Chapter 103 – A Calm, Sleepless Night

The night had grown deep.

In a high-rise apartment somewhere in Boundary City’s central district, Baili Qing, draped in her pajamas, poured herself a glass of strong liquor and strolled over to the wide floor-to-ceiling window.

The room was unlit. Only the dim yellow glow of a nightlight in the corner traced the outlines of the furnishings. Beyond the expansive window, a spectacular night view rushed to meet the eye — the enormous city ignited by neon, its magnificent colors flickering and flowing between the layered, densely packed buildings like some breathing, living thing. The earth seemed endless, the light and shadow of the urban sprawl stretching infinitely into the distance until it vanished into a haze of night. And within this darkness, Baili Qing’s own reflection in the glass looked exceptionally thin.

Fog was rising outside the window.

A thin mist seemed to materialize from nothing in the air, spreading rapidly and evenly across the night. It gradually became a churning curtain of pale gray, rendering the scenery of Boundary City hazy and dreamlike. Then, a pair of indifferent eyes appeared outside the floor-to-ceiling window, calmly watching Baili Qing as she stood before it.

Those eyes had a human-like shape yet were severely lacking in color. Their extremely pale pupil structure was nearly identical to Baili Qing’s own. They seemed to float within the thin fog outside, yet also appeared to be printed directly onto the glass itself, filling the entire window.

“Drinking at night isn’t a good habit, sister.”

A voice transmitted directly into Baili Qing’s mind — mechanical, flat, yet identical to her own voice.

“It helps me calm down,” Baili Qing said casually, swirling the glass in her hand. “Especially after being jolted awake from a nightmare by a phone call.”

“A nightmare?”

“I dreamed that I eventually turned into you.”

“Oh, that does sound like a nightmare,” the faded eyes blinked once outside the window. “Careful — don’t let me bewitch and control you. Though you’ve done reasonably well on that front so far. So, what did you summon me for?”

“I just woke up suddenly and figured I’d check in with you about a few things — regarding the ‘single eye’ that appeared in Night-shrouded Valley, have you found anything?”

The eyes narrowed slightly, and a voice followed in Baili Qing’s mind: “I’ve traversed every place I’ve ever observed, including all the Otherworlds we’ve experienced together and the ‘death hollows’ bored through by Twilight Angels in deep space. I found no information related to that giant eye. It has never appeared in any of those locations.”

“Is that so — even you can’t find anything…” Baili Qing seemed somewhat disappointed. “Never mind. It was expected.”

“Your mood has worsened, sister,” the eyes said. “And there’s some anxiety as well.”

“…Because more and more clues now indicate that the giant eye entered this world without anyone noticing. And given the trail — possibly left by another unknown angel — that the Argladians discovered in deep space several months ago, it’s likely that even more Twilight Angels have already bored through our world. More hollows remain undiscovered, and even at this very moment, the number of hollows could still be growing.”

As she spoke, Baili Qing swirled the glass in her hand, staring somewhat absently at the swirling vortex in the liquor. She asked softly, “Do you know what worries me the most?”

“That more Twilight Angels are already hidden within the physical universe?”

“No, that’s everyone’s shared concern. What worries me more is what lies behind the Twilight Angels — whether they constitute a species, whether they possess organizational structure, whether they have the capacity to learn, whether they’ve gradually come to understand the rules of our world and mastered more efficient methods of boring through death hollows, and… learned to actively conceal themselves.”

“That does indeed sound very worrying.”

Baili Qing drained the liquor from her glass, feeling the searing burn gradually spread through her mouth, then set the glass down on the floor beside her.

“Also, I asked you to scan the old city district and search for the hidden No. 66 Wutong Road. Did you find anything?”

“I found some distorted traces, but I couldn’t see them clearly.” The eyes spoke, and within that mechanical, flat voice there was actually a hint of frustration.

A trace of surprise finally surfaced on Baili Qing’s face. “Even you can’t see it clearly?!”

“Yes,” the eyes in the mist blinked. “Every time I try to focus my gaze, it feels like something just… absorbs it all at once. By the time I realize what happened, I find that I’ve actually been spacing out the entire time. However… I do have a theory.”

“What theory?”

“The so-called ‘No. 66 Wutong Road’ might not actually be there at all. That location is merely an entrance…”

“That’s not surprising,” Baili Qing shook her head before the other could finish. “The Special Operations Bureau agents who went to investigate submitted the same conclusion. They believe it should be a special space existing within a spatial gap, drifting within the spatiotemporal structure of the Borderland just like the other ‘fortress’-type Otherworlds in Boundary City…”

“No,” the eyes suddenly interrupted her. “What I mean is, it might not even be in the Borderland at all — it isn’t drifting anywhere. It’s simply… too deep, too far away. So much so that the ‘No. 66 Wutong Road’ reflected in the Borderland is merely an extremely faint shadow. When I felt my gaze being swallowed, it was actually because I was staring at a place so distant it was beyond sight.”

Baili Qing’s expression stiffened for an instant. “Too deep, too far?” Her tone carried a rare hint of hesitation. “Do you realize what that means? Your gaze… can even see into subspace.”

“So, deeper and farther than even that. This is based on logical analysis, sister.”

Baili Qing blinked.

After a moment, she heard that mechanical, flat voice echo again in her mind: “So then, the ‘person’ living inside ‘No. 66 Wutong Road’ — what exactly is it?”

“I don’t know,” Baili Qing said softly. “All I know is that every piece of intelligence so far indicates his personality and self-awareness are infinitely close to those of a ‘human.’ And just now, he called me on the phone.”

“Ah, so that phone call that jolted you out of your nightmare was from him — what does he want?”

“He said he’s going to open a ‘door’ and wanted to give me a heads-up. According to intelligence from the Operations Division a few hours ago, he apparently made a trip to the ‘museum.'”

“…Interesting.”

The eyes gradually dissolved into the thin fog, and the mist outside the window rapidly receded with them. The boundless city nightscape once again filled the window.

…

Yu Sheng barely slept at all in the latter half of the night.

He lay in bed tossing and turning, all manner of thoughts, knowledge, and intelligence squirming and crawling through his mind like countless Eileens scrabbling across the floor, climbing up and down, shrieking and howling…

Of course, that description might be a bit excessive — if there really were countless Eileens crawling everywhere, it would absolutely be far more chaotic than this.

But Yu Sheng’s mind truly was that much of a mess.

New knowledge about Otherworlds, about Little Red Riding Hood and the “Fairy Tale” organization behind her, about the Angel Cult followers and the “Twilight Angels,” about the unfortunate victim in that White Exhibition Hall, and… the moment the dead had spoken to him.

Yu Sheng picked up his phone and searched for entries related to “conversing with the dead” in the Frontier Communications database. He actually found some materials.

They mentioned that certain “gifted individuals” from beyond the Borderland did indeed possess the power to communicate with the dead. Some, called necromancers, could even temporarily anchor a deceased person’s soul in the real world after performing a series of complex rituals, enabling a simple face-to-face conversation.

But no matter which source he looked at, the described process of “conversing with the dead” was clearly quite different from what he had experienced in the White Exhibition Hall.

The “techniques” documented in those encyclopedic entries either required extremely complex ritual procedures, extremely advanced equipment, or were simply akin to “holographic reconstruction” — using technological means to gather massive amounts of intelligence to attempt recreating certain scenes from before the moment of death. Moreover, even those methods that supposedly enabled direct “communication with the dead” produced extremely vague and crude results. At best, one could only extract some “yes” or “no” feedback from the deceased’s residual brainwaves or so-called “soul.”

None of them involved simply touching the blood at the scene and having the dead person suddenly turn their head to spit a rap at you…

Yu Sheng put down his phone, let out a soft sigh in the darkened room, and then heard rustling sounds from the bed again.

He turned to look and saw Eileen wriggling and rolling at the foot of the bed. One flying kick launched into the air before she flopped back down with a thud.

Yu Sheng’s expression was blank.

The other main reason he couldn’t sleep was that there really was an Eileen crawling all over his bed.

And kicking in circles.

The next second, he watched Eileen suddenly roll over again, and then the little doll sat bolt upright, pointing forward with her eyes still squeezed shut: “Me! Alice’s Cottage’s! Pay up — or I’ll beat you up!”

Then she toppled sideways toward the edge of the bed, hit the ground with a thunk, and groggily grabbed onto the sheets to climb back up. She squirmed toward Yu Sheng while mumbling, “Stop kicking me… I fell off…”

Yu Sheng sighed.

There was no way he was getting any more sleep tonight.

(End of Chapter)