Chapter 419: Hu Li, Standing Tall on the Earth

The orbital bombardment from low Earth orbit had begun—before Hu Li's true body crashed down, what first struck the planetary surface was a barrage of suppressing fire formed by a multitude of foxfire meteors.

The countless flames coiling around Hu Li split apart the moment they entered the atmosphere, scattering into thousands of small luminous clusters down to the surface. The dense "fire meteors" burned violently in the atmosphere, instantly evaporating all clouds within their reentry trajectories. Thousands of bright streaks turned into a cascading downpour, and the instant they touched the crystal forest, they triggered a shocking chain of explosions.

The entire crystal forest began to tremble violently. Rumbling booms came from deep underground, interspersed with unsettling cracking sounds and eerie resonant frequencies.

Yu Sheng immediately sensed the chaotic screams flooding his mind, felt the changes within the crystal forest. He whipped his head around to look deeper into the forest, only to see the center of that crystalline "sea" rapidly swelling—countless "giant trees" were fusing together as they grew at breakneck speed, and a crystalline mass larger than all the previous "Yun Qingzi" combined was being birthed from the thicket.

As it rose upward, it constantly shifted its form—sometimes the shape of an old man with bristling beard and hair, sometimes a towering tree, sometimes a living crystal cluster with no discernible logical structure, as if in a state of perpetual collapse and reorganization. Deep within this rapidly swelling crystalline mass existed a... massive energy reaction.

"Holy shit!" Yu Sheng's face changed the instant he sensed that energy reaction. Without another word, he opened a door back to the center of the forest, leaving only a single sentence for Aileen as he strode through: "I'm going to shut down its air defense!"

Before Aileen could process what was happening, Yu Sheng's figure had vanished, leaving her staring blankly at the spot where the door had disappeared: "...Huh?"

Then she felt her collar tighten. Luna, standing beside her, suddenly bent down and casually picked her up.

The little doll immediately yelped: "Hey! C-clasp! What are you doing! Put me down—"

Luna acted as if she hadn't heard, carrying Aileen as she ran further away from the crystal forest: "High energy reaction. Need. Further evacuation."

And so Aileen was carried off by Luna, yelping all the way.

Yu Sheng, meanwhile, returned to the center of the crystal forest.

He looked up and saw the massive crystalline mass at the forest's center had risen like a mountain, its "slopes" filled with intense flowing light.

A bright spot in the sky was rapidly growing larger, with rings of flame spreading outward, burning through the atmosphere, and raining down an even denser suppressing barrage.

"This whole 'bloody doom' thing..."

Yu Sheng smiled wryly, glancing in the direction of Aileen and Luna, then fell straight backward.

Before he even hit the ground, his body began to disintegrate, ashes scattering and dispersing among the countless crystalline "giant trees" around him.

The next second, the entire crystal forest fell into utter silence—all accumulated energy was temporarily suppressed, all activity of the crystalline branches was forcibly interrupted, some kind of "circulation" deep in the earth was once again tightly bound, and the crystal forest lost its ability to resist.

Although this process lasted only a very short time, it was enough for an orbital fox-shell from low Earth orbit to smash into that crystal mountain.

The nine-tailed fox descending from the sky crashed down heavily, and the hyper-compressed foxfire released instantly—at first, the world was silent for less than a second, as if even the molecules in the air were locked in place, ceasing to vibrate. Then, a fireball brighter than the sun expanded from the center of the crater at an apparently slow pace.

The sky was lit up, even the entire plain was illuminated. A blinding daylight briefly appeared on this desolate planet far from its sun. Then, after a while, Aileen, who had been carried far away by Luna, finally heard the rolling thunder-like roar behind her.

She even felt her entire body vibrating along with the rolling thunder.

"Yu Sheng's dead again, huh..."

The little doll shaded her eyes, muttering while looking toward the crater—the intense light was rapidly fading, now at a level visible to the naked eye.

But soon she shook her head again: "Or maybe he's really hot, probably several hundred million degrees."

Luna casually dropped Aileen onto the ground.

Aileen: "C··clasp!!"

...

Yu Sheng felt groggy. The interruption of consciousness from sudden death took him several minutes to recall why he was in this darkness and the last scene he'd seen before entering it.

All he remembered was a fox head rushing down wrapped in flames—a headbutt from the sky.

"That silly girl killed me with a headbutt again."

He muttered helplessly in the darkness.

But this time, unlike before, he didn't slowly wait for the respawn timer in this chaotic darkness. Instead, he directly transferred his consciousness from the afterlife to the Exotic Traveler, which could serve as a "temporary body."

He needed to know Hu Li's current state as soon as possible and confirm whether the crystal forest had indeed "calmed down" after that strike, as planned.

Inside the Exotic Traveler, currently parked in high orbit above Shuji, the lights in the core module suddenly lit up, and the main system, which had been in slumber, rapidly awakened.

"Aileen."

Aileen, who was hurrying back with Luna, heard a voice calling from the depths of her heart and was startled: "Yu Sheng?! You're not dead? Or did you come back to life? That fast this time?"

"Dead—my body still needs a while to regenerate. I'm talking to you through the Exotic Traveler right now," Yu Sheng said casually. "Where are you and Luna?"

"We're running back. Hu Li said someone would need to look after her after she used that move," Aileen replied, now shamelessly clinging to Luna again (mainly because her little short legs couldn't run fast). "Let me tell you, that was spectacular..."

"Of course, I saw it better than you," Yu Sheng said quickly. "What's the state of the crystal forest now? Is it still active?"

"Crystal forest? There's no crystal forest anymore!" Aileen looked up at the distance and responded mentally. "Just a steaming big crater—oh, I see Hu Li, stuck in the crater."

Yu Sheng: "...?"

The next second, he received a live feed sent directly to the Exotic Traveler via Luna's artificial saint internal channel.

The nine-tailed fox stood tall on the earth.

Headfirst.

With Luna's astonishing speed, she and Aileen had returned to the center of the impact crater in no time—and by then, the crystal forest that had once covered the entire crater had been completely swept away.

The central area of the crater was piled with large amounts of fine, deactivated debris. The ground still shimmered with heat waves, dust and smoke drifted in the air, and under the weak, pale sunlight, it looked like a doomsday scene.

Aileen craned her neck and saw the massive silver nine-tailed fox stuck headfirst in the earth, with four legs and a bunch of tails sticking out, occasionally twitching in the wind.

She finally understood what Hu Li meant by needing help getting free.

At that moment, she deeply regretted not shamelessly asking Yu Sheng for a phone—even a Baby Genius watch would do, as long as it could take pictures...

Then the little doll jumped off Luna, carefully stepping around the various-sized debris on the ground, approached Hu Li, and poked a tuft of soft fur on the silver fox's back: "Hey, silly fox, you alive?"

The nine-tailed fox, headfirst in the ground, immediately shook its body, all four legs flailing in the air.

"Need help?" Aileen asked again.

"Obviously!" Hu Li's muffled voice came from underground. "I'm out of energy! Help dig me out!"

"Why don't you just turn back into human form and get out?"

"I told you I have no energy! Changing forms consumes magical power!" Hu Li's four legs flailed in the air again. "Stop messing around, call your bunch of mass-produced dolls over to help!"

"Alright, alright," Aileen laughed, nodding cheerfully as she backed up a few steps. "Wait a moment then. Yu Sheng got headbutted to death by you, so I have to figure out how to summon the mass-produced units from the valley myself—I've never tried it before... Oh, right, first let them go grab some little shovels..."

Hu Li's hind legs kicked twice more, sighed helplessly in the dirt and rocks, and stopped moving to conserve energy.

A rumbling sound came from her stomach.

A moment later, Aileen finally managed her first independent summoning, calling the first batch of mass-produced dolls from the valley to her vicinity.

These were the mass-produced dolls that had returned to the valley due to low power during the earlier fight—while the remaining energy wasn't enough for combat, they still had mobility.

A large group of 66.6-centimeter-tall dolls, carrying little shovels and little hoes of unknown origin (they even looked like they'd been stolen from the doll heads' gardening classroom), quickly gathered around Hu Li. After a brief exchange about the work, they began digging with great enthusiasm.

On a remote, desolate alien world, the nine-tailed celestial fox that had just completed an orbital bombardment was stuck headfirst in the ground, while a crowd of Gothic dolls wielding gardening shovels dug their comrade with gusto amidst the crystal debris—

Even Aileen thought this might be a bit too bizarre. She turned to Luna and mumbled: "C-clasp, let me tell you, this scene is really surreal..."

Luna thought for a moment, then nodded: "Yeah, it is."

But to be fair, even though the little dolls dug enthusiastically, their efficiency was somewhat... questionable.

When Yu Sheng revived, they were still digging there.

Seeing Aileen organizing the mass-produced dolls to dig out Hu Li, he was stunned into silence for a long time, then shook his head with a wry smile: "How long are you going to let them dig like this?"

"Well, what else can we do?" Aileen spread her hands. "You have no idea how hard the ground is around here. And silly fox's head is stuck in a bunch of rocks—I suspect she even 'cast' herself in there..."

Yu Sheng's eye twitched. He turned around and looked up at the nine-tailed fox stuck in the ground.

Hu Li kicked her legs, and a thunderous gurgle came from her stomach.

"Benefactor, I'm hungry."

Yu Sheng: "..."

After two seconds of silence, Yu Sheng sighed and pulled out his phone.

He had a contact saved. The owner claimed to be able to handle any construction project—from building a public toilet in the city center to dropping an orbital defense starbase on an alien planet.

"This... needs to be handed over to our all-capable Engineer Sun."