Chapter 357

Chapter 358: A Healthy Young Man in Body and Mind

Yu Sheng widened his eyes at the clearly nervous Zheng Zhi and asked: “You’re saying you saw strange birds in the sea of clouds? And you watched them darting through the clouds all day?”

Zheng Zhi blinked, then glanced back at the clouds before looking at Yu Sheng again, his gaze suddenly sharp with worry: “Oh no, is it another thing only I can see?”

Immortal Yuan Ling walked over with a grave face and asked: “What do these birds look like? Can you describe them?”

Zheng Zhi thought for a second and said: “A sharp, long beak. Tail feathers like drifting ribbons. Very big. The wing edges are… you know what, hold on, I’ll draw it.”

He ran back into his Outpost and returned with a Tablet Computer and a Stylus. He opened a drawing app and sketched at high speed. In a few minutes he had captured a bird weaving through cloud banks. The lines were simple, but the features were clear and lively.

Irene stared and said: “Nephew, you’ve got skills.”

Zheng Zhi scratched his hair and said: “I used to work as a graphic artist.”

Irene nodded and said: “Oh, no wonder you always looked exhausted, like you were about to ascend.”

Yu Sheng ignored their small talk. He studied the sketch, then raised his head to stare at the vast Cloud Viewing Terrace and the rolling sea of clouds beyond.

The sun was dropping toward the cloud edge. Red-gold light spilled along the cloud tops and gave every layer a shining outline. Yet in that grand sunset, there wasn’t a single strange bird in sight.

Immortal Yuan Ling looked at the sketch and frowned deeply.

He reached toward the Tablet Computer and made a light grasping motion. The drawn image came off the screen into his hand. With a few twists, it turned into a vivid black phantom of the strange bird that leaped into the air and began to glide.

He turned to Zheng Zhi and asked: “Is it like this?”

Zheng Zhi gaped at the Immortal arts, then hurried to look closely. He said carefully: “Make the tail longer, and the feathers more flowing.”

Immortal Yuan Ling adjusted it at once and asked: “Like this?”

Zheng Zhi said: “Shorten the beak a little, and make the wing edges rounder… raise the tail feathers so they look lively… tweak the neck a bit… actually, let’s go back to the first version.”

Irene poked the back of Yu Sheng’s head and asked: “Is he dumping all his pent-up art-department pain and acting like a revenge client right now?”

Yu Sheng lifted a brow, surprised the little doll knew that joke, then relaxed at once. [She spends more than forty hours a day online. If she isn’t making a mess in games or arguing with people, she’s soaking in meme culture. Of course she knows art-client jokes.]

Luckily, Zheng Zhi made up his mind quickly and said: “Yes, that’s it. Exactly like this!”

Immortal Yuan Ling nodded, patient even after so many tweaks. He flipped his hand and the finished “bird” came alive again, circling nearby.

Yu Sheng noticed a heavier, thoughtful look on Immortal Yuan Ling’s face. He asked: “See something?”

Immortal Yuan Ling said lowly: “It feels familiar, but I can’t recall where I saw it.”

Rapunzel asked curiously: “Is it a species from your Youth Form?”

Immortal Yuan Ling shook his head and said: “Not something I saw in real life. Maybe from an old book, or somewhere else.”

He turned to Zheng Zhi and asked: “Are those birds still at the horizon?”

Zheng Zhi glanced toward the far edge of the cloud sea and said: “Only two or three left. Looks like they’re heading back to their nests as it gets dark.”

Yu Sheng looked at Immortal Yuan Ling and began: “So this…”

Immortal Yuan Ling grew solemn and said: “It’s strange. What Zheng Zhi saw doesn’t seem harmful, but seeing Illusion Arts inside the mountain-guarding formation of Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain is not normal. The Cloud Viewing Terrace is close to the Parted Clouds Palace, and ordinary wicked things cannot approach. I need to investigate where these phantoms come from.”

After a few more questions for Zheng Zhi, Immortal Yuan Ling left the Cloud Viewing Terrace with his disciples.

Rapunzel walked up to Yu Sheng and asked, a little hesitant: “Big bro… can we still play here?”

Yu Sheng stroked his chin, watched the far clouds a moment, then said: “What Zheng Zhi saw doesn’t look dangerous, but it’s getting dark. Let the Cursed Children head back first. Tomorrow we can ask the Immortal to send a few people to take everyone down the mountain.”

Rapunzel sighed: “Okay.” She still looked sorry to leave, but quickly gathered the Cursed Children into a neat line and led them through the Door at Wutong Road 66.

The Cloud Viewing Terrace, lively a moment ago, turned quiet again.

The sun sank below the cloud sea. Only a dim afterglow lingered at the border between sky and clouds. As the light faded, stars rose, and with them, the three moons above the Grand Void Spiritual Axis.

The largest, Nethermoon, climbed first with a soft halo. Dark and bright ecological regions on its face looked like blue-green gems set in silver light.

Next was the smaller Everbright. From the ground it looked the size of a bean, yet it shone brighter than Nethermoon. People said crystal veins that reflect sunlight covered that moon, which is why it was so bright and earned the name Everbright.

Everdark rose last. If not for Irene’s sharp eyes, Yu Sheng would have missed it. From here it looked only a bit smaller than Nethermoon, yet it was so dim it seemed like a plain gray stone ball. Faint glowing lines laced its surface in a net. People said those were the ancient automatic mining routes built long ago by Nethergloom Valley. The mining sites on Everdark were now shut down, but the old transport lines still maintained basic lights. They had become a “scenery” in the night sky of the Youth Form.

Yu Sheng carried out a lounge chair and settled at the best viewpoint on the Cloud Viewing Terrace to enjoy the alien night.

Through cracks in the clouds, he saw the world below. At the foot of the mountains lay a great city full of lights. Trails of light moved across the sky over its rooftops, and sometimes a huge cargo flying vessel crossed the distant plains, traveling between the city and the ridges.

Zheng Zhi spoke from beside him and asked: “Brother Yu, did I ruin the fun today?”

Yu Sheng lifted a brow and asked: “Why would you think that? Because you saw something weird?”

Zheng Zhi sighed and said: “The Cursed Children planned to play late into the night. What I saw was just shadows. If I hadn’t said anything, everyone would have kept playing and laughing. But when I spoke up, it scared people…”

Yu Sheng glanced at the young man beside him, who was only a little younger than him, then leaned back in his chair without answering.

Zheng Zhi kept going and said: “I’ve been like this since I was little. I often saw strange things. I couldn’t tell what everyone could see and what only I could see, so the leaders didn’t like me. Later, when I learned some common sense, I could tell what I ‘shouldn’t be seeing.’ Still, I often scared people by accident and spoiled the mood like today. The truth is, whether I say it or not, those things are still there.

“After that, my uncle started helping me. He made me a ‘common sense list’ so I could sort what was normal and what wasn’t, and taught me how to act normal after seeing those not-normal things, and how to keep my distance from stuff that might be harmful. He doesn’t have special powers, just some theory, but what he taught me helped.

“It helped in the Borderland. Here, it feels like it doesn’t help as much.”

Yu Sheng asked: “Done?”

Zheng Zhi said: “Uh, done.”

Yu Sheng shifted to get more comfortable, half-closing his eyes, and asked: “Do you watch horror movies?”

Zheng Zhi said: “Some. I didn’t find them scary, so I didn’t watch many.”

Yu Sheng asked: “Then you know the classic way the main group in a horror movie gets killed?”

Zheng Zhi looked blank and asked: “What is it?”

Yu Sheng said: “Someone sharp finally notices a deadly clue, then keeps quiet about it.”

Zheng Zhi said nothing.

Yu Sheng spoke slowly: “This isn’t a flaw. It’s a talent. It just hasn’t had the right job yet. You came into this late, but your eyes can be very useful.”

Zheng Zhi’s eyes lit up and he asked: “Really?”

Yu Sheng said: “Really.” He paused, then added: “But your biggest edge is your mental state.”

Zheng Zhi asked: “Mental state?”

Yu Sheng turned to him and asked, amazed: “How did you grow up with a healthy mind and normal values? With your miserable, heavy past, shouldn’t you have ended up as a classic cautionary case on a legal-education show at fourteen? At best, the ending should have been jumping from the school building in the second half of ninth grade. And weren’t you tested as high sensitivity and low stability? I don’t see any ‘low stability’ in you.”

Zheng Zhi said: “My uncle calls me ‘low stability.’ The Bureau tested me and said my body type is easy to get contaminated, but I grew up fine. I still don’t know what ‘contamination’ really means. If you say my mindset is good, then yeah, it has always been pretty good.”

He grabbed a grape-like immortal fruit from the side table and popped it into his mouth, smiling.

He said: “If someone sees a ‘ghost’ for the first time at thirty, they will be spooked. But if someone has been able to see ghosts since three months old, the most likely thing he’ll do is give them names. To be blunt, I’m more familiar with the ‘shadows’ I see than with my parents. My parents had times when they went out through the Door to work. The things drifting in front of me never took a day off.”

Yu Sheng nodded and said: “That does make some reason.”