Chapter 364

Chapter 365: Whereabouts Unknown

Life will always throw you sentences that make you question how words can even be put together like that. Take Rapunzel’s line, “The fish fell into the water; she can’t swim.” Without backstory, anyone would spend two months trying to parse it.

To be fair, even with backstory it takes a second to process.

Thankfully, some people move faster than they think. The instant Rapunzel finished, Foxy was already acting. With a humming ring like a treasured blade clearing its sheath, she launched two tails. The fluffy fox tails flared with blue booster flames that lit the lakeshore, traced two swift arcs, and knifed into the deep underground water.

Water exploded upward. The tails dove, and firelight rippled under the waves. Yu Sheng watched, eyes wide, as the two flames grew brighter again. The pair of furry tails surged back up, pinching a still-flailing Mermaid between them. In perfect sync they shot to the shore and flicked her free. Mermaid landed with a wet slap on the stone.

She kept flopping with her eyes shut.

Everyone was still stunned, but Immortal Qian Ji looked the most shocked. Not only had a person and a fish fallen from the sky right in front of him, he had just seen a Nine-tailed Fox fire her own tails like rockets. After a lifetime of cultivation at the Grand Void Spiritual Axis and a lifetime of studying mechanisms, the old sir’s horizons split wide open. His Dao heart vibrated like a phone set to buzz. For a second he thought the Immortal Fox clan had secretly opened some wicked Door and invented a brand new Path of Ascension. Luckily he remembered the intel from the Borderland: the fox before him was from another world. His Dao heart thumped back into its cylinder.

Even so, he stared at Foxy for a long beat and couldn’t help asking: “Fellow Daoist, what is the principle behind your tails?”

Foxy actually thought about it and answered honestly: “This is Refining Method.”

“…Refining Method?”

“Yes. The fox-education edition, fifth grade, second semester Refining Method.”

Immortal Qian Ji blinked. The gears and rods inside him creaked and clattered, but no enlightenment came.

This was not the time to dwell on it anyway. Two people had just fallen from the sky.

By now Rapunzel had recovered from all the rolling and bouncing. She wobbled to her feet and made for Yu Sheng. The others clustered around Mermaid, who was still flopping with her eyes shut. Irene couldn’t stand it, so she stepped up and smacked the fish tail: “Hey, enough. You’re on land. Stop flopping.”

She almost got swatted into the cave wall by the wildly slapping tail.

The interruption seemed to help. Mermaid stopped, opened her eyes, and stared around in confusion.

Immortal Qian Ji stepped closer: “Tail Fellow Daoist, are you unharmed?”

Mermaid saw a mechanical old man greeting her and jumped: “…Waa!”

Her scream fizzed with electric buzz and bubbly pops, like the noise you would get if someone tied up a charging Irene and tossed her into water.

She recovered quickly, noticed the other faces and the strange surroundings, pushed herself up on her elbows, and stared at Yu Sheng: “Brother Yu? Where are we?”

“In the Otherworld,” Yu Sheng said, eyes still wide as he looked from Mermaid to Rapunzel. “How did you two get in here?”

“We were just hiking in the mountains…” Rapunzel began blankly, then finally noticed something else and pointed at Yu Sheng: “Hey, your head is spraying blood!”

Yu Sheng: “…”

He felt he should explain, but he didn’t want to explain anything.

Because his head hurt.

Then Rapunzel realized something else: “Wait! Only the two of us fell? Where’s Zheng Zhi?”

“Zheng Zhi?” Yu Sheng paused.

“Yeah! He was right in front of us,” Rapunzel said fast. “Then the path around us suddenly felt wrong, the light went dark, and Salted Fish and I slipped and fell. By rights the three of us should have fallen together.”

“Hang on, I’m getting lost here. Let me sort this out,” Yu Sheng said, waving for her to slow down while he tried to line up his thoughts. “Start from the beginning. Why were you two hiking with Zheng Zhi?”

Rapunzel opened her mouth and suddenly hesitated, but Mermaid answered honestly: “We went out to play. We don’t know the mountain paths, so Rapunzel asked Zheng Zhi to guide us. Someone said he knows every trail nearby like his own home and has friends all over the mountains.”

For some reason, Irene shrank into a corner when Mermaid said that.

Yu Sheng didn’t notice her small move, because Mermaid’s first sentence already shocked him: “What? You asked Zheng Zhi to guide you? He’s only been here one day longer than you! He’s the type who can fall into the Otherworld while shopping at the mall by his own front door. How did you come up with the idea to have him lead the way?”

Mermaid and Rapunzel lowered their heads at once and stayed quiet like students getting scolded.

But Yu Sheng didn’t have much heart to keep scolding.

[My nephew is missing.]

Why Rapunzel and Mermaid suddenly dropped from Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain into this Otherworld at Nethermoon could be studied later. What couldn’t wait was that a rookie agent, sharp-sensed but unsteady, unarmed, and not even past probation at the Special Affairs Bureau, had vanished during a fall into the Otherworld.

With Zheng Zhi’s level, throw him into Fairy Tale and he might not even beat the middle schoolers. His experience acting alone was basically zero. If he really had fallen into a dangerous scene inside this Otherworld, the odds of him becoming a classic year-end case would not be small.

Then again, Zheng Zhi’s luck was as tricky as his spiritual gifts. He was unlucky enough to drop into the Mistbound City while at a mall near his own door, yet lucky enough to be saved by Tree Granny’s sap in the densest fog where entities roamed. Sometimes you couldn’t judge his fate as simply bad or good. And Zheng Zhi adapted fast. Maybe he was hard to kill.

No one dared bet on that.

Just then Immortal Yuan Ling’s voice came from the Lingxi Mirror: “Where did you fall? Do you remember what was around you?”

Startled by the sudden voice, Rapunzel still replied at once: “On the way back from a cliffside gallery to Cloud Viewing Terrace… the place where you can see some big formation down in Spirit Peak City. Right, there’s a pavilion there, donated seventy years ago by the cousin’s husband’s next-door neighbor of Immortal Maiden Su Yun.”

Mermaid nodded and added: “There’s a little herb garden by the path. On the uphill stretch there’s a wooden sign that says, ‘Great Ancestor Celestial Master, please bless my three plots of Qianyuan Herb to pass the final exam. Disciple Xu Qing Qiu bows and knocks her head.’”

“I have a lead. That sounds like the area near Hanging Ravine Pavilion,” said Immortal Yuan Ling. “I will send disciples into the mountains to search. If he didn’t fall into the Otherworld with you, he may have landed elsewhere.”

Hearing Immortal Yuan Ling’s plan, everyone in the cavern breathed a little easier.

“Let’s also keep watch on our side,” Yu Sheng said. “This cavern is huge, and we haven’t finished exploring it. Zheng Zhi might have fallen into some corner.”

Everyone agreed. Immortal Qian Ji took several more Mechanism Orbs from his robe, activated them, and sent them skittering along the lakeshore to search. Luna powered up her Built-In Radar again to scan for moving targets. Foxy spread her arms, and with a chorus of humming tones, eight silver-white, fluffy tails rose behind her and streaked away like a flock of Fox Roaming Cannons into the darkness across the lake.

She paused, seemed to decide that tail-sense alone wasn’t enough, then reached into the remaining Storage Tail behind her and pulled out Bai Qie and Yan Ju.

The two Nine Heavens Mystic Chickens, gleaming with streaming light, circled twice and perched on Foxy’s shoulders, all four cross-eyes staring blankly at the cavern.

Yu Sheng had no idea how the Fox Maiden talked to those two flat-feathered beasts. He only saw her whisper to the left and right guardians on her shoulders. The two shining Nine Heavens Mystic Chickens nodded again and again, then clucked, kicked off, and shot into the dark like twin meteors.

Yu Sheng watched, stunned, and after a long while muttered: “Do those two sound a little off when they cluck?”

“Maybe they caught a cold,” Foxy said, uncertain. “I also think their calls have been strange lately.”

Immortal Qian Ji’s gaze was drawn once more to Foxy’s display. He stared at the two odd birds until he had to ask: “What Celestial Bird are those? Their bearing is grand, their aura pure, and their eyes are honest and simple. Are they also from another world?”

Yu Sheng and Irene traded a look. Both almost lost it, but neither knew how to explain. At last, Yu Sheng said stiffly: “They’re a local species.”

“Local species?”

“Local. I mean of this world. They’re produced over by the Borderland.”

Immortal Qian Ji’s inner gears clicked and clacked again. He still didn’t quite get it, but he nodded. “How curious. I have never seen them.”