Chapter 621: Big Nephew's Pathfinding Method

The night was deep, the streetlights dim yellow. The streets of the old city seemed far more desolate than the city center. A night wind blew through the buildings, whimpering and sobbing, sounding as if an invisible giant beast was crouching in the night sky, breathing lowly.

The unmelted snow on the roadside glowed cold under the lights. Yu Sheng led a few members of his family along the street where Big Nephew had tragically lost his roasted sweet potato during the day. Zheng Zhi walked beside Yu Sheng, wrapped in a down coat like a zongzi, sniffing in the wind.

Yu Sheng wore a loose overcoat. Erin (blonde hair) burrowed inside his coat, only her tiny head showing. Hearing the sniffling beside her, the little doll peeked out and muttered, "Your constitution is a bit weak, Big Nephew. Young people have no resistance to the cold at all..."

"How can I compare to you all?" Zheng Zhi listened and almost laughed in exasperation. He rolled his eyes at the motley crew beside him—a three-thousand-year-old doll, a nine-tailed fox, an Artificial Saint with a steel body, and even Yu Sheng was only roughly human-shaped. These guys could probably butterfly-stroke their way back from the Warp. "I'm just an ordinary person. How can I compare to you in physical fitness?"

As soon as Zheng Zhi finished speaking, a gust of cold wind blew through the street, making him sneeze several times.

"Ah-choo..." Big Nephew rubbed his nose and looked up at Yu Sheng. "Brother Yu, you still haven't told me. Where are we looking? Do we have a plan? Did you get some inside info from the director..."

Yu Sheng and Erin said in unison, "No plan."

Zheng Zhi was stunned for a moment. "...Huh?"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you when we left," Yu Sheng slapped his forehead and explained seriously to the super-intern operative in front of him. "Our idea is this: we take you to walk around places where the Artificial Saint has appeared or might appear. Then, whenever you see something suspicious, dangerous, or pitch-black, you take the initiative to go closer. The rest of us will be responsible for protecting you from behind, mainly to pull you back before something happens to you..."

Zheng Zhi listened, dumbfounded, and suddenly took half a step back. "This plan is unscientific!"

"But it's metaphysical," Yu Sheng went over and patted Big Nephew on the shoulder. "You have metaphysics on your side, that's enough. Leave the rest to us professionals. Look on the bright side—there's no clue anyway. The Special Services Bureau has been searching all day and hasn't found a single hair. We can just treat it as an evening stroll—nothing lost."

Zheng Zhi nodded blankly, not sure if it was because Yu Sheng had scared him or patted him. Then he suddenly shivered in the night.

Hu Li's ears instantly perked up (mainly because there was no one around at night, so she hadn't even retracted her tail). "Did you sense something?"

Zheng Zhi pulled his down coat tighter. "...I'm cold."

Yu Sheng: "..."

But anyway, Zheng Zhi eventually accepted this setup without much trouble—mainly because he was used to it. After all, at Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain, he had cooperated in similar tasks. He had rich experience in being a 'human map detector' and a very high tolerance for it.

Near the street alley where the incident happened during the day, Yu Sheng and his group found nothing.

They only encountered a Special Services Bureau action team patrolling nearby—when they saw Yu Sheng appear, the team was almost scared to death, probably thinking something had already gone wrong. Later, when they learned that the Travelers' group was just restless at home and decided to go out hunting, the team's expressions relaxed as if world peace had been restored...

Then Yu Sheng decided to avoid the Special Services Bureau patrol teams.

After checking several locations in the old city, Zheng Zhi hadn't triggered any special map events. Time was already past midnight. Yu Sheng pulled out his phone to check the time and muttered, "This isn't much different from a headless fly..."

Something squirmed in his arms. The little doll stuck her head out again, with a serious expression. "Don't we need to add some trigger condition?"

"What trigger condition?" Yu Sheng asked casually while looking around—they were near a commercial street on the edge of the old city. The surrounding shops and malls were already pitch black. In the silence, only the streetlights emitted dim, warm light. Beside the entrance to an underground parking lot, a flashing indicator sign glowed. There was nothing else nearby.

Erin thought seriously for a moment, then turned to look at Zheng Zhi with a grave face. "Big Nephew, how about you send a text to your family? Tell them you love them. Then send a message to Li Lin, saying you're glad to be his colleague. If you have a secret crush on a girl, now's the time to confess. If that still doesn't work, you'll have to start writing a diary. After writing it, tear it out and hide it in trash cans, green belts, security booths, or places like that. It'd be best to write some mysterious numbers and letters on each page..."

Zheng Zhi listened, dumbfounded, and the more he heard, the more ominous it felt. He looked up at Yu Sheng. "Brother Yu, don't I feel like I've heard this bad idea before?"

Yu Sheng nodded along. "I think it sounds familiar too... but her suggestion last time wasn't this detailed."

Saying that, he suddenly opened a small door beside him, pulled out a pen and a few sheets of paper, and handed them to Zheng Zhi. "Anyway, let's try it first."

Zheng Zhi was completely stunned. He never expected this bad idea to be serious. He stared blankly at Yu Sheng. "Really write it, Brother Yu?"

"Try everything even if it's a long shot. You never know with metaphysical stuff—and besides, it's already past midnight. If there's no progress, we'll have to go home." Yu Sheng waved his hand. "Don't worry, I've got your back."

Zheng Zhi took the paper with a worried expression, thinking whether to write a diary or a letter to someone. After holding it in for a while, he started writing, muttering, "Alright, I do have a younger sister in middle school. I'll write her a letter—but I can't actually send it, or it'll scare the girl... By the way, what kind of opening is most likely to cause trouble?"

Yu Sheng stroked his chin. "Oh, then start with 'Our family has fallen from grace'—that's a big deal."

Zheng Zhi looked up blankly. "...We only have a family of four..."

"Then write it anyway."

"Oh."

Zheng Zhi sighed, wrote a salutation on the paper, then 'Little sis, your brother wants to tell you something—our family has fallen from grace...'

Yu Sheng watched this scene beside him. In his heart, he didn't really take this method seriously. Mainly, after a whole night of tiring effort with no progress, his attitude of forcing some fun accounted for ninety-nine percent of it—spiritual sight, the Special Services Bureau's many experts couldn't figure it out, uncontrollable and unpredictable. How could it possibly be triggered by such a bad idea from Erin...

A wisp of thin mist appeared at the edge of his vision. In the mist, the light from the streetlamp was reflected, but distorted and twisted.

It began to snow in the sky—large flakes, like torn letters falling from the darkness, fluttering and mingling with the suddenly appearing thin mist, gradually covering the ground.

Zheng Zhi was writing. The cold made his fingers tremble, but that trembling gradually turned into some kind of extremely fast vibration—his writing speed grew faster and faster, until the pen tip left afterimages on the paper. A mass of crisscrossing lines completely lost the outline of text, and instead, like complex symbols drawn haphazardly, they were 'smeared' layer by layer onto the paper.

"...Holy shit!"

Erin let out a small exclamation.

Yu Sheng reacted half a beat faster—he took a big step forward and pressed down hard on Zheng Zhi's hand that was writing frantically, while simultaneously snatching the paper from his other hand.

Hu Li raised her hand and waved. A streak of deep blue spiritual light directly struck Zheng Zhi's face, then turned into protective spiritual energy that quickly seeped into his body.

Zheng Zhi jolted awake, still seeming a bit dazed and unaware of what had happened. But soon he regained his senses and raised his hand to point at the entrance of the underground parking lot not far away. "Brother Yu, there, there, there... there's something over there!"

"I know," Yu Sheng, without waiting for him to finish, had already pulled open a door that led to the valley. "Your mission is done. Leave the rest to us. Tonight, go rest at Uncle Yun's place."

Zheng Zhi didn't dawdle after hearing that. He walked straight through the door. "Okay—Brother Yu, you all be careful!"

The next second, Zheng Zhi's figure had passed through the door, and the illusory door dissipated in the air.

The surrounding mist was rapidly thickening. The snowflakes falling from the sky were also increasing.

Short Erin was still a bit stunned at this moment, staring in the direction Zheng Zhi had left and muttering, "Hey, what's the principle here? How did it actually work..."

"Now I have ample reason to suspect that Big Nephew is some kind of rule-type anomalous entity. The Special Services Bureau saying he just has higher spiritual sight than ordinary people is definitely hiding something," Yu Sheng said quickly. "But now is not the time to dwell on this detail. Do you sense it? The surrounding environment... the atmosphere feels a bit familiar."

"It's like when that 'Dark Alley' suddenly expanded," Hu Li, who was most sensitive to changes in aura, immediately said. "Another space is overlapping with this one."

Her nine fox tails slowly spread open. Deep blue fox fire pierced through the continuously gathering mist. Erin also climbed out of Yu Sheng's embrace and hurried onto his shoulder, speaking rapidly. "Yu Sheng, quickly open the door and bring me my wok..."

Luna remained silent. She simply raised her hand and brushed it across the slit of her nun's habit, popping blades from the hidden compartments on both sides of her thighs, ready for battle.

Yu Sheng's gaze fell on the entrance of the underground parking lot not far away.

The environment was changing. The entrance was visibly widening, gradually turning into a strange cave mixed with reinforced concrete, rock, and soil. The indicator lights and road signs at the entrance became twisted and warped. The lights on them had all turned into a dark red like blood at some point. A viscous substance flowed from several lights, falling onto the snow with a corrosive hissing sound.

The group stepped forward toward that increasingly twisted and bizarre entrance.