Chapter 422

Chapter 422: Crystal Graveyard

Foxy stepped out through the door, grinning, a chicken drumstick in each hand.

The first thing she did was shove one toward Yu Sheng. “Benefactor, eat drumstick!”

Full and fed, Foxy was in a fantastic mood.

Yu Sheng took it and ate casually, pointing toward the main pit not far away. “Engineer Sun’s people are digging down. After you finish eating, go help.”

“Okay!”

Foxy answered brightly. She gnawed the remaining drumstick in her hand clean—meat and bone—then took a few steps forward and flopped down. In the blink of an eye, she transformed into a massive silver-white demon fox and trotted to the edge of the pit with a spring in her step.

Thanks to the crew’s work, the main pit had been widened again—wide enough for Foxy’s huge body to jump straight in and dig. And at the bottom of the freshly opened shaft, stretches of crystal structure were already exposed.

Inert crystal branches crisscrossed through rock and soil like a colossal root system, tangled and knotted. Even after widening the pit again and again, they still hadn’t found the source. The deeper they dug, the higher the proportion of crystallized material became—and farther down, thicker trunk-like structures appeared beneath the branching web.

Engineer Sun couldn’t hide his curiosity about Yu Sheng’s stubborn instructions. “What are we digging for, exactly? Are we trying to pull the whole crystal system out from under the crater?”

“No,” Yu Sheng said, shaking his head slowly. “I’m looking for its heart.”

Engineer Sun’s eyes widened. “…A heart?”

“This is a massive living thing,” Yu Sheng said. “During the earlier fight, I used certain methods to learn its structure. There should be large cavities down there that contain its core. I don’t know if ‘heart’ is the right word—it isn’t a normal creature—but there’s a large crystal in the central cavity that’s definitely the most important part of its body.”

Engineer Sun listened like his brain had stalled.

Beside him, Xu Jiali muttered, “Reminds me of digging out bug nests back on Taronim-7. Damn. Even thinking about it gives me goosebumps.”

Irene, sitting on Yu Sheng’s shoulder, had been unusually quiet for a while. Now she blurted, “Something this huge was buried in this crater. How did nobody discover it in a thousand years?”

Yu Sheng’s brow furrowed. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking the same thing. Something’s off.”

He swept his gaze across the crater.

Those pale, eerie clusters weren’t completely buried. When they arrived, a large portion was already exposed on the surface. And the underground branch structures connected directly to the surface clusters. The shallow layer wasn’t deep at all. Even without digging, someone doing even basic probing should’ve noticed a massive foreign object hidden under the battlefield.

A thousand years ago, Yun Qing Zi fell here. An ancient powerhouse dying suddenly at the border couldn’t have been a small matter. From the later handling and records, the Grand Void Spiritual Axis did take it seriously and sent people to clean up carefully—yet in the information Xuan Che provided, there was no mention of this crystal structure under the ruins.

Was it because the crystals were dormant back then, so the people who handled the site treated them like harmless leftover minerals?

Or did the crystals not break the surface at the time, only slowly “growing” to this scale over the long thousand years?

Either way, it felt wrong.

Garrison-3 was remote and desolate. Centuries without visitors wasn’t strange. But even if the Grand Void Spiritual Axis forgot this backwater, what about Shu Ji next door?

This was right under Shu Ji’s nose. Every year, when Shu Ji’s Star Warden inspected nearby affiliated worlds, did they really never check this place?

Yu Sheng was still turning those thoughts over when the crew at the pit edge backed away—equipment and all.

Foxy’s digging was simply too violent to stand near.

The enormous nine-tailed demon fox plunged her whole body into the widened pit and dug with her head down, never lifting it once. Her paws worked like pistons. Dirt, stone, and shattered crystal flew out again and again, scattering across dozens of meters. For a while, even the machines couldn’t compete with her efficiency.

Then a dull crack echoed from the bottom.

Yu Sheng didn’t even have time to react.

With a startled “Awooo!” Foxy suddenly dropped straight down, vanishing from sight.

“Damn!” Yu Sheng broke into a sprint, cold sweat bursting across his back.

A hole had opened at the bottom of the pit, as if the ceiling of an underground cavity had snapped and collapsed. Beneath it was a dim, wide space. Faintly, crystal material glowed deeper inside, and in the darkness a vague silver-white shape shifted.

Irene craned her head down, shouting, “Silly Fox! Are you okay?!”

Foxy’s voice rose at once, lively and indignant. “I’m fine, but it scared me! It just collapsed—Benefactor, it’s really spacious down here!”

Yu Sheng exchanged a look with Irene and Luna. Then he called down, “We’re coming to take a look. Send a tail up!”

A flare of fox fire flickered from below. A huge silver-white tail shot up and hovered in front of Yu Sheng like a living rope.

Engineer Sun stared, blank.

The instant Lingdang saw a fox tail rise from the pit, she jumped back hard—several steps in a row. The indifferent Ji Pu Luo girl suddenly looked ready to hiss. After fighting the urge for a long moment, she stammered to Xu Jiali, “Boss… th-this is kind of creepy, meow.”

Xu Jiali looked startled too, but recovered quickly and patted her shoulder. “It’s fine. Things around Yu Sheng are basically always kind of creepy. You get used to it.”

Yu Sheng didn’t bother reacting. He’d long since grown numb to people making a fuss over details like this. He adjusted Irene on his shoulder, hopped onto the fox tail, and nodded at Engineer Sun. “We don’t know what’s down there. Stay up here, Engineer Sun. We’ll check it out.”

“I’m going down with you,” Xu Jiali said, stepping forward. “Lingdang and I have experience with this kind of job.”

Yu Sheng considered it. “All right. You want a tail?”

“No, no.” Xu Jiali waved both hands. “My gear can handle short-range flight, and Lingdang can fly with spells.”

Yu Sheng nodded and said nothing more. The fox tail lowered, carrying him down into the darkness.

Beside him, Luna stepped into empty air as if it were solid ground. Her body flickered between shadow and reality, leaving a chain of afterimages as she followed.

Xu Jiali gave Engineer Sun a quick wave, then dropped into the pit with a roar of thrusters.

Lingdang stared down after them, still wide-eyed. A beat late, she hurried to follow. “Boss, wait—meow!”

The sphere floated free from her hands. Her body rose lightly into the air, and she glided down after Xu Jiali.

They passed through the opening Foxy had made.

The air grew colder. The light dimmed. As their eyes adjusted, Yu Sheng finally made out the structure below.

A huge junction opened up like a crossroads, with cave mouths branching off in every direction. Crystals of every size filled the underground world—clusters wedged in crevices, vein-like networks crisscrossing like roots, pillars supporting the ceiling.

Crystals everywhere, as if they were bones and flesh and organs.

As the fox tail lowered farther, Yu Sheng spotted Foxy at the center of the crystal cave.

She’d returned to human form. She sat on a boulder with a fresh drumstick in hand, chewing placidly like she was waiting in a park.

“Benefactor!”

The moment she saw him, Foxy ran over, all smiles.

Yu Sheng chuckled, ruffled her hair hard, and confirmed she was truly fine. Then he turned his attention outward.

The endless crystals made his instincts tighten.

Irene shrank closer against his shoulder. Yu Sheng could feel the little doll’s whole body tense.

“The vibe here… makes me really uncomfortable,” Irene muttered. “Gross. It’s like crawling inside a corpse. That stench.”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer. He quietly raised his guard and followed the faint pull of the blood-built link deep in his chest, searching for the core structure buried in this crystal maze.

His eyes narrowed.

“This way.”