Chapter 393: Portable No. 66 Wutong Road |
In a suite of a hotel directly owned by Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain in the central district of Sentinel Silence, Yu Sheng stood at the window, staring out at the alien scene.
The rain did not stop. Low clouds blurred the line between day and night. Though sunlight had still shone on the thick cloud deck when Foxy descended, the city beneath the ceaseless drizzle felt wrapped in night. Countless lights drenched the rain-bound metropolis; neon pulsed between towers; vast illusion-projections hovered; and far off through the rain veil, the grand old refining towers loomed like strange mountains outside the city, their silhouettes occasionally etched in a flash of lightning, hinting at a bygone glory.
Foxy was feasting at a side table. A spread of unnameable local dishes was arrayed before her, plainly far more compelling than the alien view.
Zheng Zhi sat opposite, somewhat ill at ease. The tableful of food left him at a loss. He practically checked with Xuan Che before each bite, and his three questions never varied: What is this? Can a human eat it? Will it suddenly jump up and hit me?
Yu Sheng thought it a pity his big nephew hadn’t witnessed Foxy’s stew. [If he had survived that experience, his tolerance for strange foods would be sky-high. On this frontier world he’d eat anything, and he might even accept being punched by the meal before every bite.]
Irene sat cross-legged on the sill, watching the view with Yu Sheng. The little doll’s eyes were wide, radiating the giddy delight of a tourist on a distant trip. Everything pleased her.
Luna, as always, stood quietly behind Yu Sheng. She seemed to focus on nothing at all. The dining room light and the rain outside reflected off her cold alloy shell in a soft sheen.
“Where do we start?” Yu Sheng broke the quiet and looked to Immortal Yuan Hao and Xuan Che. “Do you have a plan?”
“Two tracks,” Immortal Yuan Hao said, nodding. “First, Xuan Che has already contacted Mo City’s City Lord. As an envoy of Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain, he can request official cooperation to review recent years’ cultivator activity and see whether we can find a trace of those Black-robed Cultivators. Second, while Xuan Che deals with the authorities, we walk the city. On the way in I swept this place with my divine sense. Several areas felt wrong—qi congested, the flows sluggish. We need to confirm.”
Then he drew back his gaze and looked around.
This was Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain’s local “base” for the group—comfortable and spacious, full of a hybrid charm of future-tech and the immortal realm. In this hotel called “Huixian Islet,” their suite counted as excellent.
After a moment’s hesitation, Yu Sheng walked to a certain bedroom door, raised a hand, and patted the frame as if testing and confirming something.
Immortal Yuan Hao watched with curiosity: “What are you doing?”
“Being away from home is never as comfortable, never as convenient,” Yu Sheng said offhand, then turned to the little doll on the sill. “I have an idea…”
“All right, all right, you have an idea, got it,” Irene drawled, as if long accustomed to this. She slid off the sill and ambled over, tilting her head up at him. “I’m warning you, this belongs to the hotel. If you break it, you buy it.”
Then she saw Yu Sheng fish a palm-sized stiff card from his pocket.
On it, in a dubious dark red “paint,” someone had drawn an alchemical infusion array in advance. In the center of the formation was the hotel’s logo—that is, it was supposed to be a fox head, but because someone’s draftsmanship was terrible it ended up a triangle.
Irene stared, baffled.
“I call it Portable No. 66 Wutong Road,” Yu Sheng said with perfect gravity. “The principle is that I split the workflow from those ‘fixed portals’ I made earlier. First I do the ‘infusion’ and ‘assignment,’ then package the result. Later, once I find a physical door as carrier, I complete the ‘open’ step. The flow is streamlined, the usage convenient, and the design eminently reasonable.”
Irene was dumbfounded: “This actually works?”
“I think it does,” Yu Sheng said after a beat. “I tested it at home once. I linked the second-floor bedroom nightstand and the first-floor fridge. It worked fine.”
“Prebuilt gate is what this is,” the little doll blurted at last, overwhelmed by the wrongness of it all. She pointed at the card. “Hey now, invent whatever you like, but does this thing have to look so low?”
“Low? This is a premium tool I crafted with care. The pinnacle of Alchemy, thank you very much,” Yu Sheng shot back, eyes wide. As he spoke, he began picking at the card’s peel-and-stick backing. “It even comes with adhesive. I went back to Boundary City two days ago just to buy it… wow, it’s hard to peel.”
“Stop, stop, stop. You’re tearing it,” Irene flapped her hands, then scrambled up his trouser leg. “Give it here. Your hands are hopeless.”
She snatched the prebuilt-gate card and, with swift little hands the size of bottle caps, peeled the backing in no time. Holding up the card, she asked: “Now what? Stick it to the door?”
“…Yes.”
Irene pressed the card to the door and gave it a few brisk pats: “That’s it?”
“Activation remains. It’s like the final step of the infusion ritual, establishing a link between the formation and its target,” Yu Sheng said, still solemn. “That step requires fresh blood. Lu—”
He had only gotten the first syllable of “Luna” out when the Artificial Saintess ghosted from the window in a single blur. She appeared at his side and down came her blade.
Yu Sheng stood blinking, blood welling from the back of his hand as the iron doll stared dully at him. After a beat, she nodded, slow on the uptake: “Cut.”
“…Thank you,” Yu Sheng said.
He turned, and before the wound could close smeared blood across the card, chanting under his breath with great seriousness. To others it sounded arcane; only Irene, perched on his shoulder, recognized the multiplication table.
Clearly he’d picked up this hand-seal-and-incantation routine during their days at Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain.
A moment later the fresh blood vanished into the paper. The card seemed to come alive, turning into a living strip of “skin.”
It began to wriggle. Its edges crept like a creature, growing, sending countless fine filaments into the door, giving the carrier life. A pre-infused array, the blood of the door’s master, intent pointed toward the target, and a door to execute that intent—when those conditions align, a “door” takes effect.
From the plain-looking door came a low, illusory heartbeat.
Yu Sheng exhaled gently and, without invoking any extra “open” power, pushed the door at random.
On the other side lay the living room of No. 66 Wutong Road.
“For safety’s sake I have to ask,” Irene said, blinking. The little doll had seen enough nonsense to be inured, yet she still checked: “You didn’t actually move the whole house here again, did you?”
“No,” Yu Sheng waved both hands. “It’s called Portable No. 66 Wutong Road, but only the door came over. The house itself is still at Guanyun Terrace. The effect is the same, though. Open the door and you’re home.”
“Good,” Irene breathed out. “Not that outrageous.”
Across the room, Xuan Che and Immortal Yuan Hao were already gaping. They spoke almost in unison: “This counts as not outrageous?”
Xuan Che turned to the nearest witness, Zheng Zhi: “Has Mr. Yu always been like this?”
“I wouldn’t know,” the big nephew said blankly. “I haven’t known him long.”
Xuan Che glanced at the nine-tailed demon fox across the table, only to find that Foxy hadn’t even looked up once. The stack of empty plates beside her had, however, climbed ever higher.
She seemed to sense something. Looking up, she spotted the door to home beside Yu Sheng, smiled at once, walked through to No. 66 Wutong Road, fished two steamed buns from the fridge, returned to Sentinel Silence, split them, and dipped them in the sauce.
The whole routine flowed like water, without the least confusion or hesitation, as if the world simply worked this way—or rather, as if this was how the Benefactor had built her world to run.
Xuan Che and Immortal Yuan Hao had no words.
At the same time, on the edge of Mo City, deep in an abandoned industrial zone near an ancient refining tower, dozens of masked, black-robed cultivators gathered inside a spirit-ore smelting plant, bustling around an array that had clearly been installed recently.
The array was inscribed on the floor, and above it hung countless phantom rifts. Within each rift swam hazy light, as if cradling unearthly visions and distant times and spaces.
But now every rift flickered unsteadily, as though the connection to whatever lay beyond might break at any moment.
A vague Elder hovered over the many visions. In the blurred silhouette only a pair of eyes was unnervingly clear, and those eyes pressed down with force as they stared at the busy Black-robed Cultivators below.
“Find out at once what just happened,” the Elder said, his voice thin and indistinct, as if separated from the real world by heavy drapes. “All twenty-two arrays on this planet were disturbed simultaneously. That cannot be mere leylines in turmoil. A hidden great cultivator has acted. Do not take this lightly.”
“Yes, Patron!” the Black-robed Cultivators answered in one voice.
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation