Chapter 18 – Investigators

He was back — back in this strange and peculiar Boundary City.

Not long ago, this place had still felt like a vast, eerie, and unsettling city to him, yet now, seeing those familiar streetlights and buildings, seeing the streets and sky tinged with the faint light of early morning, Yu Sheng felt something rise in his chest — a sense of ‘nostalgia’ that even he himself could hardly believe.

His experience of being trapped in that night-shrouded valley had made even returning to Boundary City feel like coming home.

But the very next second, the lightheadedness brought on by blood loss interrupted Yu Sheng’s moment of sentiment. He lowered his head with a dull, sluggish movement and saw crimson blood slowly spreading out beneath him.

His body had been pierced through. The terrible wound was enough to be fatal within a short time. Even though this body’s current regenerative ability and vitality were remarkable, he knew he was about to die again — he had grown quite practiced at using the word ‘again’ when it came to this sort of thing.

The culprit behind this horrifying wound lay right beside him. The scaled ‘tail’ he had severed from the monster had tumbled out of the Door along with Yu Sheng, and it still seemed to possess some lingering vitality — perhaps even a remnant of ‘consciousness.’ It was now slowly writhing about in the pool of blood, attempting to crawl away from this place.

Yu Sheng even had the feeling that it was trying to get away from him specifically — this piece of flesh was afraid of him.

Yu Sheng furrowed his brow and struggled to rise from the ground. He glanced at his front door not far away, then casually picked up the slowly writhing severed scaled tail beside him and staggered forward.

As he walked, he muttered to himself: “Isn’t the protagonist supposed to have everything sorted out once they escape from a desperate situation? What kind of garbage system keeps your injuries after the map clears… mother of god, this hurts so much…”

The constant blood loss gradually blurred his consciousness. The drain on his stamina made each step he took sway and wobble, as though he might collapse at any moment. In the final few steps, Yu Sheng was moving forward almost entirely on instinct alone. He didn’t even know why he was so determined to get back inside — perhaps to say hello to Eileen? Perhaps to avoid having his ‘corpse’ discovered by someone heading out in the early morning?

Everything before him gradually darkened, the morning light taking on a deep crimson hue. Hu Li’s golden-red eyes surfaced in Yu Sheng’s mind — at the very end, those eyes had been filled with a hungry, blood-soaked light, yet there remained one last faint trace of humanity, barely holding on beneath the crimson depths.

That fox… who knows how she’s doing. She said she wouldn’t die, but whether that was really true…

All manner of thoughts drifted through Yu Sheng’s mind as he finally struggled his way to his front door. It was unlocked. He fumbled with the handle, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

He saw the dining room diagonally across from the entrance, the oil painting still leaning against the wall. Eileen was lifting her head from within the painting, staring at the doorway in surprise, then slowly widening her eyes.

Yu Sheng mustered a last, dying-ember smile for her: “Eileen, I’m back.”

He knew his injuries were severe. If it weren’t for this body’s now-astonishing regenerative ability and toughness, he probably would have already died out on the street.

No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than Yu Sheng felt his vision tilt. His whole body slid down along the door frame, and the familiar crushing darkness closed in from all sides — accompanied by Eileen’s terrified scream.

Now he had died inside the house.

……

With a soft screech of brakes, two electric scooters came to a stop deep on Wutong Road. Two figures dismounted and surveyed the old, quiet streets and alleys before them.

One of them was a middle-aged man who appeared steady and reliable. He wore a long brown coat, with a tall and sturdy build, a slightly dark complexion, and close-cropped black hair. An irregular scar near his neck lent his bearing an air of formidability, yet the exhausted expression and dark circles on his face clashed entirely with his powerful frame and fierce scar — that face looked like it belonged to someone who had been working overtime for three straight months without a day off.

The other was a young man who appeared to be barely past his early twenties, with the same short black hair but a much slimmer and smaller build than the middle-aged man beside him. His looks were ordinary — the kind of ordinary where you could drop him into any crowd and immediately lose him. He wore a black-and-blue jacket and trousers, and his expression was visibly tense, carrying the nervous awkwardness of someone who had only been on the job for a few days before being dragged out on a field assignment by his superior.

The two of them rode into this quiet part of the Old City District and observed the seemingly unremarkable buildings around them. Occasionally a resident would pass by in the distance at the end of the road, but very few glanced in their direction.

“This place doesn’t look like anything’s off…” the dark-haired young man muttered. “Captain Song, are you sure it’s here?”

“The boundary alarm just went off, and the coordinates point right here,” the middle-aged man addressed as Captain Song nodded. “Even though the signal vanished in an instant, we can confirm it was an Otherworld reaction.”

“We rushed all the way here and still missed it,” the young man glanced at the electric scooter beside them and hesitantly spoke up. “Maybe we should have driven a car…”

Captain Song looked at him: “All the bureau’s cars are out on assignments. The only one left is Xu Jiali’s beat-up seven-hand wreck. You want to drive that? Even with the gas pedal floored, that thing probably wouldn’t be faster than your scooter.”

The young man let out a dry laugh and rather stiffly changed the subject: “Right, so, that person before… the codename was ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’ right? The one from the fairy tale organization — she apparently didn’t find anything here either?”

“That’s right, nothing at all. Which only confirms something is wrong with this place,” Captain Song slowly nodded. “‘Little Red Riding Hood’ has done plenty of work for the Special Operations Bureau. I know her abilities well — her wolf can sniff out even the faintest, most subtle traces of ‘anomaly’ in the surrounding environment. Yet she searched this entire area for a whole night and found absolutely nothing.”

The young man blinked, seemingly not grasping it right away.

“Found nothing — didn’t that register?” Captain Song prompted once more. “It’s too ‘clean.’ Too ‘normal.’ There has never been a plot of land in the Borderland this clean! Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf can catch a whiff of something unusual at every single location in this city, even if the scent is extremely faint — but here, and here alone… from a mystical standpoint, this entire street is ‘clean’ as a vacuum!”

Hearing this, the young man finally caught on — the training content from his time at the academy had at last lined up with the situation in front of him.

“Either this place genuinely is that clean, and a ‘pure zone’ deeply parallel to the ‘outside world’ has truly appeared within the Borderland — that’s not impossible, after all, this is the Borderland, and every place in the world could potentially have a connection here,” Captain Song waved his hand and said with a weary air, “Or, this place is hiding some kind of… ‘big thing.’ Something that is constantly altering the environment of the entire area, and Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf pack ran into a boundary vacuum here.”

The already visibly tense expression on the young man’s face grew even tenser before their eyes.

“I’m not going to approve a transfer to the logistics department,” Captain Song raised an eyebrow and looked at him. “Transferring to another team won’t be happening either.”

“I never said I wanted to run!” the young man quickly waved his hands. “I was fully prepared when I joined the team — I will absolutely be dedicated, love my post, and conscientiously fulfill my duties…”

A ringtone suddenly cut off their conversation — a pleasant melody, the signature tune from some wildly popular new anime.

The young man froze the instant he heard it, then looked at his superior with a rather strange expression: “…You watch that too?”

The middle-aged man addressed as Captain Song visibly twitched, and as he reluctantly fished his phone out of his pocket, he muttered: “My daughter must have changed it on me without telling me — she’s been watching it lately…”

The young man’s expression shifted in an indescribable way. He held back for a long time but never did manage to say out loud: “Is it really appropriate for a middle schooler to be watching a show about a bunch of girls forming a band…”

Captain Song answered the call, held the phone to his ear and listened for a moment before speaking: “Yes, Li Lin and I are already at the scene. Same as the situation Little Red Riding Hood investigated — this place is ‘clean’ in a way that’s downright uncanny. Go ahead and arrange things on your end; we’ll probably need to set up a fixed surveillance point here. I’ll decide on the specific personnel when I get back. Also, get in touch with the ‘Fairy Tale’ side and see if they can send another person over. This might be a long-term assignment…”

Hanging up, Captain Song let out a long breath, turned his head, and saw the young man named Li Lin still watching him.

He paused, then couldn’t help but speak up: “It really was my daughter who changed it. I don’t normally watch anime.”

Li Lin quickly gave a couple of dry coughs: “Ah, right, yes, I believe you. Of course.”

The two stood facing each other awkwardly for a moment, then by mutual unspoken agreement chose to skip straight past the topic.

Just then, Li Lin seemed to suddenly notice something.

He furrowed his brow and strode quickly toward a nearby wall corner.

“Captain Song, come take a look at this!” He crouched down to examine it, then immediately looked up and called out.

Captain Song walked over and looked in the direction Li Lin was pointing.

A patch of dark reddish marks was visible at the base of the wall, looking like dried blood. The area was small — easy to overlook from a distance — and what’s more, it was shrinking at a visible rate before their very eyes.

It wasn’t seeping into the concrete. It was vanishing rapidly into thin air.

“Blood?” Captain Song immediately frowned, then quickly reacted, pulling a plastic tube and a portable scraping tool from his long coat pocket. “No — not blood. Get a sample!”

“Got it.” Li Lin answered and took the sampling tools, preparing to scrape the dark red ‘blood traces’ remaining on the wall. But just as his scraper was about to make contact with the surface, that last small patch of red let out a sudden hissing sound — and then vanished completely.