“F-fly our whole courtyard house into outer space?!” Even an Upper-Realm envoy learns good table manners after hanging in the rosebushes for a week, Gu Changsheng thought dryly.
By the stone well of the Gu Family Courtyard, Grandpa Yao, Grandpa Fu, and Auntie Qin nearly dropped their porcelain teacups at the exact same time. Eleven-year-old Gu Nian, twelve-year-old Ye Xiao, nine-year-old Su Nuannuan, seven-year-old Jiang Tuntun, and three-year-old Little Fifth gasped with stars shining in their eyes!
“Master Gu!” Grandpa Yao floated forward hurriedly, tugging at his translucent white beard in a mixture of alchemical shock and practical concern. “Old Yao completely agrees with you that Envoy Xue Sha’s Upper-Realm battleship is cold, dark, cramped, and smells of old blood-rust—an awful place for raising five growing children on a ten-planet road trip!”
The old Pill-Saint gestured urgently up toward the dark expanse of space beyond the golden atmosphere.
“However, Master Gu, the void between worlds in the Lower Astral Corridor is not like the sky above our continents!” Grandpa Yao warned earnestly. “Outer space is filled with minus-four-hundred-degree cosmic vacuum, blinding solar radiation storms, and razor-sharp meteorites!
A mortal wooden courtyard with clay roof tiles, a dirt vegetable patch, and paper window-screens will tear apart and freeze solid in three breaths if you fly it out of the atmosphere!”
