? Didn’t she delete everything on your mobile phone?”
Princess Rapunzel sighed. “Yeah, but she found my cloud drive.”
Yu Sheng stared at her. “You seriously kept a copy on the cloud too?”
“I was afraid I’d lose it,” Princess Rapunzel rolled her eyes, then glanced at Yu Sheng out of the corner of her eye. “Just say it. Did you save yours or not?”
Yu Sheng opened his mouth. “Then that brings us back to—”
“Back to what?” a familiar voice asked from behind him.
Yu Sheng turned and saw a short-haired girl in a red jacket smiling at him—and at Princess Rapunzel.
“Holy—” Princess Rapunzel shrieked and sprang up, turning into a bolt of golden lightning as she shot for the door.
But the moment she moved, a phantom appeared out of nowhere and blocked her head-on. She crashed into it with a solid, loud thud, like a shadow wolf slamming into a wall.
Little Red Riding Hood reached out and pinned her friend back onto the couch, looking helpless. “You really are…”
As she spoke, she lightly flipped over the couch back and sat cross-legged as well. Then she looked at Yu Sheng. “And you are too…”
“It’s part of growing up,” Yu Sheng said with a perfectly straight face, as if he were delivering sacred truth. “People have to go through three stages: writing edgy youth trauma literature, getting caught writing edgy youth trauma literature, and making peace with their own edgy youth trauma literature…”
He paused, then sighed. “Fine.”
Princess Rapunzel cautiously looked up at Yu Sheng, then at Little Red Riding Hood. After confirming she probably wasn’t about to die, she let out a breath. Then she grinned and poked her friend’s arm with a strand of golden hair. “Don’t be mad yet. Look outside.”
“Outside?” Little Red Riding Hood asked, baffled. She glanced out the window—and froze.
“We’re at Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain right now!” Princess Rapunzel raised a hand dramatically and announced at full volume. “An alien planet! Bro moved the house to Xuan Che’s hometown!”
Little Red Riding Hood stared out the window for two more seconds before her eyes finally focused. Then her stiff gaze slowly slid back to Yu Sheng. After a long pause, she said, “You actually moved the house over here?”
Yu Sheng nodded. “Yeah.”
Now it was Princess Rapunzel’s turn to be surprised. She looked at Little Red Riding Hood, then at Yu Sheng, and her eyes spun. “Wait… Red Hood, you knew about this already?”
“He mentioned it last time,” Little Red Riding Hood said, gesturing toward Yu Sheng and then outside. “But I didn’t think he’d really do it.”
“So you hid it from me?” Princess Rapunzel pouted, but she clearly didn’t care much. She flopped onto the couch and stared out the window, blank as if her brain had temporarily left her body.
Then she snapped upright. “Hey! I have an idea…”
Irene whipped her head around. “Why does that sound so familiar?”
“Tell everyone else!” Princess Rapunzel grabbed Little Red Riding Hood’s arm, eyes sparkling. “Aren’t the dollheads back home getting ready to organize a group outing? Snow White and the others were stressing about where to go. There are lots of fun places in the valley, but you can’t exactly call it ‘going out.’ And Boundary City doesn’t have anywhere with an environment better than the valley. But just now, I saw this huge platform outside, like a plaza, and beyond it is a sea of clouds. On the other side there are mountains and water. Tell everyone to come out and play!”
Little Red Riding Hood listened, and her heart immediately started to sway. Looking at the immortal mountain scenery outside, she got excited and turned to Yu Sheng.
Yu Sheng didn’t speak—because the moment Rapunzel’s suggestion sparked an idea in him, his mature, steady, morally sound adult brain realized there was a more serious problem.
“…Does this count as smuggling?”
The whole living room fell silent.
A moment later, Irene broke it first. The little doll jumped straight onto Yu Sheng’s neck and hugged his head. “You open doors all over the place every day, and you’re worried about that?”
“I’ve been reporting my door openings lately, okay!” Yu Sheng said righteously. “And what do you mean ‘all over the place’? Every time I open a door, I have a solid and just reason. Besides, me opening a door alone isn’t the same as bringing dozens of people…”
Princess Rapunzel tugged Yu Sheng’s sleeve. “But bro, we’re just going from the backyard to the front door to play. That can’t be smuggling, right?”
Little Red Riding Hood reminded her, “But our backyard is in the Borderland, and the front door is on Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain…”
Princess Rapunzel thought about it, then corrected herself. “If you want to be strict, the backyard is in the otherworld valley. There’s a back door in the backyard that opens to the Borderland. The front door is in otherworld Wu Tong Road 66, and the open ground outside the front door is Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain.”
Yu Sheng listened and listened until his eyes went wide. “…Damn, that’s true. Why is it such a mess?”
“Ha,” Irene said from the armrest, laughing so hard she almost toppled off. “Serves you right for exploiting bugs all day. You glitched yourself into a corner.”
Yu Sheng held up a hand. “Wait. I’ll ask whoever’s in charge here.”
He pulled out his mobile phone, found Four Thousand Wayward Disciples on border comms, and called.
They picked up fast. Immortal Yuan Ling’s voice came through the speaker. “Yu Sheng?”
“I’ve got something,” Yu Sheng said without preamble. “I moved my house onto Cloud Viewing Terrace. Now some kids from home want to come over and play, but they’re still in the Borderland. No passports, no permits. If they come out through my door, does that count as smuggling? No customs, no border crossing—just push the door and step out into your place…”
Silence on the other end.
Immortal Yuan Ling—the Tai Xu Star Elixir-and-Talisman Sagehand, a venerable senior of the Immortal Realm, an excellent medical theory researcher, an inheritor, the Medical-Riot Demolition Fist grandmaster—now wore the same headache as the Borderland Special Operations Bureau Director.
But a master was a master. He was silent for only a few seconds before responding. “First, this can be handled as a special case.”
He paused, then added, “Second, it seems you also did not complete any procedures when you came.”
Yu Sheng said, “….”
He really had forgotten that part.
“Circumstances are special. No one has ever crossed boundaries using a method like yours. Roads are always discovered by trying,” Immortal Yuan Ling continued, and amusement had already crept into his voice. “It is only a few children coming as guests. Of course I welcome them. Let them come. I will arrange disciples to go over shortly and register them. Then I will issue each child one ‘guidance jade token’—mainly to confirm their location and prevent accidents. My mountains are high and forests deep. Better safe than sorry.”
“Then thank you,” Yu Sheng said, brightening. “I’ll have them wait on Cloud Viewing Terrace.”
“Good,” Immortal Yuan Ling replied. Then he remembered something and asked, “By the way, how many children do you have?”
“Seventy-something.”
The silence on the other end was deafening.
Yu Sheng hurried to explain, “Not biological. From the orphanage. I’m the orphanage’s ‘head guardian.’”
“Oh, I see,” Immortal Yuan Ling said, clearly relieved. “Then I will send disciples over.”
“Thanks, thanks,” Yu Sheng said quickly, and hung up.
He looked up at Little Red Riding Hood and Big Goldie on the couch—Princess Rapunzel, sitting cross-legged and wrapping herself in her own hair, really did look like Big Goldie. “All right. It’s settled.”
Princess Rapunzel’s eyes lit up. “We can go out and play?”
“Yes,” Yu Sheng said. “But for now you can only gather on Cloud Viewing Terrace—that big platform outside. Someone will come register you, and everyone has to wear a guidance jade token. It’s basically a locator and temporary ID. Only after you put it on can you move around freely.
“And even then, listen to the arrangements. This is someone else’s place. Especially in deep mountains and forests—don’t wander off. And if you see somewhere that looks like a vegetable patch, you can’t go there either. That’s their herb garden. Don’t chase wild animals. They might be Beast Taming Peak disciples’ final projects, or they might be Beast Taming Peak disciples—”
Before Yu Sheng could even finish, Princess Rapunzel was already a streak of yellow light sliding off the couch toward the stairs, yelling as she ran, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know! Bro, you’re as naggy as Red Hood…”