Outside, it's still mountains, the endlessly repeating mountains, layered upon each other, like ripples created after space shrinks on a small scale.

After recovering from the heart-stopping acceleration, deceleration, and dizziness of the journey, Yu Sheng saw the "continuously repeating mountains" Hu Li had described.

The continuous mountain ranges were like spreading ripples, endlessly extending in his field of vision, shrouded in a hazy mist between them, with no other outlines visible amid the swirling fog except for "mountains."

Yu Sheng's eyebrows furrowed tightly as he stared for a long time at those distant mountains that seemed as if they were duplicated, infinitely repeating. Then he suddenly remembered the coffee shop where he met Baili Qing—the coffee shop also infinitely repeated and stretched just like this, all the way to the horizon.

But there was a difference: the coffee shop only extended infinitely in two opposite directions, but at least its shop windows facing the street still marked a clear "boundary." However, these surrounding mountains... no matter from which direction you looked, there was no visible "end" in sight.

"This... we probably can't reach the end if we walk out, right?" Erin clutched Yu Sheng's head, her voice tense as she peered out over the opposite ridge, "Are we going to keep going forward?"

Yu Sheng fell silent while also quietly focusing his mind, recalling the perspectives he "saw" when he first connected with the valley and sensing the surroundings.

After a while, he suddenly bent over, picked up a small stone from the ground, and threw it hard into the distance.

The stone flew into the air but disappeared before it hit the ground, vanishing from everyone's sight.

"Huh?" Erin exclaimed in surprise when she saw this.

Yu Sheng walked slowly forward, very cautiously making his way to where the stone had disappeared.

There seemed to be nothing ahead, yet it felt as if there was an invisible "boundary." He bent over again, picked up a small pebble from the ground, and gently tossed it forward.

This time, he saw more clearly how the pebble disappeared—it instantly passed through a "border." At the moment it vanished, the air rippled briefly and faintly, just like the surface of water.

Yu Sheng raised his head and looked left and right along the ridge.

He felt it.

The mountains rose and fell, converging at the distant horizon, and that invisible boundary enveloped the entire valley all around, from the sky above to the earth below.

After hesitating for a few seconds, Yu Sheng finally took a breath and continued to step forward.

"Hey, hey, hey! You're really going forward!" the little puppet suddenly yelled on his shoulder, "I have a bad feeling about this! What if we go through and just..."

Before she could finish speaking, Yu Sheng had already crossed that invisible boundary. Accompanied by slight ripples in the air, a brief sensation of weightlessness appeared and disappeared. They were momentarily disoriented and then found themselves standing somewhere in the center of the valley.

"...can't come back..." Erin was still shouting with inertia, and it took a moment after she finished her last two words to snap out of it and look around in disbelief, "Ah, we're back?"

Following that, she saw an even larger ripple materialize beside her, and the enormous Silver White Demon Fox suddenly passed through the air and appeared beside her and Yu Sheng.

"Savior!" Hu Li came over somewhat anxiously searching, but when he saw Yu Sheng and Erin standing there fine, he relaxed and cautiously rubbed against Yu Sheng's body with the tip of his tail, "You suddenly disappeared, you gave me a fright!"

"The space at the boundary is closed, and it unidirectionally points to the center of the region," Yu Sheng pondered for a long time and finally broke the silence, "It's just not clear if other Exotic Realms also have this structure."

Erin listened blankly for a moment before reacting: "So you mean, we can't walk to the 'outside' no matter what?"

"There's no 'outside' at all," Yu Sheng shook his head, "This valley is the only 'valid' area in the entire space. What we saw just now, those infinite mountains, are actually because of the closure of the boundary, and the continuous superimposition of reflections in the curved space-time. If you observe carefully, you'll realize that they are the infinite duplications of these surrounding mountains."

Erin widened her eyes and eventually showed a look of realization: "...Wow."

It was unclear whether she really understood or just pretended to.

Then, after a while, Erin poked Yu Sheng's head: "What do we do next?"

Yu Sheng then turned his gaze to the Silver White Demon Fox by his side.

"Since no more entities will be spawned here, and it has become a peaceful place... maybe we could properly reinter your parents, at least erect a formal grave for them. What do you think?"

The fox girl cocked her head, and after a moment, she nodded gently.

Locating the burial site of Hu Li's parents did not take much time, and for Yu Sheng now, raising a tomb was not difficult.

The two sets of bones, hastily buried back then, were cleaned and collected once more. Yu Sheng caused the ground to sink and solidify into a neat grave, and made the stones fuse together to form a solid stone coffin—compared to healing a vast expanse of land and rapidly growing vegetation, this sequence of tasks was actually much simpler for him.

The bones were placed into the stone coffin, the coffin into the grave, and the soil writhed layer by layer to cover it, quickly forming a grave mound.

"We also need a gravestone," Yu Sheng said as he looked at the completed grave mound. Noticing the puzzled look in Hu Li's eyes, he explained, "It's placed in front of the grave to serve as a memorial..."

Hu Li immediately nodded: "I'll go get one."

As her words fell, the Silver White Demon Fox turned and ran off into the distance. Accompanied by a series of sonic booms and a loud bang, she disappeared from Yu Sheng and Erin's sight in almost the blink of an eye.

Then, after a short while, she raced back noisily, holding an oddly-shaped silver-white metal plate in her mouth.

Roughly half as tall as a person.

"This was a gift from my parents," Hu Li placed the metal plate down and explained to Yu Sheng, "It's... a musical instrument. I was fussing about joining an interest class, so they got me this, but I haven't had the chance to learn... it's broken now, anyway."

Saying this, she skillfully curled her tail around the metal plate and planted it in the soil in front of the grave, then patted it with her claws, pressing the dirt as hard as stone.

"Actually, a gravestone is not this..." Yu Sheng murmured reflexively, but stopped himself midway, "Forget it, if you think this is suitable, then it is."

"In our place, there are no such customs," the Silver White Demon Fox lay down beside the grave, lightly (truly lightly) nuzzling Yu Sheng's arm with her snout, "When demons die, they leave a small part of their bones as a remembrance, such as teeth or finger bones. When Immortals pass away, they leave their hair. The rest of the body returns to nature or is refined by descendants into objects as memorials. Either way, there is no need for additional 'burial'. Additionally, some choose to extract their Spiritual Wisdom while alive, assimilating it with the Great Way, achieving immortal consciousness while discarding the body to the world."

She said these words, shifting her head around on the ground, her eyes turning towards the new grave.

"But I've heard from Immortals that a long, long time ago, before the arrival of the Heavenly People, there were customs of burying the dead, with people solemnly placing the bones of ancestors in the ground, or keeping them in the Bone Chamber. But that is a very ancient matter, according to what schools taught, that's referred to as 'before the interstellar era', a cultural trait when civilization thrived within the gravity well... Once free from the gravity well, people's mindset and way of living no longer have a strong connection with 'the surface', the concept of life and death ethics will reshape, thus 'funeral rituals' will change as well."

Erin listened on the side, perplexed, "Why do I feel like you're talking about some very profound things..."

"It's what the school taught, and I can't remember much of it. My grades were not that good back then." Hu Li swept her bushy tail across the ground, then fixated her gaze back on the grave in front of her.

After a brief silence of two or three seconds, she spoke softly, "This is also very good, I can come here to talk to mom and dad... Savior always has sensible suggestions."

Yu Sheng said nothing, just walked over to sit next to the Silver White Demon Fox, leaning on one of her bushy tails.

He was curious about Hu Li's homeland, trying to imagine a "Immortal Demon Civilization" that had broken free from the terrestrial world, capable of traversing the stars, thinking about how to find that place in the vast universe. Then, these thoughts gradually faded from his mind, his brain seemingly empty, staring absent-mindedly into the distance.

He looked at this "Exotic Realm", which would no longer generate physical entities or produce deadly toxins and corruption, yet was intimately connected to him.

Could this place... be considered a "headquarters"?

But what to do with such a huge "headquarters"... Could they live here? Including him, his team currently had just three people, and besides, he still had No. 66 Wutong Road; no matter how old, that house was more livable than the wilderness... Farming? Not sure if this exotic realm could grow crops, though the sunlight seemed abundant, and grass could grow... Maybe it's possible, if grass can grow then so can crops and vegetables... Maybe even boldly raising cattle and sheep wouldn't be out of the question...

Yu Sheng felt he was almost asleep, leaning against Hu Li's fluffy tail, the comfort and relaxation making his thoughts drift as if floating on cotton clouds. He speculated on many random things, and then laughed at some of his more outrageous ideas.

The small doll on his shoulder suddenly leaned in close, "What are you thinking about?"

Yu Sheng earnestly replied, "I'm considering what we could do with this place in the future. The initial plan is to level out the wasteland around that ruined temple and plant some radishes, beans, and cabbages."

Erin: "…?"

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