Near Home

The Otherworld Inn streaked through the stars at faster-than-light speed in warp mode. Once all the starlight could no longer catch up with the ship, the distorted celestial projections on the outer wall of warped space finally vanished, leaving only endless, profound darkness outside the ship.

Huli was monitoring the Warp Jump Engine, while Eileen had spent quite some time enthusiastically fiddling with the "control screen" before finally starting to feel bored.

"When are we gonna get there?" The little golden-haired doll sprawled across the seat, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling of the Main Tower. "Usually, wherever we go, it only takes opening a door. I'm not used to having to fly there slowly all of a sudden..."

"This is slow? We're in warp!" Yu Sheng cast the little doll a helpless glance. "Don't treat my 'portals' as the standard speed of travel. Besides, I've never been to the place we're looking for this time. What else can we do if we don't fly there?"

"We don't have the authorization code for the target stargate." Huli also raised her head. "So we can only rely on the ship's own warp drive. If we had the stargate code, we could find the nearest stargate over at Shouji and 'jump' there directly. It would still take some time, but it would be countless times faster than using warp."

Eileen flipped upright in one swift motion and stared wide-eyed at the Great Demon Fox. "Hey, Huli, when did you learn all this amazing stuff..."

"Recently." Huli's ears twitched. "I finished reading my benefactor's flight manuals, and I borrowed a lot of materials from Baili Qing and Luo."

"For real...?"

"For real." Huli looked utterly serious and even began advising Eileen. "You should read more books too. There's a saying that goes, 'Within books,