Alien Hotel.

Chapter 686 Mysterious Desolate Star
The three adults and one child squeezed together in front of the gate, peering out at the situation on the other side, their faces blank and speechless.

Even Luna seemed a little bewildered.

Outside the door lay an unfamiliar alien land, with a thick, gray atmosphere covering the sky. In the distance, towering and precipitous mountains rose, their gray-black stone peaks seemingly covered with thick snow, which shimmered with an eerie dark blue hue. From the deep valleys nestled among the mountains came low rumbling sounds, and hot springs gushed from the cliffs below, their moisture-laden plumes mixed with acrid, poisonous fumes.

There were no plants or animals in sight, only the occasional huge shadows moving slowly in the thick clouds in the distance. The sight reminded one of some giant atmospheric planktonic organism crossing the sea of ​​clouds, but the shadows would quickly disappear with the flow of clouds and mist in the next second. The wind blew incessantly over the jagged rocks in the mountains, and the sharp, hollow sound was particularly unsettling.

No matter how you look at it, it doesn't resemble a fully developed, habitable planet. The environment is even worse than the "Nest Bottom" of the Grey Dwarfs.

"...No way, this is what the 'holy land' those cultists talk about looks like?" Eileen's eyes widened, her light blue pupils reflecting the desolate and treacherous mountains. "No, is this some kind of extreme survival scenario? Those charlatans' doctrines don't seem to follow an ascetic path at all..."

“Something’s not right,” Yu Sheng said, his brows furrowed. “Although I don’t know what their ‘sacred realm’ looks like, a fully developed capital star shouldn’t be in such a desolate state. For one thing, I opened the door using the coordinates of that Dark Star Cruiser—where is that huge spaceship? Where is the starport?”

Luo's voice came through the communicator behind everyone: "What's going on! I can't see! Boss, did you slip? Did you open the door crooked again?"

“First of all, I never open doors crookedly. The time I startled you was part of the project testing. Secondly, something’s not right about the ‘Holy Realm’. It’s a primitive landscape outside, and we can’t see where that ‘Dark Star Cruiser’ is,” Yu Sheng said, turning around. “Let’s go check it out first—wait for my news over there.”

Luo nodded in confusion, and then saw Yu Sheng and the others step through the illusory door and disappear into the spaceship's rest hall.

An unpleasant, pungent odor filled the air, and the chill that could quickly freeze a person made Yu Sheng instinctively rub his hands together—although his current physical condition wouldn't actually kill him in this environment—while the fox walking beside him sneezed several times as soon as it landed, then rubbed its nose and muttered, "A weird smell..."

“No hostile units detected,” Luna nimbly traversed a short, rugged hillside, quickly scanned the surrounding environment with her sensor radar from a high vantage point, and then returned to Yu Sheng’s side. “Environment: Unsuitable for human habitation; no traces of human intervention found.”

Eileen leaned on Yu Sheng's shoulder: "Hey, how can you run so fast in high heels with those C-shaped buckles...?"

"Why don't you get down and walk around on your own?" Yu Sheng turned his head and glanced at the blond doll on his shoulder. "Isn't your body capable of swinging around while suspended by wires? I've seen you quite agile when you're fighting..."

"Hanging my head my foot! That's the Silk Dance! Alice the Doll's skill!" Eileen tugged hard at Yu Sheng's hair. "Besides, I'm not going down. You just want to see me climb rocks on the hillside. You're so wicked, let me tell you, last time you tricked me into thinking there was something good in the bedside table and locked me in the drawer..."

Yu Sheng frantically swatted at the two little paws on Eileen's head, finally managing to calm her down. Then he checked the "signal" from the drop of blood again, looked up in a certain direction, and said, "Wait a minute, it feels like this is the right spot... the deviation shouldn't be more than a hundred meters. Where did they put us?"

The fox came closer and said, "My benefactor, how about I send a scout chicken to explore the surrounding area?"

Yu Sheng nodded subconsciously: "Okay... wait, a scout chicken?"

Then he saw the fox flick its large tail, and heard two clear and loud cries pierce the sky. He then saw two beams of light shoot straight into the sky from the fox's tail. As the saying goes, "a thousand rays of light and a thousand auspicious colors," and two fox-like chickens with colorful spiritual energy protecting them flew out. One was boiled, and the other was salt-baked...

These two hairy beasts were much larger than the ones Yu Sheng had seen last time. Their wingspans were almost two or three meters long, and when they flew over the mountain, their bodies were emitting colorful rays of light and sparks.

Well, it's pretty cool, but from a distance it looks like one of those cheap web games where you get a free six-yuan first-purchase bonus...

But that wasn't all. After the boiled chicken and the salt-baked chicken took off, the fox seemed a little worried about the safety of its two divine chickens, so it launched four tails to escort the two scout chickens with the Fox-Raising Cannon.

A bunch of furry things took off into the sky with a rumble and disappeared in an instant into the thick clouds of this wild, alien planet.

Eileen tilted her head back and, after a long while, finally couldn't help but speak: "...Seriously, you silly fox, have those two chickens already transformed? I feel like they're almost able to beat that snake in the valley?"

“We can beat her,” Hu Li said casually. “We beat her last month. The Snake Queen tried to attack Bai Qie by sticking out her tongue, but she got a head full of bumps from the salt-baked snake.”

Eileen: "..."

As they were talking, the two brilliant beams of light in the sky had already circled the nearby mountain several times. Then, after a while, Yu Sheng saw one of the beams of light suddenly plummet rapidly toward the other side of the mountain. Hu Li instantly sensed something and immediately looked up in that direction: "My benefactor! What has Bai Qie discovered!"

Before she could finish speaking, the fox-spirit girl had already rolled forward, transforming into a giant nine-tailed fox in the blink of an eye. One of her tails lashed out, scooping Yu Sheng up and hoisting him onto her back. Then, she leaped up on all fours, foxfire roaring into the air as she flew towards the direction where the flames were falling. Luna followed closely behind, leaping through the shadows to keep up.

Yu Sheng gripped the fur on the fox's back tightly, and peered out under the protection of his protective spiritual energy. He saw the wild and rugged land receding rapidly beneath his feet, and he could vaguely make out the primitive hot springs spewing toxic substances, the steep cliffs, and the crisscrossing trenches and fissures on the ground.

Further afield, one can vaguely see a massive wall of mist, like a curtain, standing at the edge of the world, encircling this mountain range like some kind of "boundary".

Yu Sheng withdrew his gaze from the horizon and saw an exceptionally large chasm stretching across the mountains. The chasm below was dark and unsettling, and its depth probably even exceeded that of the "abyss" beneath the Demon-Suppressing Tower of Thousand Peaks Spirit Mountain.

Yu Sheng subconsciously focused his gaze on the rift valley, but his brows gradually furrowed.

For some reason, he thought of a concept he had heard from Yuanling Zhenren before—the desolate star.

"Dead planets" that have dried up their ley lines for various reasons, or that have no ley lines at all, have a dead core, their planetary evolution has stagnated, and their surfaces are either devoid of life or have a strange and incongruous ecosystem. Moreover, all sorts of terrifying and bizarre phenomena often occur on the entire planet. The cultivators of Thousand Peaks Spirit Mountain have even given these planets an even more frightening name, calling them "corpse stars".

“This planet doesn’t seem to have any ‘geysers’,” Yu Sheng muttered. “Don’t you guys think the atmosphere here is a lot like the ‘desolate planet’ that Yuanling Zhenren described back then? Like that kind of lifeless planet.”

“I don’t know,” Eileen said matter-of-factly. “Old Man Yuanling mentioned this before.”

“It’s somewhat similar,” Hu Li’s voice came from the front. The great fox turned its head. “I’ve read some information about barren planets in the Alglad people’s astrological database. The large fissure on the surface just now looks a lot like the surface disintegration of a planet caused by the depletion of its ley lines—but the Alglad people call such planets ‘cold planets.’ They believe that the core of such planets has been cooled since their birth…”

“Is that so…” Yu Sheng nodded, but then paused, “Wait, where did you connect to the Algerian astrological database from?!”

“I borrowed Luo’s account. Isn’t she from Alglade?” Hu Li said casually. “My benefactor, you travel all over the universe, but you don’t usually care about star maps or navigation. I thought I’d learn a little bit, just in case it comes in handy, although I don’t think it will be very useful, after all, my benefactor is a spaceship immortal…”

Listening to the fox spirit girl's earnest tone and looking at her serious face... well, it might not be obvious, since her face was all furry right now—but anyway, he was a little moved at that moment, only he couldn't bring himself to say the truth in his heart.

Does he not care about star charts and navigation? No, he just can't learn them!

These words lingered in his mind for a long time before Yu Sheng finally decided to keep a straight face and continue to act mysterious. Then he took out his phone: "I'll send a message to Baili Qing first, tell her that the situation here has changed—and ask her to help me figure out what's going on. Maybe she's more knowledgeable... hmm?"

Yu Sheng frowned as he looked at the offline notification on his phone.

"No signal..."

"Isn't it normal to have no signal?" Eileen peeked at her phone screen. "Unless you opened the door too far to the side, this place, whether it's a 'sacred realm' or not, is definitely within the territory of the Hermitage. Where would a signal come from in a lawless zone?"

Listening to the little doll's analysis, Yu Sheng just frowned. Just then, a tremor suddenly came from below, interrupting his thoughts.

The raccoon is descending.

White-cut and salt-baked birds flew out from the nearby clouds and mountain mist, sometimes crowing, sometimes cooing, sometimes hooting, sometimes howling like eagles as they circled the fox, making a chaotic but excited noise.

Eileen, however, spotted the situation on the ground.

"Look!" the little doll stretched out its arm. "That looks like... a camp?"

Within a sheltered area obscured by mountain walls and natural boulders, Yu Sheng saw traces of man-made structures—what appeared to be pre-built cabins of some kind of planetary habitation module, alloy walls supported by a rough metal frame, antenna devices that looked to have ceased operation, and scattered debris lying among the gravel and mud.

(End of this chapter)