Chapter 275: Yu Sheng Ponders for a Moment

Staring at the street outside, which looked as normal as ever, Yu Sheng froze for a long while, then heard the patter of footsteps from behind—Ailin had also run out from the living room and stood dazed at the door alongside him.

"... Hey, wait, where's the fog outside? It looked like a huge fog just now!"

Yu Sheng, however, said nothing. He just frowned and gazed outside for a moment, then, as if suddenly thinking of something, turned around and went back to the living room.

Outside the window, the scene was still one of dense fog.

He checked several times, and the result was always the same.

The fog was limited to outside the window?

Yu Sheng returned to the window, stared at the mist outside in thought for a while, and decided to try opening it.

The window opened easily. Looking out through it, he found that the street outside had also returned to its normal appearance—but when he looked out through the part of the glass that couldn't be opened, he could still see that thick fog, as if it blanketed the entire world.

Ailin and Huli had followed along and witnessed the whole process. Both were now just as bewildered as Yu Sheng. Ailin, eyes wide, was the first to speak: "Does that mean you can only see the fog through the window glass?"

Huli immediately followed up: "An illusion realm?"

Yu Sheng silently closed the window again, gazed at the fog-shrouded street outside, thought for a moment, then said softly: "We need to check the windows in other places too."

Huli dashed upstairs with a whoosh, and Ailin's other two bodies immediately went clattering up the stairs as well. After a brief moment of thought, Yu Sheng also headed up the stairs—he wanted to personally check the room at the end of the second-floor corridor.

A moment later, the three of them were back in the living room, comparing notes on what they'd found.

Ailin: "There's fog outside the master bedroom window! And outside the attic window too!"

Huli nodded as well: "Same outside my room, but once you open the window you can't see it anymore—you can only see it through the glass."

"The room at the end of the second floor is the same," Yu Sheng spoke last, summing up the situation in a low voice. "Looks like the fog has completely surrounded the outside, but you can only see it through the window. The moment you actually open the door or window and look straight out, everything outside still looks normal... see it through the window... see it?"

He repeated the word, then suddenly frowned.

Ailin immediately jumped up from the sofa: "What did you think of?"

"Just a strange thought that popped into my head," Yu Sheng said hesitantly, frowning. "What if there really is fog outside now, and our house really is surrounded by fog—but surrounded on the 'other side'? And whether we open the window or not, looking through the window versus through the door, we're actually seeing two different scenes on two different 'sides'?"

That whole string of words completely short-circuited Ailin. The little puppet's brain wasn't exactly high-powered to begin with, and now she couldn't process it for the longest time. But Huli, standing nearby, actually grasped Yu Sheng's idea faster: "Benefactor, you mean... 'with fog' and 'without fog' are two different 'realms,' and our house is currently 'stuck' between two realms?"

Fox brains really were sharp.

After hearing Huli's explanation, Ailin finally caught up. She blinked as she translated the terms Huli used into this world's concepts in her head, then clapped her hands: "Oh—No. 66 Wutong Road is falling into another realm."

Then she just stared with her crimson eyes, locking gazes with Yu Sheng.

"What the hell!" Before anyone else could speak, she burst out on her own. "I've only ever heard of people falling into another realm, or at most machines with machine-souls falling into another realm—when has a house ever fallen in? Does your house have a house-soul?!"

Yu Sheng said nothing, just raised a finger and pointed at the fog-shrouded street outside.

Ailin was suddenly at a loss for words too.

"So what do we do now?" Huli asked curiously, her big eyes darting between Ailin and Yu Sheng. "If our house really is 'falling'... do we need to find a way to pull it back up? Or should we try to go to the 'other side' first and see what's going on? Maybe there's something over there dragging our house down..."

Ailin looked at Huli with genuine surprise: "Silly fox, you've got quite the imagination... But a house falling into another realm—how exactly are you supposed to 'pull' it back up?"

"I don't know... how do you pull a person back up when they fall into another realm?"

"If you haven't fallen deep, you just find an exit and walk out."

"... Our house doesn't exactly have legs, does it?"

"Obviously!"

Yu Sheng listened to the puppet and the fox discussing beside him, but for some reason, he didn't feel the slightest bit of tension.

He figured he ought to be tense. After all, No. 66 Wutong Road was now his foothold in this world, and this house was undergoing changes he'd never encountered before. If it really was, as Huli and Ailin guessed, gradually sinking into another realm, then this was definitely a huge deal—far more serious than him falling into another realm on his own.

But he just couldn't bring himself to feel tense. It was as though... he could now precisely sense the state of No. 66 Wutong Road, sense that it was stably, normally existing where it should be, and that the thick fog outside had no effect on it whatsoever. With this inexplicable feeling—whether it counted as "spiritual intuition" or not—Yu Sheng thought for a long time, then suddenly broke the silence: "Let's go into the fog first and see what's going on."

Ailin and Huli instantly stopped their pointless discussion, both fixing their eyes on Yu Sheng.

"How do we go?" Ailin asked. "Right now if we push the door open, the street outside still seems normal—our house hasn't fully sunk yet... Or are you planning to open a door to that place where you rescued your nephew before? Then run all the way from the 'other side' to here? That's pretty far, and who knows what we might run into along the way..."

"I'll try opening the door and going straight out." Yu Sheng said something that, to Ailin, came completely out of nowhere, then got up and walked straight to the front door, placing his hand on the handle.

The puppet and the fox both watched curiously.

Yu Sheng paid no more attention to the outside world, just kept his hand on the door handle, his eyes slightly narrowed.

It had been a long time since he'd done this.

Pushing open the front door of his home—but not assigning it directly to that familiar open space in front of the house.

He had always avoided actively "assigning" this door at the entrance of No. 66 Wutong Road to any other coordinate, because he always had some... special feelings and attachments for this door. He always remembered that it was on a certain day, when he mistakenly pushed open the front door of his home, that he arrived in this strange and dangerous world, that he left his familiar homeland. He always hoped that one day this door at the entrance might also take him back to that familiar home—and before that, he first had to fully understand his own power, master the bizarre and mysterious rules of this borderland...

But now, a bold idea suddenly struck him.

Perhaps, he should first thoroughly understand "No. 66 Wutong Road" itself—his understanding of this house that had become his "home" still seemed a little too shallow.

!

He sensed the few drops of his own blood he'd left in that thick fog before.

The connection established by a few drops of blood was incredibly faint, but a connection was a connection—as long as it existed, it could accurately point toward the "other side."

Drawing on the faint information it carried, Yu Sheng carefully distinguished the foggy world, distinguishing the subtle differences in "assignment" between the two worlds separated by fog.

He had no intention of opening a door to that block where Zheng Zhi had been trapped before—it wasn't that simple.

He was attempting an entirely new method of positioning.

He was going to find the "overall characteristics" of the foggy world, then directly map all of No. 66 Wutong Road onto the corresponding coordinate.

Since No. 66 Wutong Road could sink toward another realm as a whole, it meant this house might not actually be "fixed" here—so this operation should be feasible. As his first such bold attempt, all he needed to do now was accelerate the process and keep it under his control.

Let's give it a try—might work.

Yu Sheng opened his eyes and gently turned the handle.

Outside the door, thick fog blanketed everything.

……

Deep in the old city district, in the shop at the end of Wutong Road that had just hung up its "Star Express Collection Point" sign, the lights were on. Two Special Affairs Bureau agents temporarily stationed at the site had just finished debugging the equipment when they heard a strange noise coming from one of the machines.

"Hold on, what's that?" One agent immediately went over to the machine. Although strange noises or false interference reports from newly installed and debugged equipment were common, strict protocols and daily training kept him from ignoring even this small anomaly. He immediately began checking the various data the equipment had automatically recorded. "... Looks fine on paper, but I swear I caught a signal just now—why isn't it in the logs?"

The other Special Affairs Bureau agent also got up and went to a different sensor, preparing to check the comparison data.

And just as he rose, the corner of his eye caught a glimpse of the outside through the window.

Beyond the window lay the deepest part of Wutong Road, where several old houses stood amidst narrow alleys; the uninhabited dwellings were pitch black, their mottled exterior walls illuminated by streetlamps, while the narrow alleyway was steeped in silence.

The young Special Agent blinked, feeling nothing unusual for the first few seconds, merely casting a glance outside before returning his gaze downward to fiddle with the equipment installed only that afternoon.

Then, after nearly ten more seconds, he suddenly froze, his body jerking as if struck by lightning, and he whipped his head up, staring fixedly at the narrow alley and the few old houses standing just a stone's throw away.

His colleague, without looking up, asked, "What's the matter, making such a fuss... come help me check this..."

"Check, check, check what the hell!" The young Special Agent stared wide-eyed out the window, cold sweat visibly pouring from his forehead. "The... the... the open space outside is gone!!"

"... What?!"

"Number 66 Wutong Road is gone!!"

(End of this chapter)