“On the other side of the voidrift?” Youjin Chao was taken aback. “Not really. There are tales of cultivators going in, but not of them coming out that I have heard. However… sometimes, when a voidrift is closed, another rift opens in its place. Another kind of rift, to be precise.”

"And there are tales of cultivators going in and coming out of these second kind of… rifts?" Yung asked again, while still in a childish stare-off with Su Nanya. The vixen growled.

“Portals, they call them. The Lost plane portals.” Youjin Chao said. A bit away, Youjin Chun and Ziyou Ling were bickering while throwing creative insults, and Youjin Linbi was looking at the spectacle with interest.

“In most cases,” The taller boy continued, “on the other end of a portal is a planar fragment. Sometimes these fragments appear even without portals. Part of a hidden world, perhaps once a vibrant plane like ours, now broken and forgotten. The strongest cultivators can even refine planar fragments into personal demi-plane artefacts.

"Rarer still, a portal may lead to the lost planes, those aforementioned hidden worlds themselves, still intact, yet no longer part of the grand dao. Brother Yung, do you know why our mortal plane is called the Last Ascension?"

"I tried to find out why, but the scrolls did not mention it," Yung said. He looked away from the petite vixen and finally turned to Youjin Chao. That seemed to anger Su Nanya even more.

"This is something my grandmother told me," Youjin Chao said, "She said that we are the last existing mortal plane."

“That can’t be true.” Yung was shocked. This doesn’t match the Xianxia trope! But isn’t Chao’s grandmother a pingtian realmer? That’s gotta mean something! Yung glared at Su Nanya again but looks like the vixen had no wish to explain these secrets to him. Yet.

Su Nanya threw one final contemptuous scoff at both the boys and went to hang out with Floofy and Silky.

"I cannot confirm the validity of it." Youjin Chao shrugged; his eyes were plastered on the leaving figure of the three foxes. "But according to her, after the Continent of madness became what it is today, our mortal plane lost all communication with the neighbouring planes."

“Ah, I get it now. The lost planes.” Yung said. He was reminded of Gaia, but with a much grimmer undertone. The continent of madness was invaded by the void. The void beings, who use voidrifts that resemble the portal that brought me to this side. “Lost, literally lost, and figuratively. Lost planes are—”

“Planes overwrought by the void, corrupted and conquered.” Youjin Chao completed his sentence, which felt kinda weird. “Just like the Continent of madness.”

Brother Yung, there is a saying among the pingtian realmers. ‘The path to heaven has been closed.’ They say our plane drifts alone in the endless infinity, like a scared rabbit in a dark forest hiding from predators. That there is no heaven to ascend to, not anymore! That we are the final prey left... No one knows if we are truly the last bastion of renyao, but a million years of solitude proves nothing but.” Youjin Chao’s eyes turned gloomy, and his fists clenched white.

Yung wasn’t feeling any better.

Portals that… lead to ruined worlds which have already been conquered by the void. Bloody hell, my head hurts. Was the bone god a void being? But it was already on death's door when it broke into the Gaia universe! Does the void have factions? Or… are there other powers in this universe that can defeat it?

Moira said there is a valence to the universes, and when a soul from one universe successfully observes the other, unless a soul from the observed universe also observes the first… Damn. This means that while invasions between universes are sporadic, when they do occur, it is downright lopsided, favouring the invaders way too heavily. They can go through from their home universe to the other side easily, and send more and more 'agents' to observe their target, tipping the scale heavily in their favour. The invaded side has to match that number just to break even! Cultivators who go through the voidrifts don't return, while the void can send eleventy-zillion voidfiends to this side every damn second.

OK, calm down, Yung. No need to over-speculate. Moira nipped the problem in the bud. Gaia, Earth is safe. I observed this side. Yeah… And she said this side is a ‘lower dimensional universe’, whatever that meant. Wait, since the bone god that appeared from the ‘voidrift’ observed the Gaia universe, and I observed this side in the Last ascension mortal plane, does that mean whatever place the bone god came from, and this mortal plane, counts as the same universe? Phew if true, unless the bone god wasn’t a void being…

“Brother Yung, there is no need to be so afraid.” Youjin Chao snapped Yung out of his rumination.

Yung looked at his hands, which were sweating. No doubt his face was the same too. But this isn’t… He read the older boy’s empathic link. Curiosity and disdain? What? Does he think I’m afraid of, ooh—I get it. I am afraid, but what does he think I am fearful of, I wonder? Heh.

Youjin Chao’s eyes were full of determination. “Do not listen to what the pessimists say, Brother Yung. These are scornful cynics who have already given up! In actuality, if we truly are the last mortal renyao plane, then that means there is a whole empty ‘heaven’ out there for us to conquer! As such, finding a lost plane is what every adventurer dreams of.”

"I can see why. Unknown wonders, mysteries to be solved, legacies of sects long erased by even time itself." Yung remembered the 'fictional' hero from Su Nanya's hypothetical tale. The hero, or rather, Su Nanya's 'former' fiancé, had freed lost planes in his long separation from the vixen. Whatever that meant, Yung would need to find out.

"The largest empires and sects have many lost planes in their possession. These are their backbones, for unlike the Su fox clan, they don't have a continent's worth of resources to monopolise alone. They populate them with their own people to gather what they need, to create new colonies." Youjin Chao said. "The Warring twilight alliance shares ownership of a single lost plane, too, from what I heard. I have heard it is a void-infested world without a drop of water. Perhaps I can go there when I join one of the big five."

“You sure are confident. Have you figured out a way to awaken your cultivation?” Yung asked, looking Youjin Chao straight in the eye.

The older boy was not phased. He chuckled, saying, “It is good that we managed to close the voidrift today, Brother Yung, but stragglers remain in other branch tunnels. I will join the hunt squad to cull them. Let us meet again in the coming days.” He flexed his fingers, appearing confident, but the uncertainty from his empathic link oozed out like oil. Not about the hunt, Yung guessed, but about the coming phase one.

“On the day of the sect recruitments, the local powers will crowd the city, from the lowest gangs to the highest sects.” Youjin Chao said, picking up his rusty sword, “But it will be a festival if nothing else. I am still holding onto your promise.”

“Promise?”

“That you will cheer me on.”

"Oh, that, yeah," Yung muttered, then nodded. And Youjin Chao bade farewell. He, alongside Ziyou Ling, rushed ahead of the group with the cull squad.

I did say that. Concerning phase one of the sect recruitments, not about Youjin Chao's crush on Nyanya. Said Nyanya turned slowly, her golden pupils glaring disdainfully at Youjin Chao and Ziyou Ling's retreating backs as they entered another tunnel with a team of Youjin cultivators. Youjin Chun and Elder Gangkai followed too, after paying their respects to her.

The rest of the group walked back the same way they had come, and soon they reached the fork where one tunnel had been blocked by a formation inscribed stone wall.

The wall was gone now.

“Would you like to see the paddy farms?” The grizzly-haired elder asked.

After the voidrift matter had been dealt with, the man's entire mood changed from strict to sunny. Perhaps that was for the better, as he was injured during the final fight; despite which, his excellent mood showed his fortitude. He had asked Yung that question, but Yung gathered it must have been aimed at the small golden fox he was cradling after shooing Silky and Floofy away.

He nodded nonetheless; he was a gigolo after all. They were led through the tunnel. Downwards, perhaps half again as far as the cavern where the voidrift had been. Silky was tired, he retreated into Yung's dantian, and Floofy dug up a glowing purple mushroom from somewhere and disappeared in one of the tunnels.

“Will she be alright?” Yung asked.

"Our Su Xiya will be far safer than that smelly yang boy and the unfair maiden in these tunnels," Nyanya replied.

“Smelly yang boy?” Yung would have giggled if that moniker didn’t sound so lewd.

“We do find the yang stench excruciating. Ought that boy not stay away?” There was something aggrieved in her voice, and Yung cuddled her extra hard.

“He likes you.” He said, gauging her reactions.

“We care not for it.” Su Nanya huffed, then puffed, then looked away.

The cavern with the paddy fields was huge.

They started small, but even the littlest ones had offshoots of some underground river running through them. The rice was cultivated on the banks, with farmers taking care of the crop with unique tools and artefacts. Some removed the weeds, most of which looked like grass-sized ferns and mushrooms. They gathered them into baskets, which were then carried up by little kids, giggling and skipping. Some mixed fertiliser with the soil, taking care not to disturb the fields with crops near harvest. And others toiled the land with weird-looking ploughs strapped onto stranger-looking fiends.

With parts of the field golden, parts of it purple, and other parts green, Yung wondered what kind of wizardry the farmers were doing here. His agriculture knowledge was not really extensive, but he was pretty sure this wasn’t how crop rotation worked.

The paddy themselves were strange. They looked like rice and came up to Yung's chest in height. But they had more ears of grain on each stalk than Yung had seen, even on the most illegal GMO back on earth. Not to mention that each ear was as wide as a corn cob, with the individual rice kernel as tiny as a modern husked Basmati grain.

Spirit rice, they called them. They had other regional names too, but that was the most common nomenclature used.

Most folks just called them rice, though.

They also glowed gold. As if their self-radiated light could substitute for the sun.

A lot of things glow gold in this world.

Yung eyed Nyanya, the golden fox walking between the aisles of the fields, lightly brushing past the paddy with her silky coat and elegant tail. A golden thread connected her to him, and to everything else. And her deep gold celestial link vanished beyond the veil, as did everyone else’s.

The largest of the caverns Yung saw must have contained at least ten square kilometres of fields.

He met up with the elder in charge of farming. By this time, most of the other Youjin cultivators had left too, including Youjin Linbi and the sharp-tongued middle-aged man.

Yung looked on with his mouth agape.

These super caverns, there were multiple of these in this part of the underground, and according to the farming elder, the clan was working with the Free Sparrow gang to open up more paddy fields in similarly large but untamed caverns near the southern fiend butchery in proximity to the madlander slums.

"Most years, we can feed half a million ren without any issue." The elder explained, proud of his work. He was an alchemist too, in his words, but was more interested in growing herbs and grains than making pills.

Yung remembered Youjin Chao saying that last year, less than a thousand slum dwellers froze to death during the winter months. What about starvation and malnutrition?

Hopefully, this year would be different.