Chapter 480: How This Happened
At the edge of the Borderlands, beyond the barrier maintained by a chain of "Boundary Stones," lay the physical border of this converging spacetime—beyond the hazy curtain of light and vast tracts of barren, dim land, at the farthest distance visible from the last outpost established by the Special Operations Bureau, floated countless fragmented island-like landmasses in the chaotic half-sky.
Streams of light like auroras flowed between the countless broken islands, small spatial stabilization devices could be seen everywhere, and the starlight of the outer universe occasionally pierced through random fissures between the islands, casting light upon those islands—some barren, some lush, some like phantoms.
On one island whose physical structure and existence were relatively stable, an old foreign-style villa shrouded in mystery stood quietly, surrounded by a lush garden.
Faceless puppet craftsmen with wooden and ceramic textures on their surfaces bustled about in the garden, two clockwork guards in red-and-blue dusters stood guard at the villa's door, and a clockwork puppet in a maid's uniform, made entirely of alloy, ceramic, and bionic skin, stood at the entrance, motionless, as if waiting for someone to return.
Suddenly, a "ding" came from inside the silent, standby clockwork puppet. The mechanical device hummed softly as she pulled a pocket watch from her skirt pocket and saw the hands on the dial spinning briskly, pointing to a cell marked "Puppet Print Room."
The clockwork maid tilted her head, turned back into the villa, and lightly crossed the long front hall and dim corridor, arriving at a secret room deep within.
The lights in the secret room had already turned on automatically. Silver-gray liquid churned in a tank in the center of the room, nanomachine swarms rapidly printing a new puppet shell within. After a moment, a rigid body sat up from that silver-gray liquid, its surface quickly taking on the color of living skin—then, half a minute later, the still dazed puppet stood up sluggishly and stepped out of the tank.
She moved every joint in her body, twisting them to angles that would be enough to break an ordinary person's, as if performing a self-check, then quickly reset them. After finishing, she reached for the clothes the clockwork maid handed her.
But her movements suddenly stopped. She lowered her head, looking at her empty right wrist with somewhat wooden eyes.
The puppet's expression gradually became more vivid. She frowned, bent down, and dipped her right arm back into the printing tank. The silver-gray nanomachine swarms surged immediately, forming a new hand on her wrist.
But as soon as she pulled her arm out of the tank, that hand instantly dissolved back into a pool of silver-gray liquid, uncontrollably falling back into the tank.
The puppet lady frowned, slowly rose, and glanced at the clockwork maid still waiting nearby with the clothes.
"Marys, help me dress—I've lost my right hand."
"Yes, Miss Malin."
The clockwork maid stepped forward and began skillfully dressing her mistress. While doing so, she asked curiously, "Why did you return from the Print Room? Did you miss the Boundary Train?"
"...I accidentally looked at something I shouldn't have and triggered an emergency evacuation," Malin said in a slightly stifled tone. "But I have to say, maybe I set the trigger threshold a little too sensitively..."
"Caution is one of your virtues," said the clockwork maid, her voice lacking emotional inflection, with a mechanical synthetic tremor. "A higher evacuation rate ensures a higher mission completion rate—which forms a delicate dynamic balance with the extra printing materials you usually consume."
"...Marys."
"Yes."
"Delete the joke database."
"Permission locked. This unit's signature feature. If you insist on shutting it down, we recommend applying for the Gold Crown SVIP Diamond Card annual membership. If no objection is raised, it will be considered consent, and the system will automatically deduct the fee in ten seconds. Three, two..."
"Okay, I understand, not necessary, thank you."
"Very well, Miss Malin."
Malin sighed, then stubbornly extended her arm into the printing tank again.
The right hand still didn't come back.
"You seem troubled, Miss Malin," said the clockwork maid, watching her mistress quietly. "It seems this 'loss' is quite serious."
"...Yes, my 'right hand' was 'taken away,'" Malin said slowly as she stood up, staring gravely at the tank that was gradually calming. "Looks like I'll have to pay a visit in person... Hopefully I can get the hand back smoothly."
"Should we talk to Director Baili Qing again? She might be able to offer some advice for your subsequent contact."
"...No, that would be embarrassing."
"Very well, Miss Malin."
...
Yu Sheng and Hu Li sat on opposite sides of the coffee table, staring wide-eyed at the motionless puppet hand.
Ailin, on the other hand, sat cross-legged directly on the coffee table, curiously reaching out to poke the fingers of that hand.
The finger joints made a slight clicking sound, then quickly returned to their original state, as if residual life force still operated within them.
The three had been staring at the hand like this for quite a while without figuring anything out. Finally, Yu Sheng rubbed his chin and couldn't help blurting out, "...What's the deal with this?"
No one beside him spoke, so he turned to look at the little puppet on the coffee table. "Do you puppets have this custom? Breaking off some part of yourself and giving it to the other person as a gift when meeting for the first time..."
"How could there possibly be such a custom!" Ailin glared with her crimson eyes, but then grew a bit uncertain. "Well... maybe? After all, I haven't been back in a long time. Could be some new trendy thing—one generation more abstract than the last is the general trend..."
She stopped mid-sentence, then looked up at Yu Sheng's eyes. "Wait, could it be that you pulled it off with too much force?! You even took the glove along with it..."
Yu Sheng was nearly amused by the frustration. "I'm not a pervert. Why would I break a level-five disability off a girl the first time I met her? Even if I really did pull it off, it must have been because her wrist wasn't sturdy enough."
Ailin thought for a moment, said nothing, and just turned the puppet hand over, pressing her own hand against it for comparison.
Same ball joints, same delicate, porcelain-like texture with human body temperature and skin elasticity, just several sizes smaller.
The little puppet sighed, a note of sentiment in her voice: "If I had hands this big, I definitely wouldn't have missed that wave of soldiers last night..."
Hu Li reached out and poked Yu Sheng's arm. "Benefactor, that puppet who called herself 'Malin' left you a hand and then left, right? Did you see how she left?"
"No, I suspect it was some very advanced transfer and illusion technique," Yu Sheng said gravely. "I was even disoriented for a moment—that's why I think this 'Alice puppet' is mysterious and eerie. She must have done it with profound intent."
"What profound intent? She must have been looking for me!" Ailin looked up, a smug expression on her face.
She was in a great mood because not only had an Alice puppet appeared in today, but she had also gotten the "gift" she had been longing for.
Another Ailin was sitting on the sofa at that moment, still eagerly fiddling with the phone watch Yu Sheng had given her.
Midway through fiddling, the little one muttered thoughtfully: "Just don't know why she left without even leaving a contact method... Hey, you can ask that steel-faced stoic! That Alice puppet you met might be a 'messenger' newly assigned from my hometown. If she entered legally, she must be registered with the Special Operations Bureau."
Yu Sheng thought it over and found it reasonable, so he got up, went to the kitchen, and dialed Baili Qing's number.
She should be awake by now... right?
The phone rang twice, and the familiar, calm, slightly magnetic voice came through: "Yu Sheng? What's up?"
"I met a puppet named Malin today who claimed to be from Alice's Cottage," Yu Sheng said, glancing back toward the living room—one Ailin was still fiddling with the hand, another was playing with the phone watch, one was pushing the Ill Omen Wandering Star around the floor, and another was watching TV. The little puppet was busy and didn't seem to be paying attention to him. "But I think the situation is a bit strange..."
He roughly explained the strange events of the day, especially the part where the other party suddenly vanished mysteriously and left him a peculiar "gift."
"...I'm calling to confirm this 'Malin's' background—whether she's really from Alice's Cottage, because... you know the situation with Ailin," Yu Sheng concluded.
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Baili Qing's silences were always deafening.
After nearly ten seconds, Yu Sheng finally heard her somewhat hesitant voice: "Malin... is indeed a messenger recently sent by Alice's Cottage to the Borderlands. She helped us solve a not-so-small problem a few days ago. She's not a suspicious person.
"But what you described... doesn't quite match what I expected.
"Let me confirm. Wait a moment."
Baili Qing hung up, and Yu Sheng waited patiently.
It wasn't long—about ten minutes later—before she called back.
But for some reason, the always cool and calm female director's voice sounded a bit strained this time.
"I got in touch. It seems she ran into some... trouble on her end."
"Trouble?" Yu Sheng raised an eyebrow. "Is she okay?"
"...Nothing serious."
"Oh... What a mess. She was fine when we met. No wonder she left in a hurry without leaving a contact method," Yu Sheng said, pulling a wry smile. "Well, later on—"
"The frontier is closed now. She'll visit you tomorrow," Baili Qing said calmly. "Is the 'thing' she left with you still there?"
Yu Sheng glanced back and saw Ailin holding the puppet hand, running back and forth on the coffee table while waving it around—the little puppet's behavior was as always, with unclear motives and abstract.
"Still here," Yu Sheng turned back. "She wants it back?"
"...Mm. She does."