Chapter 213 – The Immortal Shuttle Crash Site

He immersed his consciousness, communicated with the distant coordinates, let his perception spread outward, and transformed the door before him into a mapped target. Yu Sheng quickly adjusted his state, then began attempting to convert the enormous warehouse door into a passage leading to Otherworld Valley, following the same sensation he always felt when opening a Door.

Baili Qing and Song Cheng unconsciously held their breath, watching the scene with rapt attention. Behind Baili Qing, a pair of eyes silently materialized in the air, observing with intense curiosity all the things that ordinary eyes could not perceive.

“Can you see anything?” Baili Qing asked softly in her mind.

“I can’t make sense of it, but I can observe two spatial coordinates overlapping. It’s truly… an incredible process,” a somewhat mechanical, stilted voice responded in her mind. “Under normal circumstances, this would require gathering an enormously vast amount of energy to ‘curve’ spacetime, but look—there isn’t even a breeze stirring here. It’s as though the spatial structure was always meant to overlap like this.”

Just then, a faint humming sound interrupted the voice in Baili Qing’s mind.

The next second, the center of the massive warehouse door suddenly “trembled,” and immediately after, the distant “scenery” appeared within the doorframe.

The passage had formed. The valley’s landscape was reflected in everyone’s eyes—or rather, in that very moment, the valley located in the distant Otherworld had truly “arrived” at this place.

Yu Sheng still had one hand pressed against the warehouse door’s frame as he looked up at the astonishing passage before him, feeling rather surprised himself.

“It actually worked?” he couldn’t help muttering. “How does this even work, exactly…”

The moment those words left his mouth, Ailin’s voice piped up from near his feet: “Hah?! You opened the door yourself and you’re asking who?!”

Yu Sheng paid no attention to Little Doll and just kept pondering, then glanced again at the door frame his hand was pressed against.

He did feel that it had been “easy.” It seemed like any door would do… so what was the true nature of a “Door”? How was a “Door” defined? A warehouse door counted as a “Door”—what about a city gate? A valve? Even larger doors, and more abstract ones?

The roar of engines interrupted Yu Sheng’s thoughts. He looked up to see that the heavy trucks parked at the warehouse entrance, loaded with supplies and personnel, had already started up. Song Cheng was personally directing the convoy through the passage.

Baili Qing walked over. The female Bureau Chief still wore her taut expression, but there was something distinctly different in the way she looked at the passage.

“How long can you maintain it?” she asked curiously.

“A few hours, I suppose,” Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then pointed at his hand still pressed against the door frame. “The main issue is that my arm gets sore after a while. I have to stay here holding it up—the door closes the moment I take my hand away.”

Baili Qing: “…So you’re saying that aside from ‘arm soreness,’ there’s no cost?”

“Maybe I’d get a bit drowsy too?” Yu Sheng’s tone carried some uncertainty. “The thing is, I’ve never kept one open for a really long time before. Normally I just push through a door and it takes a few seconds. Besides, once this thing’s passage is established, it doesn’t need extra effort to maintain—I’ve even set up a permanent door in my basement at home. That one stays open all the time.”

A subtle shift passed through Baili Qing’s eyes—but her ice-cold face concealed it well.

Then she thought for a moment, raised her hand and pointed at the passage: “Mind if I go through and take a look?”

“Of course not,” Yu Sheng smiled, looking completely unsurprised. “Once the convoy’s through, we’ll head in—I need to go last.”

With the large-scale passage in place, it didn’t take long for the entire convoy to enter the valley. Before long, Baili Qing, Yu Sheng, and the rest also passed through the door, arriving in this eternally daylit valley with its pleasant environment.

Song Cheng stared at the place in stunned amazement.

“I’d heard about the changes here before, but if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, you couldn’t have beaten me to death and made me believe the ‘Night-shrouded Valley’ from the files could turn into this,” Captain Song surveyed the open valley floor and the surrounding mountains that looked quite imposing under the blue sky, unconsciously reaching into his pocket for a cigarette. “Incredible, truly…”

“No smoking here,” Ailin immediately ran up to Song Cheng and held out her hand. “Fifty yuan fine.”

Song Cheng froze for a moment, looking at the cigarette in his hand: “I haven’t even lit it yet.”

Ailin replied with righteous confidence: “Then hurry up and light it, and then give me fifty.”

“Ignore her,” Yu Sheng said with an exasperated wave, torn between laughter and tears. “But there really is no smoking here—mainly because it wasn’t easy getting this place green. You have no idea how much effort it took me to restore the valley’s environment to this state.”

Baili Qing, meanwhile, hadn’t said a word the entire time. She just kept looking around, those faded, pale gray eyes seemingly scanning every bit of “information” from the entire valley and imprinting it directly into her mind. After quite a while, she finally broke the silence with a measured tone: “Indeed, compared to the containment facilities the Special Operations Bureau can arrange, conditions here are better in every respect.”

Yu Sheng gave a cheerful grin, graciously accepting all the praise, then began leading the way while providing a tour and briefing them on the campsite preparations.

The construction team leader who had come with the convoy was a stocky, reliable-looking middle-aged man. He followed behind Yu Sheng, clicking his tongue in amazement when he saw the large platform at the valley’s center and the prepared campsite foundations, looking especially pleased.

Yu Sheng was still giving introductions—over here was the teleportation gate platform, though right now there was just one door on it; next to it was the vegetable garden, though they’d still need to build a greenhouse later; the edge of the platform was where the chickens were kept, currently being tended by a fox; the campsite area already had drainage ditches and generator foundations in place; the large building at the far end of the campsite could serve as a warehouse; and that ring of inexplicable walls in front of the building was a barbican—don’t ask why there was a barbican, he already said it was inexplicable…

“Hey, this is way better than what I expected going in,” the construction foreman said happily. “When I first heard we were going to some valley to build a temporary shelter, I was all ready to start laying foundations in the middle of nowhere. Didn’t expect the construction conditions to be this good—don’t worry, we’ll have the most basic prefab housing and water and electricity sorted within twelve hours. The children can move in first, and we’ll take care of the rest gradually.”

“Mm,” Baili Qing nodded, then turned to look at Yu Sheng. “I’ve already notified the Council. Most of the staff they assigned to the orphanage will transfer over as well—mainly the teachers who are in direct contact with and responsible for caring for the young children. Until the Twilight Angel situation is resolved, they’ll live with the children in this valley. Supply logistics and distribution will still go through that warehouse, so we’ll need to trouble you to ‘open the door’ again when the time comes.”

“No big deal at all,” Yu Sheng nodded cheerfully. “My phone’s always on—just call me whenever you need the door opened.”

After the necessary handovers, site surveys, and plan confirmations, the engineering personnel from the Special Operations Bureau launched into an intense and busy construction process.

Quickly assembled prefab units were unloaded from the trucks, unfolding into shape on the pre-prepared foundation platforms. Generator sets were also offloaded to their designated areas and entered the installation and commissioning phase. Yu Sheng was a complete layman when it came to all of this—he watched from the sidelines for ages without understanding a thing. Ailin, on the other hand, remained thoroughly fascinated, finding a big rock near the construction site to perch on and settling in to watch, looking every bit like she intended to stay until the end of time.

Yu Sheng couldn’t help suspecting that the reason Little Doll was so intensely interested in the construction site was that the main components of her current body were stone and rebar…

And just then, Baili Qing walked over.

“Can you take me to see that ‘crash site’?”

Yu Sheng wasn’t the least bit surprised. At least half the reason the Bureau Chief had come along today was for the various secrets hidden in this valley—and this was something they had discussed previously. Today just happened to be the right opportunity.

“No problem. The structure over there has actually stabilized quite a bit these past couple days, so it shouldn’t keep collapsing,” Yu Sheng agreed without hesitation, then turned to glance at Hu Li. “Come with us—you know that area better.”

“I’ll pass!” Ailin waved a hand from nearby without even turning her head. “I’m staying here to watch them build houses.”

“Got it,” Yu Sheng replied offhandedly, though before leaving he added one more reminder: “Don’t get too close—be careful not to get hit by the machinery. With your size, you’re a blind spot everywhere you go on a construction site.”

Ailin instantly bared her teeth in indignation—Yu Sheng paid her no mind.

The so-called “crash site” lay several hundred meters past the area that had once been the Small Grove, on a slope that dipped inward along a mountain hollow deep in the valley floor.

That was the spot where, many years ago, Hu Li and her family had crash-landed in this Night-shrouded Valley aboard their vessel.

The “feast” that had occurred when Entity-Hunger was destroyed had nearly reshaped the entire valley, gnawing and tearing apart vast swaths of mountain structure. But even that feast had not destroyed the main body of the vessel known as the “Immortal Shuttle.” It had merely buried it a little deeper into the mountainside and destroyed the original support structures beneath the crash site, causing instability across the entire area.

After “taking over” control of the entire valley, Yu Sheng had been slowly repairing the mountain structure in this area and reinforcing the geological formations around the Immortal Shuttle’s wreckage. Over the past few days, he had also shifted it as far out from the mountain as possible. Now, most of the wreckage had separated from the rock strata and lay steadily on the slope.

Yu Sheng led Baili Qing and Song Cheng to the vicinity of the crash site, where they stood on a stable Stone Platform and gazed at the gently curved structure of the aircraft.

The streamlined metal wreckage, a full hundred meters long, lay silently amid fused and fractured rock layers. Faint glimmers of light could occasionally be seen moving deep within the remains. The warped and twisted framework of the vessel was like a gaunt skeleton, gazing hollowly up at the sky, as if still silently recounting the violent impact from all those years ago.

“This is the Immortal Shuttle that Hu Li rode in,” Yu Sheng said, pointing at the massive wreckage nearby. “There’s still a bit of residual energy deep inside, but according to Hu Li, it’s just ‘cooling afterglow’—nothing harmful anymore. Still, I wouldn’t recommend you go inside… it’s not safe.”

(End of Chapter)