Chapter 80 – Running

What lay beyond the valley?

Yu Sheng felt this was a perfectly natural curiosity—those rolling, undulating mountains stood quietly within his line of sight, not looking so impossibly tall as to be unclimbable, and the sky was no longer covered by any terrible barrier. Anyone in this place should wonder what scenery lay beyond those mountains.

“Have you ever tried climbing over those mountains before?” Yu Sheng asked Hu Li curiously.

“I… tried a long time ago, back when the immortal was still here,” Hu Li nodded immediately. “Back then, I went with several of the adults. We tried to cross over together, but we couldn’t reach the summit—halfway up, terrifying sounds would come from the sky. If you kept climbing, you’d start losing your strength, and horrible miasma-shadows would appear before your eyes. The immortal even tried turning stone into puppets and sending them to climb, but they lost contact halfway up. The next day, fragments of the stone puppets came rolling down the mountain, and every piece of stone was bleeding. The adults who went to investigate came back saying that flesh and bone had started growing inside the stones.”

“Sounds from the sky… that sounds like the influence of the Twilight Angel that used to cover the sky,” Eileen muttered. “But who knows whether that thing did it deliberately or if it was just a ‘passive effect.’ After all, with something that sinister, sometimes merely existing is enough to cause enormous influence.”

“Now that the Twilight Angel is gone, we can try again,” Yu Sheng looked toward Eileen and Hu Li with a questioning gaze. “What do you think?”

Hu Li nodded immediately. “I’ll follow whatever my benefactor decides.”

Eileen waved her hand. “Fine by me. You’re always coming up with ideas anyway, wanting to try every weird thing imaginable. I’m used to it.”

“Alright, unanimous vote then. Let’s go.”

“How do we get there? Door Opening?” Eileen glanced at Yu Sheng.

“We need to walk there,” Yu Sheng waved his hand. “I’ve never been to that place, so opening a door directly would be hard to target. And if it really is the edge of the Otherworld, the environment might be very unusual—opening a door directly would be risky. If we walk there slowly and observe environmental changes along the way, at least we won’t be caught off guard.”

Hearing this, Eileen’s face lit up with astonishment. “You actually have the concept of ‘playing it safe’?!”

Yu Sheng snapped back: “I’ll throw you off, you know! Sitting on my shoulder and running your mouth nonstop!”

Hu Li watched Yu Sheng and Eileen bickering again, considered for a moment, then spoke up quietly: “Um… the valley terrain is rough, and you don’t know the easy routes up the mountain. How about I lead the way?”

Yu Sheng looked curious. “Lead us? How?”

Then he watched the fox girl turn and run a few steps away before dropping straight to all fours—accompanied by a burst of wind pressure and shimmering light, her form suddenly dissolved and shifted within the glow. Before he could even make out what was happening, an enormous Silvery Foxgirl had appeared before Yu Sheng and Eileen.

Yu Sheng had seen Hu Li transform into her fox form before, but this was Eileen’s first time witnessing it. The Little Doll’s eyes went wide with shock, and after letting out an emphatic “Wow!” she exclaimed: “Holy—! She looks bigger than two minivans!”

“Is that really how you describe it?” Yu Sheng couldn’t help glancing at the doll on his shoulder, but still nodded along. “She really is bigger than a minivan… that pile of tails alone is bigger than a car.”

As he spoke, the massive silver-white fox was already approaching with light, graceful steps. She gently nudged Yu Sheng’s head with her chin, nuzzling him affectionately. “Like this, I can carry several people!”

Yu Sheng didn’t say anything for a moment.

Because the giant fox’s “gentle, affectionate” nuzzling had left him seeing stars, his head nearly getting hammered into his chest cavity.

“Just talk—can you please control your strength a little!” Yu Sheng barely managed to keep himself from passing out, reaching up to grab the fur under the fox’s chin to prevent her from nuzzling again. “Good grief, you’re literally smashing my skull…”

Even as he spoke, his head was still buzzing, the impact of having his crown cracked open by a Fox Spirit lingering for quite some time.

If nothing else could be said about Hu Li, she was genuinely fast at apologizing—her head drooped instantly. “I’m so sorry, benefactor…”

Yu Sheng hurriedly leaped half a meter to the side, narrowly avoiding getting his skull split open by the tip of her nose as she lowered her head.

Only then did he get the chance to properly examine the Fox-Spirit Girl’s current appearance.

It had to be said—elegant was truly elegant, beautiful was truly beautiful. It was the first time he could look at a furry canine creature and think of the words “beauty beyond compare.” Yet more than this beauty, what struck him more powerfully in this moment was the fox’s unique aura.

The massive silver-white fox stood upon the earth, her golden-red eyes seeming to hold pools of flowing light. Several long tails swayed slowly behind her, while wisps of Fox Fire flickered into existence in the air from time to time, dancing and drifting around her fox tails like spirit-sprites with minds of their own.

And probably because she’d been eating well these past two days and had gotten a proper bath earlier, her tails now looked sleek and glossy—in much better condition than when they’d first met.

Hu Li lowered her body, and one of her tails draped gently along her side, its tip resting on the ground before Yu Sheng.

“You can climb on now,” she said happily.

“This really is a first…” Yu Sheng hesitated for a moment, then tentatively stepped onto the tail. (In fact, since the fox’s fur was so beautiful at this moment, he’d even briefly considered whether he should take off his shoes.) “This doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“I can barely feel it, just a tiny bit ticklish,” Hu Li turned her head, watching Yu Sheng clumsily climbing along her tail toward her back. She added a reminder: “You can grab the fur on the sides, otherwise your feet will slip.”

“It’s fine, I’m pretty agile,” Yu Sheng said as he and Eileen laboriously climbed onto Hu Li’s back, then carefully found a spot that looked relatively stable and sat down cross-legged. “I’m settled.” Soft and fluffy, and very warm.

With a subtle mix of emotions, Yu Sheng reached out and stroked the fur around him, feeling as if he were sitting on an extraordinarily luxurious, plush blanket. Before he could even sigh in appreciation, he noticed several of Hu Li’s tails curling forward to form a barrier around him.

Eileen poked Yu Sheng’s head. “There are even armrests and a backrest!”

Then she immediately followed up with: “Can you install a seat on your shoulder too? Even a hard seat would be fine…”

Yu Sheng: “…What do you think?”

“Fine, fine, never mind then.”

A gentle rocking sensation came from beneath them as the massive silver-white fox slowly rose to her feet and turned toward the distant range of towering mountains.

“We’re setting off,” Hu Li’s voice sounded extraordinarily happy for some reason. “Benefactor, hold on tight! We’re about to run!”

“I’m holding—”

Yu Sheng barely got a few words out before he felt a lurch beneath him, and the next instant he nearly lost his seat entirely—the fox had shot forward like an unrestrained beast unleashed.

A tail sweeping from behind caught Yu Sheng and Eileen just in time as they nearly lost their balance, while another tail extended from the side to block the howling wind rushing at their faces. Amid the violent g-forces pressing him back, Yu Sheng could only watch as the scenery on both sides instantly transformed into a continuous blur of retreating afterimages. Neither the ravines nor the ruins on the ground could slow Hu Li’s relentless acceleration in the slightest.

The fox ran with wild abandon across the vast valley.

“Waaaaah hahahahaha—” Eileen shrieked and hollered, one hand gripping Yu Sheng’s head while she faced the gale forcing its way through the gaps between the tails (even though this wind had already been weakened countless times over), mouth stretched wide open. “We’re—about—to—fly!”

“I love running!” Hu Li’s voice carried from ahead, brimming with exhilaration. “It’s been so long since I’ve run like this!”

Yu Sheng had one hand clutching a big fluffy tail at his side and the other bracing the Little Doll on his shoulder to keep the now-hyperactive thing from flying off. “Watch it! Don’t crash into—mountain! Mountain! There’s a mountain ahead!”

“Okay!”

With a gleeful shout, Hu Li accelerated once more toward the rapidly approaching mountainside—and clusters of brilliant Fox Fire erupted behind her, flames gathering into dense bundles at her fox tails, followed by rapid, thunderous detonations as the violent combustion and eruption formed cone-shaped exhaust trails!

Yu Sheng heard the commotion and quickly turned to look. Through the gaps between the fox tails, he caught one glimpse and immediately cried out: “Holy shit—rocket-boosted fox!”

Then he felt an even more violent thrust slamming him backward and intense vibrations shaking through him. Even with his current physical capabilities, he nearly had the wind knocked out of him. The next instant, he realized Hu Li had already charged up the mountainside.

She hadn’t run up it.

She had essentially followed the terrain in an ultra-low-altitude ground-skimming flight!

In practically the blink of an eye, the rocket-boosted fox had blasted her way to just below the midpoint of the mountain. Her voice pierced through the howling wind and reached Yu Sheng and Eileen’s ears: “Back then, this is where we started hearing the strange sounds. Any higher, and we’d lose our strength and see strange things—we’re about to pass through it!”

And then, Hu Li surged past that “halfway line” almost without any resistance at all—the very barrier that in her memory had once stopped the immortal, stopped her parents, stopped every last survivor.

Nothing stood in her way here anymore.

She could faintly see the scenery at the summit, could see the craggy boulders standing along the ridge like rows of strange sentinels, arrayed beneath the light of the sky.

She began to decelerate. The booster flames at her tails faded rapidly, and her agile paws found purchase among the mountain rocks as she ran onward while steadying herself.

In the final few hundred meters before the summit, Hu Li’s speed finally dropped to something like a light jog. She bounded between the rocks a few more times before coming to a stop in a relatively open area.

The tails on her back slowly unfurled, opening like a crew compartment to reveal a somewhat dazed Yu Sheng inside.

It took Yu Sheng several seconds to come back to his senses. He raised his head rather sluggishly and gazed into the distance.

“Benefactor,” Hu Li’s voice reached his ears. “Beyond… it’s still mountains. Endlessly repeating mountains.”

(End of Chapter)