Chapter 8: Don't Open Doors Randomly

Walking into the kitchen and closing the door tight, he turned on the range hood. Amidst the noisy clatter of the machine running, Yu Sheng felt his heart slowly calm down.

It was as if that thin wooden door of the kitchen and the racket of the range hood temporarily isolated a chaotic and bizarre world outside for him—he had finally returned to a place that belonged entirely to himself, where he could even temporarily pretend he wasn't in that huge and bizarre "Boundary City," but had returned to his familiar, true "home."

This big house was different from his original "home" in every way, but only this small kitchen closely resembled the structure in his memory, so after settling down a bit in this world, he had done his best to decorate it to look like what he was used to.

Every day while cooking here, he pretended he was still in his real home, pretending that morning he hadn't pushed open the front door, hadn't stepped into a strange city filled with eerie shadows—sometimes, busy as he was here, he even felt that if he just looked up, he would see the familiar street scene through the window, see the old street outside the kitchen bathed in orange-red clouds, and the reddish sunlight flowing on the exterior walls of the residential buildings in his memory...

But the view outside the window would always shatter these brief fantasies; now, looking out the window, he could only see a barren empty lot and some low, old bungalows not far away. There weren't many residential buildings here, but plenty of messy utility poles, and the warm, pleasant sky of his memory, he hadn't seen in a long time.

The daylight of this city was always either blindingly bright white or oppressively dim.

Yu Sheng sighed, casually pulled down the blinds outside the glass, and stopped paying attention to the shadowy night outside that seemed to last forever.

Picking and washing vegetables, heating the wok with cool oil, after scallions sizzled with fragrance, he deftly tossed the ingredients into the pot. Listening to the sizzling sound from the wok, Yu Sheng heard the noise of a TV program from outside the door—this strange city actually had a series of information channels including TV and mobile phones; in the initial period, much of his understanding of this "Boundary City" was achieved almost entirely by watching TV programs and scrolling through mobile news, and even now, this remained one of his important ways to learn about this "world."

"Yu Sheng! The TV volume is too low! Turn it up for me! Please!"

Suddenly, a girl's loud, hasty voice came from outside the door. Yu Sheng was startled, his hand shook, and he nearly flipped the vegetables out of the pot.

He had almost forgotten there was an Irene outside.

Before, when he was stir-frying in the kitchen, no one spoke outside!

"Wait!" Yu Sheng shouted back quite rudely, then couldn't help muttering, "... she's quite the social butterfly..."

But soon he tugged at the corner of his mouth, revealing a somewhat helpless smile.

Alright then, it's for the best; it adds a bit of "human atmosphere" to the house, at least it's some kind of noise.

After a while, Yu Sheng walked out carrying steaming hot dishes. He placed the bowls and plates on the dining table, casually turned the TV volume up two notches across from the table, then sat with his back to the TV, facing Irene's picture frame—he didn't have the habit of watching TV while eating, but he would leave it on as background noise; this at least wouldn't take up space from Irene, who could only watch TV from a fixed angle.

Irene, in the oil painting, held a teddy bear, stretched her neck to look at the food on the table, her eyes darting between the program and the dining table, muttering, "Looks pretty abundant..."

"Just some home-cooked dishes," Yu Sheng said casually, "I really like cooking."

"Oh." Irene made an "oh" sound and continued watching TV obediently, but after Yu Sheng started eating, she leaned her head to peek at the table again. After holding it in for a while, she finally couldn't help but speak up: "Just you eating while I watch?"

Yu Sheng lifted his eyelids, waved his chopsticks in front of Irene's picture frame: "Want a bite?"

Irene stared with wide eyes, but immediately lowered her head and started sulking with herself.

"... Alright, alright, let's just go through the motions." Seeing her expression, Yu Sheng also felt helpless. He sighed, went back to the kitchen to get an empty bowl, divided some rice and dishes from his own bowl into it, and held it out in front of Irene's picture frame, "I left you a bowl and chopsticks—you can just pretend to smell it; in the end, I'm the one who eats it anyway."

Irene frowned, looking at the rice bowl in front of the picture frame. After thinking for a moment, she decided it was fine, so she jumped off the chair, leaned close to the edge of the frame, her face occupying almost half the area of the frame, and looked very seriously at Yu Sheng: "Okay, that works too—thanks, you're quite considerate..."

Yu Sheng lowered his head and took a mouthful of rice, mumbling a response, then looked up and saw Irene in the frame, showing only her head. Immediately, his gaze shifted to the bowl of food in front of the frame, and suddenly he felt something was wrong...

Irene didn't notice anything wrong at all; she was just a bit strange about Yu Sheng suddenly zoning out: "What are you staring at?"

Yu Sheng quickly lowered his head and took two more mouthfuls of rice, then looked up at Irene again—

A pitch-black picture frame, a pitch-black background, the head of a doll girl, and a bowl of food in front of the portrait.

The whole thing was a "voice and face remain, smile and appearance persist. jpg."

The muscles on his face twitched twice, but after holding it in for a long time, he still didn't dare to say what he was thinking—mainly because Irene's cursing was terrible.

With things as they were, he could only eat. He had to pretend nothing happened, burying his head and eating fiercely under Irene's puzzled gaze, trying his best not to look at the person on the other side of the table whose "voice and face remained"... the meal felt like a gathering at a funeral hall.

Finally finishing the meal, Yu Sheng wiped his mouth and quickly cleared away all the cups, plates, and bowls in front of Irene's frame, tossing them into the kitchen sink to soak until he woke up early tomorrow to wash them—mainly because his waist still hurt a lot, and bending over the sink to wash dishes was a bit of a burden for him now.

But while the dishes didn't have to be washed, the trash couldn't be left; during this season, the trash bag in the kitchen couldn't be left in the house overnight. He endured the waist pain, cleaned up the garbage, and carried the bag out the door.

Irene, who was watching TV, looked up and asked curiously: "Hey, where are you going so late?"

"Do I have to report to you when I'm in my own house?" Yu Sheng replied sharply to this overly familiar painted doll, but still raised the trash bag in his hand to show her, "I'm going out to take out the trash."

"Oh, then come back early," Irene's gaze returned to the TV, "Such a big house, I'm scared being alone, what if a thief comes in..."

Yu Sheng rolled his eyes, thinking that in such a gloomy big house, if anyone really came in and saw a figure like a ghost swaying in a painting, the one who would be scared to death first would definitely not be the one in the painting; with Irene's state, even a thief would call the police first upon entering...

But he didn't dare say that in front of Irene.

Yu Sheng shook his head, muttered a few curses internally, walked to the door, put on his outdoor shoes, and reached out to grasp the front door handle.

He applied slight force with his hand, turned it, and pushed it open.

For some reason, he suddenly recalled two months ago, that ordinary morning, which felt like every ordinary day of his ordinary life.

!.

Back then, just like now, he pushed open his front door, walked outside, and stepped into a huge, suffocating, bizarre city, unable to return until now—

A strange association flashed through his mind. Yu Sheng shook his head with a self-mocking smile and pushed the door open to go out.

The crisp sound of dry branches snapping broke the silence in the valley. The cold night wind carried some unsettling smell of decay and rot. The chill in the air made Yu Sheng, who had gone out wearing only a single layer of clothes, shiver instinctively. Then it took him several seconds to restart the brain that had momentarily stopped running.

He saw himself standing amidst a desolate, dilapidated field of rubble. In the night distance, it seemed like a gloomy and grotesque dense forest, with two high mountains looming in the night sky on either side, like silent, grim giants looking down from both sides at the valley bottom, bringing an unbearable sense of heavy oppression.

Yu Sheng froze entirely in the cold night, then slowly turned his head to look at the place he had come from.

A collapsed, dilapidated pile of broken bricks and tiles came into view, looking like a ruined temple abandoned and fallen long ago, a hundred years past. A tattered door—or perhaps only a half-door panel draped over a crooked door frame—stood alone amidst the ruins. When the night wind blew, a hollow sobbing sound came from the gap between the broken door panel and the rubble.

Yu Sheng stared with wide eyes: "What the hell did you send me to..."

He finally gradually understood.

Accompanying his action of "opening the door," what had happened two months ago replayed.

He was thrown to a strange place again.

And this was worse than two months ago—although that huge and bizarre "Boundary City" had many differences from the "Boundary City" where he was born and raised, at least it was still a modern city where one could survive, but this time the situation was not good.

He was thrown into a wilderness.

A dense forest ahead, dangerous mountains on the left and right, and behind him only a ruined temple that had collapsed who knows how many years ago—Yu Sheng took one look and felt that this place not spawning thirty or fifty bandits or a few wolf demons and fox immortals right there would be a disservice to the terrain and landscape...

And the only thing he had in his hand was a bag of kitchen trash he had just carried out from home...

Yu Sheng thought for a moment, and the curses in his heart were terrible.

And just the next second, as the fragrant elegant words in Yu Sheng's heart were about to burst forth, a sudden voice suddenly came from his mind—

"Yu Sheng! The TV has no signal! When are you coming back?"

(End of Chapter)