Chapter 75 – “Another Boundary City”

Chapter 75 – “Another Boundary City”

Before long, two more people had arrived in Baili Qing’s office.

One was the burly Song Cheng, and the other was a man whose hair had already gone salt-and-pepper, looking to be in his fifties.

The latter wore a pair of narrow-framed glasses. He was of modest height and slightly portly, looking like any ordinary mid-level office manager who was already coasting toward retirement.

Baili Qing looked up at the two people who had entered her office and gave a slight nod. “That was fast.”

“You went to see the one called ‘Yu Sheng’?” Song Cheng was the first to speak. “Judging by your expression… you discovered something?”

“I spoke with him at length, and the process diverged significantly from my expectations. ‘Yu Sheng’ may be the most unusual ‘non-natural’ individual I’ve ever encountered. But before we discuss the details, I want to show you something first.”

As she spoke, Baili Qing shifted her gaze to the salt-and-pepper-haired man—the head of the Classified Records Division. “Luo Zheng, close the door.”

Luo Zheng nodded immediately, turning to shut the office door.

The instant the door closed, an invisible suppression spread throughout the entire room, as if a gentle breeze had swept through the space. Wherever that breeze passed, even the dust motes drifting in the air seemed to freeze in place.

Seeing this display, Song Cheng’s heart clenched. He muttered “heaven help me” under his breath and abandoned any plans of clocking out on time this afternoon.

After the office’s “seal” was complete, Baili Qing silently rose and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window nearby.

The window was large, and beyond it hung a perpetual veil of faint mist. Within that mist, the scenery shifted constantly—and it was clearly not any landscape that should exist within Boundary City. Sometimes it showed undulating mountain ranges, sometimes endless stretches of forest, but most of the time it was a calm lake surface without a single ripple. Far across the lake stood a small cottage, shrouded in mist, hazy as a dream.

As Baili Qing approached the window, the drifting mist beyond the glass quickly stilled, and the ever-changing scenery within it slowly faded away.

Song Cheng and Luo Zheng watched the mist with grave expressions. After a brief moment of stillness lasting only seconds, something else began to appear within the fog.

Buildings. An array of staggered rooftops. An unfamiliar city—and a crimson glow gradually spreading across it all.

“What is this?” Song Cheng asked instinctively.

“This is what ‘Yu Sheng’ showed me. He says this is another ‘Boundary City,'” Baili Qing said softly, her colorless eyes gazing calmly at the mist beyond the window as the scenes stored in her memory continued to manifest and reconstruct themselves within the fog. “He’s fixated on this place—and he’s seen it before.”

A flash of shock surfaced in Luo Zheng’s eyes. He took off his narrow-framed glasses, wiped them on his shirt, then stared at the shifting lights beyond the window. “Another ‘Boundary City’?!”

“Yes, another one. And I faintly sensed his emotions—he seems to believe… that this is what Boundary City is supposed to look like. Its ‘normal’ appearance.”

Song Cheng and Luo Zheng both fell silent in their astonishment. With a trace of unease, they watched the so-called “normal” scenery beyond the window.

Buildings reduced to nothing but dark silhouettes lined the earth, while bizarre towering spires stood in the distance, tracing a magnificent outline against the sky. Mist pervaded everything—those rooftops and towers looked like rows of tombstones arranged in the haze. Scarlet light pierced through the fog, lending the entire sky an eerie, dim quality. And the sunlight…

Blood-colored “sunlight” flowed like water through the city, swirling into vortexes between the buildings, mingling with the crimson glow as it cascaded down from rooftops, streaming and dripping along the eaves—drip, drip, patter, patter…

Baili Qing’s voice drifted into Song Cheng and Luo Zheng’s ears, sounding somewhat ethereal: “He said it’s a peaceful seaside town with beautiful evening clouds. The red glow splashes across the sky like water and flows along the rooftops…”

“…That sounds like quite a poetic description,” Song Cheng said quietly.

“Yes, that’s what I thought when I first heard it too,” Baili Qing shook her head gently. “Until I realized—he was being literal.”

“This can’t be an actual ‘location’ that exists in reality,” Luo Zheng said with a serious expression. He had already shaken off the unease and tension that came from witnessing such an anomaly, quickly regaining his composure. “There may be many planets in the universe with bizarre landscapes, but this scene doesn’t look like any natural phenomenon no matter how you look at it. The light and shadow around those buildings, and that ‘sunlight’—their forms of existence violate the laws of physics. They look… as if they’re melting.”

“If I had to describe it, it’s a bit like when your graphics driver crashes while gaming and the rendering goes haywire,” Song Cheng said, stroking his chin as he analyzed the scene, then added, “I’ve seen it happen when watching my daughter play games.”

“This should be some kind of Otherworld,” Luo Zheng said cautiously. “Judging from the scale of the scene, it should be a large one, but without sufficient data or reference points, there’s no way to determine whether it’s classified as a ‘Wilderness’ or a ‘Dominion.’ It’s definitely not a ‘Fortress,’ at least.”

“It could also be an ‘Anomaly,'” Baili Qing said flatly.

“An ‘Anomaly’-type Otherworld?” Luo Zheng looked surprised, frowning. “Like ‘Fairy Tale’ or ‘Epic of Heroes’? But it looks like an actually existing space…”

“‘Anomaly’-type Otherworlds also form their own ‘actual existence’ within cognition. What I showed you is only the scene sketched out in Yu Sheng’s mind, so we can’t rule out the possibility that this is essentially just a ‘memory’ or a ‘story,'” Baili Qing shook her head. “The key point right now is that regardless of this Otherworld’s true nature, Yu Sheng believes it to be another ‘Boundary City.'”

Song Cheng and Luo Zheng fell silent simultaneously. The atmosphere in the office grew exceptionally heavy.

Countless Otherworlds existed in this world, and those that had established connections with the Borderland—or even overlapped with it—were as numerous as the stars. But regardless, an Otherworld was still just an Otherworld. The scale of their dubious overlaps with the real world was always extremely limited. In all recorded history, no Otherworld had ever been able to do something like this—

Point toward “another Borderland.”

Song Cheng stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, staring intently at the city beyond, drenched and washed in streams of red light.

Objectively speaking, those dark city silhouettes bore little resemblance to the Boundary City beneath his feet—at least, he couldn’t see the similarity. He didn’t understand why the “person” called “Yu Sheng” would think this was another Boundary City. But there was one thing he did understand:

Different perspectives of observation yield different worlds in one’s eyes.

In the eyes of the Argladian people, the starry sky was covered with magnificent, orderly lines and patterns. In the eyes of the Barmosans, the world was simultaneously illuminated by both “light” and “magnetic fields.” The Giploans could perceive the contours of electric fields. And the ancient Senjin people—they would embrace time itself during meditation, even achieving brief glimpses of the future.

Humans were one of the species with the narrowest “field of vision” in this world. In the eyes of those naturally gifted races, humans were both deaf and blind, to the extent that of all the infinite information in this vast world, less than one percent of that “intelligence” was “effective” for humans. Yet at the same time, given the right equipment or methods to assist them, the human mind could process virtually all forms of “knowledge,” and humanity’s tolerance and adaptability to dangerous information that exceeded their perception was absurdly high.

It was precisely for this reason that humans were universally acknowledged by all races of this world as possessing the “innate investigator saint body.”

“‘His’ world, as seen through his eyes, is different from ours,” Song Cheng said suddenly.

“Yes,” Baili Qing did not deny it, only adding, “But ‘he’ is equally capable of surviving in our world. Apart from being slightly uncomfortable, he’s adapted quite well to everything else.”

“Simultaneously possessing both human and… ‘non-human’ dual perspectives? Or rather, dual ‘cognitive systems’?” Luo Zheng frowned slightly, speaking as he thought it through. “You’ve had contact with him—do you think he’s actually an ‘entity,’ or a ‘human’?”

“More like a human—at least, that’s what he currently believes himself to be,” Baili Qing turned her head and lightly tapped the floor-to-ceiling window’s glass. As her words fell, the “scenery” beyond the window suddenly collapsed and contracted, returning once more to its previous state of drifting mist with mountains and water alternating in peaceful succession. “I believe it’s best not to disturb this ‘status quo’—not until we can determine what No. 66 Wutong Road and ‘Yu Sheng’ truly are.”

“Understood,” Song Cheng took a slow breath and nodded with utmost solemnity. “Then what’s next…”

“Next, Second Squad will allocate a portion of its personnel and resources specifically to handle matters related to No. 66 Wutong Road and ‘Yu Sheng.’ First order of business—help him with some registration paperwork.”

“Registration?”

“The two ‘people’ around him need legal identities,” Baili Qing said unhurriedly. “Additionally, he himself seems interested in registering as a… ‘Spirit Detective.'”

Song Cheng: “…Huh?”

“He says he wants to maintain order in the Borderland and fight against Otherworlds and entities.”

Song Cheng: “…Huh?”

“I know what you’re ‘huh’-ing about,” Baili Qing glanced up at Song Cheng. “The Special Operations Bureau has always dealt with outrageous situations. Go arrange it—pick someone sharp and reliable to take charge of this. Those two mentioned in the last report seemed quite good.”

Song Cheng’s expression was complicated. “I just gave them three days off…”

Baili Qing considered for a moment. “Fair point—given the circumstances, they do need the rest. Handle the scheduling as you see fit, just don’t delay too long.”

(End of Chapter)