Chapter 419

Chapter 419: Foxy, Standing on the Ground (Down)

The bombardment began before Foxy herself struck.

Countless fox-fire meteors split from the flames coiling around her as she entered the atmosphere, breaking into tens of thousands of burning orbs. They scattered toward the surface, dense and relentless. The fire meteors tore through the air, vaporizing clouds along the reentry track, and fell like a waterfall storm.

The moment they hit the crystal jungle, a chain of explosions erupted.

The entire forest trembled. A rolling roar rose from deep underground, tangled with cracking sounds and strange resonance.

Yu Sheng felt the chaotic howl in his mind spike. He snapped his gaze toward the basin’s center and saw the heart of the crystalline sea rising.

Crystal trees fused as they grew. A single mass—larger than all the previous Yun Qing Zi forms combined—rose like a mountain. It shifted violently, sometimes an enraged old man with flaring hair and beard, sometimes a towering tree, sometimes a chaotic living cluster that collapsed and rebuilt without logic.

And deep inside it—

A massive energy reaction.

“I’m going in!”

The instant Yu Sheng sensed that reaction, his face changed. He opened a door back into the forest’s center and vanished, leaving Irene with a single line: “I’m going to shut down its air defense!”

Irene blinked at the empty air. “…Huh?”

Then she yelped as her collar tightened. Luna bent down, grabbed her, and hoisted her up like luggage.

“Hey!” Irene flailed. “C Buckle, why’d you suddenly put me down—”

Luna didn’t acknowledge her. She ran farther from the crater. “High energy reaction. Need. Further evacuation.”

Irene was carried away screaming.

Yu Sheng reappeared at the forest’s center.

The crystal mountain loomed above him, its interior filled with intense flowing light. In the sky, the bright point of Foxy’s descent swelled—rings of fire rippling outward, a denser suppressing barrage raining down.

“Bloody disaster, my ass…” Yu Sheng muttered.

He twisted his head, looking toward the direction Luna had carried Irene, half amused and half resigned.

Then he fell backward.

Before his body even hit the ground, it broke apart.

Ash scattered and drifted, dispersing among the crystal trees.

The next second, the entire forest snapped into silence. All accumulated energy was suppressed. Crystal growth halted mid-motion. Some deep cycle underground was abruptly locked down again, and the forest lost its ability to resist.

It only lasted moments.

But it was enough.

Foxy struck.

She fell like a comet and slammed into the crystal mountain. Compressed fox fire released in an instant—so fast the world stayed silent for less than a heartbeat, as if even the air had frozen.

Then a fireball brighter than the sun expanded from the crater’s center, slow-looking only because it was unstoppable.

The sky lit up. The basin lit up. For a brief moment, harsh daylight flared on this barren planet far from the sun.

Only after the light began to fade did Irene—already far away in Luna’s grip—hear the rolling thunder behind her.

The ground shook under it.

“Yu Sheng went down again…” Irene muttered, shading her eyes with one hand. The light had dimmed enough to look toward the crater.

Then she tilted her head. “Or maybe he went up. Might be a few hundred million degrees.”

Luna set her down without ceremony.

Irene hit the ground and exploded. “C. BUCKLE!!”

—

Yu Sheng drifted in a familiar darkness. Sudden death always cut his thoughts cleanly, and it took him minutes to remember what had happened.

All he could clearly recall was a fox head wrapped in flame coming straight down.

“Got headbutted to death by that silly young lady again,” he grumbled into the dark.

This time, instead of waiting for his resurrection to finish, he shifted his consciousness directly into the Otherworld Hotel—using it as a temporary shell.

He needed to know Foxy’s condition, and he needed to confirm the crystal jungle was truly suppressed.

Aboard the Otherworld Hotel, docked in high orbit over Shu Ji, the core section’s lights snapped on. Systems that had been dormant surged awake.

“Irene.”

Irene—still rushing back with Luna—heard the call in her mind and jolted. “Yu Sheng?! You’re not dead? Or you revived again? This fast?!”

“Dead,” Yu Sheng replied calmly. “My body still needs time to regenerate. I’m speaking through the Otherworld Hotel right now. Where are you and Luna?”

“We’re heading back,” Irene replied, already clinging shamelessly to Luna again because her short legs couldn’t keep up. “Foxy said after using that move, she’d need help. And I’m telling you, that hit was insane—”

“Yeah. I saw it more clearly than you,” Yu Sheng cut in. “What’s the state of the crater? Is the crystal jungle still moving?”

“Crystal jungle?” Irene glanced into the distance. “There is no crystal jungle anymore.”

Yu Sheng went still.

“It’s just one steaming crater,” Irene continued. “Oh, I see Foxy. She’s… stuck in the pit.”

Yu Sheng: “…?”

A moment later, a live feed came through—Luna sending visuals straight through her internal channel to the Otherworld Hotel.

The nine-tailed fox stood on the ground.

Head down.

Luna’s speed was absurd. She and Irene reached the crater’s center in what felt like no time at all. By then, the crystal jungle that had swallowed the entire basin was gone—wiped clean.

The crater’s heart was covered in fine, inactive remnants. Heat shimmered off the ground. Dust drifted through pale sunlight. It looked like the end of the world.

And at the center of it all, the massive nine-tailed silver fox had her head buried in the ground. Four legs and a fan of tails stuck out, twitching weakly in the wind.

Now Irene finally understood what Foxy meant by “get unstuck.”

She deeply regretted not forcing Yu Sheng to get her a phone. A kid’s smartwatch would’ve done. Anything that could take pictures.

Rebar Little Doll hopped down from Luna and carefully stepped around scattered debris, approaching Foxy. She poked a tuft of fur. “Hey, Silly Fox. You alive?”

Foxy immediately kicked her legs in the air, flailing.

“Need help?” Irene called.

“Obviously!” Foxy’s muffled voice came from underground. “I’m out of strength! Hurry up and dig me out!”

“Can’t you just switch back to human form and climb out?”

“I told you I’m out of strength!” Foxy kicked again. “Changing forms costs mana! Stop messing around. Call over your mass-produced dolls and have them help!”

“Okay, okay,” Irene said, laughing as she backed up. “Just wait a second. Yu Sheng got headbutted to death by you, so now I have to figure out how to summon the units from the valley by myself. I’ve never done it before… Oh, right—first let’s have them grab some little shovels—”

Foxy kicked twice more, then gave a long, defeated sigh and went still to conserve energy.

A loud rumble came from her belly.

A moment later, Irene finally managed her first independent summoning. A batch of mass-produced dolls popped out from the valley and gathered nearby.

These were the ones who’d retreated earlier during the fight. They didn’t have enough power to keep blasting, but they could still move.

A whole crowd of 66.6-centimeter-tall Little Dolls held tiny shovels and hoes from who-knows-where. They looked suspiciously like they’d been stolen from some doll-sized gardening class. They formed up around Foxy, exchanged a few efficient words, and started digging with terrifying enthusiasm.

On a distant, barren alien world, a nine-tailed demon fox who had just completed orbital bombardment was stuck head-first in the ground while a group of goth dolls with gardening tools dug her out of crater debris.

Even Irene felt it was a little too cursed.

She muttered to Luna, “C Buckle, I’m telling you, this scene is seriously absurd…”

Luna considered, then nodded once. “Mm. Yeah.”

But despite the dolls’ passion, their efficiency was… questionable.

By the time Yu Sheng resurrected and returned in person, they were still digging.

Watching Irene supervise the mass-produced excavation crew, Yu Sheng fell silent for a long moment. Then he sighed, half amused and half helpless. “How long are you going to let them dig like this?”

“What else can I do?” Irene spread her hands. “You don’t understand how hard the ground is here. Silly Fox’s head is stuck in solid rock. I honestly think she basically cast herself into it.”

Yu Sheng’s eye twitched. He looked at the nine-tailed demon fox stuck in the ground.

Foxy kicked weakly. Her belly rumbled like thunder.

“Benefactor,” she said pitifully from underground, “I’m hungry.”

Yu Sheng stared.

Then, after two seconds, he sighed and pulled out a phone.

He had a number saved. The owner claimed he could handle any engineering job—from installing a bathroom in the city center to tossing orbital defense star forts onto alien planets.

“This needs our all-purpose Engineer Sun.”