Chapter 81: Peach Blossom Land

Chapter 81: Peach Blossom Land

Outside were still mountains, repeating without end, layered upon layered, like ripples produced when space is compressed and wrinkled at a small scale.

After Yu Sheng recovered from the harrowing acceleration, deceleration, and dizziness of the journey, he saw the “endlessly repeating mountains” Hu Li had described.

The continuous mountain ranges stretched like waves spreading outward, extending infinitely in his field of vision, with faint mist shrouding the gaps between peaks, leaving no visible outline other than “mountains” within the drifting fog.

Yu Sheng frowned deeply, staring for a long time at the distant mountains that seemed endlessly duplicated. Then he suddenly recalled the café he had met Bai Li Qing in. At that time, that café also extended and repeated infinitely like this, all the way to the edge of vision.

But there was a difference. That café only repeated infinitely in two directions, front and back. Moreover, its street-facing window still formed a clear “boundary.” However, these surrounding mountains now had no matter which direction he looked, there was no visible “end.”

“This… we probably can’t walk out of this, right?” Irene said, gripping Yu Sheng’s head and peering nervously across the ridge, “Are we still going forward?”

Yu Sheng fell silent. At the same time, he quietly focused his mind, recalling the perspectives he had “seen” when he first established a connection with this valley, while sensing the surrounding environment.

After a moment, he suddenly bent down, picked up a small stone from the ground, and threw it forcefully into the distance.

The stone flew into the air, then disappeared from everyone’s sight before it landed.

“Huh?” Irene exclaimed in surprise upon seeing this.

Yu Sheng slowly walked forward and carefully arrived at the spot where the stone had vanished.

There seemed to be nothing ahead, yet also an invisible “boundary.” He bent down again, picked up another small stone, and gently tossed it forward.

This time, he clearly saw the process of the stone disappearing. It instantly passed through a “boundary,” and at the moment it vanished, faint ripples spread through the air, short-lived and weak, like the surface of water.

Yu Sheng raised his head and looked along the mountain ridge to both sides.

He understood.

The terrain rose and fell, then converged again at a distant endpoint, and that invisible boundary enveloped the entire valley, extending from the sky above down to the ground below.

After hesitating for a few seconds, Yu Sheng finally took a light breath and stepped forward.

“Hey, hey, hey! You’re really going forward!” the little doll shouted from his shoulder, “This feels really wrong! What if after crossing it…”

Before she could finish, Yu Sheng had already stepped across the invisible boundary. With a faint ripple spreading through the air, a brief sensation of weightlessness appeared and vanished. Their vision blurred, and in the next instant, they were standing somewhere in the center of the valley again.

“…can’t come back…” Irene was still finishing her instinctive shout. Only after speaking the last words did she freeze and look around in disbelief, “Ah, we’re back?”

Immediately after, she saw a larger ripple appear beside them, and the massive silver-white demon fox stepped through the air, appearing beside her and Yu Sheng.

“Benefactor!” Hu Li called out anxiously as she arrived, quickly scanning for them. Only after confirming that Yu Sheng and Irene were fine did she relax. She cautiously brushed Yu Sheng with the tip of her tail, “You suddenly disappeared, you scared me!”

“The space boundary closes and points inward toward the central region,” Yu Sheng said after a long moment of thought, finally breaking the silence, “I just don’t know whether other Other Domains have the same structure.”

Irene listened blankly for a while, then finally reacted, “So no matter what, we can’t get out?”

“There is no ‘outside’ at all,” Yu Sheng shook his head, “This valley is the only ‘valid’ area in the entire space. The endless mountains we saw earlier are actually just overlapping projections created by spatial folding and curvature. If you look closely, they are all infinite copies of the mountains surrounding this valley.”

Irene widened her eyes, and after a long pause, finally showed an understanding expression.

“…Wow.”

It was unclear whether she truly understood or not.

After a while, Irene poked Yu Sheng’s head, “So what do we do next?”

Yu Sheng turned his gaze to the silver-white demon fox beside him.

“Since no more entities will be generated here, and it has become a stable place… maybe we can properly bury your parents again, at least set up a formal grave. What do you think?”

The fox girl tilted her head, then gently nodded.

Finding the burial site of Hu Li’s parents did not take much time, and for Yu Sheng now, constructing a grave was not difficult either.

The two bodies that had been hastily buried years ago were carefully unearthed and gathered again. Yu Sheng caused the ground to sink and solidify into a neat burial chamber, then fused stones together into a sturdy stone coffin. Compared to restoring large areas of land and rapidly regenerating vegetation, this process was actually much easier for him.

The remains were placed into the stone coffin, the coffin was lowered into the grave, and soil slowly wriggled to cover it layer by layer. A burial mound quickly took shape.

“We still need a tombstone,” Yu Sheng said, looking at the newly formed grave. Noticing Hu Li’s slightly blank expression, he added, “It stands in front of the grave as a memorial…”

Hu Li immediately nodded, “I’ll go get it.”

As soon as she spoke, the silver-white demon fox turned and ran into the distance. With a series of air-tearing roars and a sonic boom, she vanished almost instantly from Yu Sheng and Irene’s sight.

After a short while, she came rushing back in a thunderous return, carrying a strange silver-white metal slab in her mouth.

It was about half a person tall.

“This is a gift my parents bought for me,” Hu Li placed the metal slab down and explained to Yu Sheng, “It’s… a musical instrument. Back then I kept insisting on joining an interest class, so they bought this for me, but I never got the chance to learn it… now it’s already broken.”

She then used her tail to skillfully wrap around the metal slab and planted it into the soil in front of the grave, patting it down so the earth compacted as firmly as stone.

“Actually, a tombstone isn’t supposed to be like th—” Yu Sheng began subconsciously, then swallowed the rest of the sentence, “Forget it. If you think this is suitable, then it is.”

“In our place, we don’t have these rules,” the silver-white demon fox lay down beside the grave, gently brushing Yu Sheng’s arm with the tip of her nose, “After demons die, we leave a small part of our bones as a keepsake, like teeth or finger bones. After immortals die, they leave their hair behind. Otherwise, the body returns to nature, or is refined into artifacts for descendants. In any case, there is no need for a separate burial. Also, some people extract their consciousness while alive, merging it into the Dao. Their consciousness becomes eternal, and their bodies are discarded into heaven and earth.”

She shifted slightly on the ground, her gaze turning toward the newly built grave.

“But I heard immortals say that a long, long time ago, before the beings from the heavens arrived, there were also burial customs. At that time, people would carefully bury the remains of their ancestors or store them in ossuaries. But that was very ancient. According to what is taught in school, that was ‘before the interstellar era,’ when civilization still developed within the gravity well… After leaving the gravity well, people’s ways of thinking and living no longer had a strong connection to the surface. Concepts of life and death were reshaped, so funerals changed as well.”

Irene listened blankly, “I feel like you’re saying something very profound…”

“It’s all from school, and I don’t remember a lot of it either. My grades weren’t very good,” Hu Li’s large tail swept across the ground as she looked at the grave.

After a few seconds of silence, she spoke softly, “This is fine too. I can come here in the future and talk to my parents… Benefactor’s suggestion is always very reasonable.”

Yu Sheng said nothing. He simply walked over and sat beside the silver-white demon fox, leaning against one of her large tails.

He was curious about Hu Li’s homeland, trying to imagine what a “demon-immortal civilization” that could traverse the stars might look like, and how one might find that place within the vast universe. Eventually, those thoughts faded away. He emptied his mind and stared absentmindedly into the distance.

He looked at this Other Domain that would no longer generate entities, no longer produce toxins or corruption, and had become tightly bound to him.

This place… could it be treated as a “base”?

But what could such a massive “base” even be used for… housing people? His group only had three people, and he already had 66 Wutong Road. Even if the house was old, it was still more livable than wilderness… farming? He wasn’t even sure if crops could grow here, but there was plenty of sunlight, and grass could grow on the ground… maybe it could work. If grass could grow, then grains and vegetables should be possible… going further, raising cattle and sheep might even be doable…

Yu Sheng felt like he was about to fall asleep, leaning against Hu Li’s soft tail. The comfort and relaxation made his thoughts drift like they were floating in cotton. He entertained all kinds of absurd ideas, then suddenly laughed at himself.

The little doll on his shoulder suddenly leaned in and asked, “What are you thinking about?”

Yu Sheng answered seriously, “I’m thinking about what this place can be used for in the future. My initial plan is to flatten the abandoned land around that broken temple and grow some radishes, beans, and cabbage.”

“Irene: …”