Chapter 364

Chapter 364: Meeting Up (By Accident)

Pale fox fire floated like drifting fireflies through the underground cave, so vast it was hard to believe. The glow lit slick ground carpeted with luminous moss, rock walls tangled in strange vines, and the underground lake not far away.

Yu Sheng’s group explored carefully within the light, stopping now and then to collect samples of rock, plants, and water.

Yuan Ling’s voice came from the spirit-link mirror floating in midair. “Truly strange… In the earlier reports, did any of the otherworld’s scenes include such a massive cave?”

“There were mentions of underground caves, but nowhere near this large,” Xuan Che answered immediately. “And the reports never mentioned an underground lake.”

“So this is a new scene again,” Irene said, sitting on Yu Sheng’s shoulder and gripping his head with casual familiarity. “Like that desert before…”

“This otherworld only appeared recently,” Xuan Che said. “Many of its traits have not been explored or understood. It’s normal for it to change in ways we haven’t noticed, or to form new regions.”

He glanced down at the slick ground. “Watch your footing. It’s slippery here. Don’t fall into the lake.”

“Don’t worry, youngster. I’m watching this side,” Qian Ji said as he walked with the group. Soft clicks sounded from his head at intervals, and red light flickered in his eyes as if he were scanning. “This lake is quite strange. Divine sense can’t pierce it. Even I can’t see what’s below. There may be something in its depths.”

As he spoke, he took out a brass sphere carved with talismanic runes. Several hollow sections glowed faintly, and a ticking sound like a clock came from inside. Qian Ji tossed it onto the ground.

It split open, sprouted several pairs of nimble mechanical limbs, and scuttled straight into the lake.

A moment later, red light flickered under the surface. The sphere hopped back out in the distance and flew lightly into its master’s hand.

“The mechanism orb lost contact at less than ten meters down,” Qian Ji said. “It returned by its automatic program.”

He pressed a few spots. The orb clicked, a panel opening on one side, and a beam of light projected into the air, showing what it had recorded underwater.

The murky footage showed nothing but water. Fine glowing specks drifted inside. In the last moment before it lost contact, the orb turned and filmed the lake bottom—

Only to capture a deep blackness, like there was nothing there at all.

Yu Sheng felt Irene tense up.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Little Doll muttered. “At first, all this glowing moss and glowing vines looked pretty, but the longer we stay, the more it feels… suffocating. I don’t know. It just feels bad.”

Foxy scooted closer, rubbing her tail against Yu Sheng’s arm. “Benefactor, I feel kind of prickly too.”

Irene glared at her. “You’re fluffy!”

“She means her nerves are on edge,” Yu Sheng said. His brows knit tighter. “I feel it too. The atmosphere is… different. I can’t put my finger on it.”

He looked at Luna. “Can your radar work? Did you scan anything weird nearby?”

Luna stopped. The artificial saintess’s built-in targeting radar swept the area at high power. Then she slowly shook her head. “No. Active targets.”

Yu Sheng didn’t relax. Instead, as if he’d sensed something, he looked up.

The space overhead seemed to shiver.

—

“Holy shit! Saltfish, did you see that just now? That goose that flew across the sky—”

“That was a celestial crane,” Saltfish said flatly. “Rapunzel, could you read a book once in a while?”

“Eh, same difference!” Rapunzel stood on a cliffside walkway, staring at the open sky in the distance, excited. “The point is, it was so pretty! It burst out of the clouds, and it even greeted us. Was it dancing just now? It flew around the walkway… I want to raise one!”

“You sure you can raise a celestial bird like that?” Saltfish glanced at her. “Its IQ might not even be lower than yours. You can’t even raise a dog.”

“Ew.” Rapunzel made a face. “I just don’t like raising dogs. They always make me think of Red Hood’s wolf, and then the back of my neck starts hurting.”

She turned to Zheng Zhi. “Hey, hey, young man, do you know if they let people adopt these celestial cranes?”

“Not that one,” Zheng Zhi said, shaking his head. “That one belongs to Yuan Ling. The other celestial cranes probably aren’t available either. They’re basically final projects for the beast taming peak.”

He glanced at the sun. “Also, it’s about time. You two should head back. Even if it’s the weekend, don’t first-years have homework?”

Rapunzel sucked in a cold breath and sagged on the spot.

“I finished mine last night,” Saltfish said casually. “But yeah, we should go back. I picked a lot of wild fruits. They’re pretty tasty. I want to bring some back for everyone.”

“You finished yours last night?!” Rapunzel’s eyes went huge. “No way. Fish, isn’t your memory only seven seconds? When did you get so good at studying? You weren’t like this in middle school. Back then you copied my homework…”

Saltfish looked at her like she was watching a slow-moving disaster. “Rapunzel… could you read a book once in a while? And don’t just add settings to me whenever you feel like it!”

Rapunzel sighed, defeated, then waved a hand. “Fine, fine, we’ll go back. But when we get back, let me copy your math worksheet.”

Saltfish froze mid-step. “We have a math worksheet?!”

“…What did I just say?!” Rapunzel cried.

“Ahh, hurry back! I haven’t finished my homework… Which way do we go?!”

Zheng Zhi couldn’t help laughing. He moved to lead the way, feeling oddly nostalgic.

It really was nice to be school age. Watching them made him miss his own high school days. Back then, there were so few things to worry about. Though now… it didn’t feel like there were that many either.

Better to keep an open mind.

He’d heard these fairy tale children used to almost never live to adulthood. Now they were worrying about grades, college entrance exams, university graduation, and jobs.

That was good.

He wondered if Brother Yu and the others were doing well exploring the otherworld. Last time, they’d fought a group of dangerous guys. Thankfully nobody had gotten hurt. Otherwise, once he got back, he didn’t even know how many reports he would have to write.

You had to be able to fight.

Yesterday, Li Lin messaged that he was going out on field duty again for the next two days. Captain Song was leading personally. Zheng Zhi didn’t know what tricky case they’d run into, but it wasn’t something a newcomer like him could get involved in.

Honestly, he felt a bit bad for Brother Li.

Slacking was nice.

Zheng Zhi wandered through these thoughts as he followed the route he remembered toward Cloud Viewing Terrace.

Until the surroundings slowly dimmed.

Until the wind carried a damp, chilly edge.

“Something’s wrong,” Rapunzel said first. She looked around, and in the blink of an eye her black hair spilled into a waterfall of golden strands long enough to trail the ground. “This road doesn’t look like what we came on, does it?”

Saltfish tensed. Moisture clung to the air. “Weren’t we going uphill just now? When did we start going downhill?”

Zheng Zhi snapped out of his haze.

He stared at the mountain path underfoot—the way the steep walls had somehow crept closer and closer. He spun around.

The wide road behind them had become a narrow, steep downhill slope. The cliffs on both sides blurred into something that looked less like open mountain and more like cave walls. The sky overhead was gone, swallowed by thick layers of rock.

And then the last thin line of daylight at the edge of his vision vanished too.

Zheng Zhi’s footing slipped.

Rapunzel let out a princess scream. “Oh, I—”

A blurry golden hairball appeared in Yu Sheng’s view with a familiar scream that grew rapidly louder.

Yu Sheng didn’t even have time to think. He lunged forward on instinct and reached out.

The next second, the hairball slammed into him. Even with Yu Sheng’s far-above-human strength, the impact flipped him onto the ground. His head cracked against stone, and blood burst out.

The golden hairball bounced off him, rolled and hopped several times, and finally stopped after smashing into a nearby rock wall.

Almost at the same time, a splash erupted from the underground lake. A huge spray of water blew up into the air.

The sudden commotion startled everyone. Even Qian Ji didn’t react in time—mostly because he was only using a mechanism avatar, and Yuan Ling’s spirit-link mirror was already taking up half his transmission bandwidth.

Irene, perched on Yu Sheng’s shoulder, was flung off. She yelped midair, hit the ground, and tumbled four or five times before stopping.

Little Doll scrambled to her feet, disheveled and still yelling, “What the hell was that? What’s going on? What the hell fell down? Why didn’t I feel any killing intent—ow, I bit my tongue! What’s going on?!”

Foxy had already rushed over to guard Yu Sheng. Luna clicked as she equipped every fingertip blade. Xuan Che summoned his frost longsword and took a starting stance of the Medical Way Killing Fist, staring warily at the golden hairball sprawled by the rock wall.

The hairball finally unfurled.

Rapunzel—dizzy from the roll but somehow completely unhurt—crawled out of her own hair and stared blankly at the scene.

Everyone froze. The cave fell silent.

Which made the splashing from the lake painfully clear.

The instant Rapunzel heard it, she sprang up. “Holy shit, Fish fell in the water! She can’t swim!!”