Chapter 419: Foxy, standing upon the earth |
The orbital bombardment from low orbit began. Before Foxy’s true body struck, the first things to reach the surface were the suppressive barrages formed from countless Fox Fire meteors.
The myriad flames coiling around Foxy split the instant they entered the atmosphere, raining down as tens of thousands of small light-masses. The dense “fire meteors” burned so hot that they instantly steamed away every cloud along their reentry paths. A thousand bright lines fell like a waterfall of rain, and the moment they touched the crystal forest, they set off a chain of explosions of staggering scale.
The entire crystal jungle convulsed. Thunderous booms rolled up from the depths of the earth, laced with unsettling sounds of shattering and a strange, vast resonance.
Yu Sheng felt the mind-rupturing howl surge into his skull and sensed the change within the forest. He snapped his head toward the depths of that crystal “sea” and saw the center rising in a rush. Countless “giant trees” fused as they surged upward, and from the thicket a crystal mass was being born that dwarfed all the Yun Qing Zi forms combined.
It rose as it climbed and kept changing its shape. At times it was an elder with hair and beard flaring, at times a world-tree, at times a living cluster of crystal in a state of constant collapse and recomposition with no logic to its structure. Deep within that swelling mass, there was a vast energy reaction.
Yu Sheng’s expression changed the instant he felt it. Without another word he yanked open a door back to the forest’s heart and left Irene only a single sentence as he stepped through: “I am going to shut down its anti-air.”
Irene barely had time to say “Huh?” before the collar at her neck tightened. Luna bent, scooped her up with one hand, and broke into a run farther from the crystal jungle.
Irene squealed, flailing: “Hey, C-type buckle, what are you doing, put me down.”
Luna ran as if she had not heard and said, flat and fast: “High-energy reaction. We need to evacuate farther.”
He lifted his head to see a mountain of crystal rising, its flanks swelling with fierce inner light.
In the sky a bright point was expanding. Rings of flame rippled through the atmosphere, spreading and burning, and the air rained with an even denser suppressive barrage.
[When it comes to bloody calamity, honestly.] Yu Sheng glanced in the direction of Irene and Luna with a wry look, then let himself tip straight backward.
His body began to unravel before it hit the ground. Ash drifted and scattered among the towering crystal “trees.”
In the next second the entire crystal forest fell into dead silence. All accumulated energy was forcibly suppressed. Activity in every crystal branch was cut off. Something in the deep earth had its “cycle” clamped down again. The crystal jungle lost the ability to resist.
The halt lasted only a short while, but it was enough for a fox shell from low orbit to strike the crystal mountain.
The nine-tailed fox fell from the sky and slammed down. The Fox Fire, compressed to the limit, released in an instant. At first the world went silent for less than a second, as if even the molecules in the air were frozen in place and stopped vibrating. Then a fireball brighter than the sun began to swell outward from the crater’s center with deceptive slowness.
The sky lit up. The entire plain lit up. A blinding noon flared briefly on this desolate planet far from the sun. Only after a while did Irene, already carried a long way by Luna, hear the rolling, muffled thunder behind her.
She felt her whole body tremble with it.
Shielding her eyes to peer toward the crater, she muttered: “Yu Sheng has gone cold again.”
A beat later she tilted her head and added: “Or maybe he is very hot. Could be a few hundred million degrees.”
Luna set Irene down without ceremony.
Irene yelped: “C-type buckle!”
Yu Sheng felt groggy. The abrupt short death had broken his thoughts, and it took him several minutes to recall why he was in this darkness and what he had last seen before he came here.
He remembered a fox head wreathed in fire diving straight down. It had been a falling headbutt from the heavens.
[That silly young lady headbutted me to death again.]
This time he did not linger in the murk waiting out a respawn. He moved his consciousness directly from the afterworld into the Other-Dimensional Hotel, which could serve as a temporary shell.
He needed to know Foxy’s condition at once and to confirm whether the crystal jungle had, as planned, quieted after the strike.
Docked in high orbit above Sentinel Silence, the Other-Dimensional Hotel lit the lamps in its core compartment. Dormant main systems roared awake.
“Irene,” Yu Sheng called.
Hurrying back with Luna, Irene flinched at the voice in her heart and blurted: “Yu Sheng? You are not dead? Or alive again? That was fast this time.”
“I died. My body needs a while to regenerate. I am speaking through the Other-Dimensional Hotel,” said Yu Sheng, then asked fast, “Where are you and Luna?”
“We are running back. Foxy said after using that move she would need help,” Irene said as she once more clung shamelessly to Luna like a backpack, mostly because her short legs could not keep up. “It was spectacular, by the way.”
“I bet. I had the best view,” Yu Sheng said quickly. “What is the crystal forest’s status now? Is it still active?” Irene looked toward the distance and replied in her head: “No crystal forest anymore. Just a steaming hot pit. Oh, I see Foxy. She is stuck in it.”
“…?” said Yu Sheng.
A second later Luna relayed a live feed straight to the Other-Dimensional Hotel through the internal channel of the Artificial Saintess.
The nine-tailed fox stood upon the earth.
Head down.
Thanks to Luna’s blazing speed, she and Irene reached the crater’s center first. The crystal forest that had covered the entire rim was gone.
The center of the crater was piled with fine, lifeless debris. Heat ripples shimmered off the ground. Dust drifted in the wan pale sunlight. It looked like the end of the world.
Irene tilted her head back. The gigantic nine-tailed silver fox had her head wedged into the ground, with four legs and a heap of tails sticking out and twitching in the wind from time to time.
She finally understood what Foxy had meant about needing help to get unstuck.
In that moment she bitterly regretted not pestering Yu Sheng for a phone. Even a kids’ smartwatch would have done, so long as it could take a picture.
She hopped down from Luna, picked her way carefully around the residual fragments of various sizes on the ground, came to Foxy’s side, and poked a tuft of soft fur on the silver fox’s back as she asked: “Hey, silly fox, still alive?”
The nine-tailed fox planted headfirst in the dirt shuddered, and all four legs flailed in the air.
Irene asked: “Need help?”
From underground came Foxy’s muffled voice: “Obviously. I am out of strength. Hurry and dig me out.”
“If you turned back into human form, could you get out?”
“I said I am out of strength. Changing shape costs mana,” Foxy protested, her legs kicking again. “Stop making trouble. Call your mass-produced dolls over to help.”
“Fine, fine,” Irene laughed, backing up a few steps as she spoke with a grin, “Wait a second then. Yu Sheng got you with a headbutt. Now I have to figure out how to Summon the mass-produced units from the Valley myself. I have never tried it before. Oh right, let me have them pick up some little shovels first.”
Foxy’s hind legs twitched twice. She sighed in the dirt and rock and stopped moving to save her strength.
Her stomach rumbled.
Moments later, Irene managed her first independent Summoning. The first batch of mass-produced dolls popped in nearby.
They were the units that had returned to the Valley earlier because of low power during the fight. They did not have enough energy left to keep fighting, but they could still move.
A troop of little dolls 66.6 centimeters tall, each somehow holding a tiny shovel or hoe that looked suspiciously stolen from the doll-heads’ gardening classroom, gathered quickly around Foxy. After a brief exchange about the work, they set to digging with great zeal.
On a distant, barren alien world, a nine-tailed demon fox who had just executed an orbital strike was planted headfirst in the earth, while a gaggle of Gothic dolls with garden trowels dug their teammate out amid crystal rubble.
Even Irene felt the whole scene was getting a bit too surreal, so she muttered to Luna: “C-type buckle, I am telling you, this scene is really abstract.” Luna thought for a beat and nodded: “Yes.”
To be fair, the little dolls were enthusiastic, but their efficiency was questionable.
By the time Yu Sheng resurrected, they were still digging.
Watching Irene conduct a crew of mass-produced dolls to excavate Foxy, he was stunned into silence for a long moment, then shook his head with a helpless smile and said: “At this rate, when will they finish?”
“What else can we do,” Irene said with both hands spread, “You have no idea how hard the ground is here. The silly fox’s head is wedged in a pile of rock. I even suspect she ‘cast’ herself into it.”
Yu Sheng’s eye twitched. He turned and looked up at the fox stuck in the earth.
Foxy kicked her legs again. Her belly let out a thunderous rumble. “Benefactor, I am hungry,” she said.
“…” said Yu Sheng.
After two seconds of silence, he sighed and took out his phone.
He had a number saved. The owner claimed he could take on any engineering project, from building a public restroom in the city center to dropping an orbital defense star-fort on an alien planet.
“This job goes to our all-capable Sun Gong,” he said.
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation
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