The chaotic sky shrouded the twisted giant city, dense mist flowing between the slanted towers and buildings. The out-of-control rifts extended from the top of the city into the sky like eerie vines. Countless structures within the city spontaneously reshaped through the dense fog, with everything in constant turmoil, everything inscrutable.The pure white dragon (not the giant dragon) flapped its small short wings vigorously, flying crookedly over this bizarre city.
If Erin saw this scene, she would definitely say Baili Qing now looked like a marshmallow with two wings stuck on it.
...Actually, Yu Sheng wanted to say the same, but he was more cultured.
He sat on a small flat scale section near the back of the young dragon's neck (honestly, this space was much more cramped compared to the giant dragon form), feeling the bumps beneath him and the nerve-wracking thrill of occasionally dropping slightly. Unable to hold it in any longer, he said, "…Maybe I should get off and walk on my own. What if there are shared bikes around here?"
Baili Qing turned her head back upon hearing this, but since her neck was too short, she couldn't turn around and could only strain to glare at Yu Sheng with the corner of her eye, "No, I'm flying very steadily."
Yu Sheng: "I didn't even mention how steadily you're flying..."
Baili Qing opened her mouth, seemingly wanting to say more, but as soon as she got distracted, her body started dropping down again. She quickly turned her head back, flapping her wings vigorously, her plump and round body finally managing to climb a bit higher.
She barely avoided crashing into the lightning rod of Taihe Building.
After a while, Yu Sheng finally adapted to the sensation that seemed like they were about to plummet at any moment. He gripped tightly onto Baili Qing's neck and craned his head down to look below.
The fog-filled city reminded him of the streets of Mist City, but the "Boundary City" before him was evidently much more twisted and eerie. The rifts "growing" from below blossomed in the sky like some sort of living entity, and many were expanding at speeds visible to the naked eye. Some of the rifts had already merged, gathering into larger branches that extended all the way to the horizon.
He further saw many large canyons on the city's ground, crooked and twisted buildings weaving across the crevices like the menacing teeth of a giant beast. Upper-level structures constantly fell into those chasms, while new buildings continuously detached from the canyon edges, becoming part of this twisted city.
Deep and eerie rumblings, noises of buildings growing and fracturing, and the hollow howls of the wind rushing through the city all filled this eerie "Deep Layer Boundary City." Yu Sheng felt as though he was soaring over some nameless behemoth's massive maw, surrounded by the snores and murmurs of this beast in slumber.
Baili Xue boldly looked outside for a while, then finally shrank back onto Baili Qing's back, her eyes vibrating comic-like at the edges, "It's making me dizzy, everything's stacked together, but I can basically confirm that this should be the real-time projection of Boundary City in reality— I've seen the construction site in the Songhe District, that place just started construction not long ago."
"Don't look around," Baili Qing reminded, "we still don't know if there's anything here that might react to your 'vision.' Also, hold on tight, we're about to accelerate."
Yu Sheng quickly adjusted his position.
The short little wings in his peripheral vision flapped much more vigorously, yet he didn't feel a significant acceleration.
Baili Xue quietly crawled up to his face, muttering, "…Maybe you should lean your body slightly backward to act like you can't handle the speed?"
Yu Sheng almost ground his teeth to pieces to keep his expression steady, not daring to respond.
But in any case, it was still flying—after a bumpy ride, they finally reached the center of this enormous city.
Baili Qing's flying posture almost lost control.
They didn't see the giant landmark building—the place where the Council Tower should have stood was now just a vast void.
The city seemed to be missing a piece here. The city's center, spanning several kilometers in diameter, had turned into a huge hole, bottomless and with jagged, broken edges, its depths shrouded in darkness.
Baili Qing circled around the edge of the void. Baili Xue, already tense, started screaming, "Sis! Don't tell me you want to go down! And you, Yu Sheng, don't you dare risk it now—I'm absolutely not going down there! I'm absolutely not going down there!"
"I'm not that reckless," Baili Qing's cold voice finally interrupted Baili Xue's wailing. She turned her head (attempted) for a glance, and said nonchalantly, "I'm just looking for a place to land."
With that, she began to slow down around the big pit's edge, spiraling as she slowly approached a clearing.
Yu Sheng, seeing this situation, broke into a cold sweat, some spectacular memories involuntarily flashing in his mind, and he braced himself to get up, "Slow down, I'm preparing to jump."
Baili Qing, without turning back (possibly having given up after several failed attempts), spoke, "No need, I land very steadily."
Yu Sheng was almost standing up now, "I don't believe you!"
Baili Qing: "Last time was just an accident..."
"I'm jumping—"
"Trust me, this time it's definitely no problem."
Before she finished that last sentence, Yu Sheng seized the opportunity to leap, jumping off the dragon's back.
Yu Sheng landed solidly on the ground, but thanks to his extraordinary physique, he didn't perish immediately. He then rolled repeatedly; the intense impact churned inside his body like an upheaval—at this point, the impact resistance he developed from being frequently tackled by Hu Li came into play. After rolling twice on the ground, he astonishingly found himself still intact.
Raising his head, he saw the pure white young dragon hit the ground solidly too, her round body bouncing up and down, crash-landing amidst a pile of jumbled building debris…
Yu Sheng: "…Didn't I say so!"
Two minutes later, there was a crashing sound as the pile of building ruins shifted, and Baili Qing, now restored to human form, climbed out without saying a word, her expression cool.
"Just a bit unaccustomed to the body shrinking," she finally spoke with a straight face as Yu Sheng walked over, "My landing posture was standard."
Baili Xue whispered in Yu Sheng's ear, "My sister is the only giant dragon in the Boundary Land, no one knows how the Dragon Clan should fly—my sister's flying skills were taught by that vampire old auntie, mostly based on bats..."
Yu Sheng was taken aback, "How do bats land?"
Baili Xue: "They hang on trees if there's a tree, otherwise they slam into the ground."
Then Yu Sheng saw Baili Qing start to inhale again.
Baili Xue quickly hid in an unknown nook, while Yu Sheng hurriedly attempted to defuse the situation, "Let's focus on the task, focus on the task, huh, this pit is really a big pit..."
He and Baili Qing arrived at the area where the Council Tower originally stood and peered down from a protruding edge at the abyss.
The bottom was unfathomable, filled with mist, while on the pit walls were numerous jagged structures, some resembling twisted building ruins, others appearing as sharp stalagmites or pillars, and some pale and jagged, almost like skeletons.
The edge of the entire void was irregular, giving the impression something had crashed into it, leaving the once intact city with a hole.
Yet oddly enough, the twisted rifts visible throughout other parts of the city were absent around this Great Void.
The Baili sisters quickly noticed this too.
"The environment here is different from the surroundings," Baili Xue emerged from somewhere, hovering mid-air, speaking seriously, "I don't know how to describe it, this place feels... sudden and incongruous, like what's below isn't originally part of the city."
"It seems like there's something down there," Yu Sheng, still peering below, couldn't explain why, just felt that something down there was drawing his gaze, "right in the middle of the mist, but it's hard to see..."
He suddenly stopped.
The mist was shifting, the center of the Great Void clearing to one side, and in the suddenly thinning mist, he felt he saw a familiar outline.
Yu Sheng rubbed his eyes vigorously.
Finally, he saw clearly.
He saw a small patch of broken ground, suspended deep within the void, supported by a network of intersecting black structures, and at its center, stood a building quietly.
Its exterior appeared unimpressive, the old weathered walls seemed to have endured the long passage of time, the sloped roof of the attic was covered with waterproof shingles, between which sat a small protruding window—
That window was small, only allowing a normal-sized person to poke their head and half a shoulder out, but enough for a small puppet to squeeze through. On sunny days, Erin loved to sneak out from there to enjoy the breeze on the rooftop.
That was No. 66 Wutong Road.
Yu Sheng froze, Baili Xue froze, and even Baili Qing, who rarely showed any expression, appeared momentarily stunned.
After several seconds, Baili Xue suddenly spoke, "Sister, pinch me, did I see wrong?"
Baili Qing remained silent, it was Yu Sheng beside her who spoke, "You didn't see wrong, that's No. 66 Wutong Road, my house..."
Yu Sheng spoke while his gaze never left that familiar building. At this moment, countless absurd guesses and ideas popped up in his mind, yet he swallowed back the words "How did my house end up here?"
He had grown accustomed to encountering bizarre events in life, even if it meant... No. 66 Wutong Road appearing at the bottom of the Boundary Land's Fault, at this zero point of time.
"I'm going down to take a look," Yu Sheng suddenly said.
Baili Qing immediately nodded, "Alright, I'll take you down."
Yu Sheng paused, looking at Baili Qing with a gaze full of over three hundred characters of politeness and tact.
Baili Qing: "You can't fly, how will you go down?"
Yu Sheng: "..."
To be honest, at this moment he seriously considered whether he should risk opening a portal to call the fox girl over, at least pull her tail here.
However, considering the bizarre environment at the bottom of this Fault, especially the illusory, unstable appearance of No. 66 Wutong Road in the mist, he restrained himself from this thought.
What if the disturbance of opening a portal provoked the environment here?
So a few minutes later, a pure white young dragon took a leap from the edge of the Great Void, soaring once more.