Chapter 30: The Door Opener

The small supermarket door slammed shut, cutting off the scorching heat from that scorched-earth planet and the killing intent that had suddenly exploded from the two black-armored soldiers. Yu Sheng stood quietly at the door, a little stunned.

After several seconds of being dazed, he finally took a sharp breath and then turned his head to look around.

There weren't many people on the street. Occasionally someone walked by, seemingly completely unaware of anything unusual happening here. Only Yu Sheng had just come face-to-face with that bizarre scene a few seconds ago, and now stood in the wind, feeling completely thrown off.

After a moment of disorientation, Yu Sheng slowly turned back to look at the storefront of the small supermarket.

Over the past two months, he had come here more than once. This small supermarket in the old city district didn't have much stock, but it did have basic daily necessities and rice, flour, oil, and grains. The owners were a young couple, and Yu Sheng was now somewhat familiar with them.

The storefront had nothing special about it—just an ordinary ground-floor shop. The street-facing side had large glass display windows, almost completely covered with various promotional ads and small merchandise shelves stacked behind the glass. One side of the glass door's hinge wasn't working properly, and on that half of the door was a piece of A4 paper with "This door is broken" written on it. Through the glass, you could see the somewhat cramped shelves inside, and the owner moving things around near them.

Everything looked perfectly normal. Nothing could be more normal than this scene.

But Yu Sheng absolutely would not treat what he had just seen as some kind of hallucination—even now, he could still feel that scorching, slightly sulfurous smell lingering in his nostrils.

He had almost stepped through, but fortunately, the lingering effects from his earlier fall into the Otherworld were still with him. It made him sensitive not only to his own front door, but to any door at all. Opening a door always made him hesitate subconsciously for a step. Another reason he hesitated at the door was that at the moment of opening, he felt a certain... "jolt" deep in his heart.

Yu Sheng stood at the supermarket entrance, steadied himself, thought for a long moment, then reached out again, grasped the handle, pushed the door open slightly, and craned his neck to look inside.

Inside was a perfectly normal supermarket. It was empty at this hour. The owner was still busy behind the shelves, apparently not noticing the commotion at the door.

Yu Sheng stepped back, closed the door again, then gripped the handle tightly, took a deep breath, as if fighting with himself, gritted his teeth, and pushed it open in one swift motion.

A tall woman with golden hair flowing over her shoulders, wearing a silver-white robe and skirt, stood on a platform on the other side of the door. She turned in surprise, looking at Yu Sheng.

She was very pretty. Beneath her golden hair, her ears were not human—they were elegant, long and pointed elf ears. Several faintly glowing pipes and data cables extended from behind those ears, connecting to something behind her.

But Yu Sheng was even more concerned about the wheel-like structure extending from under the hem of her silver-white skirt, and the mechanical appendages behind her that were waving various tools around in midair.

A voice came from some direction on the other side of the door: "...Boss! The customer asked if the superluminal core sent last week is fixed yet."

The golden-haired woman didn't respond. She just stared straight at Yu Sheng, standing at the door. After a long pause, she let out a loud cry—

"How the fuck did you get in?!"

Yu Sheng slammed the door shut.

But the next second, he shoved it open again—because he hadn't gotten a clear look just now. Was the person on the other side of the door an elf? This was the first time in his life he'd ever seen an elf! Was it really an elf?! Was something fundamentally wrong with the setting?!

The door opened, and a little boy dressed in a coarse brown Daoist robe found himself face-to-face with Yu Sheng. The frame of the door was surrounded by smoke and soot. The boy was holding a fan, in mid-swing, his eyes wide as if they were about to pop out.

The next second, before Yu Sheng could even speak, the boy threw down his fan as if he'd seen a ghost, then jumped and hopped away, shouting loudly as he ran: "Master! Master! Senior Brother succeeded! The pill furnace turned out a human head! With eyes and a nose! And it's breathing!"

"What the fuck..."

Yu Sheng gave a startled cry, yanked the door shut, and took several big steps back before steadying himself.

He turned around again to look at the street, and saw a few passersby looking at him curiously—but they only seemed to notice his strange behavior. The door had closed quickly, so no one saw what was on the other side.

Yu Sheng had to quickly adjust his expression, pretending nothing was wrong as he walked aside. Once no one was paying attention to him, he took several deep breaths, stood there a little dazed at the corner of the street, and began to ponder the meaning of life.

Things were too chaotic and bizarre. He didn't even know whether at this moment he should be counting himself lucky to be alive, or having his worldview completely shattered, or experiencing a near-death escape. All he knew was that his mind felt like twelve storms had hit it at once—or like two hundred Eileens were chattering at the same time. All kinds of random thoughts were rampaging through his heart, and he couldn't snap out of it for a full seven or eight minutes.

But one thing he quickly determined.

Those places on the other side of the door... were not the Otherworld.

At least the place where that elf beauty with the mechanical weirdness and the Daoist boy with the fan were was definitely not the Otherworld. As for the two powerful soldiers in power armor who had clearly been fighting earlier—their surroundings were harsh, but it was hard to say whether that counted as the Otherworld...

After a long while, Yu Sheng's chaotic mind finally calmed down. He forcibly sorted through and suppressed the wild guesses and thoughts that were surging. Then he lowered his head and looked at his own hands.

After hesitating again and again, he slowly reached out, reaching to his side—

He was now standing at the corner of a street, next to only a wall. A bare, rough cement brick wall.

He rubbed the bare, rough surface, slowly clenched his hand, imagining... there was a door there.

Just like at the end of his home's corridor, where he discovered the hidden door handle outside the room where he found Eileen. Just like in that valley during the night, when he was thrown into the air by a monster and grabbed at the air instinctively, pulling open a door back to the real world—

He touched it. A door.

He couldn't see it, but the door appeared. He gripped the handle, and the door began to gradually materialize, gradually orient itself. His expression stiff, he slowly turned his head—the door shimmered faintly in his field of vision, as if it could be easily opened at any moment.

"What the hell, holy shit!"

Yu Sheng let out a low cry, and as his nerves spiked, his hand unconsciously let go. The "door" instantly vanished silently into the wall.

Yu Sheng's heart was pounding wildly, as if it might jump straight out of his mouth at any second.

He took several deep breaths before calming down. He recalled the feeling of grabbing the door handle just now, and twitched the corner of his mouth.

"Eileen." He called out in his mind, with a complex emotion and hesitation he couldn't even articulate.

"Huh?" Eileen's voice immediately rang out, as light-hearted as always. "I was just about to contact you. You've been out for a while—didn't you say the supermarket was at the intersection... Did you buy too much stuff?"

Yu Sheng: "...I haven't even gone into the supermarket yet."

Eileen: "Did you get lost?"

"I just wanted to let you know that I probably won't consider moving anymore," Yu Sheng said, ignoring Eileen's offbeat guess.

"Ah?! Really?" Eileen sounded a bit happy but also a little curious. "Why? Didn't you say this house felt wrong? Especially that every time you open a door, you might get 'dumped' somewhere..."

"Nothing. I just suddenly realized... on this biggest issue, the thing that's wrong might not be the house," Yu Sheng sighed. "What's wrong seems to be me."

Eileen: "...?"

She didn't say anything, but Yu Sheng could imagine the expression of question marks that the doll must be wearing right now.

"It's a bit complicated to explain. Anyway, you don't have to worry about moving anymore," Yu Sheng leaned against the wall, rubbing his forehead. "If I get a chance... I'll tell you later."

Eileen's curiosity was exploding, but she sensed that Yu Sheng didn't want to go into detail right now, so she just said, "Oh."

Then Yu Sheng ended the conversation with Eileen.

He hadn't gone into detail about what happened when he "opened the door." Not because of any other concern—mainly because his own thoughts were still a mess, and there were many details from that moment that he hadn't had time to think about carefully. The situation had been too chaotic; he had overlooked many details and would need to slowly recall and sort everything out later.

Yu Sheng decided to go back and settle down before talking to Eileen about this.

Of course, he knew that even if he told her, she would probably be just as confused as he was, and then they'd both be confused together. But at least discussing things with someone was better than just puzzling over it alone.

That doll at least had some knowledge of the supernatural—though not much.

A few minutes later, Yu Sheng walked out from the corner, perked up a bit in the gradually cooling night breeze, and looked back toward the small supermarket.

After hesitating for a moment, he still started walking toward it.

He decided to first finish today's shopping errand—the door thing was unsettling, but he couldn't just stop opening doors from today onward.

But this time, he was more cautious than ever when pushing open the supermarket door.

He concentrated hard, sensing every tiny detail during the opening—the feeling from his hand, the thoughts in his heart, the intuitive warnings, even the sound of the wind around him, the reflection on the glass door...

If anyone had been watching, they probably would have thought that Yu Sheng's door-opening process was in slow motion.

Then the supermarket door opened.

Among the slightly cramped shelves, the young shop owner looked up. Seeing that it was Yu Sheng, he broke into a smile: "Oh, what can I get you?"