Chapter 392: A Starkly Different Alien City |
Trailing a long plume of fox fire behind her, the silver nine-tailed demon fox plunged headfirst into the dense atmosphere of Sentinel Silence, while Immortal Yuan Hao and Xuan Che streaked after her like meteors on their flying swords. They began decelerating near the equator and soon met an immense bank of heavy cloud.
The clouds rushed at them like endless curtains; the deeper they went, the darker it grew. Sunlight faded behind the cloud deck as the nine-tailed fox carried Yu Sheng into the water-laden, ice-crystal-charged heart of towering cumulonimbus. Irene clung to Yu Sheng’s arm like a koala, wide-eyed at the view beyond the demon fox’s back: the wind howled; bright arcs of lightning cracked within the clouds; thunder briefly turned night into day as rain sheeted down in torrents, the sky surging like an overturned sea.
The poles of this planet were cold and arid, but the equator lay under a nearly perpetual rainy season. Millennia ago, pioneers had come for the rich ore and raised the first arrays and mines amid downpours. Many of those grand extraction facilities had since gone quiet, yet their main frames still stood, rigid and unbowed, thrusting into the rains that ringed the equator like monuments spearing the heavens.
Most of the cities that rose later were built around those ancient giant extraction stations, huddling like ant colonies in the shadow of refining towers and orbital elevators.
Bursting from the cloud base and slicing through the rain curtain, the demon fox flew toward the greatest equatorial city: Mo City.
A colossal structure like a tower to the firmament swept past at speed. On it, rusted conveyors and a complex piping system still showed through the storm. Many similar towers stood ringed among mountains and plains; stupendous cable-works and archaic transit rails laced earth and sky, linking the towers, some rails dropping to the ground to join the great city built among twelve refining towers.
Most of the ancient towers still shone with lights, huge pillars of glow connecting earth and cloud in the rainy night. From time to time a medium immortal skiff or oddly shaped small aircraft pierced the downpour, following those beacons along aerial lanes in and out of Mo City’s airspace. It looked busy.
Foxy followed suit. At Yu Sheng’s cue she merged into a lane and approached one of the city’s “aerial checkpoints.” A vast ring-shaped facility floated beside the extension platform of a refining tower, the ring itself assembled from many luminous rune-bricks suspended in loose-limbed formation. Cultivators in black rain capes stood in midair, vigilantly watching every aircraft, large and small, together with free-flying Immortals, as they passed through the ring and entered Mo City.
The caped cultivators wore the insignia of Mo City’s Airspace Control Division and unusually broad black hats whose shimmering brims shed an energy field to fend off the cold rain. The hovering ring recorded every entry and exit and conducted basic security scans. Anyone who tried to slip past would trigger the city-warding grand array and invite a swift official pursuit.
Just as they passed the ring and prepared to descend into the city, a commotion made them pause.
A rune-brick on the ring flared, a shrill alarm sounded, and two caped cultivators immediately moved to block a disheveled middle-aged man in a gray short coat who was standing on a flying sword.
The man made a noisy scene. Irene poked her head from under Yu Sheng’s arm and peered toward the platform: “There’s drama!”
Yu Sheng turned to look just in time to hear one of the caped cultivators cut the man off sternly: “Drinkers do not ride swords, riders do not drink. Fellow Daoist, the stone has confirmed you’ve been drinking. Arguing won’t help. You’ll need to come with us.”
The middle-aged man glared, thoroughly indignant: “I am a Wine Sword Immortal! Properly registered with the Grand Void Spiritual Axis as a Wine Sword Immortal, understand? Drinking is part of my path! I have papers!”
The two caped cultivators traded a look. After a moment, one said, hesitant but firm: “Then show us your papers.”
The self-proclaimed Wine Sword Immortal passed over a jade token.
The cultivator infused it with spiritual power to check, then shook his head: “That makes it worse, Fellow Daoist. According to your Wine Sword Immortal registration, your authorized conveyance is a purple-gold gourd, not a flying sword.”
Scratching his hair, the Wine Sword Immortal looked embarrassed: “I left in a rush and took the wrong thing from my daughter. I’m on my way to get my gourd back…”
“All the more reason to enter by ground,” the cultivator replied with a shake of his head. “Your vehicle doesn’t match your permit. Fellow Daoist, you’ll have to come with us.”
The Wine Sword Immortal fell silent.
The minor chaos at the checkpoint soon subsided, and Yu Sheng and Irene drew back their onlookers’ gazes.
As they continued toward Mo City, Yu Sheng couldn’t help remarking to the two Immortals beside him: “You’re pretty strict. I used to wonder what you do with that ‘no drunk sword-flying’ rule when you meet an actual Wine Sword Immortal. Turns out you even license them?”
“Of course we license them,” Immortal Yuan Hao said with a laugh, floating alongside on his chainsaw sword. “Otherwise certain bibulous cultivators would career around blind drunk and claim to be Wine Sword Immortals whenever they were stopped. Chaos would reign.”
Xuan Che chimed in: “Exactly. The Way has a thousand branches; anything in the world can enter the Dao. The Wine Sword Immortal path is an old and upright tradition. That said, it isn’t easy. You need keen insight, the right temperament, luck through the red-dust tribulations, and in the end a sturdy body.”
Yu Sheng blinked: “A sturdy body?”
Xuan Che nodded: “Yes. Otherwise you’re likely to drink yourself to death before Foundation Establishment.”
“…And after Foundation Establishment you’re safe?”
“After Foundation Establishment you can still drink yourself to death—though we can usually bring you back in time with pills,” Xuan Che said with perfect seriousness. “Our Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain’s specialty ‘Wine God’s Powder’ treats exactly this. We’ve maintained long-term partnerships with brewing houses across the realm. They sell the wine, we sell the medicine. Any cultivator who takes wine as a path is our customer.”
Yu Sheng was stunned: “Is that even… reasonable? My impression of a Wine Sword Immortal is someone free and untrammeled, tempered by the mortal world until wisdom naturally settles out—like a sage who’s seen through life. How did it become…”
He fumbled for a tactful phrasing, but Immortal Yuan Hao had already understood. The old handsome Immortal smiled slightly and said, calm and even: “Yes, the first one was exactly that.”
Yu Sheng fell silent.
“But once the first used a lifetime to grasp that Dao, from the second onward it stops being the same,” Immortal Yuan Hao went on, with a faint sigh yet a tranquil detachment. “The Dao is subtle upon subtle. Enlightenment hinges on fate, but cultivation can be replicated. What you describe belongs to a pastoral, primal age. For the Featherwing civilization sphere, that pastoral age ended thousands of years ago.”
Yu Sheng said nothing, lifting his head in thought to the alien vista drowned in rain.
Refining towers raised a thousand years ago speared the cloud-lid; a vast city lay luminous upon the earth; an immortal skiff bearing a Stellar Rapid Transit seal dropped from the clouds, stuffed with exotic goods from the Algreid Star Domain; above the city, drifting illusions projected scenes of immortal mountains and rosy clouds, a tourism video broadcast from the far-off capital world.
Yu Sheng felt a wash of feeling rise within him, yet he could not name it: [What am I even feeling?]
They came down into the great city. Large and small immortal skiff platforms were built among the forest of towers. Foxy chose one at random for their landing and, on the way from the skydock to the streets, promptly got a mouthful of handbills.
Some touted hotels, some duty-free malls, some supermarket specials, and one even advertised specialized coat-and-tail care for immortal beasts. The last one came from a plucky young clerk who froze when a dazed nine-tailed silver fox descended from the high platform, then mustered her courage and pressed a flyer into Foxy’s muzzle. It announced a tail-care promotion: one guest paid only the price for a single tail no matter how many tails they actually had.
Foxy was ready to go right then and there, and Yu Sheng barely talked her down—small businesses had it hard enough, and if this silly fox turned up with that Ten Thousand Tails Pay Homage aura, the place might go bankrupt after a single visit.
“Everything here really isn’t the same style as Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain. Different look, different vibe,” Yu Sheng said, standing on Mo City’s street and gazing at traffic flickering through rain and the hazy high-rises beyond. “If not for certain architectural details, it even makes me think of Boundary City—the area around the ‘parking lots’ is always full of people handing out flyers.”
“If anything, Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain’s ‘sect headquarters’ is the outlier,” Immortal Yuan Hao said with a smile and a shake of his head. “There the people are all cultivators. Even in the Initiation Hall, everyone has already entered the path. Across the Featherwing star domain, most residents have only basic training and very little mana. By outside standards our ‘ordinary folk’ might count as somewhat extraordinary, but cities where they gather are still not the same as ‘immortal mountains.’”
“Where are we going next, Benefactor? I’m hungry,” Foxy mumbled, her words thick because her mouth was full of flyers.
“Master has already arranged lodging,” Xuan Che said at once. “It’s near the city center—and there is food.”
Foxy tipped her head back, chewed the stack of handbills, swallowed, and brightened: “Great, let’s eat first!”
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation