Shen Jingming and the other two flew eastward for several days, covering tens of thousands of kilometers, and had experienced the customs and appearances of many underground nations.
Now, the three were sitting together, eating their first meal of the day.
Shu Feizhang put a piece of dried meat into his mouth and chewed it carefully, with an expression as if tasting wax. He said, "Is your perception okay? We've already circled half of the underground world. In a few more days, we'll see Lan Ye City again."
Mu Ye Xingchen, still unsatisfied, picked up a second piece of dried meat and crunched on it. He said, "Could there be some peculiar way to enter the main city of Dun Saxing?"
Shen Jingming could not answer their questions either.
He had forgotten how he had reached the surface himself.
Only in the depths of his memory, he vaguely recalled stepping out of a very tall black gate.
Shen Jingming gazed at the boundless, undulating oil-green grassland, his heart filled with an indescribable complexity.
He had a premonition that perhaps, upon his return, his people would not welcome him.
It felt as if he had left home on a mission, only to return without success.
But fortunately, his perception of the main city grew stronger.
"It's nearby. I can feel a powerful pressure on my shoulders," Shen Jingming said faintly.
Shu Feizhang frowned and asked Mu Ye Xingchen, "Do you smell anything?"
Mu Ye Xingchen raised his eyebrows and said, "The taste of delicacies." Then, facing Shen Jingming, he asked, "Could it exist in some other form?"
As the three were calmly discussing, a traveler in a tattered cloak, leaning on a walking stick, appeared on a distant hillside.
The traveler was a hunchback, his back heavily curved, almost to a right angle, walking with difficulty.
The three watched as the elderly traveler slowly approached, extended his withered, dark hand, and asked, "Please spare some food."
Shen Jingming handed him the dried meat he was holding and asked, "Old man, is there a city nearby?"
The old man smiled, carefully wrapped the dried meat in a dirty handkerchief, and said, "Yes, yes, it's right above your head."
The three looked up in the direction the old man pointed. The sky was clear and empty.
Shu Feizhang was slightly annoyed and said, "You! I was kind enough to give you food, and you still lie?"
Mu Ye Xingchen quickly reached out to interrupt Shu Feizhang, stood up, and respectfully asked, "Elder Uncle, do you mean that we can only enter through you?"
Saying that, Mu Ye Xingchen invited the old man to his seat, gave him all the dried meat, and continued to ask, "Elder Uncle, may we juniors witness the grandeur of Dun Saxing?"
The old man grinned, accepted handfuls of dried meat, and nodded, "Indeed, I am the carrier of Dun Saxing."
Mu Ye Xingchen thought for a moment and quickly asked, "I've heard that one cannot safely enter a unique space with the physical body alone. How do the people of Dun Saxing survive inside?"
"Heh heh heh!" The old man chuckled twice and said, "You are the smartest person I have ever met. Your fellow junior beside you is not as eloquent as you."
Shen Jingming was not surprised. He also sensed something unusual about the old man.
"The virtual space of the carrier is an independent perfect spacetime protected by virtual numbers. One is born every two hundred years."
As the old man spoke, a towering black domain suddenly opened behind him, reaching into the clouds.
Shen Jingming immediately recognized that this was where he had exited the main city.
The three exchanged glances, no longer delaying, and shouldered their bags, walking towards the dark gate.
Shen Jingming, walking last, pressed a needle-like communicator into the dirt, then walked in without hesitation.
When the black gate disappeared, the old man looked at the boiling food in the pot and said faintly, "I'm afraid you have the courage to come, but not the life to leave."
As soon as the three stepped out of the darkness, they found themselves inside the main city of Dun Saxing.
Shu Feizhang stared at the houses densely packed in the sky, and was stunned.
Even Mu Ye Xingchen was surprised by the fantastical and bizarre nature of the place, and slowly asked, "What... what is the principle behind this?"
The crisscrossing streets were like soft ribbons, some floating in the air, others extending straight into the distance before turning sharply upward into the sky.
They were like intersecting, twisting, and dislocated Möbius strips.
The houses, horizontal, vertical, upside down, and tilted, were arranged on both sides of the streets.
Some were built in the sky, with roofs hanging down; some were situated on slopes, and some showed wooden floors at the bottom of the houses.
The entire space was complex and chaotic, dazzling the eye.
And the residents of Dun Saxing living here were even more interesting.
A plump woman reached forward, pulled a bag of oranges from a cubical space, and tossed it into the sky.
The bag of oranges, which had been resisting gravity a moment ago, was suddenly pulled by another force, falling towards the house overhead and disappearing into a suddenly appearing black cube.
"Thanks, sis!" a woman's voice called from the upside-down house.
People walking on the streets, following the Möbius strip-like streets, walked either vertically, upside down, or at an angle.
The entire main city seemed like a giant kaleidoscope, crammed full, and just one glance was enough to make one dizzy, with normal thinking unable to comprehend it.
After watching for a while, Mu Ye Xingchen began to understand. The gravity field of the entire space was not constantly directed in one direction; instead, each house had its own gravitational field.
For people to visit their neighbors, they either walked along the streets or simply jumped and fell into the other person's gravitational field.
The little children here were even more amusing. Three or five of them chased a fist-sized ball, jumping horizontally and vertically, moving through various gravitational fields, cheerful and unconstrained.
"Ah!" a little girl suddenly ran over and bumped into Shu Feizhang's thigh.
Shu Feizhang smiled, bent down, and patted the child's head, saying gently, "Be careful next time."
However, Shen Jingming quickly snatched Shu Feizhang's hand away and said, "Don't touch them!"
Shu Feizhang was somewhat displeased, flicked his wrist, and said, "What? Are all the children of your Dun Saxing made of gold? Will touching them make gold dust fall off?"
The little girl's eyes widened in alarm, tears immediately welling up in her eyes, and she cried out, "Mom! There are, there are foreigners—!!!"
Her cry was not in vain. Adults from the neighboring houses rushed out, surrounding the three from above, left, and right.
"I told you not to touch!" Shen Jingming shouted, suddenly expanding his unique space and summoning their exoskeleton mechs, attaching them to themselves.
Shu Feizhang grumbled resentfully, "Why are you like Xingchen! You didn't explain properly beforehand! How was I supposed to know not to touch?"
The surrounding Dun Saxing residents had already summoned their full armor, and the twisted streets were suddenly covered in a dense black mass.
Without time to think, the three activated their back thrusters and flew towards the sky.
Shu Feizhang maneuvered in the air. After flying only a few meters, he crashed into a house above, causing chaos inside.
In the ensuing confusion, Shu Feizhang burst out of the house. Before he could accelerate, he crashed through the roof of a vertical house and fell inside.
"Aiya!! This damned place, I can't move freely!" Shu Feizhang complained and roared.
Compared to Shu Feizhang's recklessness, Mu Ye Xingchen was much calmer and more elegant.
He dodged several approaching Dun Saxing people, utilizing the constantly changing gravitational fields to fly in intricate patterns, like a bird soaring in a storm.
But more and more Dun Saxing people flew out of their homes, using their familiarity with the terrain and gravitational fields to continuously attack the three.
Soon, Shu Feizhang and Mu Ye Xingchen were captured, their legs and feet firmly bound by chains.
Even Shen Jingming was surrounded by his own people, unable to escape.
The disturbance caused by the three lasted only a dozen minutes before it was quelled.
Shu Feizhang and Mu Ye Xingchen were escorted by the crowd and taken to a tightly guarded prison.
As for Shen Jingming, he was escorted by his compatriots to the tallest, inverted, towering spire-like building in the city.
In the hall, Shen Jingming's hands were bound, and he was forcefully held by his shoulders by several burly fellow tribesmen, refusing to kneel even if it meant death.
As the standoff continued,
A tall woman, dressed in a magnificent white robe, walked out from a chamber off the side of the hall. She ascended the steps and slowly sat on a towering throne.
The woman looked down at Shen Jingming and spoke in a majestic and irresistible tone, "Traveler 39248, have you completed your mission?"