Chapter 36: The Sleepless One (Not Yu Sheng)

Whether or not he found it easy to get along with him, Li Lin had to admit that Xu Jiali was the best deep diver he had ever met—having someone that tough come to back him up at least showed that the Bureau was taking care of him as a rookie.

The catch was that he had to put up with the big man’s big mouth and his habit of bragging, especially every time he came back from a mission.

“I’m telling you, this mission of mine really ran into some freaky shit,” the burly man on the sofa said, grabbing a bottle of water from the side table without being asked. He twisted the cap off and kept talking. “I caught that Angel Cultist who snuck into Emein-IX, finally cornered him in the no-man’s-land, and right when we were fighting, I looked up—guess what?”

Li Lin rolled his eyes. “You and that big mouth—can you even say that stuff outside?”

“Sure I can. I’ve already reported to the Bureau, and this intel is rated as shareable with you,” Xu Jiali waved a hand, not caring whether Li Lin wanted to hear it or not, and plowed on. “I look up, and holy shit! A person is standing right next to me! You know what they looked like? Just wearing a shirt and trousers, standing in the toxic wind of Emein-IX. Oh, and there was a door frame stuck in the ground beside them. I was so shocked in that moment—I was about to kill that Angel Cultist the next second, but because I got startled, the guy caught his breath. But luckily, in the end, I was still a step ahead…”

Li Lin waved his hand impatiently as he walked toward the monitoring equipment he had set up by the window. “Yeah, yeah, every story ends with you being a step ahead. Can’t you come up with a more original twist?”

“But I really was a step ahead,” the big man said, staring at what Li Lin was doing. “Hey, hold on—aren’t you surprised? I saw a person standing in the toxic wind of Emein-IX! No power armor at all! Even the team leader isn’t that tough!”

“Last time, in the acid rain on Tata-V, you also saw someone suddenly pop up without wearing protective gear—it was a professor from the Academy out collecting samples,” Li Lin said without turning around. “This world doesn’t lack for weird people, not to mention that after too many deep dives, you start getting all kinds of hallucinations. I’ve heard horror stories like this from you eight hundred times already. I don’t believe a single word now. Wait until you’re sitting on a shuttle taking off from a spaceport and you see someone standing outside the porthole flying with you—then come tell me. At least that would sound a little more creative.”

“I’ve seen that too,” the big man grinned, walking straight over to Li Lin’s bed and plopping down. “It was a Daoist master from Thousand-Peak Spirit Mountain. I was about to accelerate, and he was holding up a mirror, flicking it at my monitor, saying he wanted to overtake me… overtake my ass! Let him try entering hyperspace in the flesh…”

Li Lin finally stopped what he was doing. He turned his head and looked at Xu (the big man) Jiali sitting beside him. After a long pause, he sighed in admiration. “You special field operatives really do live a colorful life.”

“Why don’t you get your deep diving license too? Then next time you can come out with me on a special mission,” the big man urged. “What’s so good about the Borderlands? It’s dangerous, it’s troublesome, and everything you do carries a huge responsibility.”

Li Lin thought for a moment, then shook his head. “The Borderlands are always short on manpower. Someone has to watch the biggest hub. And honestly, I don’t think running around in power armor on a wasteland planet fighting Angel Cultists is any safer than staying in the Borderlands to deal with Otherworlds. Besides… don’t you still have to deal with ‘Otherworlds’ on your special missions?”

“That’s different. The density of Otherworlds out there isn’t this high. It’s nothing like the Borderlands. Damn, a bus ride of twenty stops has seven stops that are Otherworlds…”

Li Lin glanced back at Xu Jiali, wanting to say that 99.99% of people could only see the thirteen normal stops in normal circumstances, but when he thought about the file on this big man—who had accidentally stumbled into an Otherworld ‘Platform’ at age twelve, survived there alone for six full years, and only became a deep diver after psychological correction because he couldn’t shake the Otherworld’s pursuit—the words stuck in his throat and never came out.

The Bureau’s frontline combat personnel came in two types: those who had gone through standard training and assessment, and those who had been pulled out of Otherworlds.

Don’t show off your knowledge in front of someone with traumatic experiences—even if they don’t seem to care.

Li Lin lowered his head and focused on checking the parameters recorded by the equipment.

The big man beside him seemed bored. He was a pure combatant, sent here mainly as a combat asset, and he had little interest in work like ‘stakeouts.’

“The Bureau is in total chaos right now,” he suddenly said after a moment of boredom. “All the action team leaders got called in for overtime. I heard even the Director went.”

“I know,” Li Lin said without looking up. “This is the Borderlands, after all.”

“Are things like this common in the Borderlands?” the big man scratched his hair. “Have there been similar ‘anomalous phenomena’ before? I’m always out on special missions, so I don’t really know…”

“If you’re talking about tonight’s spatial rift phenomenon, it’s never appeared before. But if you’re talking about ‘anomalous phenomena’ themselves, the Borderlands never lack them. This… is the Borderlands, after all.”

“Alright, the charming Borderlands. I love this place to death,” the big man stretched his arms and shoulders, then lay back on Li Lin’s bed. His heavy body made the poor single bed groan. “People who want to destroy the world and people who want to protect the world both love this place to death—good thing I don’t have to pull duty at the Bureau. I hear the team leaders work overtime every day.”

Li Lin didn’t answer. He just concentrated on performing his monitoring and recording tasks.

Just then, the sudden ring of a phone broke the silence in the room.

Li Lin glanced at the phone screen and immediately picked it up. “This is Li Lin… Mm? Ah, okay. I understand.”

The big man sat up from the bed and looked curiously at Li Lin, whose expression had changed. “What’s up?”

Li Lin looked strange. He raised his head and gazed out the window at the calm night.

“The Bureau just called. The rift phenomenon… has stopped.”

The big man was taken aback.

“Stopped?” He stared. “Just stopped? No follow-up attack, no Angel Cultists? Not even an Otherworld?”

“No, it just stopped. The entire Borderlands monitoring network has gone quiet.”

“So I’m pulling a night shift for nothing?”

“Not for nothing—and it’s not over yet. The Bureau hasn’t rested either,” Li Lin shook the phone. “Everyone stays on monitoring duty to see if the force behind the rift phenomenon will make any further moves. You go sleep in the next room now. I’ll wake you in six hours to relieve me.”

“Okay,” the big man got up immediately, without a single unnecessary word. “If anything happens, wake me directly.”

Li Lin nodded and turned his gaze back to the night outside the window.

“Another sleepless night…” he muttered softly.

…

Yu Sheng slept soundly in the latter half of the night.

After successfully recreating a ‘door’ leading to some distant time and space, he had firmly memorized that feeling. He now understood how to control so-called ‘spiritual guidance’ and how to imbue the door with a specific ‘frequency’ when opening it, so that it would stably lead to a designated location.

He felt that most things in the world could be summed up as ‘the first time is hard, the second time is easy.’

After that, he kept practicing and strengthening the process of opening the door, successfully reproducing all kinds of passages until he was completely exhausted.

Sleep after total exhaustion was always especially solid. He felt he hadn’t slept this soundly in years.

But he was also a little disappointed. In that good night’s sleep, he didn’t dream of the fox—he didn’t even dream at all.

It seemed that the dream with Hulii wasn’t generated stably.

This made a flicker of unease and a hint of urgency stir in Yu Sheng’s heart.

After waking up in the morning, he told the situation to Erin.

“It’s fine. Don’t overthink it. That fox has survived in the Otherworld for so many years; she’s not going to get into trouble in just a day or two,” Erin said without spewing any trash talk this time. Instead, she comforted Yu Sheng seriously. “Dreams are inherently unstable. Maybe next time you dream, you’ll see her again?”

“Hopefully,” Yu Sheng replied casually, picking up a slice of meat from the table and putting it in his bowl.

It was more meat cut from that ‘local specialty.’ He had eaten it for three consecutive meals and still hadn’t finished it, nor had he gotten tired of it.

But he could no longer feel any physical enhancement from this ‘eating.’ It seemed that the effect of this thing on him had reached its limit.

Regardless, it still tasted good.

“Any plans after the meal?” Erin’s voice came from the side. “Keep practicing ‘door opening’? Or try to recreate the passage to that ‘valley’?”

“I need to go out and buy some things first. After I get back, I’ll start trying to construct the road to the valley. It might take a long time—I can’t really remember the ‘feeling’ from back then,” Yu Sheng said. Then he noticed the hesitant expression on Erin’s face. “Hm? Do you have something in mind?”

Erin stared straight at him. The doll girl seemed to be hesitating. It took several seconds before she spoke. “…Set aside half a day. For me.”

Yu Sheng was taken aback. He rarely saw such a serious expression on this doll’s face.

“Set aside half a day for you… to do what?”

“Make me a body.” Erin said calmly and firmly.

(End of Chapter)