Chapter 523: Haze in the Fog
The dark-dot soldier on the other side of the barrier really didn’t seem to know any more intelligence—after that, Yu Sheng asked him about the strange device at the Dark Alley crossroads, and the man’s reaction was equally blank, claiming complete ignorance.
Considering that this man was just a guard in the lab, and given Bai Liqing’s skill with the "Memory Restoration Technique," what he said was probably true.
With a soft mechanical grinding sound, the isolation gate of the single-person cell slid shut again. Yu Sheng carried Aline back to the entrance, and Bai Liqing was beside him.
"Now you should understand why I said the Black Dot Group is an 'extreme academic organization,'" Bai Liqing said, taking a slight breath and lifting her eyelids to glance at Yu Sheng. "Their research is always so recklessly haphazard—and their labs really are prone to blowing up in a big way."
"And they blow up other people's houses too, right?" Yu Sheng tugged at the corner of his mouth, but then quickly changed the subject. "But I gotta say, they really do manage to get their hands on some real stuff… A fragment of the Border Bridge, no wonder they could open a fissure into Dark Alley."
Bai Liqing frowned slightly and, after a moment of thought, broke the silence. "A deep-dive team has entered Dark Alley. They found that 'silvery-white cylinder' you mentioned. They're figuring out how to transport it out now. We can't be sure what it's for yet, but one thing is certain: it's some kind of device manufactured by the Black Dot Group."
"That soldier just now said he didn't know anything about a silver device, and he wasn't sure if his superiors had deployed any equipment to the Borderlands," Yu Sheng said as he thought. "Earlier, I thought they opened that fissure to retrieve the machine at the crossroads, but now it looks… more like two unrelated accidents that happened to interfere with each other."
"Can't rule out that he was lying," Bai Liqing said unhurriedly. "Of course, your speculation is also very possible. After all, this is a Black Dot Group project—accidents and loss of control are the norm."
Yu Sheng deeply agreed with Bai Liqing's statement.
After leaving the Special Services Bureau, Yu Sheng didn't go straight home. Instead, he opened a door near 66 Wutong Road and slowly walked toward home with Aline in his arms.
"Why don't we go straight home?" the little puppet mumbled quietly from Yu Sheng's arms, secretly glancing around. "I still have to play dead outside…"
"There aren't many people on this road at this hour—you should come out and get some air once in a while," Yu Sheng said casually, then looked down at the little puppet in his arms, a trace of hesitation in his expression. After a moment, he continued, "Aline."
Aline lifted her head. "Huh?"
"From the time I freed you from that painting until now, how long has it been?" Yu Sheng asked seriously.
Aline was taken aback, as if wondering why he suddenly asked that, but she thought carefully about it for a good while before speaking uncertainly. "Has it been a year? Ah, probably less… so a few months? I'm not really sure."
Yu Sheng didn't seem too concerned with the answer. He muttered to himself, almost to himself, "Judging by the timing, the sudden increase in the 'Zolda Black Stone's activity in that lab was around the time I made you your first body and let you come out of the oil painting."
Aline listened, her eyes slowly widening. After a long while, she drawled, "Whoa—"
Yu Sheng often couldn't figure out this little thing's reactions to various things, but he was used to it by now.
"If you ever feel anything strange happening to you, or if you hear or see anything, tell me immediately… or anyone else around you—Hu Li or Luna, it doesn't matter."
"Mm-hmm!"
Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then added a little worriedly, "Also, if your head suddenly feels sharper, or suddenly more muddled, you need to tell us promptly."
Aline: "But I think my head's always been pretty sharp…"
"That's an illusion—I mean a sudden change in feeling."
"Oh… mm-hmm!"
Yu Sheng thought again, then suddenly stopped. "Ah, I forgot to go to the supermarket!"
"What for?"
"To buy lotus root and meat filling!"
Aline looked bewildered. "Huh? But my arm's already fixed…"
"Not that—Hu Li wants to eat lotus root fritters. I almost forgot," Yu Sheng said quickly, opening a small door leading to the living room at 66 Wutong Road. "You go home first. I'm going to the supermarket."
Before he finished speaking, he set the little puppet in his arms directly onto the sofa on the other side of the door, then turned around and opened another door to a nearby supermarket, hurrying away.
Aline hadn't even registered what was happening. By the time she came to her senses, she was already sitting on her sofa at home. The little puppet blinked and looked around. First, she mentally cursed Yu Sheng's ancestors, then she saw Luna cleaning and immediately forgot the grudge of being casually dumped at home. She jumped up and pointed at the artificial saintess. "Ha! Sweeping bot!"
…
Thick fog filled the streets.
Familiar cityscapes turned into blurred, ambiguous reflections in the mist. Towering skyscrapers stood propped in the fog like tilted tombstones. Streets that were bustling with traffic in the real world were deserted in this fog city, with only a few scattered car "shells" parked at nearby intersections, their windows pitch black, filled with shadows that seemed to twist.
From time to time, suspicious clusters could be seen crossing the roads in the distant fog, along with enormous shadows resembling giant insects with long legs, moving slowly among the clouds and skyscrapers. Several conspicuous red beams of light projected from the rooftops of nearby buildings, slicing clear lines through the fog. Along the edges of these red beams, large holographic projections scrolled in a loop:
"WARNING: DENSE FOG ZONE AHEAD. UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL STRICTLY FORBIDDEN."
This was the Foggy , an ultra-large-scale alien domain located "beneath" the real . As a newly discovered alien domain, many of its rules and physical boundaries were still awaiting exploration. Given the Foggy 's astonishing scale (it might cover the entire Borderlands) and the extremely high risk of its dense fog areas, the Special Services Bureau was currently maintaining a very cautious approach to exploring this alternate space.
Except for a few "light-fog districts" that had been explored and opened to civilian spirit detectives or investigators, more than seventy percent of the Foggy was still accessible only to deep-dive teams from the Special Services Bureau.
The sound of an exchange of fire came from the dense fog zone, accompanied by the unique bright blue flashes of particle weapons annihilating matter, and the energy hum of psychics performing purification techniques. The fog over the entire block began to surge violently as if boiling, then quickly returned to calm after the brief turmoil.
Several entities lingering near the edge of the dense fog zone were eliminated, and a team of figures in heavy powered armor stepped out of the fog.
The leading figure was especially burly.
Xu Jiali opened the faceplate of her powered armor, looked back toward the barrier of the dense fog zone, and rubbed her nose. "Honestly, seeing 'Joker'-type entities appearing outside 'Circus' is really gross. Teleporting all over the place in open terrain, I missed more shots today than I have in the first half of my life."
"But Big Bro still nailed him in the head with one shot in the end, meow," a petite figure in light powered armor, with cat ears on her helmet, also walked out of the dense fog zone, looking happily at Xu Jiali. "He didn't even get a chance to open the 'gift box'~~"
"Course it is, thanks to my superior skill," Xu Jiali said cheerfully, then rubbed his nose again. His expression turned subtle as he looked down at his thick fingers inside the powered armor gauntlets, the corners of his mouth twitching.
"What's wrong, Big Bro?"
"One of the ten most painful things in life while wearing powered armor just happened. I really want to pick my nose…" Xu Jiali's face was a bit distorted. Then he looked at the psychic attendant beside him. "Lingdang, do me a favor…"
"Ew—Big Bro, that's a little disgusting," Lingdang immediately took half a step back with a look of disgust, then waved her hand. "I'm wearing powered armor too, so Big Bro, you'll just have to hold on, meow."
Xu Jiali tugged at the corner of his mouth, rubbed his nose vigorously, and muttered, "Strange… I keep feeling a weird smell, but the environmental monitor isn't reacting."
"Chief," another deep-diver approached from the side, his voice somewhat muffled behind the thick faceplate. "Barrier zone scan complete. Entity generation confirmed stopped. Battle data has been uploaded."
"Mm," Xu Jiali nodded, then glanced at the information terminal on his arm. "Next, this area goes to the tactical walker. We'll proceed according to the original plan through Qinghe District to East Forest Square, where we'll rendezvous with a technical team that just landed to help them set up communication relays. En route, watch for changes in fog concentration—the thick fog districts in the eastern city have been unstable lately."
"Understood!"
After the orders were given, the deep-divers quickly completed a simple equipment check, then set off toward the next fog-covered area. Several psychic attendants, including Lingdang, were protected inside the formation—normally, psychic attendants were special units that only operated alongside deep-divers during "outpost missions," but given the unknown conditions and overall instability of many areas in the Foggy City, deep-dive teams had recently started taking psychic attendants along on dense fog zone missions.
The keen perception and mental defense capabilities of psychics proved highly effective in this vast fog.
The action team began moving along the edge of the dense fog barrier. They passed cautiously and quickly through the fog-covered areas, navigating a series of ambiguous roads that were somewhat offset from the real world, searching for the correct path while leaving small beacons along the way to guide subsequent personnel.
Lingdang suddenly stopped.
Every deep-diver had a degree of telepathic connection with their psychic attendant. Xu Jiali immediately sensed the cat-eared girl's abnormality. "What's wrong?"
"Cold," Lingdang shivered, quickly moving closer to her big brother. "Something just tripped me, and then suddenly I felt cold to the bone, meow."
Xu Jiali frowned deeply. The next second, he heard a teammate nearby exclaim, "Something's got a hold of me!"