Chapter 212 – A Very Large Door

In truth, Yu Sheng really wanted to emphasize that after this period of practice and adaptation, he had made tremendous progress in “sculpting” buildings within the Valley. The two rows of stately, antiquated pillars flanking the teleportation gate on the platform were the best proof. He wouldn’t dare claim he could sculpt a luxury hotel for the orphanage children, but at the very least, throwing together two rows of resettlement housing wouldn’t be a problem. However, after giving it some careful thought—he decided it would be better to just prepare the foundations.

The main reason was that the Special Operations Bureau had already prepared all the materials. It’d be a waste not to take advantage of that…

Of course, to demonstrate his craftsmanship, he still split some of his focus while leveling the foundations and put up a structure at the far end of the planned campsite.

Soil and rock reorganized deep beneath the earth, rising gradually with a low, rumbling hum, interweaving on the surface like living limbs, stacking and thickening layer upon layer, transforming into pale gray pedestals, walls, columns, and rooftops. Then the walls further differentiated, forming doors, windows, and simple decorations. Ailin was drawn by the commotion and ran over to watch curiously as this massive building rose from the ground at the edge of the wasteland. She turned her head and asked with curiosity, “What’s this?”

“Having nothing but a bunch of prefab trailers in the camp would be a bit dull, and no matter how comfortable they are, it still feels like you’re refugees. So I built Little Red Riding Hood and the others a ‘castle,'” Yu Sheng explained cheerfully to the little doll. “It can also serve as the Fairy Tale organization’s ‘office’—and if all else fails, it works as a warehouse. When the Bureau’s construction crew arrives, we’ll just have them hook up the electricity.”

Ailin listened in stunned silence, then climbed onto Yu Sheng’s shoulder, shading her eyes with her hand as she gazed at the pale gray, stone-textured building for a long while, muttering, “If you hadn’t told me, I would’ve thought it was a scenic public restroom with three courtyards and two barbican gates…”

Yu Sheng reached up to flick the doll off his shoulder. “…You’re never going to let that go, are you?!”

Ailin instantly hopped down from Yu Sheng’s shoulder with a giggle, dodging in circles as she said, “Alright, alright, I’ll stop messing around—to be fair, this one actually does look pretty decent. It’s rough around the edges, sure, but it looks quite imposing. It’s got that vibe of those mysterious, inexplicable alien ruins you see in game cinematics…”

Yu Sheng suspected the doll was implying that the building he’d painstakingly sculpted looked absurd, but he had no proof.

Not that he particularly cared. After all, Hu Li beside him was already wagging her tail so fast it left afterimages, sweeping up clouds of dust and gravel…

The basic foundations of the campsite were soon essentially complete.

“Next up is coordinating with the Special Operations Bureau.” Watching the last stretch of foundation before him gradually harden and take on a rock-like texture, Yu Sheng let out a small breath. He pulled out his phone to check the time while easing his somewhat taut nerves. “…Not bad, a bit faster than expected.”

Ailin curiously climbed onto Yu Sheng’s arm to peek at his phone screen. “It’s already this late—doesn’t the Bureau take breaks?”

“They said all personnel and materials are on twenty-four-hour standby. The settlement construction and relocation work going forward will be done in rotating shifts—people rest, but work doesn’t stop.” As he spoke, Yu Sheng casually dialed Baili Qing’s number. “When it comes to things like this, they’re quite reliable… Hello? It’s Yu Sheng. Everything’s ready on this end.”

From the other end of the line came only Baili Qing’s calm reply: “Good. Come straight to my office.”

“I have to say, she really is cold,” Yu Sheng said blankly, muttering to Ailin and Hu Li as he hung up the phone. “No wonder everyone calls her Iron Stone-Face…”

The next second, another voice drifted out from his phone: “I am not Iron Stone-Face.”

Yu Sheng: “…”

Silently ending the call, he tugged at the corner of his mouth. “This touchscreen is acting up.”

An ethereal door opened out of thin air, and a temporary passage extended from Otherworld Valley straight to the Bureau Chief’s office in Special Operations Bureau headquarters. Yu Sheng walked out through the door with a straight face, and was met by an equally straight-faced Baili Qing, as well as Song Cheng beside her, who was barely managing to keep his own face straight.

He realized that when he’d been trash-talking a certain lady as Iron Stone-Face moments ago, there had apparently been more than one listener present—Captain Song’s face was clearly screaming, “Great, I was sitting right next to my boss when I heard something I shouldn’t have, and now I’m definitely pulling overtime for this.”

Everyone very tactfully avoided mentioning what had happened on the phone. Then Baili Qing personally led the way, guiding Yu Sheng and company into another elevator in the corridor.

In this strange Special Operations Bureau headquarters building, nearly all the special floors were connected by these bizarre elevators—and they didn’t necessarily move in any predictable direction. Yu Sheng first felt the elevator ascending, but after about a dozen floors, he noticed the arrow above the car had changed to point straight down. Before he could process this, the arrow rotated ninety degrees in place, indicating the car was now moving horizontally to the left. After another moment, he felt the entire elevator lurch violently, and a gentle female voice came through the electronic synthesizer: “Transfer Level—Port. You have arrived.”

The car doors opened, and an astonishingly vast space appeared before Yu Sheng’s eyes.

Slightly dazed, he led Ailin and Hu Li out of the elevator and found himself standing on a metal platform. Surrounding the platform was an enormous artificial island. The open ground was lined with over a dozen large buildings arranged as neatly as warehouses. Numerous transport vehicles, seemingly unmanned, were shuttling back and forth between the warehouses and the port facilities in the distance. And beyond this extraordinarily vast area stretched an endless… ocean.

Yu Sheng instinctively gazed toward that glittering sea, spotting numerous large transport ships bearing the Special Operations Bureau’s insignia moored at the docks along the artificial coastline. He watched as one ship departed the port, gradually accelerating toward that boundless ocean—and the next second, a chaotic curtain of light abruptly materialized on the sea surface. The transport ship seemed to pass directly through some invisible “rift,” vanishing rapidly into the swirling light.

A faint mechanical hum came from behind him. Yu Sheng turned around and saw that the elevator car’s doors had already closed. The entire car was connected to the platform’s edge by a series of sturdy rails, and as the mechanical apparatus on the tracks activated, the whole car began retreating rapidly, disappearing in the blink of an eye into another patch of chaotic light.

After holding it in for a long while, Yu Sheng finally couldn’t help but speak up: “…Where on earth did you bring me? Is this still the Borderland?”

“This is the ‘Border.’ What you see before you is both a storage facility and a transportation hub for the outside world,” Song Cheng said with a laugh. “As you know, the entire Borderland is actually a sealed space, different from the normal universe outside. People in the Borderland—aside from you, of course—we ordinary folk can only get out through those fixed ‘natural passages.’ These natural passages come in all sizes. A small one might be a drawer in some office inside Bureau headquarters. A large one… a train station, the end of a tunnel, or, as you can see, a port.” Song Cheng pointed toward the glittering sea in the distance.

“This place can only be reached via ‘shortcuts’—it’s part of the shortcut network. Depth level one, danger level zero. This stretch of sea overlaps with a body of water on some planet ‘outside.’ Cross that light barrier you just saw, and you’re outside the Borderland. Of course, we can’t go through right now—leaving from here requires getting a permit from the Council first…”

Song Cheng suddenly stopped and stared fixedly at Yu Sheng.

“…You’re not going to just open a door and leave from here, are you?” he asked nervously.

Yu Sheng was caught between amusement and exasperation at the man’s reaction. “It’s not like I have that kind of free time.”

“Oh.”

Song Cheng nodded, but not two seconds later he was anxiously confirming again: “You really won’t leave from here, right?”

“To open a door, I first need specific coordinates, and the coordinates only affect where I end up—not where I open the door from,” Yu Sheng said helplessly, spreading his hands. “If I really wanted to go outside, I could just open a door from home. There’s no need to cause trouble for you here.”

“Oh, well that’s fine then,” Song Cheng nodded again, then smiled a bit sheepishly. “Don’t blame me for being nosy—it’s just that this place is pretty sensitive.”

Yu Sheng thought about it and figured this was probably the difference between sneaking across the border through an unmanned wilderness and fighting your way out through customs—though both technically counted as illegal border crossing, the latter was doing it with considerably more swagger…

Soon, Baili Qing and Song Cheng led Yu Sheng and his companions away from the metal platform and to the entrance of a large warehouse.

A reception team was already waiting there—and alongside them stood a construction crew in Special Operations Bureau Engineering Department uniforms, over a dozen large transport vehicles, and all manner of materials loaded to the brim on those trucks.

Trying to transport enough materials and an accompanying construction crew to build a temporary settlement from the real world to Otherworld Valley through a single door in a basement was clearly unrealistic.

Baili Qing had naturally considered this point, which was precisely why she had brought Yu Sheng here.

“You said you need a door large enough—ideally one that trucks could drive straight through,” Baili Qing said, gesturing toward the warehouse beside them. “A physically existing door can effectively reduce the mental strain of your Door Opening—does this door work for you?”

Yu Sheng looked up at the warehouse door, which was large enough for two container trucks to drive through side by side.

“…Honestly, this is my first time opening a door at this scale. Even I’m curious whether it’ll work,” he said, rubbing his chin as an eager, can’t-wait-to-try expression gradually spread across his face. “Let’s give it a shot.”

The moment Yu Sheng said even he wasn’t sure and could only try, Song Cheng instinctively frowned. “Uh, what if it doesn’t work?”

“If it doesn’t work, then we’ll have to unload everything from the trucks, break it all down, and stuff it into the fox’s tail to transport bit by bit,” Yu Sheng said, glancing over at Hu Li. “Can you fit all that?”

Hu Li looked up at the dozen-plus large trucks and gave it serious thought.

“Whole vehicles definitely won’t fit. Even with the Shrinking Technique, each object still needs to be under four meters…” the fox-spirit girl said, gesturing with her hands as she estimated.

Yu Sheng hummed in acknowledgment and turned to Song Cheng. “That’s a pretty big limitation. Let’s hope the door opens smoothly.”

Song Cheng’s expression went a bit blank—mainly because he still wasn’t quite used to Yu Sheng’s wildly leaping thought process…

Clearly, as a middle-aged corporate drone who was busy every single day, his understanding of certain bizarre details surrounding Yu Sheng was not yet deep enough.

Yu Sheng paid no attention to Song Cheng’s reaction. By this point, he had already walked up to the massive door and placed his hand against its frame.

As long as it’s a door… it should be possible to open, right?

(End of Chapter)