Chapter 591: The Cats Are Good

Yu Sheng's eyes snapped wide open, staring in the direction of the sound, but all he saw was a strange dim light flickering at the entrance of a ground-floor shop next to the old bookstore. Within that "light" like sticky gel floated nearly transparent human figures, and in the blink of an eye, those figures vanished.

The people beside him showed little reaction, except for Hu Li, who suddenly twitched her ears and cast a puzzled glance his way. "Benefactor, what's wrong?"

"Didn't you guys hear that just now?" Yu Sheng asked, somewhat surprised. "Someone was talking nearby."

"Nope," Hu Li's ears twitched again. "Just a little wind."

Yu Sheng frowned deeply.

Hu Li's ears were the sharpest. Usually, if he opened a pack of instant noodles upstairs, this girl would come darting up from the basement. If she said she hadn't heard anything, then those whispers just now... weren't really "sounds."

After a moment of hesitation, Yu Sheng's gaze fell on Luna.

The latter immediately turned her head, the bionic alloy-covered face showing some question.

"I just heard someone talking nearby," Yu Sheng said. "They mentioned Luna's name..."

He decided to reveal everything he had heard—though it had been only a few sentences like auditory hallucinations, countless classic cases had taught him one lesson: never keep such intelligence from the team. After all, sometimes if you think the timing isn't right to speak up, that opportunity might never come again...

The scene fell silent.

The two lines of conversation Yu Sheng had heard carried a lot of information. Even Aileen could glean something from them, and Little Red Riding Hood had also heard the story of the "Artificial Saint." Her brows tightly knit as she fixed her gaze on Luna.

Luna stood rooted to the spot, her steel body maintaining an almost chilling stability under precise program control. Yet the near-eternal perfect smile had faded from her face—the mecha-girl's pale features showed such distinct shock and turmoil for the first time.

She lifted her head stiffly, looking at the shop windows around her with their eerie lights, her gaze sweeping over the nearly transparent phantoms inside those windows, as if searching for something among those illusory shadows.

After a long while, she stiffly withdrew her gaze, looked at Yu Sheng, and spoke haltingly: "Any... more talking?"

"No, I can only hear sounds occasionally," Yu Sheng said. "But we can check around; maybe we'll catch more."

"Mm." Luna nodded slowly.

So the group temporarily left the pitch-black old bookstore, leaving only two shadow wolves that Little Red Riding Hood had stationed at the door. Yu Sheng led the team forward along the alley.

They deliberately approached those street-level shop windows with their strange lights.

Occasionally, they saw swaying figures in the windows, like projections from a distance cast onto the glass.

Most windows emitted no conversation; even when there was sound, it was just vague muttering to Yu Sheng, impossible to distinguish.

Luna's footsteps were very light—even the metal high heels on the stone ground made almost no sound, as if afraid of affecting Yu Sheng's hearing.

Just as they were about to reach the crossroads, Yu Sheng suddenly stopped.

"Someone's talking about the harvest," he said, cocking his ear and whispering to the others. After listening a bit more, he looked uncertainly at Luna. "Also heard a word that sounded like a place name, 'Tashiko' or 'Tushiko'... couldn't make out the rest."

"Tashiko," Luna spoke with effort, more fluently than ever. "Is, big city. Heard of it. Never been."

Luna's confirmation proved the most outrageous conclusion—

Those "whispers" Yu Sheng had heard in the Dark Alley... were actually from the world of her homeland?

A conversation happening right now? A "record" of the past left here through some unexplainable supernatural mechanism? Or an omen of the future?

Regardless of the possibility, the biggest question was... why were these sounds heard in the "Dark Alley"?

Everyone looked at each other, but no answer emerged.

"I... have never encountered anything like this, haven't even heard of such a case," Little Red Riding Hood frowned. "It's already inconceivable for different Otherverses to 'interconnect,' let alone that Luna's homeland might be somewhere on a planet deep in a lawless star sector controlled by the Saintly Ascetic Order. How could they connect from so far away? The Boundary Bridge is gone..."

"This is a bit absurd even by Borderland standards," Yu Sheng rubbed his head. He looked up at the crossroads ahead. "This is the end. If we go further, we might enter the next layer of the Dark Alley or return directly to the real world. Let's not go out yet; let's go back and check the old bookstore."

The group quickly retraced their steps, returning to the entrance of the old bookstore.

The bookstore door was still wide open, the interior silent. The dark doorway and shop windows seemed to hold a wordless invitation.

A shadow wolf poked its head in, half its body entering, then retreated after a long while.

"The wolf says there's no danger," Little Red Riding Hood said, riding on another wolf's back, her voice low. "But the atmosphere inside is very strange."

"Strange atmosphere?" Yu Sheng looked doubtfully at the dark room, but since the wolf had scouted and confirmed no danger, he bravely stepped inside.

A few wisps of blue foxfire lit the surroundings. Hu Li held a fireball in her hand, and several fireballs floated on the tip of her tail as she followed close behind Yu Sheng.

The bookstore was as usual: old, mottled walls; a counter piled with miscellaneous items that seemed from the last century; tall, heavy bookshelves standing silent giants, filled with aged books of unknown titles.

Only there was no light—the door was wide open, indicating it was operational, yet it didn't follow the "rules" of the Dark Alley by turning on the lights.

Yu Sheng's gaze swept around. He didn't feel the "strange atmosphere" Little Red Riding Hood had mentioned, but maybe it was because the bookstore itself was already eerie everywhere, making him less sensitive.

Still, he noticed some unusual phenomena.

In a corner of the old bookstore, where two tall bookshelves met, a triangular area was particularly dark, like a stubborn patch of black shadow.

Hu Li saw it too. She frowned, raised the foxfire in her hand into the air, then twisted and rubbed the tip of her tail, creating several brighter flames to illuminate that spot.

The dense darkness contracted slightly, persisting under the firelight.

Hu Li tossed a clump of foxfire toward the darkness.

From the darkness came the sound of a hiss: "Hss—"

"Whoa!" The fox girl yelped, quickly retracting her fireball. Almost simultaneously, Yu Sheng saw two hollow white lights appear in that darkness.

Around the white lights, the faint outline of a cat's head emerged.

More white spots appeared, jostling within the shadow, crowding together.

Those were the "cats' " eyes—the unique entities of the Dark Alley; their eyes gave off pale light like this.

Then the mass of black shadow huddling in the bookstore corner began to writhe. Numerous outlines that had been indiscernible due to piling started to take shape. Aileen, who had been standing on the ground, suddenly shimmied up to Yu Sheng's shoulder—he had no idea how she could climb so fast while carrying a frying pan nearly as big as she was.

Yu Sheng snapped out of it too, finally understanding why, despite being deep in the Dark Alley, they hadn't seen a single "cat" the whole way—they were all hiding in this old bookstore, even piling up into a heap!

Hu Li's tail was already unsheathed, Luna's blade gleamed coldly, the two shadow wolves growled, guarding Little Red Riding Hood, while Yu Sheng casually opened a door and retrieved a "Blood Needle Launcher" from the basement—the one Mo Ran had given him—strapping it onto his arm. He aimed at the pile of cats while also palming a blood grenade.

But the cats just squirmed in place, jostling, doing nothing else besides hissing at Hu Li's foxfire.

Little Red Riding Hood remained on high alert for a few seconds, then realized the cats didn't seem to be attacking. She was momentarily dumbfounded: "...What's wrong with them?"

Aileen sat on Yu Sheng's shoulder, brandishing the frying pan with both hands: "M-maybe their tails are tangled together?"

Yu Sheng was half-afraid the little thing would smack the frying pan on his head first. He instinctively tilted his head, observed for a while, then spoke uncertainly: "Looks like they're hiding from something... Hold on, I think these 'cats' are different from before."

While speaking, he took another half step forward.

Aileen screamed from his shoulder: "Hey, what are you doing—"

A few more hisses came from the cat pile, but some vague shadows squeezed out of the heap, waving their front paws at Yu Sheng.

Yu Sheng sensed a faint connection.

He suddenly remembered—he had bled in this Dark Alley.

He recalled deliberately leaving extra "marks" near the old bookstore.

...Had these cats lost their aggressiveness because of that?

Yu Sheng wasn't sure, but he bravely reached his hand toward one shadow—actually, he wasn't sure if that shadow was a cat's head, since they were all stacked together like a big cat slime. But after a moment's hesitation, the shadow leaned forward, rubbing against his palm.

Under normal circumstances, if an outsider touched a "cat," a wound that would bleed continuously would immediately form on the body—that was the characteristic of the Dark Alley cats: "scratch where they can."

But Yu Sheng only felt a cool, slightly furry head.

And a simple "thought" suddenly entered his mind:

"Intruder, hide, hide in the darkness."

Intruder?

(End of chapter)