Chapter 80: Running

What could be outside the valley?

Yu Sheng felt a natural curiosity. That range of rolling mountains stood silently in his sight, not towering so high as to be unclimbable, and the sky was no longer covered by any terrifying barrier. Anyone standing here would wonder what the scenery beyond those mountains looked like.

"Have you ever tried to climb over those mountains before?" Yu Sheng asked Hulithe curiously.

"I... tried a long time ago, when the Immortal was still here," Hulithe immediately nodded. "Back then, a few adults and I tried to cross together, but we couldn't reach the top. Halfway up, a terrifying sound would come from the sky. If we climbed any further, we'd start losing strength and see many horrible mirages. The Immortal even tried to turn stone into puppets and send them to climb, but they lost contact halfway. The next day, pieces of the stone puppets rolled down the mountain, each block bleeding. The adults who went to check said that flesh and bone had already started growing inside the stones."

"A sound from the sky... sounds like the influence of that 'Dark Angel' that used to cover the sky," Erin muttered. "But I don't know if it was intentional or just a 'passive effect.' After all, that kind of evil thing sometimes just by 'existing' can have a huge impact."

"Now that the Dark Angel is gone, we can try again," Yu Sheng looked at Erin and Hulithe with a questioning gaze. "What do you think?"

Hulithe immediately nodded: "I'll follow Benefactor's lead."

Erin waved her hand: "I don't care. You always have ideas anyway, you want to try the most bizarre things. I'm used to it."

"Alright, so it's unanimous. Let's go."

"How are we getting there? Open a door?" Erin glanced at Yu Sheng.

"We have to walk over," Yu Sheng waved his hand. "We've never been there, so opening a door directly wouldn't be easy to target. And if that place is on the edge of the Other Domain, the environment might be special. Opening a door directly isn't safe—if we walk slowly, we'll have time to react if we notice environmental changes."

When Erin heard this, she showed a look of surprise: "You actually have the concept of 'being safe'?!"

Yu Sheng: "I threw you down! And you still talk so much while sitting on my shoulder!"

Hulithe watched Yu Sheng and Erin bickering, thought for a moment, and spoke quietly: "Um... the valley is hard to traverse, and you don't know the convenient way up the mountain. How about I lead the way?"

Yu Sheng was curious: "Lead us? How?"

Then he saw the fox girl turn and run a few steps away, then crouch down—with a rush of wind and illusory light, her form suddenly dissolved and changed in the light. Before they could see what was happening, the huge silver-white spirit fox appeared before Yu Sheng and Erin.

Yu Sheng had seen Hulithe transform into a fox before, but Erin was seeing it for the first time. The little doll's eyes widened in surprise, and after a loud "Wow!" she exclaimed: "Mom! It's bigger than two vans."

"Is that how you describe it?" Yu Sheng couldn't help glancing at the doll on his shoulder, but he nodded anyway. "Yeah, bigger than a van... just that bunch of tails alone is bigger than a car."

As they spoke, the huge silver-white spirit fox walked over with light, graceful steps. She gently touched Yu Sheng's head with her chin, nuzzling affectionately: "Like this, I can carry several people!"

Yu Sheng didn't say anything for a moment.

Because the big spirit fox's "affectionate, gentle" nuzzles had smashed his head so hard he saw stars, nearly driving his head into his neck.

"Talk, but can you control your strength a little!" Yu Sheng barely managed not to pass out, reaching out to grab the fluff on the fox's chin to stop her from nuzzling again. "Good grief, pounding my head like that..."

As he spoke, his head was still buzzing, the impact of being opened by the fox spirit's celestial strike lingering.

Hulithe, if nothing else, was quick to apologize. Her head immediately lowered: "Benefactor, I'm sorry..."

Yu Sheng quickly jumped half a meter to the side, barely avoiding getting his skull cracked open by her nose when she lowered her head.

Then he had a chance to carefully observe the spirit fox girl's current appearance.

He had to admit, she was truly elegant and beautiful. For the first time, he could see the word "ravishing" from a furry canine animal. Yet besides this beauty, what he felt more was the unique 'aura' of the spirit fox.

The huge silver-white spirit fox stood on the ground, her golden-red eyes seemingly filled with flowing light. Several long tails slowly swayed behind her, and from time to time, tiny fox fires appeared in the air, like independent spirit beings, circling and dancing around her tails, then dispersing.

And probably because she had eaten well the past couple of days and taken a good bath, her tails now looked sleek and shiny—much better than when they first met.

Hulithe lowered her body, one tail gently placed at her side, the tip falling before Yu Sheng.

"You can come up now," she said happily.

"This is a first..." Yu Sheng hesitated, then tentatively stepped onto it (in fact, because the spirit fox's fur was so beautiful now, he even considered whether to take off his shoes). "Does this hurt?"

"Almost no feeling, just a little ticklish," Hulithe turned her head, watching Yu Sheng climb awkwardly along her tail onto her back, and reminded him, "You can grab the nearby fur, or your feet might slip."

"It's fine, I'm pretty agile," Yu Sheng, with Erin, struggled to climb onto Hulithe, then carefully found a relatively stable spot and sat cross-legged. "I'm settled."

Fluffy and warm.

Yu Sheng reached out and touched the surrounding fur with a mixed feeling, as if sitting on an especially high-end soft blanket. Before he could sigh, he saw several tails from behind curling over and blocking beside him.

Erin poked Yu Sheng's head: "Oh, there are handrails and backrests!"

Then she blurted out: "Can I install a seat on your shoulder too? Even a hard seat is fine..."

Yu Sheng: "...What do you think?"

"If not, then not."

A slight sway came from beneath him. The huge silver-white spirit fox slowly rose and turned toward the distant chain of high mountains.

"We're setting off," for some reason, Hulithe's voice sounded especially happy. "Benefactor, hold tight! I'm going to run!"

"I'm holding..."

Yu Sheng barely managed a few words before feeling a lurch, and then he almost lost his balance—the spirit fox had already shot forward like a runaway...

A tail curled from behind timely caught Yu Sheng and Erin, who were about to fall, and another tail extended from the side to block the oncoming wind. Amid the intense acceleration, Yu Sheng only saw the scenery on both sides instantly turn into a series of receding blurs. Neither the ravines nor the ruins on the ground could affect Hulithe's continuous acceleration.

The spirit fox ran freely in this vast valley.

"Waaah hahahaha—" Erin started shouting excitedly, grabbing Yu Sheng's head while opening her mouth wide against the wind blowing in through the gaps of the tails (even though the wind had been greatly reduced). "We're almost flying!"

"I love running!" Hulithe's voice came from ahead, full of excitement. "I haven't run like this in a long time!"

Yu Sheng held tightly to a big fluffy tail beside him with one hand and supported the little doll on his shoulder with the other to prevent her from falling off: "Watch out! Don't hit... mountain! Mountain! There's a mountain ahead!"

"Okay!"

Hulithe shouted joyfully and accelerated again toward the gradually approaching slope—even clusters of brilliant fox fires burst into vigorous burn behind her. The flames gathered on the tails, then a series of continuous and dense booms occurred, forming cone-shaped wake trails amid the intense burning and eruption!

Hearing the commotion, Yu Sheng quickly turned his head and looked through the gaps between the fox tails. He exclaimed: "Holy crap—rocket-boosted fox!"

Then he felt an even stronger surge of acceleration and violent vibration. Even with his current physical fitness, he almost couldn't catch his breath. Then he realized Hulithe had already charged up the slope.

She wasn't running up it.

She was flying along the terrain, skimming the ground at extremely low altitude!

In the blink of an eye, the rocket-boosted fox rushed to a place near the mountainside. Her voice pierced through the wind, reaching Yu Sheng and Erin: "Back then, we started hearing strange sounds here. Any further up, we would lose strength and see strange things—we're about to cross!"

Then, Hulithe almost effortlessly charged past that "mountainside line" that in her memory had once stopped the Immortal, stopped her parents, stopped all survivors.

Nothing was blocking her here anymore.

She could vaguely see the scenery at the mountain top, those jagged boulders standing like rows of strange sentinels under the sky.

She began to decelerate. The boosting flames on her tails quickly died down. Her agile paws landed among the mountain rocks, stabilizing her body as she ran.

In the last few hundred meters before the summit, Hulithe's speed finally dropped to a brisk trot. She jumped a few more times among the stones and finally stopped in a relatively open area.

The several tails on her back slowly opened, like a crew hatch opening, revealing a somewhat dazed Yu Sheng inside.

It took Yu Sheng a few seconds to wake up, looking up at the distance with some delay.

"Benefactor," Hulithe's voice reached his ears, "Outside... it's still mountains, endlessly repeating mountains."