Chapter 418

Chapter 418: Foxy Goes All Out

Yu Sheng’s group fought while retreating, and along the way they destroyed yet another towering Yun Qing Zi body.

A crystal mass tens of meters tall blazed under concentrated Scorching Rays. Stored energy detonated inside it, ripping the old-man-shaped heap apart. Pale crystals streaked with gray-black exploded into the sky and fell like sharp rain—

And only moments later, another Yun Qing Zi crawled up from a distant fissure.

Every crystal tree, every cluster, every crack in the ground was only a tiny extension of something enormous.

“We can’t fight this, Yu Sheng!” Irene screamed from his shoulder, directing the remaining dolls in frantic suppression fire. “This is more ridiculous than giving the king of giants a pedicure with a firewood stick!”

Yu Sheng’s brows knotted. Once he understood the whole forest was one living organism—and Yun Qing Zi was just a mimic limb it extended—retreat became the obvious choice.

But a faint unease kept circling his heart. Like he was missing something.

He still couldn’t make himself run.

Then, whether from blood loss or because the blood-built connection had strengthened again, that haze surged back into his mind. The whispers thickened until they were almost audible. And inside that noise, something else appeared.

Yu Sheng reflexively looked up.

A strange pallor washed over his vision, draining color from everything. The distant sky twisted into a warped vortex again. Far away, Shu Ji throbbed like a heart at the center of the star spiral, as if calling to the crystal jungle below. And at the edge of the forest, translucent limbs—like the outline of a spirit body—began to rise toward the sky, responding to Shu Ji’s pull.

Yu Sheng lowered his gaze.

In the haze, he seemed to see through rock and soil. Crystal branches and cavities crisscrossed deep in the crust. Beneath it all sat a crystal-like heart—withered, cracked—

And something else clung to its surface.

That heart—or the foreign thing attached to it—spoke into the blood-built link with a frantic, grinding urgency.

“It noticed you… don’t let it send the message back!”

“Yu Sheng?”

Irene’s voice slammed into his ear. “Yu Sheng! Yu Sheng!”

Pain snapped across his scalp.

Yu Sheng jerked awake to find Irene biting his head with all her strength.

“Shouldn’t we retreat?!” she shouted. For once, there was no smugness in it—only panic. “We have this tiny batch of mass-produced units! There’s no way we can grind it out against an entire forest!”

Yu Sheng’s ears rang. The information he’d glimpsed through the blood link felt alive, writhing in his mind, trying to spread like contamination. He shook his head hard, forcing himself clear.

“No.” His voice came out sharp. “We have to find a way to block it here.”

“Block?” Irene stared at him. “Block what? What’s trying to leave?”

“This forest is trying to transmit a signal to Shu Ji,” Yu Sheng said fast. “Something else is suppressing it, but it can’t hold it down for long.”

His jaw tightened. “We have to stop the transmission. If we don’t, something big is going to happen on Shu Ji’s side.”

Irene looked like she might cry. “Easy for you to say! How do we fight it? I don’t think it’s even shown us a health bar!”

Yu Sheng forced himself to think through the noise. “The crystals aren’t sturdy. We tested that—even the biggest structures can be smashed by brute force. The problem is scale. Break one part and the rest regenerates the damage immediately.”

He glanced across the forest. “But I’ve already formed a connection with it. I can feel it—its regeneration is limited. If we destroy most of the surface structure in a short time, it won’t be able to keep up. It’s already weakened. Once the regeneration falls behind, its cycle collapses.”

Another screaming wave of crystal bombardment rained down. The remaining dolls coordinated with Foxy’s fire barrage to intercept it, but their numbers kept dropping.

Irene’s voice climbed into desperation. “You’re still saying nothing! It takes forever just to smash one Yun Qing Zi! And now you want to wipe out the whole forest in one go? With what?! With what, exactly?!”

Yu Sheng stared toward the forest’s center, teeth grinding. After a beat, he exhaled like he’d swallowed something bitter.

“The Otherworld Hotel.”

Irene went still. “…But that thing’s weapons can’t be used, right?!”

“I’ll drop the whole pile of subsystems off its roof,” Yu Sheng said, pained. “They can’t be used anyway.”

Irene’s eyes went wide. “Holy crap. That’s so wasteful.”

Yu Sheng could only give a bitter smile.

Then a fluffy tail brushed his back.

He looked up. The massive nine-tailed silver fox had lowered her head toward him, fox fire drifting around her like living mist. Her golden-red eyes glowed strangely in the flames.

“Benefactor,” Foxy said. “How about I try?”

“You try?” Yu Sheng blinked. “How? A ten-thousand-tails paying homage? Saturation bombardment? Even that might not be enough…”

“I have one more move,” Foxy said, tilting her head. “Mother taught it to me. I never had the chance to use it. I can only use it once when my belly is really full—and only somewhere open, with sky overhead.”

Yu Sheng couldn’t make sense of what that “move” actually was, but Foxy’s tone—earnest, steady—made him decide to trust her.

“Then do it.” He nodded. “What do we need to watch out for? What do we need to do?”

“After I use it, I’ll be hungry,” Foxy said seriously. “And I won’t be able to move much for a while. I might need someone to help me get unstuck.”

She flicked her tails. “But before that, you all need to run far away. The farther the better.”

Yu Sheng exchanged a quick look with Irene and Luna.

“All right.”

The instant the words left his mouth, the fox fire around Foxy surged—stronger, fiercer than before. In a blink, the massive demon fox was swallowed by flame. Her whole body looked forged from burning light.

She stepped back, then leapt.

Foxy sprinted toward the sky—like a meteor flying backward, spiraling, wrapped in ever-fiercer fire. She carved a bright blade-streak through Garrison-3’s atmosphere.

Irene stared up, stunned. “…Holy crap, Silly Fox, what is this move? I seriously don’t get it—”

Yu Sheng grabbed her and tossed her straight through Door Opening.

On the other side waited the crater’s rim, where they’d first landed on Garrison-3.

At the same time, he reverse-summoned every remaining mass-produced doll back into the valley.

“We’re retreating too.”

He glanced at Luna, then stepped backward through the door.

From the crater’s edge, the scale of the “crystal jungle” became horrifyingly clear.

At first, the crystals had only covered the small plain at the basin’s center. But in the short time they’d been fighting, the growth had swallowed nearly everything within the crater. Now the entire battlefield ruin was a pale forest streaked with gray-black, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Bizarre. Malicious. Unsettling.

And yet… terrifyingly beautiful.

Yu Sheng looked up.

The bright point in the sky kept rising—Foxy sprinting upward until she pierced the cloud layer, then higher still, accelerating until she vanished beyond sight.

The crystal forest seemed to sense it.

Something lethal.

Chaotic resonance surged into Yu Sheng’s mind. Through the forest’s “viewpoint,” he felt it shudder, every piece writhing as if trying to tear itself free. He sensed something deep underground swelling and contracting, straining against restraints wrapped around the crystal heart.

Then his awareness snapped back to the sky.

From the crystal jungle’s perspective, he saw Foxy again.

She had reached low orbit.

Her body had expanded several times over. Condensed fox fire shaped her into something almost celestial. Her nine tails spread like a fire lotus blooming in the void. Complex runes appeared at each tail’s tip, and countless living streams of flame coiled around her in space.

The nine-tailed celestial fox adjusted her posture.

Nine tails drew in.

Fox fire condensed into an energy shell.

An eerie glow lit the vacuum and aimed down at the planet’s surface.

Reentry.

Immortal arts, a thousand paths—this was orbit.

Celestial fox, ten thousand methods—this was the Orbital Bombardment Grand Art.