Chapter 417

Chapter 418: Foxy unleashes her ultimate

Yu Sheng’s group fought as they fell back, and in the process they destroyed yet another massive body of “Yun Qing Zi.”

Dozens of meters tall, the crystal mass blazed under the Dolls’ thermal beams; pent-up energy tore apart the heap shaped like a human elder. Pale shards streaked with gray-black burst into a storm of fragments that rained across the Crystal Jungle. Yet as before, within moments, another “Yun Qing Zi” crawled up from a distant Rift in the ground.

Here, every crystal tree, every cluster, and every crack below the surface was only a small part of one vast main body.

Irene sat on Yu Sheng’s shoulder and screamed while she clumsily directed the remaining Mass Produced Dolls to keep up suppressive fire: “We can’t fight this, Yu Sheng! This is even more ridiculous than holding a fire poker to give the Giant King a pedicure!”

Yu Sheng frowned. After realizing the whole Crystal Jungle was one giant living thing and “Yun Qing Zi” was only a “mimic limb” stretched out from it, he had to consider retreat. But for some reason a thin, restless worry kept circling in his chest, [Something is off. I missed a detail.] It made him hesitate to order a withdrawal.

At that moment, maybe from blood loss or because the “link” formed by blood had tightened again, the daze and the hazy whispers that had hovered in his mind surged back, stronger than before, and something new rose inside that daze and those whispers-

He looked up by instinct toward the sky above the Crystal Jungle.

A strange pallor washed over everything. All color seemed lost. Far away, the sky of stars twisted again into a spiraling vortex. In the center, the distant Sentinel Silence swelled and throbbed like a heart, as if calling to this Crystal Jungle on Garrison-3. At the edge of the Jungle, translucent, spirit-like “limbs” were slowly lifting toward the sky, as if answering the Summoning of Sentinel Silence.

He dropped his gaze to the ground. In his trance he seemed to see through rock and soil, down into roots of crystal, Rifts and caverns latticed through the crust. A crystal heart lay buried. It had withered, and something else had “stuck” to its surface.

That heart, or the “foreign thing” stuck to it, was speaking to him: “It has noticed you… don’t let it send the message back!”

“Yu Sheng? Yu Sheng! Yu Sheng!”

A shout rang in his ear, followed by sharp pain on his scalp. Yu Sheng jolted awake to find Irene gnawing on his head.

“Shouldn’t we fall back now?” she yelled, skipping her usual tease about his deadly daydreaming this time: “We’ve only got a few fresh Mass-Production Units. We can’t grind against an entire ‘Forest’!”

A low buzzing filled his ears. What he had glimpsed through the blood link scurried through his head like living noise, trying to spread some kind of contamination. Yu Sheng shook hard, cleared his mind, and spoke fast: “No. We have to find a way to keep this thing ‘trapped’ here.”

“Trapped? Trapped what?” Irene blinked. “What’s trying to leave?”

“This ‘Forest’ is trying to transmit a signal to Sentinel Silence,” said Yu Sheng, breath quick, “and something else is suppressing it, but not for long. We have to stop the transmission. If it gets through, there will be big trouble over there.”

Irene was near tears: “That’s easy to say, but how do we fight this… I don’t even see a health bar!”

Yu Sheng thought fast and answered: “These crystal clusters aren’t that strong. We tested it. Even the largest bodies can be smashed by brute force. The problem is the Forest is too big. Break one part and other parts immediately regenerate what’s damaged. I’ve formed a link with it now. I can feel its regeneration is limited. If we break most of its surface structures in a short time, its regeneration won’t keep up. It’s already weak. If the regeneration lags, its own ‘cycle’ will collapse.”

A howl of sweeping crystal branches rolled across the sky. The Mass Produced Dolls, together with a Fox Fire barrage, intercepted another “bombing” pass. With every second, fewer Dolls remained, and Irene’s voice grew more frantic: “That still tells me nothing. We barely manage to shatter one ‘Yun Qing Zi,’ and you want to blow up the whole Forest at once? With what?”

Yu Sheng glanced toward the Forest’s center, brow knotted. After a moment of hard thought he gritted his teeth: “The Otherworldly Hotel.”

“…Aren’t that thing’s weapons offline?”

“I’ll knock the stack of Systems off its top,” he said, wincing at the thought, “they’re useless right now anyway.”

Irene stared: “…Wow. Wasteful.”

Yu Sheng could only let out a bitter sigh.

Before he could decide which Systems to smash loose from the Otherworldly Hotel, a fluffy tail tip brushed his back.

He looked up and saw a giant Nine-Tailed Silver Fox bowing her head to him.

“Benefactor,” said Foxy, Fox Fire drifting around her as her golden-red eyes gleamed in the glow, “how about I try?”

“You?” Yu Sheng blinked. “How? A ‘ten thousand tails’ barrage to blanket the whole Forest? Even that might not be enough.”

“I have another move,” Foxy tilted her head, “my mother taught me, but I’ve never had the chance to use it. I can only use it when my belly is very full, and only in a wide place under open sky.”

Yu Sheng was stunned. Foxy couldn’t really explain what the move was, but the serious look on the Nine-Tailed Fox’s face made him choose to trust her judgment. [Trust her. We’re out of options.]

“Then try it. What do we need to watch for?”

“After I use it I’ll be very hungry and I won’t be able to move for a while. I may need help getting ‘unstuck,’” Foxy nodded, “but first, you should run far away… as far as you can.”

Yu Sheng traded a look with Irene and Luna.

“Okay.”

Almost as the word left his mouth, the fire around Foxy roared higher, more fierce than ever. In an instant the massive Nine-Tailed Silver Fox was engulfed, as if cast from living flame. She nodded to Yu Sheng, stepped back, then leapt for the sky.

The Demon Fox sprinted upward like a meteor in reverse, spiraling, wrapped in hotter and hotter Fox Fire. She carved a sword-bright track through Garrison-3’s atmosphere.

Irene stared up, shocked: “Wow, silly fox, what is this move, why can’t I read it…”

She didn’t finish. Yu Sheng scooped her up and, with a Door Opening, tossed her into The Door.

On the other side lay the rim of the Impact Crater, the place where they had first set down on Garrison-3.

Then Yu Sheng reverse-Summoned the remaining Mass Produced Dolls back into the Valley.

“We’re leaving too,” he said, giving Luna a nod as they stepped through The Door.

From the crater’s edge, Yu Sheng finally grasped the true scale of the “Crystal Jungle.”

What had once been a small “plain” at the crater’s center was now buried. In a short time, crystals had surged out of the ground and covered nearly every span of land inside the crater. The whole “battlefield” was now a Forest of pale crystal marred with gray veining. As far as he could see, it was all “it.”

It was eerie, hostile, unsettling, yet it held a strange, powerful beauty.

Yu Sheng looked up. The bright streak in the sky kept climbing. Foxy raced free above the clouds, then higher still, accelerating until she vanished from sight.

The Crystal Jungle seemed to feel something.

A fatal threat from the sky.

A wave of chaotic Resonance slammed into Yu Sheng’s mind. The whole Jungle shuddered, every “tree” writhing as if trying to break loose. Deep underground, something swelled and squirmed, straining to tear free from the bindings layered around the “Crystal Heart.” The next second, his sight was pulled upward. From the Jungle’s “view,” he saw Foxy.

The giant silver-white Demon Fox had reached low orbit.

Foxy’s body had grown several times over, a shape of pure Fox Fire blooming like a burning lotus in space. Her nine tails unfurled; at each tip, intricate runes glimmered. Countless living flames flowed and coiled through the void around her.

Then the Nine-Tailed Celestial Fox slowly set her stance.

Her nine tails drew in. Fox Fire condensed into an energy shell. Uncanny light poured over space as she aimed at the planet below.

Re-entry began.

Immortal Arts are a thousand ways: this one is orbital. The Ten Thousand Fox Methods are endless: this one is the Heavenly Ground-Bombardment Method.