Chapter 496: The King's Power

The large hole disappeared as if it had never existed, and the old bookstore's collapse and shaking abruptly stopped. Only the "rotting knowledge" continuously flowing from the bookshelves continued to accumulate, quickly turning into something like mud upon contact with the floor, emitting an unsettling odor of decay.

Only then did Yu Sheng turn and leave this increasingly eerie and worthless old bookstore. The moment he ran out the door, a bang came from behind him—the shop door closed, and the entrance, previously lit by bright lights, instantly became as dim as the other stores around.

Little Red Riding Hood and King stood at the door, one human and one cat, both looking warily into the depths of the alley. The short staff in the "Priest's" hand emitted a soft, warm glow, illuminating a small area around them.

"That hole disappeared," Yu Sheng said quickly. "Before it vanished, I saw nothing but fog outside, and something like spider silk extending from a distance."

"Can't you stop being so reckless?" Little Red Riding Hood looked back at him helplessly. "Even if you're not afraid to die, at least consider the pace of ordinary people like us... Wait, spider silk? What kind of spider silk?"

"What other kind could it be? Similar to what Irene usually uses," Yu Sheng sighed. "We came here looking for clues, didn't we? Now we have a real clue—something is indeed 'seeping' in from 'outside' the Dark Alley. Too bad the hole only lasted a moment and collapsed the old bookstore..."

"This is a borderland. Everything will recover before we enter next time, but next time I don't recommend you dig holes anywhere," Little Red Riding Hood said, pointing across the street. "That 'destruction' just now caused the Dark Alley to change. The situation... isn't right."

At the girl's reminder, Yu Sheng immediately noticed many changes in the alley's details.

The daylight seemed dimmer than when they first entered the alley. The already damp cobblestone ground was now covered with an unpleasant dark moss that had appeared at some unknown time. All the buildings on both sides of the alley looked more aged and dilapidated than before. The strings of lights crisscrossing between the rooftops flickered intermittently like a bad connection, the colors changing constantly like an illusion, making one dizzy.

The street-facing shops across the road all had their doors and windows shut tight. Their signs, dimly lit, were covered in thick grime. The writing under the grime was not only blurry but upon closer inspection, utterly indecipherable—they looked like words, but were actually randomly arranged lines with no meaning.

"This is..." Yu Sheng said.

"We directly entered the next layer of the 'Dark Alley,'" Little Red Riding Hood said seriously. "Not through the intersection—we entered this more eerie version of the alley the moment we left the old bookstore."

Yu Sheng blinked, then suddenly realized: "Wait, then what about the 'cats'? Doesn't the deeper layer of the Dark Alley generate entity-cats?"

"That's why I said the situation isn't right—no entities were generated here, and... all the shops on the whole street are closed," Little Red Riding Hood said, looking around. "Under normal circumstances, at least one shop in the Dark Alley would be open."

Yu Sheng pressed his lips together and cautiously looked around.

The entire alley was terrifyingly quiet, yet in this extreme silence, it felt as if countless eyes were watching them from the darkness, watching the uninvited guests who had invaded the alley and caused trouble.

Yu Sheng thought he heard faint cat meows, but when he looked up, he only saw moss-covered corners and the ground.

"First, head to the intersection at the end of the alley and see if we can enter a more normal layer," King suddenly spoke. Perched on the Wandering Mage's shoulder, its cat face was serious. "I think we might not have fully entered the 'next layer' but are stuck between the first and second layers of the Dark Alley. That's why everything looks so strange, yet no entities were properly generated."

Yu Sheng looked at the tabby cat sitting on the Wandering Mage's shoulder with some surprise, feeling that it now acted like an experienced, steady, and reliable veteran spirit-world detective—a stark contrast to its usual lazy demeanor of sunbathing all day on that two-hundred-square-meter cat tree.

He voiced his surprise, but King replied lazily, "What's so surprising about that? I've seen all kinds of borderlands. Whenever some unlucky kid in the orphanage accidentally gets trapped in a borderland, I have to go in and rescue them. Plus, I take jobs to make money. As a little cat, do you know how much burden I have to bear?"

Yu Sheng turned to look at Little Red Riding Hood. She nodded. "It's telling the truth. As one of the more capable and most versatile members of 'Fairy Tale,' King has plenty of experience as a spirit-world detective... It's considered an expert even across the entire Borderlands."

"Uh, that's what I wanted to ask," Yu Sheng finally couldn't help but say. "But it's a cat. How does it usually take on tasks?"

"Simple. If it's dealing with other spirit-world detectives or investigators, it goes by itself—people in our line of work are used to strange things," Little Red Riding Hood said casually. "If it's dealing with ordinary people, it summons a smart subordinate, lets the subordinate communicate with the client, and pretends to be a pet cat."

Hearing this, Yu Sheng felt it made a lot of sense. He thought to himself, "Fairy Tale" really is a long-established spirit-world detective organization with rich experience in all sorts of bizarre cases—compared to it, his "Inn" hasn't even taken any serious commissions yet...

But then he reconsidered—the "Inn" wasn't without business; it just handled major, important cases...

The group walked through the eerily silent "Dark Alley." The alley wasn't long, and they soon reached its end.

An intersection cloaked in the same deathly silence appeared before Yu Sheng.

He looked curiously at the intersection and saw that every road looked almost identical, all leading into a dim alley with all buildings' doors and windows closed. In the distance, everything was hazy—no matter how hard he looked, he couldn't see beyond a hundred meters.

He hesitated for a moment, then turned to Little Red Riding Hood. "Which way do we go?"

The girl frowned deeply, not responding for a while.

The huge shadow wolf prowled near her, sniffing around the intersection.

After a long moment, Little Red Riding Hood finally broke the silence. "...There's no passage to the next layer. All three are safe exits."

Yu Sheng was stunned.

"All three are safe exits?!"

In a normal exploration, this would be a cause for celebration. For most spirit-world detectives and investigators, safely evacuating from a borderland with information or supplies is the top priority. Three safe exits appearing at the end of the Dark Alley wouldn't just be a stroke of incredible luck—it would be like the ancestors' graves shooting out a two-hundred-meter-long jet of flame, with the ancestors burning down the underworld to produce such a jackpot.

But Yu Sheng wasn't here for a safe evacuation today.

"Hey, wait—didn't the records say that the intersection at the end of the Dark Alley has exactly one correct 'safe exit,' and the other two lead to deeper layers?" he blurted out. "How did we trigger a jackpot? But we want to go deeper!"

"I don't know either. That's why I said the situation is off today," Little Red Riding Hood said, clearly confused. "King, why don't you have the mage try Great Prophecy again?"

But King didn't respond to Little Red Riding Hood. Instead, it suddenly jumped off the "Wandering Mage," its vertical pupils fixated on the depths of the street they had come from in the darkness, as if it had noticed something.

Before Yu Sheng could ask, a threatening growl came from King's throat, followed by a sharp command: "Come out!"

That direction was empty, with only mottled moss and shadows on the wall corner.

But in the next second, Yu Sheng's vision blurred. The mottled moss and shadows suddenly trembled, and then something slowly "squeezed" out from the shadow, like some kind of fluid emerging from a two-dimensional shadow plane into three-dimensional space.

It was a small black cat, its fur having a rubbery or plastic-like texture.

It slowly walked toward King, but as it moved, it flickered and teleported like a choppy video, skipping several frames with every few steps.

Entity, "cat."

The moment the first black cat appeared, Yu Sheng noticed that many dark corners in the alley suddenly stirred.

Shadows writhed on the corners, eaves, windowsills, and roadside. Countless cat-shaped silhouettes of all sizes came into view. A large number of entities were emerging from the two-dimensional plane into three-dimensional space. Pitch-black cats walked out from every corner of the alley, their pale, glowing eyes fixed on the uninvited guests at the intersection.

The invisible stares they had felt along the way seemed not to be an illusion.

Little Red Riding Hood instinctively stepped back half a step, staring in shock. "It's cats... but why so many all of a sudden?!"

"They don't seem happy," Yu Sheng said, also startled, but then noticed something. "But looking at this setup... it's like they're urging us to leave through the safe exits?"

At that moment, King suddenly stepped forward a few paces, standing in the middle of the road.

The tabby cat stared at the black cats gathering in the alley, especially the first one that had appeared not far away, and slowly arched its back.

Its voice was low and threatening—

"Technically, cats of your level have no right to hiss at me."

The little black cat opposite: "Hiss—"

King was clearly startled for a moment, then arched its back even higher. "Hiss!"

In response, several black cats opposite arched their backs together. "Hiss!!"

And then both sides started hissing at each other.

Yu Sheng: "...?"

The situation seemed a bit different from what had been said earlier.

But just when the hissing between the two sides was becoming increasingly tense, King suddenly stopped. Amidst the black cat's "hiss," it directly waved a paw.

The four-person adventurer team instantly vanished into thin air.

A group of archmages wearing starry robes, wielding amethyst staffs, with energy fluctuations nearly distorting space, suddenly filled the entire intersection.

King licked its paw. "Prepare a Solar Flare."

The little black cat opposite: "Meow~"