Chapter 366

Chapter 366: Scenery Beyond the Layered Rock

In the dim, vast underground cavern, Rapunzel looked unusually dejected.

Yu Sheng found it genuinely surprising. It was the first time he’d ever seen her wear that kind of low, downcast expression. Princess Rapunzel was normally pure optimism—if her mental state wasn’t outright peripheral necrosis, then it stayed year-round at just ate mushrooms. Seeing her sink into real gloom from the heart wasn’t easy.

Even Foxy, who usually didn’t pay much attention to other people, noticed. She tilted her head. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Bro…” Rapunzel looked at Yu Sheng helplessly. “Was I not supposed to egg Zheng Zhi into guiding us? If I hadn’t… maybe he wouldn’t have gotten into trouble…”

“You’ve been sulking over that?” Yu Sheng didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You’re overthinking it. Before you even arrived, he spent half a day touring around the Spirit Infusion Peak area. With that kind of initiative, does he need anyone to egg him on? And honestly, with his constitution, do you really think he wouldn’t get lost on his own if you didn’t ask him?”

Rapunzel blinked. At first she thought he was just comforting her. Then she remembered Zheng Zhi’s long list of achievements, and Yu Sheng’s words started to sound… painfully accurate.

Around then, Mermaid shed her fish tail and returned to human form. Yu Sheng didn’t even see how she changed—one blink, and the girl was standing there.

She stared wide-eyed into the darkness, hesitated like she wanted to speak, then finally blurted, “Um… do you hear a buzzing sound?”

“A buzzing sound?” Yu Sheng frowned. “No. What kind of sound?”

“Like… the cave is humming,” Mermaid said, studying the cavern around them. “There are faint echoes everywhere. And it kind of sounds like something snoring.”

Yu Sheng glanced at the others. “Did you hear it?”

One by one, everyone shook their head. Even Rapunzel didn’t hear anything, but after shaking her head she added quickly, “Saltfish can usually hear a lot of sounds ordinary people can’t. She can hear low-frequency and high-frequency vibrations that even precise instruments can’t pick up.”

No one dismissed it after that.

Immortal Qian Ji’s internal mechanisms ticked. After a brief pause, he broke the silence. “There is vibration, but the source is unclear. Extremely weak.”

Mermaid suddenly raised her head and let out a soft, strange humming song toward a certain direction.

It was only a few short syllables, sharp and birdlike. Then she made a few more sounds, higher and sharper, until human ears couldn’t catch them. Yu Sheng could only see her mouth moving.

He watched in confusion, then realized what she was doing.

She was scanning the structure of the cavern.

He almost thought it was unnecessary. Between Immortal Qian Ji’s mechanism orbs, Foxy’s sensing tails, and the two guardians Bai Qie and Yan Ju, they weren’t lacking detection methods. Mermaid’s sonar probably wouldn’t produce anything new.

But just as that thought crossed his mind, a faint cracking sound drifted out of the distant darkness and snapped his attention back.

Yu Sheng turned toward it instinctively—and almost at the same moment, a louder, clearer sound followed.

Then he saw light.

Across the underground lake, deep in the rock wall swallowed by darkness, a horizontal slit of light flared to life.

The slit widened fast. The cavern’s boundless darkness seemed to be torn open and shoved back. And with it came a low, heavy rumble that beat in time with a human heart. It came from every direction at once, like the chanting of a behemoth echoing through space.

The ground began to tremble. The once-calm surface of the underground lake rippled violently, then churned like boiling water. The rock walls creaked and groaned. The glowing vines and stone pillars hanging from the ceiling quivered and shook.

The distant light expanded again—no longer a faint glow, but a bright, widening crack, its jagged edges sharpening into an outline Yu Sheng suddenly recognized.

Teeth.

A mouth was opening.

And all of them were inside it.

“Holy—!” Irene finally screamed. Most of the time Little Doll’s head was pretty empty, but this time she got it instantly. In a flash, she sprang onto Yu Sheng’s shoulder. “Th-th-th-this thing is alive! Fish, what did you do?!”

Another roar of grinding stone rolled through the cavern, and the tremors intensified. Foxy didn’t waste a word. She dropped flat, then in an instant took avatar as a massive, nine-tailed silver fox, using her body to shield Yu Sheng and the others.

Mermaid had long since stopped singing. When she turned back, she looked completely lost. Hearing Irene’s scream, she answered at once, panicked and sincere. “I don’t know! I kept hearing the buzzing, and the more I listened the more it sounded like a living thing humming softly. So I tried to imitate it—I thought I could communicate…”

“Saltfish, you—next time you have an idea like that, can you tell people first?!” Rapunzel sounded half-crazed. The shaking under her feet nearly knocked her over. Golden hair erupted from her scalp, bracing the surrounding rock and ground, weaving a protective net around her. “That lake is boiling! What the hell!”

Before Rapunzel could finish, a deep, solemn voice rang out ahead.

Immortal Qian Ji had already floated into midair. Light rippled across the metallic sheen of his Dao robe as countless arcane runes lit up one after another. He raised an arm. The shell plating along it unfolded like fish scales, talismans igniting as they spread. His command echoed through the cavern in layered reverberations.

“Still!”

The enormous, impossible behemoth actually calmed for a breath. The shaking steadied. The churning water settled—barely.

Yu Sheng had one hand already lifted, ready to pull open a door and send people away first. But in the instant before the door formed, he felt the blood-built connection.

The moment he judged what it carried, he stared straight at the opening across the lake.

“Zheng Zhi is over there!”

Rapunzel froze. “What?!”

“He’s outside that crack,” Yu Sheng said fast. “He fell outside.”

He grabbed one of Foxy’s tails and swung himself onto the great fox’s back with practiced speed. Then he waved hard at Rapunzel and Mermaid. “Up here. Now!”

Rapunzel hesitated—riding a nine-tailed fox was a first in her life—but she snapped out of it immediately and climbed up behind him. Golden hair lashed out, wrapped the still-dazed Mermaid, and tossed her right beside Rapunzel.

Several tails folded around Yu Sheng like a cradle as protective spiritual aura thickened into a hazy barrier. Foxy stepped toward the boiling lake—and accelerated.

She ran faster and faster, stepping on air above the water itself. Under Yu Sheng’s direction, she charged straight for the yawning mouth in the distance.

Xuan Che and Immortal Qian Ji rode their spiritual light, following close behind.

The light spilling in from outside had driven the cavern’s darkness away entirely. It carried a strange, dark red tint. The demon fox and the immortal figures leapt through that red glow and crossed the lake—which had seemed endless in the dark—in a blink.

“…So the water wasn’t actually that wide,” Irene muttered, clinging to Yu Sheng’s shoulder and peeking down at the roiling surface.

“Because it was dark before,” Luna said quietly.

Yu Sheng didn’t answer. His eyes stayed locked ahead.

Foxy crossed the giant mouth.

Yu Sheng saw towering, jagged rock. Moss-covered stone rose at the opening like a barrier of blades. Between the strange “teeth,” torn vines and dead branches hung in shredded clumps.

Outside the mouth, the rock layers were steep and brutal, like a mountain wall.

He couldn’t imagine what kind of behemoth this was. A living mountain? A moving island?

“Up,” Yu Sheng said, voice tight. “Along that slanted ridge. Zheng Zhi is up there.”

As Foxy climbed, Yu Sheng’s gaze drifted farther—past the rock wall and the beast’s fangs—trying to see what the world outside looked like.

And then he saw it.

A planet torn open.

An atmosphere boiled away.

A curved horizon arced into view. The land below was covered in surging seas of magma and blazing fire pillars that looked like they could erupt into space. A terrifying trench split the surface as if the whole planet had been ripped in two. Molten fire rose from within it, and above it all, the sky was gone—nothing but a dark, mad universe full of stars.

Countless stars trembled over that shredded horizon, fell, collided, and burned. Ominous dark red light spread across the cosmic backdrop, scorching whatever remnants still clung to the planet.

The behemoth drifted slowly through the sky of the world that was breaking apart. A low, bleak wail echoed through the last scraps of atmosphere that still belonged to hometown.