Chapter 70 – Contact

Chapter 70 – Contact

In the Special Operations Bureau, deep-dive operatives were combat elites who had risen above ordinary agents only after rigorous selection, brutal training, and countless trials.

They were always dispatched to the most dangerous places, facing challenges of extreme difficulty—even beyond the limits of human rationality. They knew how to survive in the lethal environments of alien worlds, how to pursue crazed Angel Cult zealots through lawless territories. They could even fight their way into the Otherworld to confront the most dangerous entities, or plunge deep into nightmares to rescue fallen souls from the bizarre labyrinths woven from psyche and consciousness—deep-diving, descending from the peace and calm of the waking world into the dark dimensions beneath rationality. That was their job.

Yet there would always exist things in this world that human intellect could not comprehend or oppose. Even the most elite deep-dive operatives encountered failure—and often did.

But the current situation still exceeded Song Cheng’s professional experience—and seemed to have exceeded the Bureau Chief’s expectations as well.

Six deep-dive operatives had been immediately transferred out of the “tank.” Their powered armor had automatically executed emergency medical protocols the instant they returned to the reality dimension. The armor’s built-in injection systems pumped large doses of rationality-blockers and protective medications into their bodies, rapidly bringing them into a calm state. Support personnel then stepped forward, checking each person’s contamination status while confirming whether their consciousness had returned to the Material World along with their physical bodies—and confirming whether anything else had “come back” alongside their consciousness.

Song Cheng and Baili Qing stood off to the side, brows tightly furrowed as they watched the scene.

“Math problems?” After a long, grave silence, Song Cheng finally couldn’t help breaking it. “…Math problems drilling into their brains could cause this kind of damage?”

Baili Qing shook her head gently.

“Terra Academy’s professors can indeed attack opponents by instantaneously flooding an ordinary person’s brain with an overwhelming volume of knowledge, but the effect wouldn’t look like this. Moreover, our deep-dive operatives have undergone specialized training and already possess an inherent resistance to ‘knowledge’-type attacks. Beyond their considerable learning capacity, their brains can actively enter hibernation when confronted with ‘knowledge infusion’ that exceeds their processing ability.”

Song Cheng frowned. “You mean…”

“The ‘math problems’ that operative mentioned before losing consciousness were likely just some kind of visualized impression they perceived during the dive. What actually caused the contamination… should be something else entirely,” Baili Qing said, her expression grave. “At the end of the passage… there was no Night-shrouded Valley… but why math problems?”

Song Cheng didn’t dare speak either, afraid of interrupting the Bureau Chief’s train of thought.

After a moment of quiet, Baili Qing suddenly turned to him. “Little Song, you haven’t made contact with that ‘Yu Sheng’ yet, have you?”

“No, I was planning to reach out to him today, but I didn’t expect all these unexpected incidents…”

“Don’t go,” Baili Qing said flatly.

…

Yu Sheng heard a faint noise. He looked up and glanced around but couldn’t find its source.

Business was slow, and there weren’t many people in the café. Only a few scattered customers sat at tables in the distance, while two baristas stood nearby, idly scrolling through their phones. The place was quite deserted.

Occasionally someone would glance curiously in his direction—probably wondering why a guy in his twenties was sitting in a café hunched over a thick stack of high school homework.

Yu Sheng sighed, looking at the remaining half of the test booklet, feeling a faint ache creeping into his hand.

He’d already been scribbling through it as carelessly as he could manage. Many of the long-answer sections looked like absolute chicken scratch. But ultimately, his hands were accustomed to keyboards and hadn’t held a pen to write this much in years. This task turned out to be far more exhausting than he’d anticipated.

Though it was hard to say which was more tiring—sitting here doing a high schooler’s homework, or dragging a fox who knew nothing about anything through a shopping mall to buy clothes.

Yu Sheng thought about it and decided that copying test answers here was probably the better deal—he truly didn’t have the courage to walk into a lingerie store with Hu Li. That would make him feel like some kind of creep.

Especially when Hu Li displayed that crystal-clear ignorance of hers—he’d genuinely end up getting reported to the police by the store clerks as a pervert.

Just then, Eileen’s voice suddenly echoed in his mind: “Hey hey~ Yu Sheng, how much have you written over there?”

Yu Sheng’s hand kept moving. “Halfway done. Today’s high schoolers really have it rough—how is there this much homework?!”

“Keep at it! I just heard Little Red Riding Hood muttering earlier—she actually has a physics workbook too, but she forgot to bring it…”

“Tell her to go home and do that one herself. I’m not dealing with it,” Yu Sheng shot back irritably. “How’s it going on your end? Everything smooth?”

“Pretty good. Hu Li doesn’t really know how to use zippers, so Little Red Riding Hood spent a while teaching her. The two of them just went into the changing room together… They left me on a stool outside the changing room door,” Eileen sounded like she was in a great mood. “Little Red Riding Hood even bought me a hair clip! From a doll accessories shop—a red one…”

Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then it clicked. “That was bought with my money!”

“I know, I know,” Eileen said hurriedly. “Just think of it as a gift from you… I didn’t ask for anything else, just a hair clip. It wasn’t expensive…”

“Fine, fine, nobody said you couldn’t buy it,” Yu Sheng said, caught between laughter and exasperation. “Just a reminder—don’t get too carried away shopping. Also, don’t forget to buy Hu Li some toiletries and things like that, plus bedsheets and a comforter cover. You remember the sizes, right?”

“Yes yes, I remember, don’t worry. My brain…” Eileen started to say, then suddenly paused. Her tone shifted. “Hu Li’s brain…”

An awkward, eerie silence fell in Yu Sheng’s mind.

This was what happened when your team was hopeless.

“How big was her bed again?” Eileen’s voice sounded notably less confident now.

“One-fifty by two meters,” Yu Sheng sighed. “Tell Little Red Riding Hood those numbers and let her remember for both of you. And whatever else you need to buy, tell her too. She’s a high schooler—her brain works better than either of yours.”

“Right… right…”

Yu Sheng wearily ended the conversation in his mind and lowered his head, preparing to continue writing.

But just then, he suddenly felt something strange about his surroundings.

Silence. At some point, everything around him had grown so silent that he couldn’t even hear the quiet conversations of those few tables of customers.

Yu Sheng’s head snapped up, and he quickly scanned his surroundings.

He was still in the café.

Countless tables and chairs were arranged in perfect, orderly rows, stretching forward infinitely, stretching backward infinitely.

The boundless café was completely empty. All the way to the edge of his vision, there was nothing but an unbroken expanse of tables and chairs.

To his left were the street-facing windows—now also stretching infinitely in both directions. But beyond the glass, there was no street scene to be seen, only a vast expanse of white, hazy fog.

Something enormous moved slowly through the fog, occasionally drifting close to a nearby window, seemingly peering into the café. But no matter how he looked, those shadows were nothing more than blurred, indistinct silhouettes.

Yu Sheng stared at all of this in shock, slowly rising from his chair.

But just as he was about to push open the door and leave, a voice suddenly came from across the table: “Hello.”

It was a slightly husky female voice, quite young.

Yu Sheng was startled to see that someone had appeared at some point in the seat across from him—a woman who looked to be not yet thirty. She wore a fitted white skirt suit, her grayish-white hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was quite beautiful, but her bearing carried an indescribable sense of detachment and coolness.

Yu Sheng’s attention, however, was drawn more to her eyes. She had a pair of pale gray irises, as though drained of all color. Even the boundary between her iris and the white of her eye seemed remarkably blurred, giving her an appearance that was, at first glance… not quite what a normal human should look like.

Then Yu Sheng noticed something incredible—everything around this woman was rapidly losing its color. From the nearest coffee table and chairs to the surrounding floor and other furniture, everything was being overlaid with a layer of pale gray-white. The bleaching effect extended outward for over ten meters before finally fading.

In the end, only the woman herself and Yu Sheng still retained their original colors.

Yu Sheng steadied himself, recalling what Eileen had told him—entities with rational minds could appear in the Otherworld, but even the most human-like entities would display glaringly obvious inhuman traits. This woman across from him looked a bit unusual, sure, but she clearly hadn’t reached the level of “eerily inhuman.” That meant she should be a human being.

And since she was human, and had taken the initiative to greet him, they could obviously have a proper conversation.

Yu Sheng abandoned his plan to push open the door and leave, sitting back down in his chair. He looked at the woman across from him with curiosity. “You are…?”

“Baili Qing. Chief of the Special Operations Bureau, under the Borderland Council,” the woman sitting across from him said with a slight nod. “I apologize for meeting you this way—it was for maximum confidentiality, as well as certain safety considerations.”

Yu Sheng was instantly stunned.

So the Special Operations Bureau really had come looking for him—but at this level? The Bureau Chief herself?!

While Yu Sheng stood there dazed, Baili Qing’s gaze swept casually across the table before her.

She saw the stack of test papers Yu Sheng had left on the table, and her expression froze for just an instant.

Math problems. They were all math problems. Past years’ college entrance exam questions, every single one.

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