Chapter 500: Intelligence from Bai Liqing
"Patients" who entered Jinglin Sanatorium would and could only be affected by the sanatorium's rules—this simple sentence made Yu Sheng almost instantly think of a certain possibility.
"...That independent investigator named 'Sun Chen' might be using the 'rules' of Jinglin Sanatorium to avoid the influence of that 'Tower'?"
"That's what I'm guessing too," Red Riding Hood nodded. "After all, he posted before that he'd been haunted by that Tower, even suspected that part of his mind was trapped in nightmares related to it—in that case, the party in question would have definitely sought help from familiar aberrant doctors and psychics, maybe even the Special Services Bureau. Hiding in Jinglin Sanatorium might have been someone's suggestion."
Yu Sheng recalled his previous experiences exploring the 'Dark Alley' with Red Riding Hood and the King, recalling that 'eroded' old bookstore and the bizarre chaotic nightmares at dawn.
"Looks like we need to visit that sanatorium," he said slowly. "Find that independent investigator and confirm the situation in person."
"Mm, that's why I came to you right away—getting into Jinglin Sanatorium isn't easy. That place has a special nature, and 'visiting' requires special procedures. I can't manage that, but for you, it shouldn't be a problem."
Hearing Red Riding Hood's words, Yu Sheng quickly caught on. He picked up his phone and started sending messages, muttering as he did: "Ah, troubling a bureau chief day in and day out with this kind of mess..."
Eileen, who had been sitting on the edge of the table swinging her little legs in a daze, immediately turned her head at these words: "You never felt guilty about texting people at eleven or twelve at night before—at least today you're on a normal human schedule."
Hearing this, Yu Sheng immediately hit it off with the little doll, partners in crime, birds of a feather: "Now that you put it that way, I feel a lot more at ease..."
Red Riding Hood looked at Yu Sheng, then at the doll on the table, opened her mouth but didn't know what to say about the two of them, so she just kept eating her steamed buns.
Fox Hu, on the other side, had been gorging herself the whole time, seemingly not paying attention to the others' conversation. When she heard the surroundings quiet down, she just looked up curiously, then placed a sausage in front of her good canine friend.
Red Riding Hood ate the sausage and steamed buns, feeling a bit subtle inside, as if an urge to be fed was rising within her...
Then she saw Yu Sheng across the table suddenly stand up, pull open a sliding door beside him, and walk in. As he walked, he waved at her: "Texting isn't clear enough—I'll go talk to Bai Liqing in person. I'll be right back. You three wait here for me."
The next second, Bai Liqing, sitting inside the Special Services Bureau building's director's office, looked up at Yu Sheng as he pushed the door open and came in uninvited. Her face was as expressionless as usual.
"I know you've been investigating something lately, and I know roughly how far you've gotten," Bai Liqing said bluntly as soon as they met, without any attempt to hide her 'attention' on Yu Sheng's usual activities. "The special investigation permit you need will be issued soon. I'll also notify Jinglin Sanatorium personally and have their person in charge cooperate."
"That's a huge help," Yu Sheng pulled a chair from the side and sat across from Bai Liqing, looking up at her eyes. "The procedures themselves really weren't the issue—so you let me come through the door myself to talk about something else?"
Bai Liqing didn't waste words. She just nodded lightly, then turned to look at the huge floor-to-ceiling window behind her desk.
Outside the window, thick fog billowed and churned. Within the mist, all sorts of bizarre phantoms rapidly formed. In the blink of an eye, Yu Sheng saw some familiar sights—
It was that shattered, eerie Tower, along with the golden-haired puppet charging outside the Tower, climbing along the outer wall toward the summit.
"Ah, this is the video footage Mailin sent me earlier," Yu Sheng immediately said. "I've seen it."
Bai Liqing focused on the phantom emerging from the fog. As her gaze concentrated, part of the image zoomed in and enlarged.
It was a corner of the scene that had originally occupied only a small part of the footage and hadn't drawn much attention from Yu Sheng before.
A group of people was hurriedly evacuating from near the shattered Tower. Unstable spatial fissures expanded and contracted at the edge of an open area. A few corpses lay abandoned near those spatial fissures.
The clothes worn by those evacuees clearly weren't in the style of today's . Instead, they looked somewhat classical or fantastical, with some dressed almost like wizards or sorcerers, others in complex armor with exaggerated greatswords and crossbows on their backs, and still others covered in all sorts of odd trinkets whose functions were hard to discern.
These people's clothing was diverse and bizarre. The only thing you could tell was that they weren't any kind of 'regular army'—they looked more like a hastily assembled investigation and exploration team.
"These people were a Borderland exploration team," Bai Liqing's voice sounded from the side, not letting Yu Sheng guess for long. "In today's terms, they would be considered 'colleagues' of current investigators and spirit detectives."
"Whoa..." Yu Sheng blinked. Though his attention had mostly been on the golden-haired puppet and the shadow at the top of the Tower, he hadn't paid much attention to the panicked team retreating in the corner of the frame. But he had noticed those figures. "The style is very different from today's Borderland people... I was curious before—why are there magicians among them?"
"Because they come from three thousand seven hundred years ago—in the unique era division within the Borderland, that's called the chaotic 'Classical Era,'" Bai Liqing explained flatly. "In that special period, magic... was widespread in the Borderland."
Yu Sheng's expression froze. He turned to look at Bai Liqing's expressionless face, blinked, and after a few seconds opened his mouth: "...Ah?"
"Not just magic, but also psionics, witchcraft, aberrant bloodlines, and 'ancient species' that only exist in certain scrolls," Bai Liqing said calmly. "By 'ancient species' here, I mean giants and dragons—and other intelligent beings whose names are now lost, only confirmed to have existed."
Yu Sheng's eyes slowly widened. Realizing that the female director had just casually revealed something quite astonishing, he was a bit stunned: "Hey, wait, hold on... three thousand seven hundred years, just three thousand seven hundred years, and you're telling me that the Borderland back then was full of magic, psionics, witchcraft, and all kinds of 'aberrant' creatures that have nothing to do with today's humans?! Isn't that... does that make sense?"
He gestured vaguely, then suppressed himself for a few more seconds before struggling to organize his words: "I mean, even if this place is blessed with outstanding people, shouldn't there at least be some 'continuity' between civilization and history? At least within the recorded historical range, you'd have to develop from ancient times to modern times, not just take a giant leap that resets the entire world line and jumps straight to—"
"Your reaction is normal, but the Borderland really doesn't have continuity—that 'giant leap' you mentioned actually happened."
Bai Liqing said this with a flat face, directly cutting off the rest of Yu Sheng's words.
Yu Sheng: "...Alright. Badass."
Bai Liqing sighed uncharacteristically: "I know you have many questions. I do too. The Borderland people themselves aren't sure how many secrets are buried in this place called 'home,' an isolated 'cosmic hub' cut off from the outside. The chaotic Classical Era is like a shattered patch of light and shadow, reflected deep within the fog of history, blocking our gaze as we try to look back.
"As you know, this world experienced a 'Second Singularity Outburst.' Many civilizations have varying degrees of historical discontinuity or collective memory disorder, but even compared to the most severely broken groups, the Borderland is the most extreme.
"We really were 'reset' during the world's second birth, possibly even undergoing more than one reset after the world had already been reborn. This chaos only stabilized after the Special Services Bureau was established and the originally disordered spacetime of the entire Borderland was connected as a whole. Yet during this 'stabilization' process, a large number of records concerning the Classical Era seemed to be deliberately erased by someone. Today, less than one in a hundred of the verifiable materials remain..."
Speaking to here, Bai Liqing suddenly shook her head.
"But the focus of today's discussion isn't the 'Classical Era,' it's this Tower and this special 'exploration team.'"
As soon as Yu Sheng heard this, he quickly adjusted his sitting posture on the chair and his expression grew serious.
Although Bai Liqing had just mentioned that records from the 'Classical Era' were heavily damaged and hard to verify, judging by her reaction now... the all-powerful Special Services Bureau had obviously still found some leads from those dusty archives.
"In the Special Services Bureau's classified archives, we found a very suspicious event record," Bai Liqing slowly spoke. "'In the Drifting Year, the Dark Star overlapped with the Dome. The Hetero-God descended along the World Bridge, arriving to rendezvous with us as promised. But the World Bridge unexpectedly broke, and the Hetero-God went out of control and disintegrated... The reception team suffered heavy losses. Only three withdrew and brought back word—an unidentified powerful individual intervened at the scene, intercepted the Hetero-God and acted as a rearguard. Afterward, the World Bridge, the Hetero-God, and the Dark Star all vanished without a trace.'"
The office fell into a brief silence.
"That's all," Bai Liqing said.
"...Hold on, let me sort this out," Yu Sheng immediately waved his hand, running the just-heard content through his mind again as he quickly organized his thoughts. A few seconds later, he looked up again. "So, the situation described in that passage is the exact same event recorded in the footage Mailin found on the 'Garden' network?"
Bai Liqing nodded: "Very high possibility."
Yu Sheng: "..."
Isn't the amount of information here a bit too much!?