Chapter 292: He Even Brought a Gift

Yu Sheng felt extremely fortunate.

He thought he might be spared a bloody disaster today — the little doll's earlier "divination" had obviously been off.

This Senior Brother Xuan Che from Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain was quite friendly, probably out of respect for his master, or perhaps due to the deterrent effect of the Dark Angel incident. Regardless, he seemed to have no intention of pursuing the grudge of being hung from the beam and hit with a copper belt back then. That genuinely let Yu Sheng breathe a sigh of relief.

After that sigh, he also decided it was best not to inquire about the aftermath of that "misunderstanding."

After exchanging pleasantries, Xuan Che finally got used to the somewhat eerie environment inside 66 Wutong Road. He fumbled around somewhere on his person, then produced an exquisite-looking wooden box from thin air and handed it to Yu Sheng.

"This is a small token from my master," the talented young man said politely. "Please don't refuse — it's just a common local specialty of Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain."

The moment Yu Sheng saw the box, his heart stirred. He immediately felt excited and expectant, thinking that the kind of plot he usually only wrote about in novels was actually happening in real life — this was a gift from a genuine cultivator! Even if the cultivators in this world were a bit strange in style, judging by the box's exquisite appearance, its contents couldn't be bad.

He thanked Xuan Che and took the wooden box, carefully opening it while looking forward to some heavenly treasure inside. Then he saw that it was filled with a large number of beautiful light purple pills.

Each pill had faint, flowing, slowly flickering mystical patterns on its surface.

Yu Sheng's eyes lit up. Over two hundred thousand words of setting fiction flashed through his mind. He looked up at Xuan Che opposite him. "This... is this an 'immortal pill' refined by your Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain?"

"Made by my master himself," Xuan Che said with a smile. "Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain has three main peaks: Spirit Accumulation, Divine Weapon, and Beast Taming. Spirit Accumulation is the foremost, specializing in the art of alchemy and talismans. My master is a grandmaster of this school. The pills he personally makes are quite renowned even among the stars..."

Yu Sheng's heart was already rejoicing halfway through the explanation. Although the "stews" that Hu Li usually threw together had all sorts of strange "supernatural powers," their appearance was still a bit grotesque. But this stuff in front of him at least looked the part, fitting his stereotype of an "immortal pill." Even if its effects were unknown, it seemed worth collecting just for its appearance. As soon as Xuan Che finished speaking, he asked eagerly, "And the effects? Foundation building? Body forging? Enhancing cultivation?"

"Um..." Xuan Che opened his mouth. After hearing Yu Sheng's string of questions, he hesitated for some reason. Two or three seconds passed before he continued, "...They're mainly tasty. This batch is grape-flavored, and it's my master's proudest work."

Yu Sheng's expression froze instantly. "...?"

After another two seconds, he heard Xuan Che add, "That's the export version. Of course, it also has some other functions, like regulating endocrine, calming the mind, and aiding digestion — effective for most carbon-based species. Not recommended for Sengjin people, though — eating it can easily give them stones."

Yu Sheng's expression remained frozen. "..."

He felt like he'd just heard something both perfectly reasonable and utterly absurd. Not sure — better ask again.

"Um, I have a question," Yu Sheng finally spoke. "I don't go out much, so I'm not really familiar with the outside world. I haven't been to your Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain, but from what I understand and from the information I found on Border Communications, you guys are all about seeking the Dao through cultivation. The function of pills..."

He pointed at the box of grape-flavored immortal pills, his eyes full of confusion. "Shouldn't they at least have the power to enhance cultivation, condense qi, and reshape bones and tendons?"

"The kind you're talking about does exist, but we can't give it to others without a permit," Xuan Che said with a shrug. "Mainly the 'Foreign Food Safety Permit' and the 'General Biological Consumables Circulation Permit.' The second one is especially hard to get — we'd need to produce a whole bunch of 'Cross-Species Toxicology Hazard Assessment Reports.' Our regular immortal pills would definitely never pass review..."

He paused for a moment, probably organizing his thoughts. Half a minute later, he figured out how to explain. "Simply put, if you're not a common species from our side and haven't undergone professional training, eating them will kill you."

Yu Sheng: "..."

He immediately recalled the time he saw the Xenomorph Canned Goods on the home page of the Stellar Express app.

This world was exactly like that — perfectly logical, yet absurd.

Yu Sheng exhaled, nodded with a look of understanding and a mix of laughter and tears. "Alright, I get it. So you have this special export type... Well, no wonder it's called a local specialty."

"It's quite famous. Feather-13b is a mysterious place to many outsiders, so a lot of people are interested in our pills and talismans," Xuan Che said proudly. "My master is an open-minded man. He's always wanted to take another step in foreign exchanges and has spearheaded many cultural and creative projects..."

Great, so it was the flagship product of Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain's cultural and creative projects — personally made and signed by the local leader.

By now, Yu Sheng's expression had calmed down completely. He maintained a serene indifference.

But beside him, Erin suddenly got excited for some reason. The little doll scrambled onto the coffee table in two or three moves, pointed at Yu Sheng, and said to Xuan Che, "Hey, you could actually bring your regular immortal pills over here. This guy can eat anything, and even if he dies, you won't have to compensate..."

Xuan Che blinked. This time, it was his turn to freeze.

Seeing this, Yu Sheng generously leaned over and patted the handsome young man across from him on the shoulder. His tone was earnest. "This is what it's like when two worldviews meet for the first time — it's easy for each side to get stunned by something the other says. Don't mind this guy's nonsense. I really like this gift."

As he spoke, he took one of the "immortal pills" from the wooden box and put it in his mouth — and sure enough, it was grape-flavored.

Then he stuffed one into the mouth of Hu Li, who had been staring at him eagerly, and put the rest away.

He had to put them away. Looking at Hu Li's eyes, if he was careless for even a moment, she would gobble up the whole batch.

After that, the conversation gradually turned to business.

That was also the main reason Xuan Che had been sent by his master, the "Four Thousand Wicked Disciples," to "meet the netizen" — to figure out the origin of the "foreign object" that appeared in that strange room on the second floor of Yu Sheng's house.

Xuan Che placed another small wooden box on the coffee table.

"This is the thing that the senior grandmaster brought back during his wanderings back then — my master found it in the senior grandmaster's treasure pavilion."

Yu Sheng, Hu Li, and Erin immediately crowded around, looking at the unremarkable "piece of cloth" lying in the box.

"Indeed, the patterns on the edges match. It's just that the fabric material and color are a bit different. They seem to be creations from the same source," Yu Sheng said thoughtfully as he carefully compared the details of the cloth fragment with his phone. "And this piece has a neat cut on the edge, as if it was cut with a sharp tool... The piece I found looked more like it was torn off."

"Can I go see the 'room' you mentioned?" Xuan Che asked. "Your junior has some rough skills in Qimen Dunjia and the arts of spirit realms and other worlds. Maybe I can see something."

Yu Sheng nodded immediately, standing up as he said, "Of course, it's upstairs. I'll take you there."

He casually picked up Erin and placed her on his shoulder, then led Hu Li and Xuan Che upstairs.

The group quickly arrived before the eerie room at the end of the second-floor corridor.

"This is the room," Yu Sheng said, pointing at the door in front of him. "This room has always been a bit strange. Sometimes scenes that don't look like this world appear inside. The door itself is also weird — the first time I opened it, it took a lot of effort..."

As he listened, Xuan Che's mouth twitched involuntarily.

This room was a bit strange?

There were hardly any places in this whole house that were normal!

But his master had given him a mission, so he steadied himself. He quietly applied several protective spells to his body, crushed a pill in his palm and refined it. Then, following Yu Sheng, he opened the door and stepped into the room at the end of the corridor.

It looked like an ordinary room — at least to the naked eye. Like all the other places in 66 Wutong Road, the room was simple and normal.

But the moment he stepped through the door, Xuan Che sensed that very subtle... discordance.

Unlike other parts of the building, this discordance wasn't a sensory imbalance in spatial orientation or distance. The entire room felt off.

The most off thing was the mirror on the opposite wall.

Yu Sheng noticed that Xuan Che's gaze immediately fell on that mirror. This reaction made him raise his eyebrows slightly.

"So you can sense something?"

"This mirror is a bit peculiar," Xuan Che said as he approached the seemingly ordinary mirror. He carefully touched its surface. "But... I can't quite put it into words."

"It does have a problem, but it's currently in a 'closed' state," Yu Sheng said casually. "When this mirror 'opens,' it reflects the scenery of another place — sometimes a ruin in black mist, sometimes a wind-and-snow-swept cave. In the second case, the entire room fills with wind and snow. Also, sometimes I feel like the room is torn in two — not physically torn apart, but..."

Yu Sheng hesitated, seemingly unable to find the right words to describe that abstract feeling. After a long while, he came up with a description. "It's as if the whole room exists in two places at once. On top of the visible room, there's an 'other side' that the eye can't see."

Xuan Che thought for a moment. "...Like it's stuck between two worlds?"