Chapter 149 – The Unbelievable Special Operations Bureau

Chapter 149 – The Unbelievable Special Operations Bureau

It had to be said—though the riding experience in Xu Jiali’s car left something to be desired, listening to her rattle off obscure knowledge the whole way was actually quite entertaining.

Far more vivid and engaging than those dry, rigid entries in the Frontier Communications database.

The scenery outside the car windows kept receding behind them. The beat-up Xiali drove all the way from the worn-down streets of the Old City District onto the city’s main road, then followed the main road through the bustling area lined with high-rises and shopping malls. Hu Li was pressed against the car window with her eyes wide, curiously taking in the scenery outside. Although she’d tucked away her ears and tail, that excited and delighted look on her face still made Yu Sheng feel like there was a bunch of tails swishing back and forth behind her.

“By the way, how long does it take to get from here to your Special Operations Bureau?” Yu Sheng asked curiously. “We’re going to your headquarters, right… or should I call it the main bureau?”

“We’re going to headquarters,” Xu Jiali nodded, glancing at the three of them through the rearview mirror. “It’s very quick—half an hour and we’ll be there.”

“That close?!” Yu Sheng exclaimed in shock. Thinking of this city’s mind-bogglingly enormous scale, he was stunned that the distance could be covered in just a half-hour drive. “Your headquarters is near the Old City District?”

But Xu Jiali shook her head. “No, the Special Operations Bureau headquarters is very, very far away—but from any point in this city to the Bureau, the drive will always be under half an hour.”

Yu Sheng froze for a moment. “…Huh?”

“Because we’re taking a ‘shortcut,'” Xu Jiali smiled, her grin carrying a hint of smugness that said ‘finally got you surprised for once.’ Then she turned the steering wheel, pulling off the main road and following a side road along the edge of the commercial district into a secluded area behind some shopping mall. “Our Special Operations Bureau has a few ‘little tricks’ of its own.”

As she spoke, Yu Sheng saw a parking garage entrance appear ahead. Xu Jiali drove in through the entrance ramp. The first level down still looked like a normal parking garage, filled with many private vehicles, with plenty of directional signs pointing toward the above-ground mall, supermarket, or nearby intersections. But immediately after, Xu Jiali wound through a series of twists and turns inside, then veered into another ramp deep within the structure—

Yu Sheng couldn’t even tell how this ramp had appeared. Before they’d approached, it had seemed like nothing more than an empty space at the far end of the parking garage, with some standing water of unknown origin on the ground. But the moment they drew near, a downward-sloping road suddenly materialized within the puddles, and a dim light illuminated this unsettlingly long passage. The passage angled continuously downward, as if it could stretch all the way to the earth’s core.

As they descended deeper, the color of the lights along the passage walls gradually shifted. An icy, ghostly blue flooded the space beyond the car windows. Everything grew extraordinarily quiet—even the sound of the small car’s engine seemed muffled behind a thick curtain, distant and dampened. Yu Sheng suddenly felt his spiritual intuition start pinging wildly, and while he was still puzzling over this sensation, Eileen had already reacted faster than him: “Wait—we’re falling into the Otherworld?!”

“Strictly speaking, we’re ‘passing through’ the Otherworld,” Xu Jiali said, glancing back slightly. “Depth L-1, Otherworld ‘shortcut,’ overlaid across the entire Borderland. It doesn’t generate entities, and aside from a slight risk of becoming lost, it’s essentially harmless. The Special Operations Bureau sits at the central junction point of the ‘shortcut,’ and has slightly ‘borrowed’ the special power of this Otherworld—we’re here.”

The moment Xu Jiali finished speaking, Yu Sheng felt a lurch beneath him, and then that strange sensation of his spiritual intuition pinging wildly—the feeling of falling into the Otherworld—rapidly faded. He noticed the car had already exited the passage and, after passing through a barrier gate, entered a brightly lit parking garage.

“Get out,” Xu Jiali said, parking in a spot and coming around to open the door for Yu Sheng. “We’ll take the central elevator up.”

Yu Sheng casually hoisted Eileen onto his shoulder, then followed their “guide” Xu Jiali with the fox girl whose face was brimming with curiosity and excitement. The group crossed through this astonishingly large parking garage, wound through several intersections in the maze-like underground space before reaching the elevator lobby, then followed Xu Jiali as she swiped her card and boarded the elevator.

The moment he stepped inside the elevator, Yu Sheng noticed the labels and signs posted on the car walls and near the buttons.

Printed or written on them were numerous tips and warnings that felt distinctly peculiar—

“The elevator will not stop on floors 1 through 3.”

“Floor 4 is under light restrictions. If you enter a brightly lit Floor 4, immediately return the way you came to the parking garage or proceed to Floor 12, the security level.”

“Elevator maintenance is on Saturdays. Outside of this time, if the elevator’s screen displays the word ‘Maintenance,’ press the blue button and exit. You may transfer to Elevator 2 or Elevator 5.”

“If you are an upper-level employee, you may only take this elevator to B1, B2, and above-ground floors. If the elevator indicates arrival at B3 or deeper underground levels, please greet the deep-level staff members in the car, but do not leave the elevator.”

There were several more notices of this nature. Yu Sheng stared at these slips of paper posted on the elevator walls, and after a few seconds of stunned silence, turned to look at Xu Jiali. “…Your work environment is pretty high-risk, huh? You have to pass a round of rules checks just to come to work?”

“Honestly, you get used to it,” Xu Jiali said with a perfectly calm expression. “It’s mainly because the Bureau headquarters building has a lot of special ‘nodes’ that connect to many places. Some floors are set up entirely in pocket dimensions, and besides offices, there are some bizarre ‘natives’ wandering around in them. But it’s not as dangerous as outsiders think. The vast majority of locations and rules here are non-lethal, and there are dedicated help devices and return shortcuts for anyone who gets lost. The building even has a dedicated ‘Workplace wellbeing Division’ that works in coordination with the security department, specifically responsible for bringing colleagues who’ve gotten lost in the building back to their workstations…”

His explanation, rather than being reassuring, only made things sound even more bizarre. Even Eileen couldn’t help muttering: “A goddamn Workplace wellbeing Division… So basically, in your place, if you try to sneak off to some empty corner to slack off, it gets treated as a ‘lost’ incident, and you get dragged back to your desk by a bunch of security guards?”

Xu Jiali shrugged. “Can’t help it. After all, the nature and environment of our work is special. Especially near the special floors—if you leave your post for thirty minutes without coming back, who knows whether you went off to slack or got swallowed by the office next door. But really, it’s fine. Most floors here are very stable, and the more demanding positions have shorter working hours. For specially trained Bureau employees, this environment is no different from ordinary people working in an office building.”

“Do you work in this building too?” Yu Sheng asked curiously.

“No, I’m mostly out on field assignments,” Xu Jiali waved her hand. “When I come back, I’m usually on standby at the annex building. Besides that, there are facilities like ‘field offices’ and ‘garrison posts’ for regular action teams to use. They’re not directly connected to the headquarters building, but you can travel quickly between them through shortcut floors or special ‘passages.'”

As she spoke, the elevator had already stopped at a floor labeled 54-1/2. Accompanied by the soft arrival announcement from the elevator’s broadcast system, the doors opened, and a brightly lit corridor appeared before the group.

The three of them followed Xu Jiali into the corridor, noticing that this floor was very quiet. Only occasionally could they spot a few people in uniform walking past, each one looking hurried and serious.

One side of the corridor had a row of tightly closed doors, while the other side featured a row of neat, wide windows. Through the windows, they could see the scenery outside—

Beyond the glass was a heavy, oppressive rock layer. Dark-colored stone pillars and massive stalagmite formations crisscrossed in every direction, filling the entire space. Far in the distance, at the edge of the rock layer, there was an enormous crack, and beyond the crack appeared to be a forest—a forest blanketed in white snow, with sunlight gleaming off the snow layer so brightly it hurt the eyes.

Yu Sheng: “…What the hell kind of view is this?!”

But Xu Jiali wore an expression of complete nonchalance, glanced outside and actually looked pleased. “Oh hey, it’s sunny outside Floor 54-and-a-half today. Nice weather—it’s been snowing through the crack on this floor for nearly half a year now.”

Hu Li’s eyes went wide, and finally even she couldn’t help but speak up: “Does every floor in this building contain its own world?”

“Not every floor,” Xu Jiali waved her hand. “Didn’t I just say? Most floors here are quite stable. Only about a third of the floors have strange views like this, and they’re not self-contained worlds either—they just happen to not be in the Borderland.”

Yu Sheng was dumbfounded—what do you mean ‘only a third of the floors,’ and they ‘just happen to not be in the Borderland’?! Was this place really this bizarre?

But Xu Jiali seemed not to notice the colorful expressions on their faces and continued her calm explanation: “The Bureau’s headquarters building is like a massive ‘spacetime rift sampling needle,’ with floor after floor piercing through numerous ‘anomalous locations.’ If the Borderland is this world’s ‘spatial hub,’ then the Bureau headquarters was built right at the busiest intersection of that hub. That’s why our building even houses two small customs stations and one border transit station. When we get the chance, I can give you all a special tour—it’s quite interesting for people visiting for the first time.”

“Just listening to you describe it is interesting enough,” Yu Sheng said, his tone already somewhat numb. “How did you people even build this place?!”

“A bit of miraculous civil engineering. How would I know the specifics?” Xu Jiali shrugged. “But now you should understand why the moment you ‘opened a door,’ our entire Bureau went into a frenzy, right?”

The expression on Yu Sheng’s face froze instantly.

“When the spacetime displacement was detected, alarms went off from top to bottom across the entire building,” Xu Jiali sighed, her tone carrying a distinct sense of not wanting to revisit painful memories. “It even set off alarms in the annex building and several satellite facilities connected to the main building by shared floors—though we later discovered no actual damage had been done, when those alarms went off it really felt like headquarters had fallen. On the liveliest night, half the building had to be emergency-evacuated…”

What could Yu Sheng even say to that? He could only continue standing there frozen: “…”

(End of Chapter)