Chapter 230: Spacetime Stacking

Four people (because a squirrel was added, this time the human content is even lower) stood dazed in the silver-white corridor, momentarily all a bit bewildered.

After a long while, Hu Li was the first to break the silence: "Benefactor, so this is behind the 'stage'?"

"It's not what I imagined," Erin muttered as well, "I thought it would be those kinds of tentacles, flesh and blood, eyeballs and such, with eerie voices everywhere... wasn't the art style like that before?"

"Don't ask me, I don't know what's going on either, this isn't what I imagined either," Yu Sheng waved his hand, but quickly pointed at a sign on the corridor wall, "But this place is indeed inside Ankaira... uh, inside its 'interior', the sign says so: Ankaira - Maintenance Corridor."

Hu Li widened her eyes in surprise: "Benefactor can read the text on this?"

"I can understand the meaning, but I don't recognize these characters," Yu Sheng frowned, looking down at the hunting suit he was wearing at this moment, "Maybe... it has something to do with the 'Hunter's' vision?"

After a moment of stunned silence, Erin quickly reacted: "Maintenance corridor?! What the heck? A maintenance corridor inside Ankaira's body, is that what it means?"

Yu Sheng couldn't give an answer; he could only lead the team, maintaining high alertness while walking deeper along this mysterious "maintenance corridor".

What place is this? Is it inside Ankaira's "body"? Or is it the road leading to Ankaira? Why is the "stage" behind the fairy tale such a corridor that clearly belongs to a man-made object? Ultimately... "Ankaira", the existence dubbed the "Gloomy Angel", what exactly is it?

Countless questions surged in his mind, yet in the empty corridor, only Yu Sheng and Hu Li's footsteps echoed monotonously. Yu Sheng didn't know where to go either; he simply followed some kind of "intuition" in his heart, walking deeper into the corridor, and choosing a direction that "felt most correct" whenever he encountered a fork.

The hunter's bullet was still slightly warm, guiding him toward a vague range; he could only roughly judge from the bullet's condition that his current direction of advance was not yet wrong.

A faint humming sound occasionally came from beneath their feet or overhead; it sounded like the noise emitted by some equipment in operation, but these sounds always felt somewhat unreal, as if they were merely a reappearance of some distant memories within a dream.

A slight dizziness struck; Yu Sheng instinctively looked forward.

His vision flickered; the brightly lit white corridor instantly turned into a torn and twisted wreckage, terrifying dark red shadows pierced the walls and floor, and mud-like proliferating substances gushed out from the broken pipes all around, polluting and covering everything; a large hole was broken in the roof ahead, and outside the hole was chaotic, mad light and shadow along with star phantoms that seemed infinitely stretched—

The squirrel immediately let out a tiny scream, even Erin loudly said "Damn", Yu Sheng and Hu Li instantly stopped their steps, their whole bodies' muscles tensing.

However, just as Hu Li had already hugged her two tails together, preparing to fire a round of Fox-Radish machine-gun sweeps at the front, that terrifying scene disappeared again, and the corridor returned to its bright and tidy state.

Yu Sheng and Erin on his shoulder looked at each other; the two fell silent for a moment, then the small doll spoke first: "Do you think that was the past, or the future?"

Yu Sheng's tone was grave: "It could also be the present, the true appearance."

"... You've already become a professional Spirit World detective," Erin tugged at the corners of her mouth, "knowing how to propose hypotheses from the most sinister and frightening angles."

"Benefactor," Hu Li walked over hugging her two big tails, her tone nervous, "I suspect there is a barrier technique here... I watched a horror movie when I was young, one shot was just like this."

Yu Sheng instinctively spoke: "Horror movie? What horror movie?"

"I forgot the name, it was just a person taking a boat out, but actually everyone on the boat had already died in an accident halfway, but this person suffered from Observer Effect Displacement Syndrome, so he never realized it, and continued sailing with the already disintegrated ship, then as the journey continued, he kept sinking toward 'another world', sinking all the way until he suddenly woke up in a world line where all life had gone extinct, and then went mad..."

Listening to this, Erin's hair stood on end: "Did you have to tell this kind of story in this kind of environment!"

The fox girl was still very aggrieved: "Benefactor asked me to tell it..."

Just then, Yu Sheng suddenly raised a hand, cutting off the doll and the fox's voices: "Shh."

The corridor instantly fell silent.

Then they heard footsteps.

Dense footsteps, sounding like a group of people, ran quickly from behind, very close.

Yu Sheng's eyes narrowed, and he immediately turned his head to look in the direction the sound came from.

However, he saw nothing; the corridor was still empty.

Only the footsteps sounded, and they seemed to be running right past him.

That sound, just like the humming around them, also carried a certain unreal, illusory quality.

Yu Sheng also heard what sounded like the hissing of a propulsion device pressurizing and depressurizing from the footsteps, as well as the sound of equipment carried on their bodies colliding and rubbing.

"Sounds like more than ten people ran past," Erin grabbed Yu Sheng's hair, speaking nervously, "Invisible people."

"Can't you, a cursed doll, be less nervous than me in this kind of environment?" Yu Sheng had to pull Erin's hand down, "And don't pull, I've already started losing hair these days." "It seems they went in that direction," Hu Li's ears twitched sensitively in the air, pointing her finger toward a fork ahead, "But after turning into the right fork, the sound disappeared."

Yu Sheng frowned, and quickly made a decision: "... Chase after them."

The group ran quickly through the corridor, turned at the fork according to Hu Li's hint, and after walking a bit further, a damaged silver-white metal gate suddenly appeared before their eyes.

Yu Sheng hesitated for a moment, just as he was preparing to walk toward that door, the footsteps appeared beside his ears again.

Those invisible people seemed to have arrived at the gate; immediately after, there was low conversation—speech was fast, but mixed with a lot of static, the content was unclear, only vague words like "break through", "lost contact", "continue mission" could be roughly heard.

Then he heard an explosion, a piercing tearing sound, a few low cries, and a distant, muffled alarm.

Yu Sheng's eyebrows furrowed tightly; at this very moment, he seemed to understand something.

"... It's them."

Erin cast a puzzled look: "Huh? Them? Who?"

"The deep-diving squad from seventy years ago," Yu Sheng slowly approached the gate, his fingers brushing over the damage marks on the door, "It's the sounds they left behind."

While speaking, he put Erin down on the ground, then bent down and carefully crawled through the hole between the two gates.

No single mistake, one sentence, one issue, one content, one look inside!

Erin and Hu Li also crawled in after him.

They all stood dazed, looking at the space behind the gate.

Inside was a large hall; the center of the hall was sunken, a huge structure resembling a pillar supported the center of the hall; countless pipes and cables were wrapped around the pillar, and a large number of display devices that had long since gone dark hung around the pillar; there were also many cables hanging from the ceiling, looking like dead blood vessels and nerves; around the hall were many unknown devices, which looked like neatly arranged square cabinets or cylinders, with some openings and display structures on their surfaces—but all the lights and display devices had long since gone dark.

"... This looks like a control center," Erin muttered softly.

Yu Sheng did not speak; he simply carefully confirmed the surrounding environment, then stepped forward toward the center of the hall.

But the next second, that familiar slight dizziness struck again; he suddenly stopped his steps, seeing the hall instantly turn into a wreckage shrouded in darkness and corruption; terrifying dark red substances covered all walls and floors; the cables hanging from the ceiling turned into twitching nerves and blood vessels; the devices arranged around the hall began to swell and wriggle like hearts; and the large pillar in the center turned into a giant tentacle-like shadow, with numerous display devices surrounding the pillar transforming into countless indifferent eyes covering the surface of that shadow...

That shadow bent down toward Yu Sheng and the others, and tentacle-like structures grew from its end.

But in the blink of an eye, all of this faded away like an illusion, and the hall returned to its previous appearance.

Yu Sheng steadied himself and continued walking forward.

Hu Li followed closely behind him, several tails floating quietly in mid-air, guarding the surroundings.

The footsteps sounded again, sounding somewhat chaotic.

The deep divers who arrived here seventy years ago seemed to have run into trouble; Yu Sheng heard the sound of weapons firing, and people shouting, as well as unsettling static and chaotic whispers mixed among the human voices.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a person wearing heavy protective armor stumble and appear in the air, but in the blink of an eye, disappeared before his eyes again.

This place was like a twisted spacetime node. Events happening at different times were stacked together, and even "realities" from different layers were stacked together.

Just then, Yu Sheng suddenly felt a wave of heat.

He raised his hand and saw the bullet from the "Hunter" trembling slightly in his palm; the increasingly intense heat was emanating from the bullet, and in the blink of an eye, that heat turned into an unbearable burning, as if the bullet had just left the gun barrel a second ago!

Yu Sheng instinctively shook his hand, and the bullet fell from his palm.

He quickly bent down to pick it up.

But just as he reached out, the corner of his eye saw everything around him suddenly lose its color.

At the same time, a strange and muffled voice entered his ears:

"... Final report, this is the Deep Dive Team, operation codename 'Adulthood'..."

(End of this chapter)