Chapter 261: The Distress Call

The news that the great gate had opened quickly spread throughout the valley. The children were drawn over and, quite curious, kept ducking in and out of the new portal, but before long the smaller ones were dragged off by the ears by their "parents" and shooed back to the "little town"—after all, the orphanage side was still a wasteland, with construction machinery everywhere, and for the children who couldn't yet skillfully control their own abilities, or hadn't even awakened any at all, the danger of playing around here was honestly a bit too high.

Princess Bai Xue and the others, meanwhile, were leading a few half-grown kids around the ruins, rummaging here and there within areas that wouldn't interfere with the cleanup crews.

Although the entire orphanage had been razed flat, and the two main buildings had twisted grotesquely during their transformation into "umbilical cords," within these ruins one could still occasionally find some intact objects—not necessarily anything useful, but objects brimming with memory for the members of "Fairy Tale."

Dorothy had made some discovery in the distance: "Rapunzel! I found a few novels—see if they're yours! There are also two smashed figurines lying next to them…"

Then Rapunzel went "aaaaaah" and ran over shrieking.

Next, Princess Bai Xue also directed the Thunder Titans to haul away the cement chunks that had piled up and fused together as if they had melted, and beneath the ruins they found part of the activity room—they uncovered a graffiti board and a wooden chest for storing indoor toys.

Yu Sheng stood not far off with Little Red Riding Hood, silently watching the situation in the ruins. After a while, Yu Sheng spoke quietly: "Aren't you going to look around? Maybe some of your things are still here."

"Anything important was already taken out," Little Red Riding Hood shook her head, but after a brief silence she still looked toward Li Lin, who was standing nearby. "Could I trouble you to keep an eye out? If you find anything relatively intact while clearing the ruins, collect it for us…"

"Of course," Li Lin nodded immediately, but then added, "though we can only do our best—after all, we're going straight in with the machines, and most of the cleanup crew can't be as careful and thorough as you all."

"Best is enough."

"Then no problem."

Yu Sheng listened from the side without chiming in, and just then a ringtone suddenly blared from his pocket, cutting off the exchange between Little Red Riding Hood and Li Lin.

Yu Sheng pulled out his phone and saw it was an unfamiliar number.

After a moment's hesitation, he answered and held it to his ear.

A somewhat familiar voice came through the receiver, tinged with nervousness and panic—a young man: "Hello? Hello! Can you hear me? Bro Yu? I %￥%%@…"

Intermittent static came through the earpiece. Yu Sheng froze, then suddenly remembered where he'd heard that vaguely familiar voice before: "…Little nephew?!"

Little Red Riding Hood beside him immediately looked baffled: "Who's calling?"

"Old Zheng's nephew," Yu Sheng turned his head and said quickly. He had already sensed something off in the static coming through the earpiece, so he immediately pressed on the phone, "It's Yu Sheng. What's your situation over there? Run into danger?"

Another brief burst of noise from the earpiece, but after two or three seconds a normal human voice came through: "I'm in a shopping mall. Something about the situation here doesn't seem right—lots of things have shifted position all at once, the people have changed too, and there are a bunch of mirrors… It's my first time running into something like this, and I don't know any other experts… Could you come %￥@%#￥…"

Halfway through listening, Yu Sheng switched straight to speakerphone. Just as the static rose again and before he could speak, Little Red Riding Hood beside him leaned straight at the phone and shouted: "Cut the crap! Just say which mall!"

Intermittent static kept pouring from the speaker, interspersed with the young man's increasingly off-key voice: "Heyang District… @#￥, around the Mixc Mall… but I went in through some weird door, and inside it doesn't look like… &**&￥"

The static completely drowned out the young man's voice; what came after became muddled mumbling mixed in with the noise, and then the phone signal cut out.

Yu Sheng looked up and exchanged a glance with Little Red Riding Hood, but before he could speak, Li Lin beside him had already snatched up his phone, dialed with practiced ease, and held it to his ear: "Second Brigade, Li Lin. Anomaly Class iii. A person possibly trapped in Heyang District near the Mixc Mall… Yes, there was a signal a minute ago but comms just dropped—suspect currently sinking into an Other Domain… Good, the patrol team's already deployed? Good."

Yu Sheng watched Li Lin's conditioned-reflex-level response and was somewhat surprised for a moment. The latter, noticing the gaze on him, looked a bit awkward: "Uh, what?"

"You're pretty reliable," Yu Sheng said offhandedly. "Don't tell me you handle this kind of thing often?"

"Not that often, but we covered it all in training—after all, that's what the Special Affairs Bureau does," Li Lin said quickly, though his expression was a touch unnatural. "Honestly I'm still a bit nervous—this is my first time reporting an Anomaly Class iii on my own…" "I'm going over to check the situation," Little Red Riding Hood cut off the exchange between Li Lin and Yu Sheng. As she spoke, the shadows of wolves had already begun to stir faintly around her. "Yu Sheng, you coming?"

"Together," Yu Sheng said without hesitation. "The guy called me, after all."

"I've got a mission, I still have to stay here," Li Lin shook his head helplessly. "But my colleagues are over there—if you need anything, you can find them."

Yu Sheng nodded, then called over Hu Li and Eileen and went straight into the shadows along with Little Red Riding Hood's wolf pack.

The wolf pack, condensed from shadows, swiftly crossed the dimensions between light and shadow, leaping and weaving among the abstract, shadow-rendered "plates" of the city—in the blink of an eye they had crossed several blocks.

Hu Li, imitating Yu Sheng, also sat on a shadow wolf, eyes wide as she curiously took in the monochrome, projection-like, half-familiar city buildings around them. Eileen, meanwhile, clung tightly to Yu Sheng's shoulder, looking around while muttering nervously: "What's going on, what's happening… Is that 'little nephew' gonna be okay?"

"That's high-sensitivity-low-stability for you," Little Red Riding Hood's voice came from the side, sounding a bit vexed. "Should've applied for Special Affairs Bureau protection for him earlier, but his 'high-sensitivity-low-stability' situation is just too absurd… He barely had any formal contact with any supernatural elements in the Old Zheng incident—the only link was that he got close to the scene… How does he still get tangled up by 'the other side' like this…"

"Who could've seen that coming," Yu Sheng's tone was also a bit complicated, because this was the first time he had directly seen an ordinary person, after coming into contact with information about "the other side of the world," genuinely get "tangled up" by a supernatural event again. "After we wrapped up Old Zheng's matter, I told him to head straight home. Thought it was over…"

He paused at that, looked up at Little Red Riding Hood: "Do you know the mall he mentioned? Is there an Other Domain there?"

"The Mixc? I know it, I've been twice. Of course that place isn't an Other Domain—but the entrances to many Other Domains move at random, and they can even pop right up in a victim's face when conditions are right. Running into one anywhere isn't strange," Little Red Riding Hood said with a serious face. "You yourself ran into a sudden freezing rain once, remember?"

!

Yu Sheng blinked, recalled the frog in the rain, and his expression turned a touch subtle: "Wow, if you hadn't reminded me I'd forgotten. Feels like ages ago."

He then shook his head, tossing aside for the moment those somewhat heartening memories: "You're more professional than me. From that phone call just now, can you tell what's going on? Do you think 'little nephew' is in trouble?"

"When the call first connected his voice was still clear, meaning he hadn't fully 'sunk down' yet—should've been in the process of sinking from l-0 toward l-1. If he were an experienced Spirit Realm detective or investigator, at this stage he could get himself out completely. The depth between Level Zero and Level One is almost directly connected to the real world; safe fissures are visible to the naked eye."

Little Red Riding Hood shook her head as she spoke.

"Then the static appeared and the signal was interfered with—he should've already passed l-1 depth. At that point, for an ordinary person to get out depends on luck, but the surroundings probably aren't fatal yet. Level One depth is, most of the time, just 'looking not quite right,' with almost no lethal mechanisms, and there are safe passages back to reality… But again, it comes down to luck.

"And the bad part is, the signal dropped really fast back then—the whole thing seemed to last about a minute? Then the noise completely drowned out the human voice, and there were delirious mutterings mixed in… That means he 'sank' very quickly—he might've gone straight past l-1. Hopefully he stays in some Other Domain at the l-2 level… At least until the rescue team finds him…"

Yu Sheng listened carefully. Although he had already been through an event at the Dark Angel level, this kind of foundational-domain knowledge was still quite fresh to him—much of the experience-based stuff couldn't be found in databases; only a veteran Spirit Realm detective like Little Red Riding Hood would know it.

At this point Hu Li also turned her head and chimed in from the side: "He also mentioned that people and things had changed, and a bunch of mirrors…"

"Can't tell much from that. Distortion of surrounding things is the most common phenomenon during the process of falling into an Other Domain—most of the time it's not that the surroundings have changed, but that the victim's own 'field of vision' is shifting. As for the many mirrors… there are just too many Other Domains related to mirrors," Little Red Riding Hood waved a hand. "Just off the top of my head I know over a dozen—the specifics will have to wait until we're on site. The Special Affairs Bureau people should already be there by now; they've got plenty of detection equipment, and there are high-power scanning stations all over the city. Maybe they've already picked up a signal from 'little nephew' during his descent."

Eileen looked up at Little Red Riding Hood, then at Yu Sheng, and finally couldn't hold it in: "…You two keep saying 'little nephew,' 'little nephew,' but the guy must have a name, right? What's his name?"

Little Red Riding Hood and Yu Sheng exchanged a look.

"…No idea!" the two said in unison.

(End of chapter)