Chapter 13: Meeting

Ah, the familiar darkness, the familiar crushing weight, and the familiar feeling of consciousness sinking deeper and deeper.

Yu Sheng's thoughts floated in a chaotic, pitch-black abyss. Along with the oppressive pressure pressing in from all directions, an overwhelming sense of helplessness and exhaustion surged upward.

He had imagined that before he could leave that "otherworld," there might be many more twists and turns—he had even considered the possibility that he might have to "die" more than once. But he had guessed the beginning and the end, yet not the process. During his drifting, sinking time in the darkness, he couldn't help but recall the last scene he had seen before losing consciousness—the fleeting blur of a moment, the golden-red pupils that had appeared in his field of vision, the magnificent fox tails blooming like fireworks against the night sky...

And that supersonic headbutt.

So who was that girl who had knocked herself out headbutting him? Where had she come from? And why was she in this otherworld?

Also... what was the change that had happened to him while he was fighting that monster? The inexplicable surge in strength, speed, and...

That gnawing hunger.

What was happening to him?

Yu Sheng felt chaotic, tangled thoughts swirling like a vortex in his mind. Without the constraints of a physical body, these runaway "thoughts" even kept manifesting into bizarre, grotesque illusions before his "eyes." Among these illusions were many memories surging up from the depths—he saw the monster formed from countless limbs, then the suddenly appearing "headbutt" girl with fox ears and tail. But the next second, he saw an oil painting—Ailin torn apart, scattered around her seat, spiderweb-like threads connecting the puppet's limbs, with a strange shadow vaguely standing in the depths of the frame...

Suddenly, Ailin vanished again, and new scenes arose from the depths of Yu Sheng's memories—crimson clouds and sky, sunlight flowing like water, dyeing the familiar old streets and alleys.

Oh, that was where Yu Sheng was born and raised—the "Boundary City" he was familiar with, an unremarkable coastal small city. He had left there two months ago... but for some reason, when those scenes surged up from the depths of memory, they felt like they were from a very, very long time ago—so distant they seemed like someone else's memories, coldly presented before his eyes.

All the images disappeared, and finally only gentle darkness surrounded him.

Yu Sheng felt his thoughts clear slightly. After a moment's hesitation, he tried to call out in his heart: "Ailin."

In the darkness, there was no response.

It seemed that in his "dead" state, the connection with Ailin was severed.

Next, Yu Sheng tried to move his "gaze," searching for other objects in this darkness, and confirming whether his limbs existed.

He saw nothing—this place was empty, and he seemed to be nothing more than a floating, unanchored "consciousness" here, without a body.

Yu Sheng silently tried more things.

In his previous two "deaths," he had no experience, and had almost muddled his way back to the "world of the living." But this time, he began to consciously perceive the process and test various conjectures.

He knew that during this period, he had been in a daze—an unfamiliar world, bizarre phenomena, his own mysteries, deaths and resurrections... too many things he didn't understand were piled together, leaving him utterly confused.

But ever since Ailin had told him about the concept of "otherworlds," he understood he had a goal again—he had to go back, to return to the "normal" side.

When the rift of an otherworld occasionally opened to people, ordinary people, upon glimpsing the scenes spilling out from that rift, would cross the edge of rationality and arrive at the other side beyond the normal. This process might happen because they got off at the wrong stop on a bus, because they took one extra step descending a staircase, or even because they turned one extra page in a book, misread a single character, or... opened a wrong door.

But whatever the cause, the key was that this process was not irreversible.

According to the intel Ailin had revealed, there were people in this world who studied otherworlds, who had summarized their rules, and even experts who specialized in solving otherworld problems. Even ordinary people, once fallen into an otherworld, had a chance to return.

The valley shrouded by night was an otherworld. The No. 66 Wutong Road where he now lived was also an otherworld. But Yu Sheng believed that his first contact with an otherworld had been even earlier—

When he had pushed open his own door two months ago, he might have fallen into an otherworld centered on himself, called "Boundary City."

Now, he had to explore as much as possible, understand as much as possible about these strange things, acquire knowledge related to otherworlds... and then leave this wrong world.

So he opened his eyes.

Cold night wind blew through the large hole in the wall. Beyond the half-collapsed roof was a murky sky.

He was sitting in a corner of the ruined temple, but he didn't get up immediately. Instead, he remained motionless in the posture of just awakening, cautiously sensing everything around him, while trying to grasp the memories and "impressions" that were rapidly fading from his mind.

He was trying to recall the feeling of the moment he had awakened, to pinpoint the boundary where he had returned from the darkness to the "present world."

He felt this might be the key to understanding the process of his "resurrection."

At least, it could bring him closer to the truth of these mysteries.

Vaguely, he began to recall certain "scenes" he had "seen" in the moment before awakening. He recalled rising from the darkness, crossing a hazy boundary, then sinking back toward reality... but what came after? Between "sinking toward reality" and "opening his eyes"? What had happened in that brief instant?

He seemed to see several fleeting images—very fast, very blurry. Among them, a few were clearer... including the path near his home, the front gate of No. 66 Wutong Road, and... this corner deep inside the ruined temple.

Yu Sheng's eyelids drooped slightly, his thoughts gradually calming. He formed some conjectures but set those thoughts aside for the moment. Then he let out a soft breath and began to move his hands and feet in small motions.

His body was clean and strong—he could even feel the vast strength surging through his veins. He could hear clearly, see far, and his limbs were full of power—even though not long ago, a supersonic headbutt had left him severed below the neck, he was now fully recovered and lively.

He stood up from the corner, about to call out to Ailin.

But at the next second, he abruptly stopped his movement.

Because a rustling sound came from outside the wall.

Hearing this sound, Yu Sheng's first reaction was—could that tasty monster have actually chased him into the temple?!

But soon he felt something was wrong, because that monster's movements were always earth-shaking, not as cautious as this.

Taking a light breath, Yu Sheng moved with three parts caution to the hole in the wall and peered out through the opening.

The night was deep, but his eyes saw clearly.

He saw a girl carefully walking among the ruins of the broken temple.

The girl was wearing a tattered robe-dress. It might once have been an elegant garment, but now it was nothing more than dirty, ragged strips. Her long white hair, unwashed for a long time, hung messily down, obscuring most of her face. And on top of the girl's head... were a pair of pointed fox ears.

But compared to those furry ears, Yu Sheng's gaze landed more on what was behind the girl—those tails.

Fox tails, more than one. But from his angle, Yu Sheng couldn't clearly count how many there were—and since the girl looked utterly disheveled, he even suspected it might just be one big tail matted together from lack of grooming...

By now, of course, Yu Sheng had recognized her.

It was the supersonic headbutt girl.

But the headbutter didn't seem to have noticed Yu Sheng nearby. She was just cautiously prowling through the temple ruins, occasionally twitching her nose as if sniffing and searching. After a while, she seemed to find something—her eyes lit up and she quickly ran to a certain spot.

The sound of rustling a plastic bag came through the night.

Yu Sheng's eyes widened.

That was the bag of kitchen waste he had brought along when he was "thrown" into this valley earlier. He had casually tossed it into the ruins.

Inside were the vegetable leaves and eggshells he had thrown away while cooking dinner, plus the leftover food he had cleaned out of the fridge earlier.

He pressed against the wall, watching as the girl with fox tails excitedly yet clumsily tore at the plastic bag. She accidentally spilled its contents everywhere, but without hesitation, she grabbed a handful of the leftover scraps and shoved them into her mouth—

As if she had been starving for many, many years.

Suddenly, Yu Sheng felt a suffocating sensation.

He didn't know why, but he felt terrible. He thought... a person shouldn't be starving like this.

Even if she didn't quite look like a "human."

Even if she had once headbutted him—but back then, she had been trying to save him.

And at that moment, the girl seemed to finally sense the presence of a "living person" inside the ruined temple.

She crouched on the ground, a piece of rotten vegetable leaf hanging from her mouth, staring back in shock and tension.

Yu Sheng stood at the collapsed corner of the ruined temple, their eyes meeting through the rubble.

(End of chapter)