Step Back

Bai Liqing raised her eyes, looking toward the direction from which the hoarse voice had come.

Surrounded by countless towering bookshelves, a broken stone platform floated among many large and small stone slabs. The platform was shaped like an altar, its edges covered with reliefs and weathered cracks. A huge crystal skull, clearly not human, was placed in the center of the platform. The crystal skull was entirely translucent, with a long, narrow face and sunken eye sockets. Its sharp teeth were jagged and ferocious, bearing the features of some large reptile—it lay quietly on the platform, its size alone comparable to that of a full-grown human.

A faint glimmer flickered in the eye sockets of the crystal skull. As Bai Liqing approached, the glimmer brightened slightly, and a hoarse voice came from within the bone cavity: "Speak. What do you want to know today?"

"Still materials on the 'Classical Era,' about the Border Bridges, the Dark Star, and the descending alien god, called 'Goddess of Ill Omen,'" Bai Liqing said calmly, staring into the eye sockets of the crystal skull.

"…Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Digging information from the 'Depths' is very risky and rarely yields results," the glimmer in the crystal skull’s eye sockets flickered. "Checking a few more times won’t bring anything new, Colorless Descendant—this is a dead library. Everything that should be here is already here. What isn’t here will never be."

"This time, I’ve brought a more effective 'medium,'" Bai Liqing pointed to her own head. "It might be able to 'draw out' something deeper."

The crystal skull was silent for a moment. "…Show me."

Bai Liqing nodded slightly, then half-closed her eyes.

A haze of mist had somehow gathered behind her. In the mist, a pair of faded, enormous eyes flashed, and then lifelike illusions emerged in the fog—a sanatorium in the woods, the director’s office in its "waterlogged" state, the director knocked down by an attacker who had shattered the fish tank, and the attacker monster with a swollen, deformed head holding a dagger…

Scenes flashed rapidly through the mist, recorded from Bai Liqing’s first-person perspective, interspersed with scenes the "director" had once shown her using bubbles. After a dozen seconds, the recording reached the moment when the attacker was about to disappear and leave the director’s office.

The illusion in the mist froze at that moment. Then the main perspective slowly turned toward the attacker—it was like swimming through a paused holographic scene. Bai Liqing’s "perspective" finally locked onto the attacker’s swollen, malformed brain, and then the image flashed, and her view plunged into the pair of eyes embedded on the surface of that brain…

Then the illusion in the mist flickered again. Deep in the fog, the scene of the Jinglin Sanatorium’s morgue emerged. Sun Chen’s headless corpse lay quietly in its containment container. Bai Liqing stared at the corpse, and under her gaze, Sun Chen’s body seemed to undergo reverse time—his head rapidly reformed, then slowly opened its eyelids. In the hollow, dazed pupils, Bai Liqing’s faded eyes were reflected…

The sacrifice who died from a headshot, the attacker born from distortion… No matter which "Sun Chen," they had both moved through the Jinglin Sanatorium, leaving traces of their existence within specific times and spaces.

Since they left traces, they couldn’t escape the gaze of the Special Affairs Bureau director.

All the illusions gradually dissipated. Only a broken tower floating in the darkness remained in the mist—a scene deeply etched into the memories of both "Sun Chens."

Though it was just an illusion, this illusion was a "medium" that Bai Liqing had dug directly from Sun Chen’s memory. The unstable knowledge contained in this medium, though scarce, was still vivid and restless. Even under the suppression of the archive’s environment, the phantom of the broken tower trembled and pulsed like a living heart, as if it had a life of its own.

The glimmer in the crystal skull’s eye sockets flickered violently.

"Colorless Descendant…" it said in a low voice, pausing for two seconds before continuing, "If you keep being this reckless, you’ll die from it."

Bai Liqing sighed. "Because I’m too busy."

The mist dissipated, and the crystal skull on the stone platform also let out a sigh. "Go ahead. Thirty minutes. Whatever you can 'salvage' depends on your skill. Remember the rules: don’t be seduced by knowledge; don’t listen to anything; don’t look at anything; focus only on what you want; take only what’s within the agreed scope. Ignore everything else that reaches out to you, begging to be taken out."

"I understand."

Bai Liqing nodded lightly, then stepped forward and placed her hand on the surface of the crystal skull.

The next second, the entire broken library began to tremble silently. The enormous white bookshelves surrounding the stone platform shook and shattered. Countless white fragments and scrolls, like a torrential downpour after the collapse of the heavens, fell from above, completely burying Bai Liqing and the stone platform beneath her.

Bai Liqing raised her head, neither dodging nor avoiding, allowing herself to be submerged layer by layer under the fragmented and chaotic historical remnants of the Borderlands…

…

Dusk approached.

On a vacant lot marked "Keep Out," an illusory door suddenly appeared near the "node" set up by the Special Affairs Bureau. The door opened, and Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood returned to the entrance of the "Dark Alley" in Qinghe District, East City.

This time, he hadn’t just brought the King, who was good at dealing with "cats," but also several others.

Hu Li, Luna, Eileen, and most importantly—the Nephew.

The sky grew dim, the evening breeze cool. There was no one around the node. The occasional passerby at the distant intersection didn’t spare a glance in this direction. Zheng Zhi involuntarily shivered in the slightly cold and gloomy environment, rubbed his arms, and looked around.

"Brother Yu, why do I feel a bit cold…"

"It’s autumn, that’s normal," Yu Sheng said without looking up. "The temperature’s dropped these past few days."

Zheng Zhi blinked. "Brother Yu, why does that sound familiar…"

"Hey, don’t be so nervous," Little Red Riding Hood stepped forward and patted Zheng Zhi on the shoulder. "There are plenty of us this time. Besides, Yu Sheng gave you that 'Portable Wutong Road No. 66' card in advance, right? Even if you somehow end up alone in another dimension again, you can still run back on your own. Relax, relax."

"Then… I’ll relax," Zheng Zhi said, his expression odd but, after all, he was someone who had faced many dimensional crises (never mind how those crises happened). He quickly adjusted his mindset, steadying his emotions as he muttered, "But seriously, is this really reliable? I mean, my constitution is special, but I always feel like this is just gambling on luck. It can’t work every time…"

Before Zheng Zhi could finish, the King jumped straight onto his shoulder. "Young man, that’s where your experience is shallow—having teammates with high spiritual perception lead the way is a very natural thing in our line of work as spirit realm detectives and investigators."

Zheng Zhi was dumbfounded. "…You guys really do it that way?"

Little Red Riding Hood said, "The private sector is wilder. It’s normal that you wouldn’t know, joining the Special Affairs Bureau directly from the start."

Zheng Zhi: "…?"

Seeing that the honest young man was about to be led astray, Yu Sheng quickly coughed twice to interrupt them, then pointed at the entrance of the Dark Alley not far away. "Stop talking. It’s almost time. Start preparing."

As he spoke, the group arrived beside the narrow entrance between two buildings. Zheng Zhi craned his neck to look inside and mumbled, "A bit narrow. It’d be tight for three people to go in together…"

"So we go in batches. You and I will go in first with Eileen and the King—they don’t take up space; they can sit on our shoulders," Yu Sheng said casually. "Then Little Red Riding Hood, Luna, and Hu Li will come in afterward."

Zheng Zhi nodded repeatedly. "Oh, oh."

"Alright, now let’s start the 'enchantment' preparations before entering," said Eileen, sitting on Yu Sheng’s shoulder, pointing at Zheng Zhi. "Stick out your arm."

"…Enchantment?" Zheng Zhi was a bit confused but instinctively raised his arm. "What for?"

The next second, a thin black thread materialized out of thin air, accompanied by a bone-chilling cold. The thread wrapped directly around his hand, even penetrating through skin and flesh into his body.

Zheng Zhi yelped, nearly jumping on the spot, and then started rubbing his arm vigorously.

"Of course, to strengthen your connection with 'that thing,'" the little doll said proudly as she withdrew her hand. "Plus, I’ve left a 'connection point' on you. If something really latches onto you, I can pull you back in time."

"Sss…" Zheng Zhi rubbed his arm hard, grimacing. He twitched at the little doll’s words and nearly ground his teeth. "Well, thanks a lot then."

"You’re welcome! By the way, do you have a girlfriend?" Eileen asked bluntly.

Zheng Zhi looked puzzled. "No… why do you ask?"

"If you did, I’d tell you to call her now and say you’re going on a business trip and you’ll marry her when you get back—that raises the probability of something happening even more," Eileen said with utter confidence. "I see that in TV dramas all the time. But since you don’t, never mind…"

Zheng Zhi was stunned for a moment, then turned to Yu Sheng. "Brother Yu, what did I do to…"

"She’s not targeting you," Yu Sheng sighed. "She just has that kind of cursed mouth."

Eileen thought for a moment, then started tugging Yu Sheng’s hair. "Was that a compliment?"

Yu Sheng sighed again, ignoring the little claws pawing at his head, and turned to face the wall leading to the Dark Alley.

Having done his homework and understood the mechanism of the Dark Alley, Zheng Zhi quickly adjusted his state and came to stand beside the wall.

Under the dim light of dusk, the surroundings grew even more silent.

Time ticked by.

After a long while, Zheng Zhi couldn’t help it anymore. He looked up at his companion. "Brother Yu, I don’t feel any wind from the other side?"

Yu Sheng also realized something was wrong. He looked up and turned to Little Red Riding Hood. "…Why isn’t it reacting?"

What he saw was Little Red Riding Hood’s equally bewildered expression.

The fox girl standing beside Little Red Riding Hood tilted her head. "Is the 'Dark Alley' closed today?"

"I’ve never heard of realms taking days off," Little Red Riding Hood immediately said. "Maybe the timing was off. Step back and try again. Occasionally, there are failures like this…"

So Yu Sheng and Zheng Zhi tried again.

The entrance to the Dark Alley still didn’t open. The wall was completely silent, with not even a hint of breeze.

Yu Sheng refused to believe it. He stepped back and tried once more, staring intently at the mottled old wall.

This time, the entrance to the realm finally responded—

The wall… before his eyes, retreated half an inch.

Yu Sheng: "…?"

(End of chapter)