Chapter 19 – Going Home

Li Lin stared somewhat blankly at the empty corner of the wall, still holding the scraping tool used for collecting samples, his mind adrift as though he had forgotten what he was supposed to be doing.

The middle-aged man known as “Captain Song” — Song Cheng, captain of the Special Operations Bureau’s Team Two — furrowed his brow tightly the moment he saw the bloodstain disappear.

Something had vanished from his memory and thoughts, yet a residual impression remained, and that faint impression was stimulating his “spiritual sense,” making him aware that something was off.

A murky glimmer surfaced in the depths of Song Cheng’s eyes. He immediately took control of his mind and tried to “solidify” the last remnants of that lingering impression in his heart, preventing it from fading along with certain memories. Years of professional training made itself useful at this moment. Li Lin, who was holding the scraping tool, hesitated before raising his head: “Sir, I feel like I suddenly forgot what I was doing. Was there something here just now?”

“There’s a mental interference!” Song Cheng reacted instantly, quickly warning, “Check the ‘depth’ of this place immediately!”

Li Lin immediately put down the sampling tool in his hand without another word. He swiftly unclipped a jet-black box, no bigger than a palm, from his belt, pressed a few spots on its surface, and then drew out a thin “tube” from its side. He connected the needle-like tip of the tube directly to his own eyeball. After doing all of this, he raised his head and slowly scanned his surroundings with the eye connected to the tube.

A faint humming sound came from within the jet-black iron box, and it seemed as though a liquid was slowly flowing through the thin tube. Li Lin’s eye gradually turned pitch black, and in his spiritual vision, everything on the old, worn-down street began to take on a monochrome black-and-white hue.

“Depth L-0, no Otherworld reaction,” Li Lin reported as he observed, “No entities or residual traces from the ‘Otherworld’ visible either.”

Song Cheng frowned and glanced at the box in Li Lin’s hand — this was a portable depth-detector. Its sensing range and sensitivity were no match for the standard briefcase-sized equipment, but even a portable model should be able to detect any changes in “depth” within range.

He was certain that something had truly affected his memory and thoughts just now. The residual “impression” was still being forcibly preserved in the depths of his mind. There had to be something sinister here exerting its influence on him, and yet… the equipment wasn’t picking it up.

And just as he was about to tell Li Lin to adjust the depth-detector’s sensing mode, the latter seemed to suddenly discover something.

Li Lin stared fixedly at a particular spot at the end of the alley.

The eye connected to the tube was as dark as ink, and within that deep blackness, another field of vision was reflected. He saw that amid the black-and-white buildings lining the street, there was a faint trace of colour — the colour was extremely blurry and faint, impossible to make out clearly, but its scale was large. He strained to distinguish it for a long while before roughly determining the outline of that near-transparent silhouette, judging it to be approximately the size of a house.

“Captain Song, there’s something up ahead, but it’s very blurry, looks like it might be a house,” he said, carefully making his way forward. “The depth reading is still 0, and there’s no contamination reaction… I’m almost in front of it now. Can you sense anything?”

Song Cheng followed behind Li Lin, his right hand gripping a badge in his pocket, ready to intervene at any moment should something go wrong. He frowned and shook his head: “My spiritual sense isn’t giving any warning.”

Li Lin stopped at a certain spot. He felt as though he had come to stand before that hazy smear of colour. Then, after a moment of hesitation, he slowly reached his hand forward —

A sharp, piercing hum suddenly erupted from within the jet-black iron box, followed by several crackling sounds. Accompanied by a wisp of smoke, the depth-detector ceased functioning.

The tube connected to his eyeball instantly fell away, and a substance as dark as sludge trickled out from it, rapidly evaporating and dispersing upon contact with the air.

The sudden soreness and stinging pain in his eye made Li Lin involuntarily curse under his breath. He threw down the black box, which had started to burn his hand, and instinctively went to rub the eye that had been connected to the tube. Song Cheng, watching from beside him, immediately stepped forward and pressed his hand against the area near Li Lin’s temple: “Don’t rub it! It’ll pass in a moment!”

Li Lin froze in place. He felt a burning sensation near his temple, while the discomfort in his eye rapidly faded. A moment later, he recovered, and looked down at the depth-detector still smouldering on the ground.

“…Can I put in a reimbursement claim with the Bureau?”

“You can.”

“That’s a relief, gave me a scare,” Li Lin let out a breath, then turned his head, staring uneasily in the direction he had reached toward.

However, there was only a small empty plot here, at the end of which was a wall — the wall had been scrawled with graffiti by some unknown person, its surface covered in colourful spray-painted images of doors, windows, houses, trees, stones, and the like.

He reached out and swept his hand forward. He didn’t touch anything.

“There was definitely something here. The instrument had already detected it, but I hadn’t managed to confirm it before the device broke,” Li Lin muttered to himself. “Right before it broke, the depth reading was still L-0.”

“…Let’s head back to the Bureau first,” Song Cheng deliberated for two seconds and made his decision. “Once we’re back, I’ll file a report to the council. This place really does need to be kept under surveillance for a while. We can’t rule out the possibility that it’s some kind of unregistered ‘Otherworld.’ Probably going to need large-scale equipment and dedicated ‘deep-divers’ to deal with it. Also, is your eye alright?”

“…If something is wrong with it, can I get a half-day off?”

“No, the Bureau is short-staffed.”

“Then there’s nothing wrong with it. I’ll just go put some eye drops in when I get back.”

Song Cheng nodded. Li Lin bent down and carefully picked up the remains of the depth-detector, which had stopped smoking. The two of them walked one behind the other back to where they had parked the electric scooters.

Li Lin turned the key. The electric scooter’s LCD screen flickered once, then went dark.

He stared blankly for a moment, then looked up — right into Captain Song’s gaze, which mirrored his own expression.

“My scooter’s dead… yours too?” Song Cheng silently nodded.

“…Do you think it’s a coincidence?”

Song Cheng gently shook his head and spoke in a low voice: “The people from the ‘Academy’ have a specific saying to explain this phenomenon.”

Li Lin was momentarily taken aback, then recalled some documents he had read before —

“The machine spirits are displeased.” / “The machine spirits chickened out.”

The two of them spoke simultaneously, but not in unison.

Then they each fell silent for a moment, this time genuinely in unison: “You’ve got it wrong.”

“We can sort that out later,” Song Cheng waved his hand and began pushing the electric scooter slowly on his way back. “Let’s leave this place first.”

Li Lin pushed his scooter and followed behind Song Cheng: “…Sir, are we really just going to push these all the way back?”

“What else? You don’t want your scooter anymore?”

“Doesn’t the Bureau have a small van or something? If not, we could call over that electric three-wheeler from the logistics office downstairs… pushing these all the way back is going to kill me…”

“Less whining. You’re young — how do you have less stamina than me?”

The two veteran agents of the Special Operations Bureau pushed their scooters off into the distance, their figures gradually disappearing at the mouth of Wutong Road.

……

Yu Sheng was already quite familiar with the boundless, deep darkness around him. He’d been coming here rather frequently of late, and when he drifted through this expanse of dark chaos, he almost felt as though he were coming home.

Eileen’s screams were still ringing in his ears.

He thought that the sight of himself pushing open the door, covered in blood with a hole in his stomach, and dying inside the room had probably given that Person in the Painting quite a fright — it seemed that even Eileen, a “cursed object” by nature, had her limits when it came to psychological endurance.

This made Yu Sheng all the more curious about what would happen after he “came back.”

When he returned to the world of the living and appeared before Eileen again… what would the little doll’s reaction be?

Would she… still remember the sight of him pushing open the door and dying in the room?

Yu Sheng drifted through the darkness. Hu Li’s figure surfaced before his “eyes.” He recalled his experience in that night-shrouded mountain valley, remembering how Hu Li, upon seeing him in the ruined temple, had completely forgotten the whole ordeal of headbutting someone to death — though somehow she had suddenly remembered later on, at first, Hu Li had indeed completely forgotten his “death.”

Yu Sheng didn’t know what to make of this “forgetting,” nor was he sure whether the issue lay with himself or with Hu Li — after all, that fox girl’s mind already seemed quite muddled, and it wouldn’t be unusual for her to suddenly forget certain things.

But if Eileen also failed to remember the sight of him pushing open the door and dying in the room, then Yu Sheng could be fairly certain… that the problem lay with himself.

There was no way to judge how much time passed while drifting in the darkness, so after briefly sorting through his experiences up to this point, Yu Sheng emptied his mind, let his tightly strung nerves rest a little, and patiently waited for the moment the darkness would end.

And then, he felt that familiar sensation of falling, the feeling of rapidly “returning” to the mortal world.

Prepared as he was, Yu Sheng immediately focused his concentration and tried to capture his perceptions at the moment he crossed the “threshold” —

Familiar scenes flashed before his “eyes” one after another, and a faint, indefinable sense of guidance was driving him to “fall” in a particular direction. He struggled to distinguish between the chaotic stream of images that surged up in those fleeting moments, but before he could grasp anything, he “saw” one of those images rapidly magnifying before his eyes —

No. 66 Wutong Road. The living room just inside the front door.

Yu Sheng snapped his eyes open.

The familiar interior of his home came into view. In the dining room beside the living room, a classical and exquisitely crafted Oil Painting sat quietly on the dining table.

The Eileen within the Oil Painting broke the silence.

“Yu Sheng! You’re finally back!”

(End of Chapter)