Chapter 365
Chapter 365: Whereabouts Unknown
It turned out no one got through life without running into the absurd reality that yes, words could be arranged like this. Take Rapunzel’s line—“The fish fell into the water and she can’t swim.” Strip away the context and toss it at anyone, and they could brood over it for two months.
Honestly, even with context, it still took a second to process.
Luckily, plenty of people reacted with their bodies faster than their brains. The moment Rapunzel finished speaking, Foxy was already moving. With a buzz like a treasured blade sliding free of its sheath, she fired two tails.
Blue thruster flames blasted from the tips. The silver-white fox tails lit up the cavern and streaked along two sharp lines straight into the underground lake.
Water exploded upward. Firelight rippled across the surface, burning through the waves. Yu Sheng stared, wide-eyed, as the two patches of flame swelled—fast.
Two enormous, fluffy tails burst back out of the water. Clamped between them was Mermaid, eyes squeezed shut, thrashing like she was still drowning. Working in perfect sync, the tails shot to the shore and flicked her out, slapping her onto the ground with a wet plap.
Mermaid kept flailing, eyes still closed.
Everyone was stunned for a heartbeat, but Immortal Qian Ji looked even more stunned than the rest. Watching people (and fish) fall from the sky was one thing. Watching a nine-tailed fox launch her own tails like rockets was another.
The old gentleman had cultivated steadily for a lifetime on the Grand Void Spiritual Axis and studied mechanism arts for just as long. His horizons blew wide open. His Dao heart practically switched to vibration mode. For a terrifying second, he almost believed the immortal fox clan had secretly invented some evil, brand-new path of ascension. Thank heavens he remembered the intel from the Borderland in time and realized this fox was from another world—otherwise his Dao heart might’ve thumped right out of its cylinder.
He stared at Foxy for a long moment before finally asking, “Daoist friend… what’s the principle behind your tails?”
Foxy actually considered it, then answered honestly, “This is a refining method.”
“…A refining method?”
“Yes. The fox cult fifth-grade, second-semester refining method.”
Immortal Qian Ji blinked. The gears, linkages, and bearings inside him squealed and clattered for a while, but still failed to make sense of it.
Now wasn’t the time to get hung up on that, though. Two people had just fallen from the sky.
Princess Rapunzel had recovered from her long series of rolling and bouncing. She wobbled to her feet and staggered toward Yu Sheng. Meanwhile, the others gathered around Mermaid, who was still flopping with her eyes shut.
Irene couldn’t take it anymore. She stepped in and smacked the other girl’s fish tail. “Hey, hey, that’s enough. You’re on shore. Stop flopping.”
She nearly got slapped airborne by the tail whipping back and forth.
That interruption finally seemed to break through Mermaid’s panic. She froze, then cracked her eyes open and looked around in a daze.
Immortal Qian Ji walked over. “Daoist friend, are you alright?”
Mermaid’s eyes landed on a mechanical old man leaning over her, and she jolted like she’d been struck. “Waaah!”
The scream came with an electric buzz and a burst of bubbles. It somehow sounded like what you’d get if you tied up a charging Irene and tossed her into the water.
But Mermaid recovered quickly. She took in the unfamiliar faces and the strange environment, braced herself with an arm, and sat up. Then she stared at Yu Sheng with those huge eyes. “Brother Yu? Where is this…?”
“Inside the otherworld,” Yu Sheng said. His eyes were just as wide as he looked from Mermaid to Princess Rapunzel. “No—wait. How did you two get in here?!”
“No idea. We were still wandering in the mountains…” Rapunzel said blankly, then realized something a beat too late. She lifted a hand, pointed at Yu Sheng, and shrieked, “Hey, bro! Why is your head spraying blood?!”
Yu Sheng: “…”
He felt like he should explain, but he didn’t want to explain anything.
Because his head hurt.
And right then, Rapunzel noticed something else—also a beat too late. “Wait! Only the two of us fell down? Where’s Zheng Zhi?!”
Yu Sheng froze. “Zheng Zhi?”
“Yeah! We were together. He was walking in front of us,” Rapunzel rattled off. “Then the path suddenly felt wrong, and the sky went dark. Saltfish and I slipped and fell… but logically, the three of us should’ve fallen together.”
“Hold on, I’m a mess—let me sort this out,” Yu Sheng said, waving for her to slow down while he tried to force his thoughts into motion. “Start with the context. Why were you two wandering in the mountains with Zheng Zhi?”
Rapunzel opened her mouth, hesitated, and didn’t answer.
Mermaid, still sitting on the ground, spoke up instead. “We came out to play, but we didn’t know the mountain paths. So Rapunzel asked Zheng Zhi to guide us… because someone said he knew the nearby routes insanely well, like it was his own home, and that he had close friends all over the mountains.”
For some reason, the moment Mermaid said that, Irene quietly shrank into a corner.
Yu Sheng didn’t notice. He was already reeling. “What? You asked Zheng Zhi to be your guide?! He arrived one day before you! And he’s the kind of guy who can stroll a mall near his own doorstep and still fall into an otherworld. Where did you get the idea to let him lead you?!”
Mermaid and Rapunzel both tucked their necks and went silent, obediently accepting the scolding.
Yu Sheng didn’t have the mood to keep scolding, though.
Because his big nephew was missing.
Why Rapunzel and Mermaid could suddenly fall into this otherworld on Nethermoon while wandering around on Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain could be studied later. But the fact that a high-sensitivity, low-stability rookie agent—unarmed, and not even finished with his internship at the Special Operations Bureau—had vanished during the fall?
That couldn’t wait.
With Zheng Zhi’s combat power, if you tossed him into Fairy Tale, he might not even beat a middle-school bracket kid. His independent field experience was basically zero. If he’d really fallen into some dangerous scenario inside this otherworld… the odds of him turning into a year-end textbook case were sky-high.
Of course, Zheng Zhi’s luck was as delicate as his spiritual talent. He could be unlucky enough to fall into Mistbound City just by shopping near his own home. He could also be lucky enough to have Granny Tree spit out a mouthful of tree resin and keep him alive in the most dangerous thick fog zone, where entities showed up all the time. Sometimes it was hard to label his fate as simply unlucky or lucky—and with Zheng Zhi’s own adaptability… maybe he really was hard to kill.
But no one dared to bet on it.
Just then, Immortal Yuan Ling’s voice came from the spirit-link mirror. “Where did you ‘fall’ from? Do you remember what was around you?”
Rapunzel jumped at the sudden voice, but she answered immediately. “On the way back to Cloud Viewing Terrace from a cliffside hanging corridor… the place where you can see that huge formation down below in Spirit Peak City. Right—there’s a pavilion there. The one donated and repaired seventy years ago by the across-the-hall neighbor of Immortal Maiden Su Yun’s cousin-in-law.”
Mermaid nodded and added, “There was also a little herb garden beside the path. On the uphill section, there was a wooden sign that said, ‘May the great ancestor Celestial Master bless me—may my third-term qianyuan herb pass the final exam. Disciple Xu Qing Qiu respectfully bows and kowtows.’”
“Mhm. I have a lead. That sounds like it was near Hanging Ravine Pavilion,” Immortal Yuan Ling said from the mirror. “I’ll send disciples to search the mountain. If he didn’t fall into the otherworld with you, then he may have landed somewhere else.”
Hearing Yuan Ling’s arrangements, everyone in the cavern felt a little steadier.
“We’ll keep an eye out on our side too,” Yu Sheng added. “This cavern is huge. We still haven’t fully explored it. Zheng Zhi might’ve landed in some corner when he fell.”
Everyone agreed at once.
Immortal Qian Ji took out several mechanism orbs, activated them, and tossed them onto the ground, ordering them to search along the underground lake’s shore. Luna activated her built-in radar again, scanning for movement. Foxy spread her hands toward the distance, and with a chain of bzz-bzz sounds, eight silver-white fluffy tails rose behind her and flew into the deep darkness across the lake like a swarm of fox-roaming cannon.
Then Foxy paused, apparently deciding her tails’ sensing ability still wasn’t enough. She turned and rummaged through the remaining storage tail behind her, pulling out Bai Qie and Yan Ju.
Two dazzling, gleaming nine heavens mystic chicken circled twice in the air and landed on Foxy’s shoulders, their four crossed eyes staring blankly into the dark.
Yu Sheng had no idea how the demon fox girl communicated with those two feathered beasts. He only saw her mutter a few words to the left and right guardians perched on her shoulders. The two glowing birds nodded vigorously, then clucked, “Gu-gu-gu,” and shot into the air, streaking into the darkness like meteors.
Yu Sheng watched for a long time before muttering, “Is something off about their calls?”
“Maybe they caught a cold these past couple of days,” Foxy said, not entirely sure. “I also think their calls have been weird lately.”
Immortal Qian Ji got dragged in again by Foxy’s little display. He stared blankly at the strange creatures flying away, taking a long moment to even recognize what they were. “What kind of celestial bird is this? Majestic bearing, abundant spiritual aura, and such plain, honest eyes… Could it also be from another world?”
Yu Sheng and Irene exchanged a look. Both of them nearly cracked, but neither knew how to explain it. After swallowing it down for far too long, Yu Sheng finally said, “It’s a local breed.”
“Local breed?”
Yu Sheng kept a straight face. “Yeah. Local—or rather, this-world local. Produced over in the Borderland.”
Immortal Qian Ji’s gears clacked again. He still didn’t fully understand, but he nodded anyway. “Wonderful. I’ve never seen such a thing.”