A pile of mass-produced puppets remained haphazardly stacked together, raising their heads to look at Lucrecia with a blank gaze, seemingly not very intelligent.The "Star Sea Witch" merely smiled at the sight, appearing unconcerned by their response. She soon lifted her head again to survey the surroundings, then hummed an unknown light tune, leisurely strolling out of the hall.
Stepping out of the gigantic hub pyramid, the radiant valley came into view.
The first thing Lucrecia saw was the town closest to the Hub Pyramid. It was small, resembling more of a "village," yet it boasted an incredibly wondrous landscape—castles of various sizes, treehouses, towers, and caves, even oversized cat climbing frames and mushroom houses. Almost none of the structures looked like "normal" residential buildings; some houses even made one wonder how they managed to stand without collapsing. Moreover, the arrangement of the houses was casual, and many structures had "attached facilities" that were completely baffling, resembling...
Like building wherever you dreamt.
As she gazed upon this marvelous scenery, the "Star Sea Witch" slowly curled her lips into a smile, her face revealing a look of surprise and delight.
A rustling sound came from nearby.
An arrogant and impolite voice interrupted Lucrecia's appreciation of the landscape: "Hey, who are you? Why hasn't this girl seen you before?"
The Star Sea Witch turned around, seeing a long Snake Demon crawling out from a nearby bush. The demon had a sleek, several-meter-long snake tail, while her upper body was a pretty girl with black hair. She wore a simple white gauze dress—originally the elegant attire of a fairy, but her hands-on-hips posture and brash expression ruined the entire aura.
The Snake Princess boldly stared at the stranger before her. Seeing no response, she asked bluntly again, "Hey, I'm asking you, do you have hearing problems? If you're sick, I can take you to Old Man Yun's place; the old man has medicine..."
Lucrecia raised her eyebrow.
"Do you often get beaten for speaking like this?"
"Yeah, so what?" The Snake Princess placed her hands on her hips, raising her upper body high while her lower body coiled her tail into rings, "But this girl has been cultivating for a thousand years… or maybe hundreds… Anyway, a long time of cultivation, usually good in fights, not always getting beaten. You haven't answered my question yet, do you really have hearing problems?"
"..."
Lucrecia took a gentle breath, displaying a trace of a wry smile: "My name is Lucrecia, coming from the Lost Home, visiting Mr. Yu Sheng, but it seems he might not be here?"
"Oh, Yu Sheng True Monarch is out; he often goes out but returns in an instant," the Snake Princess wiggled her waist and crawled closer, seemingly without any suspicion about the stranger's origins, "But if you have urgent matters, you can directly talk to the puppets you see everywhere here; Erin is always by Yu Sheng True Monarch's side."
Lucrecia pondered: "I did see several puppets when I came over, but they fell and seemed to have broken threads."
The Snake Princess touched her chin: "Oh, that's quite common. What you saw are the 'worker bees.' They're responsible for less important tasks, not very smart, sometimes suddenly confused. Yu Sheng True Monarch calls this… oh, downtime. But rebooting is easy."
"Rebooting?"
The Snake Princess showed an excited expression, full of pride: "Yes, you just loudly call them 'shorty,' Erin immediately comes over, and nearby mass-produced puppets get drawn in."
Lucrecia pointed behind the Snake Princess: "Like now?"
The Snake Princess visibly shivered, sensing a wave of murderous intent spreading close to the ground behind her. Turning her head around, she saw a large group of mass-produced puppets converging from all directions—likely just switching shifts from the hub pyramid.
The tip of the Snake Princess's tail trembled like a rattlesnake, but she still held her head high in front of outsiders: "I, I warn you, the guest is here, this girl is this year's most popular reptile in the valley... Please leave me some face, I promise I'll agree to anything later..."
Then a large group of mass-produced puppets rushed in, screaming like a flying cockroach teambuilding.
The Snake Princess shrieked: "This girl's thousand-year cultivation can endure and yield—"
Before she finished speaking, she coiled her tail into a ring-shaped spring, compressing it tightly, then launched herself into the distant sky.
Flying in the air, she shouted: "See you later, you bunch of shorties..."
Lucrecia watched this scene with astonishment, showing a smile of great interest on her face: "… Truly able to endure and yield."
The next second she saw a large expanse of black spider webs appear out of nowhere on the flight path of the Snake Princess, the spider silk instantly wrapped the Snake Princess into a massive snake ball. The latter exclaimed as she fell from mid-air to the ground, rolling all the way into the nearby grove — a dozen mass-produced puppets were chasing after her.
Judging from the commotion coming from the woods, this beating seems quite miserable.
Lucrecia just watched the scene with a smile, with no intention of helping.
"What an interesting place..."
At this moment, a mass-produced puppet left behind ran over with its little short legs, looked up at the "Star Sea Witch," and showed a surprised expression on its palm-sized little face: "Sister Lucy! Why are you here? Yu Sheng said earlier that he was going to tell you guys about the situation here on the Lost Home..."
Lucrecia squatted down: "Father successfully adjusted part of the information mapping rules between the world engine and the internal universe, and sent me over to establish contact—by the look of you, it seems like something big has happened?"
"Indeed! It's huge! The Boundary Land has been poked full of holes... wait a moment, I'll have Yu Sheng open a gate to come over, we're on an alien planet right now..."
As soon as the mass-produced puppet finished speaking, a phantom gate appeared in the air nearby, Yu Sheng brought Hu Li, Erin, and Luna through the door back to the valley.
Lucrecia immediately went forward proactively, Yu Sheng hadn't spoken yet, she had already politely bent slightly: "Good morning, Uncle Yu - is it morning here?"
This caught Yu Sheng a bit off guard because usually, those calling him like this were the bunch of kids under ten from the Fairy Tale Orphanage. Anyone older than ten was forced to call him older brother. However, looking at the Queen of Witches in front of him who was smiling knowingly, he choked on several words but they all got stuck in his throat.
He suspected she did it on purpose—after all, during their time on the Lost Home, this witch had never greeted him this formally.
But besides this title, calling anything else seemed inappropriate—if called brother, he would be out of sorts later with the Captain, calling by name lacked some courtesy, directly addressing as Mr. distanced relationships—the Captain must have instructed Lucrecia beforehand, after all, among the original four gods of the Endless Sea, in terms of seniority, they indeed belonged to the same group...
So, in the end, Yu Sheng could only nod with a difficult smile, trying to appear laid-back.
As a result, Erin on his shoulder almost laughed herself dizzy, even Hu Li kept his head lowered, with his giant tail swaying like a fan at speed five behind him.
Only Luna was calm, standing aside without blinking and shaking precisely like a qualified former sword-carrying guard of Yu Sheng.
Yu Sheng awkwardly waved his hand: "Alright, alright, stop laughing, let's find a quiet place to talk serious business — go to the castle, the conference room is empty. Also, Erin, tell those mass-produced puppets in the woods to go easy, you know that silly snake has a few screws loose, if she makes trouble in the town later, I won't be responsible."
Erin acknowledged with an oh, while Yu Sheng immediately opened a door to the castle, and the others followed — Luna conveniently turned off the anti-shake mode for the recording.
Moments later, in the castle hall of Fairy Tale Town, Lucrecia listened to Yu Sheng recount the major events in the Boundary Land over the past period, causing her to slightly frown and her expression finally turned serious.
The Dark Angels invading the world from the depths of the Boundary Land fault, the disintegrating kingdom fragments, large-scale Exotic Realm fusion and mutation...
"I really didn't expect that what you mentioned casually on the Lost Home back then would develop to such an extent," Lucrecia said, sitting beside the large table used for meetings by Fairy Tale guardians, while single-handedly fiddling with a colorful toy soldier, "You mean, that large temporal structure known as the 'Kingdom' might be similar to an Endless Sea-kind of sanctuary?"
"It should be, but on a slightly smaller scale," Yu Sheng nodded, "From the remaining traces, this sanctuary seemed to have internally collapsed before it collided with our universe. Fortunately, an external presence suspected to be a 'Tree Angel' dragged its wreckage to reduce the impact, giving a chance for things to settle smoothly — now the temporal structure of the kingdom has evaporated, leaving only a small part of the core data named Knight and Rosaline. Based on previous experience with introducing Dark Angels, I 'transcoded' them into the Soul Wilderness, currently registered under a collective account at the World Bridge."
"That's truly... only something you could achieve," Lucrecia said, showing a subtle expression upon hearing Yu Sheng's last words, "And what about the World Bridge's side? Has there been any instability after connecting the new 'world remnant information'?"
"No, I specially kept an eye on it, the entire structure is still running stably," Yu Sheng nodded, "This counts as a test, and also a limited simulation of the 'calibrator'. The facts proved that after undergoing so many changes, this structure can still normally accept information injected from other Dark Angels—this process can therefore be stably reproduced in the future."
Lucrecia showed a noticeable smile: "Father will be very happy to hear this news."
"Certainly," Yu Sheng said, then immediately shifted his tone, "Unfortunately, after the good news, there's bad news."
"Bad news?"
"The current state of the Boundary Land is not so good... simply put, it's already a dangerous place."