Chapter 71: Learn More
Yu Sheng had no idea why the woman across from him, who claimed to be the director of the Special Services Bureau, had suddenly frozen. He was just looking at her with some curiosity. Seeing that she wasn't speaking, he took the initiative to start the conversation: “So, the Bureau’s protocol for ‘contacting’ a subject is usually this high-level? I thought it would be Li Lin and the others meeting me. I didn't expect to see the director directly—is this always the way you do things?”
Upon hearing this, Bai Liqing quickly regained her usual calm demeanor. “No, only under special circumstances.”
“Special circumstances?”
“For example, a... ‘freak’ who has lived in the Borderlands for over twenty years as an ‘ordinary person’ while actually residing in a different domain for a long time,” Bai Liqing said, looking Yu Sheng in the eyes. “Sorry, I hope you don't mind me referring to you that way.”
“Uh, I don’t mind, but am I really that strange in your eyes?” Yu Sheng felt a bit awkward. “I could tell from Li Lin and Xu Jiali’s reactions that my lifestyle surprised them too. Though I guess I can understand why.”
“Maybe you don’t feel it yourself,” Bai Liqing sighed. “Many people in the Special Services Bureau have been keeping an eye on your actions. In the past few days... a large number of operatives have been busy with this.”
Yu Sheng opened his mouth. “...Huh?”
Bai Liqing looked at him. “You have the ability to open ‘doors,’ don’t you?”
“Oh, yeah,” Yu Sheng nodded, reaching into the air beside him. A door materialized out of nowhere next to him. “I used this thing to get back with Li Lin and the others...”
Before he could finish, the woman across from him suddenly raised her hand. “No need to demonstrate!”
Bai Liqing, usually calm and indifferent, rarely got this agitated.
Yu Sheng awkwardly let go of the door handle. Seeing her reaction, he vaguely understood: “So... from the looks of it, when I open a door, it affects you guys?”
“Every time you open a door, the entire Borderlands detects a spatiotemporal tremor of unknown origin,” Bai Liqing said bluntly. “The staff responsible for monitoring have been quite displeased lately—do you really not feel it?”
Yu Sheng’s expression turned blank, then gradually grew subtle. After a long moment, he shook his head with a peculiar look. “No feeling... So you’re saying the impact of me opening a door can reach the entire Borderlands? Does that mean I’d better not use this ability from now on?”
He clearly wasn’t happy about saying that. After all, the “door” was really convenient. He’d only recently gotten familiar with it and was enjoying its ease of use. Now, suddenly, the Special Services Bureau came and told him it was causing a disturbance... That was a bit awkward.
But judging from the director’s attitude, the degree to which his door-opening was “bothering people” was apparently... not small. That was indeed awkward.
Bai Liqing, of course, noticed Yu Sheng’s mood. After a brief thought, she shook her head. “I’m just making a suggestion. I hope you can try to control the frequency of opening doors in the future—at least don’t open hundreds of rifts in a single night like you did before. Or at least report it in advance. After all, it’s your ability, and it hasn’t actually caused any substantial damage to the Borderlands. In principle, we can’t directly ban such actions—provided you, as a legal resident, are willing to cooperate with us on some registration. We’ll also coordinate with your ability and make some technical adjustments to the monitoring methods.”
Yu Sheng was a bit surprised.
The female director before him had a cool and stern aura, giving the impression she was hard to get along with. Yet unexpectedly, she was actually quite... reasonable.
When she mentioned “opening hundreds of rifts in a single night,” Yu Sheng immediately knew what she was talking about. At the time, he hadn’t felt anything special. But now, even just imagining it, he could picture how much of a commotion he must have caused that night. And even so, Bai Liqing was willing to negotiate a solution with him using a friendly attitude—even coming over in person to discuss it...
Yu Sheng wasn’t a naive teenager. He knew that from an “official” perspective, this was a huge gesture of goodwill.
This “reasonableness” even caught him off guard—when Bai Liqing first mentioned the “disturbance,” he’d already mentally prepared himself to outwit the Bureau. But before he could even throw a punch, he was hit with a faceful of cotton.
He actually felt somewhat embarrassed. “Well, that’s fine. Registering is definitely no problem... But I have a few questions. Can you answer them first?”
Bai Liqing nodded. “Of course. What do you want to know?”
“First, what exactly is this ‘Special Services Bureau’ of yours?” Yu Sheng quickly organized the questions he’d been keeping in his mind. He looked serious. “What kind of organization is it? What’s its scope?”
“Just curious about these?” Bai Liqing seemed a bit surprised that Yu Sheng would ask about such things, but she quickly spoke. “The Special Services Bureau, full name ‘Special Security and Service Assurance Bureau,’ is a department directly under the Borderlands’ highest administrative body—the Council. It is also the highest-level official department in the Borderlands for handling all kinds of ‘supernatural incidents’ involving different domains, entities, and anomalies. If you think of the Borderlands as having a ‘natural’ side and a ‘supernatural’ side, you can consider us as the highest responsible unit on the ‘supernatural’ side.
“But our scope of activity, or jurisdiction, isn’t limited to the Borderlands—I don’t know if you’ve already learned about the special nature of the Borderlands...”
Bai Liqing paused and looked into Yu Sheng’s eyes.
“The special nature of the Borderlands...” Yu Sheng frowned, immediately recalling the various pieces of information he’d gotten from Irene, as well as what he’d realized when he opened those doors to distant places—
This world was far more than just a single Borderlands. Outside this strange “city,” there were countless “distant places.”
“I probably know a bit,” Yu Sheng said as he thought. “From the name, it seems to connect to many places? I’ve heard that all kinds of weird things exist here, just hidden beneath the surface of ‘normal’...”
“Hiding things that go beyond reason, beyond the ‘baseline’ of the Borderlands, and keeping this city operating and developing according to ‘standard parameters’—that is one of the Special Services Bureau’s jobs,” Bai Liqing nodded lightly. “As you understand, this place connects to many places. And the number and breadth of those connections exceed anyone’s imagination. You can imagine the entire world as a huge ‘web’ woven from countless traffic lines. These ‘traffic lines’ don’t exist in the physical dimension, and ordinary people can’t perceive them. But on the ‘supernatural’ side, they become entangled, influencing each other, and there is a place where all lines converge...
“That place is the Borderlands.”
Bai Liqing paused to confirm Yu Sheng fully understood before continuing.
“The first job of the Special Services Bureau is to maintain the boundary between the ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ within the Borderlands, ensuring order on the ‘supernatural’ side. The second job is to handle all threats that spread through the ‘traffic web’ toward this ‘convergence point’—whether they come from a stone’s throw away or from deep space three hundred sixty billion light-years away.”
Yu Sheng’s eyes widened. It took him a few seconds before he blurted out, “...Isn’t the distance span a bit too huge?”
“For the special nature of the ‘Borderlands,’ these distances are the same,” Bai Liqing said calmly, raising a hand and pointing at Yu Sheng. “For you, isn’t it the same?”
Yu Sheng was taken aback, then quickly understood what she meant.
“Among those hundred rifts, no fewer than double digits pointed beyond ten billion light-years,” Bai Liqing said flatly.
Yu Sheng didn’t reply.
His expression was calm, but inside, his thoughts were churning.
In fact, he wasn’t surprised. When those doors had opened, he had already guessed as much—how far away were those distant sights?
He didn’t have a clear answer. But when he and Irene had discussed it enthusiastically, he felt that some of them were probably at the outer limits of his imagination.
Hearing the number from Bai Liqing now felt like his imagination suddenly got a “footnote.”
What truly shocked Yu Sheng was the “coverage” of the “Special Services Bureau.” He had seen Li Lin—an “operative” who stocked up on instant noodles with him at the supermarket, and who disguised himself as a young guy scrolling through short videos on his phone while staking out (he’d made the connection by now). His style was, at best, that of a neighborhood cop. For such a character to suddenly have an organization behind him with a background spanning the stars and the universe... that was hard to imagine.
But Yu Sheng hesitated for a long time and didn’t feel comfortable expressing that sentiment to the “director” in front of him.
Mainly, he was worried about affecting Li Lin’s career...
Neither Yu Sheng nor Bai Liqing spoke for a while. They fell into a brief silence.
Half a minute later, Bai Liqing broke the silence: “Anything else you want to ask?”
“Yes,” Yu Sheng quickly cleared the messy thoughts from his mind, organized his words, and said, “Next question—is there only one ?”