Chapter 363

Chapter 363: Surveying the Map

That dim boundary at the end of the mine ramp seemed almost alive, faintly swelling and contracting in the dark.

Immortal Qian Ji knocked on the wall to one side. A thin needle flicked out from his fingertip and stabbed into stone within the boundary’s corroded zone, as if he were taking a sample.

“Loose and brittle. Mineral salts seeping out. The earth veins severed,” he said casually, turning back to Yu Sheng and the others. “Did this otherworld really only appear recently?”

“It was only discovered recently,” Xuan Che answered. He stepped forward half a pace and cupped his hands with respect. “Half a month ago, everything here was still normal.”

“…This kind of corrosion doesn’t look recent. I suspect the environment below started going wrong years ago,” Qian Ji murmured. He turned back toward the dim area. With a click, two beams of strong light burst from his eye sockets and shot into the darkness.

But the beams met an invisible filter. They lit only a few steps ahead before fading in a bizarre, muffled way.

“Interesting,” Qian Ji murmured, then stepped forward.

Yu Sheng led the others after him.

The darkness gradually closed in. The long ramp felt endless, stretching beneath their feet as if it ran straight down to the planet’s core. They walked and walked, until Yu Sheng finally felt the environment begin to shift.

He focused as he moved, remembering the hazy moment of entering last time—the grand, unreal voice that had sounded through the haze, saying, “Activate the grand array.” He stayed on edge, but this time he heard nothing.

A damp breeze blew from ahead.

The thick darkness scattered as if swept away by wind. Yu Sheng’s vision swayed, and suddenly he wasn’t on an endless ramp anymore. A wide underground space unfolded before him.

It was a cave of astonishing scale. Its boundaries vanished into darkness. Nearby, raw stone walls rose and disappeared into blackness above. Glowing vines and luminous fungi spread across rock, ground, and stalagmites, casting faint light across everything.

Yu Sheng stared, stunned. Then he noticed rippling light far away across what looked like the ground. When he squinted, he realized it wasn’t ground at all.

It was water.

A massive underground lake stretched out ahead. Strange plants floated across its surface, their stems and leaves emitting soft radiance. That glow mingled with the luminous moss and vines along the shore, weaving the scene into something dreamlike and beautiful—yet threaded with a dim, uneasy strangeness.

The view made Yu Sheng’s breath catch. At the same time, Irene gasped on his shoulder. “Wow—”

“At least there’s no sand this time,” Foxy muttered. Her big tail bloomed open, and countless pale fox fires drifted out from between the tails like a swarm of fireflies. They rose and spread through the air, brightening the area.

Even after the fox fire spread hundreds of meters, it still couldn’t touch the cave’s boundaries. But it made the space feel less suffocating.

“So it really changes every time,” Yu Sheng said. He hitched his shoulder. “Irene, do you feel any killing intent this time?”

Irene sensed carefully. “Not yet. But I think you’re about to have another blood disaster.”

Instead of worrying, Yu Sheng smiled. “You make it sound like there’s ever a day I don’t. How much blood this time? Where do I get hurt?”

Irene glared. “How would I know? You really think I’m some prophet?”

“Lately, you’re about as mystical as a prophet,” Yu Sheng said, clicking his tongue. He turned to Luna and held out his hand. “Stab me.”

Luna moved at once—swift and clean. Truly worthy of an artificial saintess. She could be slow about everything else, but when it came to cutting someone, she was practiced enough to be frightening.

Then Yu Sheng started splashing his blood onto the muddy ground. After that, he flicked it into the lake as well.

Irene stared. “What are you doing?”

“Whether it helps or not, I might as well spill some blood,” Yu Sheng said, utterly calm. “Even if I can’t gather intel, at least I’ll leave a marker. Maybe I’ll hit something important, and later it’ll help us steal something.”

He glanced at her. “Besides, you said I’d have a blood disaster. I’m just bleeding a bit now to boost the drop rate.”

“You can bug exploit like that?!” Irene looked genuinely shaken. Then she frowned at the spreading stains. “But why do I feel like you’re laying down a fungus carpet?”

Yu Sheng paused, silently grateful she hadn’t used an even worse metaphor.

Immortal Qian Ji watched, baffled. He’d met spirit realm detectives and investigators before, but he’d never seen a workflow like this. After holding it in for a while, he finally turned to Xuan Che. “What is Daoist Friend Yu Sheng doing?”

Xuan Che was also confused. He only half understood what kind of group the Hotel was. But when an elder asked, he had to answer, so he thought hard for a few seconds and cupped his hands, bluffing as best he could. “…Mr. Yu has his own investigative approach. He understands many blood sacrificial refining methods.”

A click sounded inside Qian Ji’s skull. “Fresh blood sacrifice refining?”

Xuan Che swallowed. “Uh… he only refines his own.”

Qian Ji nodded as if this made perfect sense. “Oh. Then that’s fine.”

At the same time, Yu Sheng was carefully sensing what happened after the blood fell.

That emptiness returned.

He could feel his blood sink into ground and water, but in an instant it seemed to pass straight through both, vanishing into some void below, failing to connect with anything at all.

Yet maybe because he’d experienced this once already, he sensed slightly more this time than before.

At the far end of that ultimate emptiness, there truly seemed to be something enormous—so vast that even perception couldn’t properly detect its existence.

It felt like standing at the foot of a black wall that stretched endlessly in every direction. No matter where you looked, you saw only darkness, and so you couldn’t even be sure the wall was there.

But there was no pressure. No malice.

It felt dead. Or maybe… empty. Like a shell.

Yu Sheng frowned, trying to extract meaning from the vague sensation. In the end, he got nothing. After ten seconds or so, even that faint feeling disappeared.

He thought for a moment, then decided increasing the dose might help.

So he turned to Luna again. “Stab me again.”

The wound from before had already healed.

Luna nodded, but before she could move, Foxy couldn’t hold back. “Benefactor, I can do it too! I brushed my teeth today~”

“No,” Yu Sheng said firmly. “You always sneak drinks. Every time you suck down half of it.”

Foxy’s ears drooped instantly. She hummed and muttered in grievance.

Luna didn’t comment. She simply raised her hand and cut again, quick and practiced—like someone who’d butchered fish for ten years.

Yu Sheng continued laying down his “marker” by the lake.

This time, he didn’t sense anything new. He didn’t even feel that immense presence at the end of the emptiness again.

“…Only works once per otherworld scene?” he murmured.

—

“Uh… Rapunzel… if we sneak out to play like this, will Red Hood sis scold us?” On a mountain path somewhere on the Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain, a black-haired girl in a blue dress looked around with wide, curious eyes, worry creeping into her voice. “She said we can’t run around…”

“What do you mean sneak out to play? We came out openly!” Rapunzel said righteously. “And bro said we could move freely. We even registered yesterday. Saltfish, you’re too timid.”

“But bro also said we need a guide if we’re moving freely,” the blue-dressed girl—Saltfish—fretted. “And I have a livestream tonight. If Red Hood sis catches me, she’ll lecture me all night…”

“Hey, didn’t I say it’s fine?” Rapunzel waved it off. “Also, who said we don’t have a guide? The guide is right here—right, big… Zheng Zhi?”

She looked up at Zheng Zhi walking ahead.

He sighed helplessly. “I only got here one day earlier than you. I’m really not familiar with this place… Left ahead. The spirit herb garden is on the right, and you’re not allowed in.”

“You call that not familiar?” Rapunzel stared. “And I heard you made seven sworn-brother bonds in half a day. Even the beast taming peak has your best buddies…”

“Where did you hear that?!” Zheng Zhi was stunned. “How did it turn into something this ridiculous?”

“Irene said it.” Rapunzel said it like that answered everything. “She also said you fell off a cliff in the back mountain and crushed some reclusive expert who was fishing. Then you searched him and found more than seventy cultivation manuals—though I know she’s exaggerating. Who goes fishing with seventy manuals on them?”

Zheng Zhi’s face twitched. Choosing to stay at the Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain was starting to feel like a mistake. But since things had already come this far, it was probably too late to say he wanted to go home.

He could only keep walking and ramble, “You can’t believe what Irene says. I just ran into an uncle down the mountain who watches the dorms, and he even complained I scared away his fish.”

“There’s a pavilion up ahead on the right. It was donated and repaired seventy years ago by the cousin-in-law of Immortal Maiden Su Yun from the Spirit Infusion Peak’s neighbor across the street,” he continued, as if reciting from a brochure. “The view from the pavilion is great. You can see the spirit-gathering grand array in Spirit Peak City down the mountain.”

Rapunzel poked Saltfish’s arm smugly. “See? I told you Zheng Zhi can be our guide. Anyone who can stay by bro’s side is never simple.”

Saltfish stared at Zheng Zhi’s easy stride along the mountain path, like he belonged here. After a long moment, she blinked. “…That’s insane.”