Almost simultaneously with Erin's voice reminder, the few people standing on the deck also saw the massive shadow emerging from the darkness.These were blurry giant structures, with a large number of plants intertwining and growing in the darkness like roots or vines, some thicker parts resembling twisted giant towers and astonishingly vast, the entire structure being boundless.
Hu Li's nine tails gently swung in the air, and bunches of foxfire floated from her tail tips, quickly spreading out from the center of the white paper boat to all directions, extending deep into the darkness. The impressive structures surrounding the paper boat were finally outlined clearly under the increasing "Foxfire Matrix."
Countless roots and vines intertwined while growing upwards into shapes resembling giant nests, and the small boat was now passing through an inconspicuous gap between these vines, heading towards the depths of this nest.
"Puppet Progenitor..." Even the usually fearless Erin seemed somewhat frightened, and the Little Puppet began to tug at the tuft of hair on Yu Sheng's scalp again, "I guess it wasn't like this from the start down below..."
Yu Sheng raised his hand to press down on the Little Puppet's paw, "Don't worry about what it was like at first; if you keep tugging at the hair on my head, it'll be all gone!"
"Let me tug a couple of more times; I get nervous if I don't," Erin justified herself, "If it doesn't work, you can reset yourself, right? Anyway, now even if you have an ingrown problem, you'll die and resurrect with it..."
Yu Sheng suddenly felt awkward, turning his head to look at the few people beside him, encountering Kant and the Chairman's eyes filled with three parts awe (and the light), he started explaining, "It's not about the ingrown problem; it was mainly to test my blood loss limit back then..."
Erin muttered, "This sounds even more twisted, doesn't it."
Just then, Hu Li released another batch of foxfire. Large and small clusters floated around the small boat like stars, drifting into the dense vine and root systems. Seeing the increasingly impressive plant structure around, the demon fox girl's tail started puffing up bit by bit, instinctively grabbing Yu Sheng's arm, "Savior, how vast is the scale of these things?"
"The scale is secondary, but why are these things here," Yu Sheng frowned tightly, "These seem like the plant roots that appeared at the Kingdom fragment border... But logically, they should've vanished with the Kingdom's retreat."
"Maybe they reemerged afterward?" Lucrecia pondered, "It could also be that this was how it was after the storm appeared; these things were not only inside the Kingdom fragment but also spread outside, only initially hidden by those chaotic time-space structures, so no one noticed..."
"Is this all left behind by that Tree Angel?" Hu Li murmured, "Could there still be some alive within these roots and vines?"
"They seem withered," Baili Qing's gaze swept around, "But... given it's a Dark Angel, its true state of life and death might be hard to define."
Yu Sheng turned his head to glance at the Little Puppet on his shoulder.
"Wh-Why?" Erin shivered, "What's the point of looking at me; all I remember now is that the old tree was a gigantic tree, nothing else."
"I meant, should we try to see if you can connect with the Tree Angel's main body behind these roots?" Yu Sheng mused, "Lucrecia, let's approach a relatively large and stable tree root."
"Okay, Uncle Yu."
Supported by miracle magic, the small paper boat gently bobbed in the void, soon leaning against a giant tree root, from which some smaller branches extended, one reaching the deck.
Yu Sheng brought Erin to the root nearby, lifting the Little Puppet from his shoulder, "Want to give it a try?"
Erin nodded in slight nervousness, but soon blanked, "Wait, easy for you to say, how do I try?"
Beside them, Hu Li offered a suggestion, "Why not call out to it and see if it responds?"
Erin, easily swayed, immediately nodded, "Oh, let me give it a try then."
Speaking, the Little Puppet stretched out her hand, vigorously slapping the dry tree root twice, "Old tree! Old tree root! Respond if you hear me, I'm that... Oh, Omen!"
Of course, the tree root didn't react at all, but the few with Yu Sheng showed no surprise. Erin, still hanging in midair from her outfit held by Yu Sheng, touched her chin with a serious look, "Maybe it's a bad signal; wait a bit, let me bring my Wi-Fi over..."
Saying so, she raised her hand, summoning a twisted space rift in midair from which a mass-produced puppet poked half its body out, hands holding the Omen Wandering Star.
Erin took that gray stone ball and started vigorously rubbing it against the Tree Angel's roots—sparks were almost flying.
After busying for a while seeing no reaction, the Little Puppet began pondering again, "Yu Sheng, should you spill some blood over it? Or summon Apiao to give it a slash..."
Yu Sheng already started preparing to shed some blood, stunned by Erin's latter phrase, "Freyia? Why?"
"Isn't Apiao the Crystal Tree Administrator now? Just a couple of days ago, you had her register an address for Sir Knight," Erin said confidently, "Ask her to come and jump slash the roots of the old tree, maybe she'll get an address registered for the old tree too..."
"Hey, that's not a bad idea... wait, what do you mean by address registration? I almost missed it, is this how you use an IP address?!"
"Just tell me if it makes sense or not!"
Yu Sheng and Erin were having a heated discussion, two of the most imaginative minds in Boundary Land were having a spark-filled brainstorming session, while Kant and the director, who were standing nearby, were stunned from earlier on. After holding it in for a long time, Kant couldn't help but whisper to Baili Qing, "...do they usually solve problems like this?"
Baili Qing kept a straight face, "Yes."
"It's usually even rougher than this," Baili Xue's voice chimed in, "Now at least they're pretending to discuss the principles..."
Kant: "…?"
Just then, a low sound suddenly emanated from the depths of the darkness, interrupting everyone's actions.
It sounded like some massive structure was stretching and transforming, or perhaps it was the loud noise of something colossal moving slowly. The sound traveled over a great distance, rolling in like muffled thunder.
Yu Sheng, who was about to call Luna for help with a little knife, immediately went to the edge of the deck and looked in the direction the sound was coming from.
It was deep below, at the source of all the roots and vines.
"No, no way, I just rolled a stone ball on top of this..." Erin looked around in surprise and tension. She noticed the enormous roots were slowly moving, while many low, indistinct sounds echoed, as if around her or resonating in her heart, prompting her to subconsciously speak, "Old tree? Old tree, is that you?"
However, no response came from the darkness, and the sounds resonating in her heart vanished like illusions.
A faint glow emerged at the source of the numerous roots and vines.
"There's something down there!" The fox girl immediately grabbed Yu Sheng's arm, "There's a path! The roots below are making way for a path!"
"Lucrecia, lower the altitude," Yu Sheng said without hesitation, "Let's see what's below."
The origami boat quivered slightly, then detached from the resting roots and started flying swiftly down the path indicated by the faint glow below.
And so, after another ten minutes or so, the scene in the faint glow became clear—
Layered bizarre cityscapes, seemingly incongruous buildings and roads, fractured and twisted overpasses, and stalled vehicle projections on roads, as well as obsidian structures standing in the city.
All this was enveloped by a canopy-like structure of roots and vines, blanketing the city—dotted with large and small black rifts, some even cleaving entire districts and causing them to float in the void. Vast structures presumed to be from the Tree Angel emerged from these rifts, weaving and growing maddeningly over the city, extending into the darkness of the Fault.
"Whoa..." The Little Puppet stared blankly at the scene, though it was a crude exclamation, no one paid much attention this time, "Those skyscrapers look a bit familiar... Yu Sheng, is this the 'Deep Layer Boundary City' you saw with Ironclad Expression last time?"
"I am not Ironclad Expression!"
Baili Qing said immediately, then nodded lightly.
"This is indeed the peculiarly twisted 'Boundary City' that Yu Sheng and I saw last time, but before... it wasn't this exaggerated."
The scene before them was somewhat bizarre, even Lucrecia put away her smile, carefully controlling the paper boat to descend, maneuvering through the roof of roots over the city, moving towards the conspicuous Great Void at the city's center.
Half of Yu Sheng's attention was on the canopy they were flying over—the roots and vines interwoven above the city were originally very dense, but now they had evidently opened a path deliberately, and this change occurred during Erin's attempt to communicate with the "Tree Angel"... so, is this some kind of invitation?
As he pondered, the paper boat had completely crossed the canopy, entering the city located at the bottom of the Fault, gliding through the low altitude under the Star Sea Witch's control, trying to avoid the roots and spatial rifts occupying the land and sky, before hovering beside the Great Void at the city's center.
There, the spatial rifts and roots were relatively sparse, yet still featured visible twisted structures, and the Great Void's center still presented the same scene Yu Sheng had seen previously—a small piece of the fragmented ground floated at the center of the void, and in the middle of that piece of ground was the familiar...
No. 66 Wutong Road.