Chapter 395: Emergency Rescue |
The instant he saw the titanic rift, Zheng Zhi sucked in a breath of cold air. Remembering Yu Sheng’s earlier warning to report anything amiss at once, he shouted on the spot: “I see it! The tower ahead turned into a rift, just like the one at Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain!”
He had not even finished when the world-rending crack vanished from his eyes, that horrific sight ending like a dream cut short.
They skidded to a stop. Yu Sheng looked back at Zheng Zhi: “Another rift? How large? What state was it in?”
Zheng Zhi stood blinking at the tower’s silhouette in the rain, at a loss: “Uh, it suddenly disappeared. It lasted only a few seconds.”
Lightning slashed across the sky. The sudden glare lit a portion of the ancient tower’s vast structure. Instinctively Yu Sheng turned to it. In the rain its outline was hazy, but the lit section seemed to stir, trembling under the dim sky as if it were alive.
Before he could dwell on Zheng Zhi’s phantom rift, a heavy reek of blood hit him from nearby. It was close, strong enough that even he could smell it.
They had left behind the last lively border of the city and stepped into the abandoned belt hugging the old mining facilities. The smell came from a cluster of dilapidated buildings nearby.
Holding Irene against his chest, Yu Sheng led the way into a maze of linked plants, giant pipe runs, conveyor cables, and mechanical tracks.
Lofty industrial structures ringed the mountain-like tower. Where once the machines had thundered, now everything lay silent in the equatorial region’s eternal rainy season. Black workshops and mechanical megastructures hunched like massive bones, washed by rain, mute and hollow.
Apart from self-running mechanisms that came by on a periodic schedule to check the structural stability of these quarters, it was as if the area had been entirely forgotten.
“Radar, response.”
Luna spoke softly, then suddenly crouched. Panels opened in the skirt around her legs to reveal hidden weapon bays, and sharp blades clicked into place on all ten fingers.
Foxy’s tails lifted behind her. She raised her head and looked ahead. Light flickered in her eyes. Clusters of Foxfire rose and circled her. The ghostly flames spread along her oiled-paper umbrella, bathing it in fire without harming it, as if turning it into a burning canopy that glowed all the brighter in the rain.
Irene wriggled out from Yu Sheng’s clothes and lay flat across his shoulder, peering about nervously while she rolled a little orb of lightning between careful fingers. She had come out today in her spirit-fox black iron body.
Yu Sheng lifted his gaze and noticed that a section of roof on a nearby plant had collapsed, as if something had crashed through not long ago.
They edged toward that building. Suddenly, Foxy’s fox ears twitched.
She caught a voice, taut with anxious urgency, drifting through the rain: “Grand-uncle, hold on. Don’t sleep. Whatever you do, don’t black out. The elixir is about to take effect… Grand-uncle, you already reverted to your true form! Please, hold on!”
Yu Sheng heard it too. He traded a glance with the demon-fox girl, then darted toward the source of the voice.
Rounding a wall that had likewise collapsed as if struck by something, he saw the origin of the voice and of the blood.
A girl in a red dress knelt in the rain, straining to save her companion. The one she worked over was a giant demon fox, about half the size of Foxy’s original form, with six tails. Its straw-colored fur was matted with blood. Its breath was faint. Its state was dire.
Almost in the same heartbeat, the red-dressed girl noticed Yu Sheng’s group appear. She jolted, then snapped her head up: “Grand-uncle, people are coming!”
A moment later she saw Foxy at Yu Sheng’s side, the nine tails gently swaying, Foxfire sheathing the umbrella in her hand.
The girl froze, then sniffed sharply. Shock and delight flashed across her face as if she had suddenly grasped a life-saving straw. She scrambled up and staggered toward them: “Silver Fox High Immortal! It is me, we met once on Taiyou… could you please help my grand-uncle, he is about to…”
Before she could finish, Immortal Yuan Hao had already flickered like a teleport and arrived at the side of the faint six-tailed demon fox. He spoke quickly: “Do not panic, girl. Let me see to him.”
At the same time Yu Sheng’s eyes fell on the five golden fox tails behind the red-dressed girl.
Those tails must usually have been beautiful and full of vigor. Now they were hurt and rain-soaked, drooping in a miserable way.
“Hey, silly fox,” Irene lifted her head and glanced at Foxy: “your distant relative.”
Foxy did not rise to the bait. She stepped to the red-dressed girl’s side and, after a few seconds’ thought, leaned in to take a careful sniff. The girl went rigid in an instant, the wet tails fluffing up even in the rain. Only then did Foxy remember and say, enlightened: “Oh, it is you.”
She tapped Yu Sheng’s arm with a tail: “Benefactor, this is the jade-faced, golden-furred five-tailed fox we met on the Immortal Ark Terrace in Taiyou.”
“I know,” Yu Sheng nodded, “I guessed.”
[It is my first time seeing her in human guise. Without a nose like Foxy’s I can only guess.]
By now they had all gathered around the dying stranger. Immortal Yuan Hao pressed his palm to the demon fox’s body to stabilize the wounds. The red-dressed girl stood beside Foxy, face full of worry.
“What is this about? Weren’t you still on Taiyou? How did you end up here? How was he injured? Were you ambushed?” Yu Sheng rattled off a string of questions.
“I… my grand-uncle and I were guided here by an Immortal to seek an opportunity. But after we arrived my grand-uncle suddenly sensed something and said there was danger,” the red-dressed girl answered in a rush, words rattling, “we tried to run at once but fell into a bizarre place. There we ran into a group of black-clad assassins and many monsters that besieged us…
“We fought with everything we had and still could not beat them, and we could not find a way out. But then, somehow, those black-clad assassins suddenly seemed to receive an order and all withdrew. My grand-uncle and I escaped by the skin of our teeth and then, muddle-headed, dropped here…”
She rattled off nugget after nugget like beans spilling from a jar. The account was jumbled, whether because her head was still spinning or because the events had happened too suddenly.
Yu Sheng listened, confused, and frowned: “An Immortal’s guidance? Seeking opportunity here?”
He lifted his head as he spoke, blinking at the factories, at the pipes in the rain, and at the mountain-like refining tower.
[Seek destiny in an old industrial mining belt on the frontier?]
The little doll suddenly chimed in: “Say it differently. ‘Set out for the ancient relics of the ley lines in the borderlands to find what’s been left from antiquity.’ Does that sound more reasonable?”
“Put that way, it really does sound more reasonable,” Yu Sheng rubbed his chin, then caught himself, “wait, how do you know… have you been binging novels again?”
“Yes, yes, using your account,” Irene said without hesitation, then turned to Immortal Yuan Hao at the side, who was treating the wounded, “So, how is it? Can he be saved?”
“Under normal circumstances, no,” Immortal Yuan Hao said without lifting his head, starting with a fright and then turning his tone, “but meeting me is his fortune. So long as he still has the will to live, I can keep his life from guttering out. But conditions here are limited. To truly bring him back… my junior brother must take over. He is a sage of the medical arts.”
“I can open a gate now. You carry him through?” Yu Sheng said at once.
“Wait a moment. I will steady him first,” Immortal Yuan Hao waved a hand. “Right now his heart meridians are severed. A jolt might kill him. Do not panic. A moment more.”
His words were both alarming and offhand, leaving the five-tailed golden fox beside them gaping. From the handsome old man’s tone, though, he seemed confident.
Perched on Yu Sheng’s shoulder, Irene studied the demon fox on the ground with curious eyes, clearly turning something over in her mind. After a while she blurted: “Hey, Yu Sheng, this fox looks a little ugly.”
“Hey, that is rude,” Yu Sheng said, a bead of cold sweat on his forehead.
“But he really is a bit ugly, much uglier than the silly fox’s original form,” she insisted, “square face, square head…”
More cold sweat gathered. Yu Sheng glanced at the six-tailed demon fox, eyes closed, half-conscious, and could not help himself: “There are many kinds of foxes. This one is called a Tibetan fox.”
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation
Comments 1