Erin cautiously edged toward the jagged boundary of the shattered land, peered over it briefly, and then hastily pulled back, grabbing Hu Li's tail: "Hey, silly fox, hold on to me a bit, I'm scared of falling."Hu Li then turned around, extending his tail outward while Erin clutched it tightly, peeking down once more. After a while, she scrambled back up with both hands and feet: "Puppet Progenitor! How long would one falling down here keep screaming 'ah'... Yu Sheng, did you really reach the bottom last time?"
"I really did, but back then there were many time-space rifts down here due to the interference of the Lodaxim High Wall. Baili Qing and I took a shortcut through those rifts, reaching the bottom directly after passing through a time fragment, so it wasn't a normal 'submergence.'"
As Yu Sheng recounted, he unconsciously recalled the time he explored this place with Baili Qing. As he spoke, the image of someone's short-legged, round-bodied white hatchling dragon unwittingly surfaced in his mind, prompting him to glance sideways.
He met Baili Qing's expressionless gaze — her face devoid of emotion, though the weight in her eyes was immense.
Baili Xue quickly slipped over, muttering in Yu Sheng's ear: "My sister means please don't ever talk about how she looked as a dragon hatchling and she'll agree to anything..."
Yu Sheng awkwardly coughed twice to interrupt this sharp-witted whisper, while also turning his head to avoid Baili Qing's gaze — after all, he had already discussed her hatchling form with Erin and Hu Li...
"Fault..." Just then, Lucrecia's voice came from the side. The Star Sea Witch used her wand to trace two gestures in the air, sketching two butterfly doodles that fluttered from the wand's tip toward the darkness. Her eyes glimmered with magic power: "I have indeed heard my father talk about the complexity of the Boundary Land — its deep-layer structure left many historical issues. It's a pity I never got the chance to see it myself... Ah, has the magic power been cut off?"
"Information rarely transmits across the faults, even quantum communication fails due to space-time dislocation," the Fault remarked off to the side. "Moreover, even if the signal gets through, it gets scrambled beyond reliability because of interference."
"...Interesting," Lucrecia raised an eyebrow, then glanced at Yu Sheng, "looks like the best bet is to go down personally, what do you think, Uncle Yu?"
By this point, Yu Sheng was getting used to the address: "That's exactly why we're here today."
No sooner had he said this than he saw Lucrecia nod gently. She then pulled out a sheet of white paper seemingly from nowhere, folding it swiftly into a paper boat — before anyone could react, she tossed it into the darkness beyond the land.
The origami boat swooped into the dark, swiftly expanding into a flying vessel big enough for a dozen people, with folding wings of a fantastical nature on either side swaying gently in the gloom.
Although it wasn't the first time Yu Sheng had witnessed the Star Sea Witch's astonishing magic, he still gaped in awe — it's truly impressive.
"Wow!" Erin was the first to exclaim, her Little Puppet eyes sparkling, "Sister Lucy, can you teach me this magic?"
"I taught you that years ago," Lucrecia replied with a smile, glancing at the Little Puppet, "did you forget?"
The Little Puppet stared blankly, scratching her head: "Oh, I really forgot... Well, guess I can't learn it then."
As they spoke, the paper boat drifted gently to the edge of the land, extending a paper bridge from its deck to the shore. Lucrecia was the first to step onto it, beckoning back with her hand: "Who's coming aboard?"
Yu Sheng quickly followed, trailed by Hu Li who was munching from a pot, then Luna and Erin.
Unbeknownst to him, everyone else, including Kant and the Council Leader, joined them shortly after.
"You're all coming too?" Yu Sheng asked in surprise as he looked at Kant and the Council Leader, "It's not safe down there."
"Didn't the Colorless Dragon accompany you down once?" the Council Leader chuckled, "Exploring the bottom of the fault with the Ancient Saints is a rare opportunity."
"I'm just interested in this ship," Red added with a smile, curiously examining everything around after crossing the paper bridge, "truly remarkable magic..."
"Will the paper really not tear and drop us down?" Fault asked, appearing a bit skeptical as he cautiously walked on the seemingly flimsy paper deck. "It just looks like an enlarged piece of paper..."
"No worries, I can fly," Red said, smiling.
"So can I," Baili Qing nodded calmly.
Hu Li hugged the pot: "I can too!"
Then Luna, Yu Sheng, and Erin chimed in: "I can teleport / It's just about opening a door / Summon a couple of Sword Flights and up we go..."
The Fault's lights flickered a couple of times, producing a series of creaking noises inside. Just as he thought to say something, the paper boat folded its paper bridge and drifted away from the shore.
Then the boat began to soar into the depth of the fault's darkness, accelerating continuously — it sped with ease, so much so that if the shattered land wasn't gradually shrinking out of sight, nobody would have noticed that the vessel was cutting through the dark at great speed.
"Oh oh! It's really flying!" Erin leaned over the ship's railing, eyes wide with excitement, then bravely looked down, "It's so deep down there... you can't see the bottom at all."
At this time, Hu Li had finished the last bit of rice in the pot. She casually tossed the pot and spoon into her tail, and upon looking up, saw Yu Sheng standing thoughtfully at the front of the deck. She immediately went over with curiosity: "Savior? What are you doing?"
"Last time when I went down with Baili Qing, I left some coordinates down there, originally planning to open a door to get there directly next time," Yu Sheng said casually, "Should have expected it... Anyway, the coordinates are now invalid."
As he spoke, he summoned a large illusory door in the air, but when the door opened, all that lay beyond was a chaos of darkness, not looking like a safe place to land at all.
Baili Qing, seeing this scene beside him, spoke with a hint of surprise: "...Does your 'door' have times when it fails?"
"Of course it does, it's not the first time. Back when dealing with the Fairy Tale Curse, it failed once trying to find the Black Forest," Yu Sheng said casually, "My door is essentially a portable World Bridge. The original World Bridge often had parameter issues and failed, not to mention my handmade version."
Lucrecia, while controlling the paper boat's flight, kept an eye on the commotion, and upon hearing Yu Sheng's words, showed some curiosity: "What could be the reason for the coordinates failing?"
"There are many possibilities. It could be because the spatial structure changed, truly 'rewriting' the original coordinates, or perhaps the bottom of the Fault at 'No. 66 Wutong Road' has some special attribute, preventing it from being accurately recorded, or even possibly a temporal shift or break—after all, below is the 'Time Well'."
Yu Sheng spoke while shaking his head.
"The outer universe's spacetime is continuous and complete, but it's not so down here. The spacetime within the Fault often exists in fragments without any clear order or position. Of course, I might be wrong, as I've only been here once before and didn't fully understand the spacetime structure down here."
Erin, blinking and listening beside him, couldn't help but mutter: "...This sounds as messy as that city those C-type buckles built."
Yu Sheng heard this and cleared his throat twice, tempted to make a comment, but seeing Luna standing earnestly nearby, he didn't dare speak.
However, truth be told, he felt that the things Luna and her folks built were not comparable to this place at all...
As they spoke, the paper boat had already crossed the upper area of the Fault. The faint light from the chaotic space above had nearly vanished, and the fragmented floating lands disappeared from their sight.
Hu Li hugged a big tail, rubbing it and conjuring two balls of Fox Fire to float in the air. The firelight faintly illuminated the small boat, but the surrounding darkness was vast, and outside the boat, the space was still shrouded in complete darkness.
"Be careful now! This boat's made out of paper!" Fault said, watching the two fireballs float above, about to short-circuit as the bulb on his head flickered, "Don't set it on fire..."
"No need to worry," Lucrecia smiled slightly, "Even though it's a paper-made boat, it has basic fireproof measures."
Fault blinked, looking at the Star Sea Witch in amazement, a sound of surprise coming from his chest: "Is it also the power of magic?"
Then he saw Lucrecia casually pulling out two sheets of paper, folding them into paper extinguisher cans and placing them on the deck...
"...I've started to regret coming down with you lot," Fault's light bulb dimmed, "I should've stayed up there handling data, so at least if the Council were wiped out, there'd be one survivor..."
"Don't mind him; he's always like this, a pessimist," Baili Xue floated near Yu Sheng at some point and whispered, "This probably has something to do with none of the clocks inside him working on time."
Yu Sheng opened his mouth, uncertain how to respond for a moment.
Meanwhile, under everyone's feet, the paper boat continued moving towards the endless darkness at the bottom of the Fault.
When even the last reference point of light above disappeared, the journey felt particularly oppressive—the darkness was boundless, with no reference point proving movement, all around was silent and still, and below, the journey's end was never in sight.
Yu Sheng now fully understood what Red meant by "too quiet."
Compared to the previous chaotic conditions with deformed shadows occasionally emerging from the sediment of time, the current endless, empty darkness was indeed more unsettling.
Even the usually noisy Little Puppet had unknowingly quieted down, clinging to Yu Sheng's leg, staring wide-eyed into the endless void outside the deck, eyes filled with tension.
Yet just as Yu Sheng felt this darkness seemed endless and started considering whether to turn back, a ball of Fox Fire that drifted out beyond the deck suddenly revealed something in the dark.
"Hey, hey! Yu Sheng!" Erin reacted quickly, climbing onto Yu Sheng's shoulder in a few moves, "Look over there! Something flashed a moment ago! It seemed like... plants?"