FPE Chapter 38

The Fluffy Ones

Otherworld, Abyss Border.

Previously, Chi Yizhen had always taken control of Sal’s shell first and let Chi Xiaozhen follow along, while splitting his attention to also manipulate Chi Xiaozhen. But this time, before heading over, he thought it through and decided he couldn’t play favorites — a father had to be fair to all his children. So this time, he took primary control of Chi Xiaozhen and let Sal follow instead.

Not only that, but before setting out, he had also taken the time to dress Chi Xiaozhen up properly: camel-colored knee-high boots, khaki trousers, a grey short jacket, and a white inner shirt. Chi Yizhen thought this was perfectly practical and warm attire — only for the game to turn around and mock his sense of fashion. It was a good thing Sal’s consciousness hadn’t fully taken shape yet, otherwise Chi Yizhen would have had to vent to Sal: “What does a piece of AI even know about human aesthetics?”

After landing at the Abyss Border, Chi Yizhen swept his gaze across the land, his eyes reflecting a world split between fire and ice — one half blazing red, the other frozen blue.

“Game, do you remember what I said before, when I looked down through the rift and called this place a living hell?”

The game gave a cool, indifferent hum of acknowledgment.

The Interdimensional Travel Card allowed the user to freely choose their destination. The first time had been a random placement by the game, and Chi Yizhen’s luck had been poor — he’d landed right inside the royal palace of the Kingdom of Theodore. From that point on, he could spend points to travel wherever he pleased. This time, Chi Yizhen had chosen the very spot he’d once glimpsed through the rift. If the locals had been any stronger, they would have seen a tiny hole appear in the sky above them.

This place was known as the Abyss Border. Chi Yizhen recalled from the background lore that over five hundred years ago, the ground here had suddenly split open in an enormous crack, from which scorching lava and magic beasts poured forth. The sentient races of this world, in order to stop the magic beasts from spreading outward, had gathered nearly all of their extraordinary beings to seal the fissure — one that stretched across almost the entire continent — in ice. Unfortunately, as time passed, the seal gradually weakened; lava and magic beasts began erupting once more from the edges of what had originally been blue frost, and the situation grew worse with each passing year.

According to the background information the game had provided, the seal had originally been capable of lasting a thousand years. But the otherworldly evil gods’ talent for recruiting followers was simply too formidable. It had started with humans, and before long, many other sentient races began to fall under their influence as well. In this world where idealism reigned supreme, the more faith humanity devoted to the evil gods, the stronger the evil gods became, the more magic beasts they spawned, and the more wretched humanity’s existence grew…

“Tsk, what a sin.”

Chi Yizhen had barely finished sighing when he suddenly felt something tickling the top of his boot. He looked down — and saw several fuzzy black creatures burrowing up from the ground, crawling their way up along his boot. Chi Yizhen blanked for a split second, then let out a shriek of several dozen decibels. He launched himself into the air as though he had springs installed, stamping and flinging his feet wildly until he finally shook off the arm-thick black caterpillars.

He let out a breath of relief, his whole body flooded with the exhilarating sensation of having narrowly escaped death. He didn’t forget to explain himself to the game. “It’s not that I’m a coward. It’s just — ordinary caterpillars are about as thick as a finger, but these otherworldly caterpillars are practically as long and thick as snakes. Even the toughest man alive couldn’t handle that.”

As soon as he finished speaking, something felt off. He looked down — and snapped back to reality with a jolt. He was using his daughter’s shell!

Chi Yizhen’s heart lurched. He immediately pulled up the character card control interface, and sure enough, he found that a new line had been added to Chi Xiaozhen’s personality settings.

Chi Xiaozhen’s current personality settings:

1. Gentle, caring, loves handing out flyers.
2. Has an extreme aversion to insects; when startled, will erupt into high-pitched screaming several times over, lose all rationality, and go into a frenzy of jumping and flailing while unleashing a string of profanity.

Chi Yizhen: ……

Daughter, Daddy is sorry. Daddy had originally planned to raise you into an elegant, refined young lady.

He let out a sigh. Oh well, he thought. Raising a child isn’t something just anyone can pull off. Better to just go with the flow.

Chi Yizhen continued walking forward.

Meanwhile, the dwarf elves who made their home at the Abyss Border had finally noticed these two uninvited guests.

Hidden inside a rounded bump on a brown hillside was a pair of glistening vertical-slit pupils. They watched the approaching figures — a woman and a man — drawing gradually nearer in the distance. A pair of curly ears gave a little twitch, and then the creature nimbly burrowed back underground.

“Did you get a clear look — were they two humans?”

The underground cavern where the dwarf elves lived was not dark at all. On the contrary, they had a highly developed sense of aesthetics: small mushrooms that gave off a soft white glow had been planted in a ring, like an ever-burning river of stars, casting a gentle light over the dwarf elves’ dwelling.

The dwarf elves had lived here since time immemorial. Long ago, this land had been fertile and the rivers clear, but everything changed five hundred years ago.

Five hundred years ago, as stipulated by the inter-racial alliance, the extraordinary beings of other races had protected the dwarf elves who lived here, while the dwarf elves, in turn, were to serve as the frontline and stand guard in this place indefinitely. In the beginning it hadn’t been too bad — the living environment had grown colder, but the dwarf elves simply grew a layer of fur for warmth and carried on much as before. In recent decades, however, the number of places where the seal had cracked open had multiplied, and the magic beasts pouring out had increased in kind. They had been forced to relocate underground, living lives no better than those of rats. In recent years, the young born into the clan had been growing weaker across the board, and the clan chief, Hohochi, was deeply worried.

Upon hearing from the patrolling clan members that two humans were approaching the heart of their territory, Hohochi was quite curious. Thanks to their particularly useful extraordinary abilities, the dwarf elves had maintained good relations with most sentient races and bore no ill will toward humans either. After a brief deliberation, Hohochi instructed the clan to open their gates and welcome the two visitors inside.

Though the two were extraordinary beings of no small power, this was the dwarf elves’ home ground, with over a hundred thousand of them living here. Two extraordinary beings alone gave them no cause for fear whatsoever.

The dwarf elves’ average height was under one meter, and the tallest cavern in their dwelling was under two meters — hardly suited to receiving tall, long-limbed humans. So the meeting was arranged to take place above ground.

The moment Hohochi laid eyes on the two humans, he took a liking to them. No particular reason — who didn’t like beautiful things?

Despite the difference in race, “beauty” had its own natural formula, one unbounded by race, skin color, or height or build. The dwarf elves believed that the eyes and the mind were extraordinarily precise instruments, and their perception of beauty would always take precedence over any factors acquired after the fact.

The moment Chi Yizhen laid eyes on the dwarf elves, he too took a liking to them. No particular reason — when a row of fluffy little creatures politely laid out food and welcomed you in, who could possibly resist being overwhelmed by how adorable it all was?

Chi Yizhen imagined it: in the restaurant he ran, the fluffy ones dressed in tiny little uniforms, standing on chairs to take customers’ orders, calling out queue numbers, and tiptoeing on their fuzzy little paws to deliver food to the tables… round little tails swaying back and forth as they walked with their trays…

No, no — he had to stop thinking about this!