Chapter 9: A Little Bit of Truth

The voice that came from within his mind made Yu Sheng, who had been somewhat dazed by the cold wind blowing through the valley, jolt with surprise—and then become even more dazed.

He stayed dazed until Erin shouted in his head a second time before he snapped out of it with a start.

"...Erin?" Yu Sheng blinked. He was currently cautiously observing the valley while carefully making his way toward that collapsed, dilapidated old temple, trying to find a temporary shelter. At the same time, he attempted to respond in his mind, "How did you... contact me? I mean, you're talking directly in my head..."

"Is that hard?" Erin's tone was particularly self-righteous. "I'm Alice's doll after all!"

Yu Sheng thought about it but couldn't for the life of him connect those two things... Did that mean all of Alice's dolls could do this? Talk inside other people's heads?

"Didn't I already burrow into your dream once? Once I burrow in, I know the way," Erin added patiently when she noticed Yu Sheng hadn't responded, but then her tone shifted abruptly, "Hey, seriously, where did you run off to? I can't sense you at all..."

Yu Sheng was silent for two seconds. He looked up at the deep valley and dense forest around him. He had a creeping feeling that at any second, a demon several stories tall might spawn and epic battle music would start blaring. That made his heart cold. "...I might have gone far away. I doubt I can get back easily..."

Erin was obviously stunned on her end too. Her voice came through after a few seconds' delay: "...Didn't you say you were just going out to take out the trash? Did the garbage truck scoop you up?!"

Yu Sheng had no idea where she got such a strong imagination...

But he had to admit, hearing Erin's voice did calm his panicked heart a little—just a little—after being abruptly thrown into this desolate wilderness.

At least this voice proved that his connection to his original world hadn't been completely severed. Since Erin could contact him, there should be a possibility of going back—even though he had no idea how and couldn't think of any reason to support that assumption, he had to believe it now.

As for the present, his first priority was ensuring his own safety.

The valley was quiet. So far, only the occasional hollow wind reached his ears. But Yu Sheng felt a nagging, oppressive sensation. He had a constant feeling that something was watching him from here—a certain... cold, empty, hungry gaze sweeping over this place, over him, again and again.

This made him increasingly uneasy, desperate to find a corner to hide in. At least he shouldn't be standing so brazenly in the open.

But the only place within sight that seemed to offer cover was that nearly collapsed old temple. The forest in the distance was dense, but the atmosphere there was even more weird and eerie. Plus, "entering a deep forest at night" was a classic trope in horror stories for asking for trouble. He absolutely didn't want to approach it.

Unfortunately, sneaking into a ruined temple at night was also a standard death flag. The only difference between the two options was that the forest was more likely to spawn beasts, while the ruined temple was more likely to spawn monsters...

Both were prime candidates for triggering epic battle music.

Yu Sheng gritted his teeth and headed toward the only relatively intact corner of the temple ruins.

Meanwhile, he mentally contacted Erin and roughly explained his situation—though there wasn't much to explain, because even he didn't know how all this had happened. From start to finish, he had only opened a door...

After listening, Erin was silent for a long time before hesitantly speaking: "Sounds like you fell into a 'Realm Beyond'?"

Standing amidst the temple ruins, Yu Sheng froze and suddenly came to a realization: "Realm Beyond? Is that what you call this place? Do you know where I am?"

Erin's voice sounded oddly confused: "Huh? There are plenty of Realms Beyond. How should I know which one you fell into..."

Listening to Erin mutter, Yu Sheng frowned. He suddenly realized he had gained another piece of knowledge about the "supernatural domain" and, more importantly, a critical fact:

Maybe he hadn't been thrown into "another world" at all. Maybe he had encountered some kind of "natural phenomenon" that wasn't unusual in Erin's eyes?

While Yu Sheng was muttering to himself, Erin apparently thought of something and said with an incredulous tone in his mind: "...You haven't even heard of 'Realms Beyond,' have you?"

Yu Sheng's expression turned odd: "...Should I have? Is this some common knowledge that every ordinary person knows?"

"Oh, it's perfectly normal for ordinary people not to know about Realms Beyond. After all, most people never encounter this sort of thing in their entire lives," Erin said casually, but her next sentence stunned Yu Sheng. "But you shouldn't be unaware."

"Me? Why should I know?" Yu Sheng looked confused. "I'm just an ordinary person..."

"...But you live in a Realm Beyond every single day."

...

Shadows darted through the night. Hunters took shape within the shadows. A fierce wolf leaped out from the darkness, agilely bounding across the uneven rooftops of the old city district, then landed lightly and silently in the empty street, standing in the middle of the road and looking around.

"Come back!" An annoyed female voice came from the shadow of a building at the corner of the street.

The wolf immediately shrank its neck, letting out a muffled whimper, and scurried back into the shadow of a roadside building.

A girl in a dark red coat and a black skirt stood in the corner between two old houses. She reached out and rubbed the head of the wolf that had just run back, then lifted her eyes to look at the houses at the end of the street.

This was a very short street, home to only a few dozen households. It was open at both ends, and the situation on the road was clear at a glance. Even without the wolf's eyes, she could judge the situation in one look.

The girl frowned. Just then, her phone rang—that classic 86 version of the Journey to the West theme song. She picked up just as the monkey was doing its second somersault: "It's me. Yeah, I'm in the old city district, on Wutong Road."

A middle-aged man's voice came through, its owner clearly working overtime until his senses were hazy. He rambled on.

Little Red Riding Hood listened patiently for a while, then curled her lips. "I'm here, but I haven't found anything. My wolf has searched this entire street three times. There's no trace of a Realm Beyond opening, and nothing that came out of one, either."

There was a two- or three-second silence on the other end, then the voice: "But the monitoring team is certain that there was a Realm Beyond opening on Wutong Road in the old city district. There must have been a brief passage to a Realm Beyond there..."

"I believe you," Little Red Riding Hood said helplessly. "I still recognize the professionalism of your Special Affairs Bureau's monitoring personnel. But I equally trust my wolf. Maybe there really was a brief passage here, but it's definitely clean and gone by now... Considering that under normal circumstances, a Realm Beyond couldn't disconnect from the real world in such a short time, maybe someone else stepped in and dealt with it."

"There aren't many people capable of cutting off a Realm Beyond connection that quickly, and those with such abilities and their affiliated organizations all have records and contact channels with the Special Affairs Bureau," the voice on the phone sounded tired. "But I didn't receive any communication of that sort tonight..."

"Maybe it was someone from the Hermits' Society. They're always so mysterious..."

The girl said casually, and then, as expected, heard another string of rambling from the phone. She had to sigh and repeatedly agree: "Alright, alright, I get it. They're all highly respected scholars, got it... I've always respected scholars. Enough. I'll take my wolf pack and search through the shadows one more time. This 'Wutong Road' isn't big anyway—only sixty-five house numbers. Searching again won't take much effort..."

She hung up, finally getting some peace and quiet. Little Red Riding Hood looked at the dark phone screen and sighed, then glanced down at the dog... wolf heads bobbing up and down in the shadows around her, and couldn't help sighing again.

"I still haven't done my homework... Ah, the life of an outsourced worker is really miserable..."

...

Yu Sheng sat in a corner of the temple ruins under a wall that seemed somewhat intact. He blew the cold wind coming through a large hole in the wall, looked up at the dark, murky night sky visible through the hole in the roof, and tried to let his mind go blank, but failed.

Just now, he had learned a truth.

His only stable foothold in Boundless City—the place he considered the safest and most normal in the entire city—was actually an anomalous... "location" called a "Realm Beyond."

In Erin's words, so-called "Realms Beyond" are domains outside the norm, dimensions on the edge of reason. The orderly, normal world that ordinary people live in might seem like a stable, solid mountain, but in reality, the fine cracks in this mountain are all passages leading to irrational, disorderly "holes."

For the vast majority of people, they would never touch these "holes" in their entire lives, never see the bizarre sights on the other side.

But the faint light leaking from those holes always catches the eyes of some others—and for them, once they accidentally glimpse those sights, some things can never go back.

—However, even for a well-traveled painted doll, it's still a bit absurd for someone to live inside a Realm Beyond long-term...

(End of Chapter)