Chapter 262: An Unusual Incident

The phantom wolf pack crossed block after block through the cracks of light and shadow, leaping over the misaligned, overlapping high-rises and roads that seemed to pass straight through the air. The entire city had been transformed into an extremely complex, misaligned mirrored structure in the world of reflections, but the wolf pack knew how to find a way out of such a twisted world—and then, the destination arrived.

Yu Sheng only felt a blur before his eyes, and the wolf he was riding beneath him leaped from that clear black-and-white world of reflections into the colorful real space. The sound of traffic on the distant road came to his ears as if a device had suddenly switched on.

Huli also appeared close behind. She jumped off the wolf's back, and rather amused, she patted the shadow wolf's head, happily saying to Yu Sheng, "Benefactor, this spirit beast Little Red Ridinghood raised really has some tricks. Even though its intelligence is lacking, this kind of shadow-traveling mount could still be useful even in my homeland..."

Then the pitch-black shadow wolf let out a muffled grumble, shaking its head and wagging its tail in front of Huli...

"Still wagging!" Little Red Ridinghood came over and slapped the wolf on the head. "She even said your intelligence is lacking and you're happy about it! Usually when you interact with others, I've never seen you so fawning!"

Irene was lying on Yu Sheng's shoulder. She looked around and saw it was an empty alley, then looked up and muttered, "Normal, all canines, easy to communicate."

Huli didn't react much to the little doll's words, probably because she didn't understand, and just kept rubbing the wolf's head.

But soon Little Red Ridinghood retracted all her wolves, then quickly judged the direction and led Yu Sheng and Huli forward.

"The Wanxiangji Mall is just ahead, a few minutes' walk," she said as she walked. "I've made the wolves invisible and spread them out to check the area. When Big Nephew fell in, he said he was at Wanxiangji, but when a foreign realm opens, it can easily interfere with a person's judgment. He might have been sucked in from a nearby entrance and only saw the mall's reflection at the moment he was pulled in..."

While speaking, the group had already reached the main road outside. Yu Sheng quickly spotted the large mall that was most conspicuous in his field of vision—as well as several black Special Affairs Bureau vehicles parked at the intersection.

There were still people organizing the evacuation of customers and staff from the mall. Groups of people could be seen exiting through various passages, and it was relatively orderly.

Yu Sheng and Little Red Ridinghood quickly found the Special Affairs Bureau person in charge at the scene—a man who looked to be in his early thirties, tall, with neat short hair. His build was only a size smaller than Xu Jiali's.

Little Red Ridinghood stepped forward to negotiate with him: "Hello, we are Spirit Realm Detectives who accepted the client's commission and have a cooperative relationship with the Special Affairs Bureau—I am Little Red Ridinghood from 'Fairytale'..."

Yu Sheng, as a "newbie," watched this scene from behind, watching Little Red Ridinghood, who was wearing a high school uniform, exchange words with a fully armed 1.9-meter-tall burly man. She looked like a middle school student who was lost outside and asking a police uncle for directions—her usual cool and calm image completely vanished...

The Special Affairs Bureau officer across from her was also a bit stunned. He had received a message from Li Lin, but he didn't expect the person walking over to talk to him was a girl still wearing a school uniform. In his confusion, he blurted out, "...So you're a high school student?"

Little Red Ridinghood: "...I've been cooperating with your bureau for so long, and you didn't know I was a high school student?!"

The burly man awkwardly touched the tip of his nose: "...I knew, but I didn't realize it."

"I won't wear my school uniform out anymore." Little Red Ridinghood turned back and said to Yu Sheng with an irritated expression.

"I'm Liu Bing, responsible for this area," the tall Special Affairs Bureau officer changed the subject. He checked his equipment and then led Little Red Ridinghood and the others toward the mall entrance while speaking. "I've heard the general situation from Li Lin—there's a distress call, right? The caller was previously your 'client'—but this incident is a bit unusual. Spirit Realm Detectives also need to cooperate with the Special Affairs Bureau's operations. Ah, right, who are you two...?"

He had walked halfway before suddenly remembering he had forgotten to ask for Yu Sheng and Huli's names (Irene, because she had been lying motionless on Yu Sheng's shoulder playing dead, was probably mistaken for a trinket), and quickly turned back to ask.

"Oh, I'm Yu Sheng, Yu Sheng from the 'Hostel,'" Yu Sheng was the first to speak.

Then the fox spirit girl: "I, I'm Huli, Huli from the 'Hostel'!"

"Irene," the little doll also suddenly lifted her head from Yu Sheng's shoulder, "Irene from the 'Hostel.'"

Liu Bing's footsteps stopped.

He stood there, stiffly looking up and down at Yu Sheng's group of three. The muscles on his face twitched, and he took a light breath.

"This incident is a bit unusual. We'll fully cooperate with your actions later..."

Little Red Ridinghood stared wide-eyed: "That's not what you said just now!"

"Seriously, it's better if we cooperate with you," Yu Sheng waved his hand with a wry smile. "I don't know how your bureau spreads the word, but I'm really a newbie. Dealing with Dim Angels and solving foreign realm incidents are two different tracks. I have no experience with the latter. Just treat the three of us as super soldiers."

"Super soldiers are hard to deal with..." Irene muttered quietly.

Liu Bing thought for a moment, saw that Yu Sheng's expression was serious, and had to nod: "Alright then."

Little Red Ridinghood asked curiously: "You said this incident is a bit unusual. What's so unusual about it?"

"The foreign realm expanded extremely quickly, but its range was extremely small. After the entrance appeared, it might have only lasted for an instant before 'closing,' without the 'expansion phase' that lasts for a period of time in a normal foreign realm leakage incident."

As soon as it came to serious matters, the Special Affairs Bureau officer's expression immediately became earnest.

"Specifically, when the foreign realm appeared, the boundary alarm devices we set up in the urban area only detected a single 'vibration' lasting one second. The amplitude of the vibration wasn't even enough to trigger the system's automatic alarm. It was only because the duty officer was alert that the signal was noticed. And that one-second vibration was the entire duration of the entrance... In other words, the person who called for help was really unlucky. He happened to be standing in the 'right' place during that one second..."

Yu Sheng and Little Red Ridinghood exchanged glances.

This time, the two said in unison: "That's high sensitivity, low stability for you..."

"And there's more," Liu Bing continued. "Afterwards, we checked the data recorded at that time and found that within the few minutes before and after that 'vibration' occurred, there were hundreds of vibrations of various sizes, with smaller scales and weaker intensities. Each vibration lasted less than a second."

Yu Sheng was completely shocked when he heard this: "What? Hundreds of entrances? Has it become a sieve?!"

Liu Bing shook his head, however: "No, because each vibration was too weak, far from the intensity needed to open a foreign realm. So theoretically, only that one-second 'stronger vibration' opened the only entrance. In fact, under normal circumstances, such weak signals would be automatically filtered out by the backend system. It was only because they appeared densely in a short time that the system's fuzzy judgment took effect, causing this part of the signal records to be intercepted and retained."

Irene sighed and looked up at the sky: "And then that one entrance was just what Big Nephew ran into, right..."

"High sensitivity, low stability might not explain this situation anymore," Yu Sheng thought and muttered to Little Red Ridinghood. "I think after we rescue him, we should first advise him to go somewhere and pray... Are there any Ancient Holy Spirits in charge of luck?"

"There's one in charge of good mindset," Little Red Ridinghood also muttered. "Alice, the Ancestor of Dolls, is in charge of good mindset. Or you could pray to Lady 'Star Thrower' as well. The Star Thrower and her hounds are in charge of surviving against the odds and being tough."

Yu Sheng: "..."

Don't those Ancient Holy Spirits have some serious issues?!

He suddenly became somewhat curious about this world's 'belief system' that takes the 'Ancient Holy Spirits' as the 'true gods'. He wanted to research what those ancient beings who supposedly participated in the creation actually did, and how they influenced this world—but of course, now was clearly not the time.

"Is the vibration still ongoing now?" Little Red Ridinghood suddenly asked.

"It has already stopped," Liu Bing shook his head. "It stopped before we arrived here."

"Hasn't this ever happened before?" Yu Sheng also asked out of curiosity.

"This is the first time since records began," Liu Bing said seriously. "A normal foreign realm entrance opening only has one relatively strong energy fluctuation, and it can last from minutes to hours. After opening, it will continuously expand. That's why, once a foreign realm entrance appears, evacuation must be organized immediately to prevent the harm from spreading... So if I had to say, this incident, though strange, actually has very little harm—at least it seems very small now."

Yu Sheng's brow slowly furrowed. For some reason, although Liu Bing said this incident had a small impact and little harm, Yu Sheng felt that something was off in his heart.

That way the foreign realm entrance opened... struck him as especially suspicious.

The Special Affairs Bureau personnel had obviously considered this 'suspicious' aspect as well, so even though the foreign realm entrance seemed to have disappeared, they had still set up defenses here at the highest level and sent support forces.

At the mall's main entrance, Yu Sheng saw some kind of 'node' device directly installed on a special vehicle, as well as many monitoring and protection equipment that had obviously just been transported to the scene.

Fully armed Special Affairs Bureau officers had already sealed off the main entrance and several exits on both sides of the main entrance.

The mall had several other gates, and those were probably all under control as well.

"This is the location where we recorded the entrance opening," Liu Bing led Yu Sheng to a wall near the main entrance and pointed at the huge tempered glass display window. "If I'm not mistaken, the person involved 'walked' through this glass into the 'mall' he described."

Yu Sheng took a light breath, walked up to the glass, and looked inside.

The glass only reflected the normal street scene.