Chapter 11 – Third Time’s the Charm

Chapter 11 – Third time’s the… charm

In the final second as death descended, Yu Sheng felt an boundless, impossibly heavy ‘darkness’ — like some viscous liquid given physical form.

He felt his consciousness rapidly dissolving. He knew that the shell sustaining that consciousness was swiftly losing its vitality amid the terrible wounds — as his bodily functions ceased, the thoughts carried by his flesh sank and dissipated along with them. Such was the natural order of things.

Yet at the very edge of his dissolving consciousness, a force — or rather, a powerful ‘thought’ — a strange obsession, seemed to firmly bind Yu Sheng’s mind. In a daze, he recalled the frog that had devoured his heart, recalled his previous ‘resurrection.’

What exactly had happened back then? What had happened to him? Why was he still alive?

These questions crystallized into obsession, keeping his consciousness clinging to the edge of that endless darkness. Even as it teetered on the brink, it never fully sank. He truly wanted to know… what exactly had happened, and how he had ‘come back’ after death.

The darkness bore down on him, its viscous texture gradually turning cold and rough. He felt as though he were being buried under thick layers of earth, his soul slowly suffocating beneath that crushing weight… but then, suddenly, that oppressive pressure vanished.

In a moment of sudden clarity, a thought surfaced in his wavering consciousness —

Within his death, death had died before him.

Yu Sheng’s death died, and so the Yu Sheng who had died once again returned from that boundless darkness toward the land of the living — he felt his ‘body’ suddenly grow light and begin to accelerate away from that endless void.

In the process, he vaguely glimpsed something on the surface of that darkness, as though he were sweeping rapidly past some kind of ‘outer layer,’ but he had no time to make out what he saw before his eyes snapped open.

A cold night wind blew in through the large hole in the wall. Above the half-collapsed roof was a murky, turbid night sky, and deep within the darkness, the hollow wind of the valley howled.

Yu Sheng sat in the corner of the ruined temple, his mind groggy — a feeling he knew well. Not long ago, he had experienced it once before.

But this time, he recovered far more quickly. In just a few breaths, he had recalled everything, including that sensation of being buried by darkness.

After steadying his breathing, Yu Sheng slowly rose.

He felt the joints all over his body gradually awakening from stiffness, as though a newly born frame were rapidly learning how to ‘be alive.’ His strength surged back swiftly, his mind grew clearer, and only then did he look outside the ruined temple — toward the place where his blood had pooled on the ground moments before.

The area was now empty. The Amalgamated Beast seemed to have left… or perhaps it was only hiding, just as it had before.

After a moment of silence, Yu Sheng tentatively called out in his mind, “…Eileen.”

Almost the instant his words fell, Eileen’s boisterous voice exploded in the depths of his heart: “Yu Sheng! What the hell, are you okay?!”

Then she immediately launched into a rapid-fire stream of chatter: “Just now you suddenly stopped responding. No matter how I called there was no reaction, I couldn’t even sense where your consciousness was. I thought you were dead! That scared me half to death — if you die there’s no one to come home and fix the TV — are you really okay?”

The muscles on Yu Sheng’s face twitched instantly. “So all you were really worried about was having no one to come fix the TV?”

Eileen thought about it. “…That’s not entirely it, I was also a little afraid you’d actually died…”

Yu Sheng: “…”

She actually hesitated for a moment before saying that!

Working hard to calm himself, Yu Sheng finally managed — through gritted back teeth — to make his voice sound composed: “What if I told you I really did die just now?”

Eileen didn’t believe him at all: “Stop fooling around, you sound perfectly lively right now…”

“…Right, I was just joking with you.” Hearing Eileen’s reaction, Yu Sheng quietly moved past the topic. Then he fell silent for a moment before asking somewhat abruptly, “How long has it been?”

“Huh? How long since what?”

“From when I told you I was going offline to right now, how much time has passed?”

“Uh… I can’t see the clock in the living room from where I am… I’d estimate roughly half an hour? It might not be accurate — I’ve been sealed in this painting for years, my sense of time is a little dull. But looking outside, the sky doesn’t seem much different, at least a full night hasn’t passed, it still hasn’t gotten light out…”

Yu Sheng: “…Isn’t that a little too inaccurate? Do you know how big the difference is between half an hour and an entire night?!”

Eileen went quiet for a moment, but right after that, a sharp and muffled burst of mocking laughter came from her side.

Eileen immediately spoke up to explain: “That wasn’t me! It was the bear!”

Yu Sheng, exhausted in body and spirit, waved a hand. “I know.”

Eileen sounded rather pleased: “Oh, you’re finally willing to believe me…”

Yu Sheng was already too lazy to deal with this sealed doll. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he wasn’t believing her claim — he just felt that if she really wanted a beating, she didn’t even need to laugh; her way of talking was already infuriating enough on its own.

As it turned out, in the face of Eileen’s verbal provocations, that bear’s sniggering at most served as a bit of fuel for the fire…

Turning over some useless thoughts in his mind, Yu Sheng walked out of the ruined temple once more.

He wasn’t sure if it was an illusion, but he felt his physical strength was even better than before he had died — his steps light, his movements powerful, and even his eyesight… seemed to have sharpened a little.

He seemed to be adapting to this place — adapting to the darkness here, the jagged ruins, and the omnipresent malice and hungry stares.

He walked toward the open clearing in front of the ruined temple, toward the forest on the other side, toward the deeper reaches of this ‘Otherworld.’

He knew he might die again — perhaps with the very next step, the very next second.

“Yu Sheng,” Eileen’s voice sounded again in his mind, “are you really okay from just now?”

“I’m fine, just took a little injury, all healed up now.”

“Well… how about you just stay where you are for now, or find somewhere safe to hide? I’ll try to think things over — maybe I’ve encountered that ‘valley’ you mentioned before…”

“Then you go ahead and think. I’ll keep wandering around here for a bit.” Yu Sheng said casually.

“Huh? But that might be a little dange…”

“Eileen,” Yu Sheng cut her off directly. He had reached the clearing, and at that moment he took a deep breath of the valley’s cold, strangely rank air. Looking at the gloomy, shadowy forest in the distance, he suddenly broke into a grin. “You know, these past days I’ve been living in a complete daze.”

Eileen was clearly struggling to follow his train of thought. “Uh… oh, am I supposed to know that…”

Yu Sheng paid no mind to Eileen’s reaction and simply spoke on to himself: “…Just now I heard you mention the ‘Otherworld,’ and some incidents involving people falling into it. Do you know what my reaction was?”

“What reaction?”

“Happy.”

“Huh?”

“Happy. I was very happy,” Yu Sheng stood in the night, unable to suppress a smile. “You said that some people accidentally open the wrong door, or simply step on the wrong floorboard at some extremely unlikely moment, and fall into this godforsaken place called the ‘Otherworld,’ right? And you also said that people who fall into the Otherworld, if they’re lucky enough to find its patterns, still have a chance to get back…”

“That is what I said…” Eileen replied with some hesitation, “but it really does depend on luck. Trained investigators are one thing, but ordinary people without training basically fall into the Otherworld and wait to die…”

Yu Sheng murmured quietly: “It’s fine, you just die enough times until you figure it out…”

Eileen: “…What?”

“It’s nothing. I just suddenly found myself something to do,” Yu Sheng let out a soft breath, as if to expel the stale, murky air that had built up over two aimless months in this world. “I’ll start from right here. It might take a while, but I’ll definitely get out of this place.”

“I don’t know what’s going on over there, but it feels like you’ve… gotten your spirit back?” Eileen said haltingly. “Well, I guess that’s at least a good thing. Do your best — try not to die… I’m still waiting for you to come back and fix the TV… and find me a body and all that…”

“Sure, when I get back I’ll figure something out for your body situation,” Yu Sheng said offhandedly. “I’ve had a bit of exposure to sculpture and model-making before, I should be able to give it a try.”

This time, Eileen was genuinely delighted: “Oh? You have experience as a dollmaker?! Why didn’t you say so earlier! How good are you? What kind of dolls or models can you make?”

Yu Sheng hesitated for a moment, then answered honestly: “About the level where I follow tutorials online watching experts shape clay, and by the time I’m done watching, my brain tells my hands that it knows how — but my hands don’t believe it.”

Two seconds later, Eileen cursed him out spectacularly.

But Yu Sheng’s mood had completely relaxed. Some kind of loose, easygoing confidence — whether it made sense or not, he couldn’t quite say — swelled within him, and he walked forward, tilting his head in the night to look toward the mountains on one side.

A blood-and-flesh Amalgamated Beast, several meters tall and seemingly formed from the fused limbs of countless twisted monsters, was staring at him from the roadside.

Yu Sheng stopped in his tracks, thought for a moment, and called out in his mind to the Person in the Painting who was still cursing: “Eileen.”

“What?”

“…Nothing, I’m going to have to go offline again.”

“Huh?”

(End of chapter)