Chapter 89 – Extremely Creative

Chapter 89 – Extremely Creative

The Academy?

Seeing Three Thousand Wicked Disciples’ message, Yu Sheng was momentarily confused, feeling like the word “Academy” seemed somehow familiar. Then he recalled something Baili Qing had casually mentioned during their previous conversation, as well as some intelligence he’d inadvertently noticed among a pile of documents while fiddling with his phone’s functions earlier, and he finally connected the dots.

According to the documents, it was an organization located beyond the Borderland, with its headquarters situated on a distant planet called “Terra.” The Academy specialized in knowledge preservation, archaeological discoveries, technological research and development, and combating ancient aberrations that threatened mortal sanity. In essence, it really did seem to be a “university” — an enormously scaled “university” — and most of its field operatives held the title of “Professor”…

If it was this kind of academic organization that enjoyed studying curiosities, it made perfect sense that they’d be interested in the strange metal device Yu Sheng had found.

But there was a problem. The Academy wasn’t as easy to contact as other “extradimensional organizations” — they basically only engaged in official-level exchanges with other organizations and were extremely secretive in private. Yu Sheng, a newcomer who’d just entered the field and barely knew any “colleagues,” where was he supposed to find an Academy “Professor”?

Yu Sheng furrowed his brow, hesitated briefly, then sent Three Thousand Wicked Disciples a message: “How do I get in touch with the ‘Academy’? Do you have any channels?”

But this time, he waited for a long while without receiving any new reply from Three Thousand Wicked Disciples. The other person seemed to have gone offline right after sending that last message.

“Well, at least it’s one more lead.” After waiting for a long time, Yu Sheng could only reluctantly put his phone away, then picked up the dark metal device again, turning it over and examining it carefully from every angle.

He found the strange inscriptions on the device’s surface that Three Thousand Wicked Disciples had mentioned — he hadn’t even noticed them when taking the photos earlier, yet they’d been spotted by an observant “internet friend.”

They looked like some kind of writing, already somewhat worn, but because they’d been deeply engraved, they were still discernible. However, Yu Sheng couldn’t understand their content, nor had he ever seen this peculiar script composed of curves and numerous arcs.

Just then, Yu Sheng suddenly felt his phone vibrate again.

A reply?!

He hurriedly pulled out his phone, only to discover it wasn’t a new message from Three Thousand Wicked Disciples — it was Little Red Riding Hood’s avatar bouncing in his private messages.

Opening it, the other person had sent just one line: “I saw the photos and messages you posted — don’t tell me you picked that thing up from your own ‘home’?!”

“Yeah,” Yu Sheng replied quite candidly, “but I didn’t mention that because I was afraid of scaring people.”

“Good thing you didn’t — considerate of normal people’s worldview. So how did you find it? No. 66 Wutong Road is your ‘territory,’ so how did something appear in that house that even you don’t recognize?”

“There’s no shortage of bizarre things in this house,” Yu Sheng sighed as he typed. “I even picked up Eileen from one of the rooms. Random stuff just pops up all the time.”

The little doll, perched nearby watching the show over the edge of his head, immediately headbutted his arm: “Why are you dragging me into this out of nowhere! And what do you mean ‘random stuff’ — am I random stuff?”

Yu Sheng casually ruffled the top of Eileen’s head a couple of times: “I was just using you as an example, serving the function of deepening the theme and strengthening the description…”

He then roughly described the process of finding the metal device in his private messages with Little Red Riding Hood, and didn’t forget to ask at the end: “Have you seen anything similar?”

“It’s normal for artificial objects to appear in Otherworlds, but it’s very strange for ‘foreign’ artificial objects to show up in an Otherworld. Of course, right now we can’t be sure whether that thing really did come from ‘outside,’ or if it was always part of No. 66 Wutong Road and you just never noticed it. After all, I don’t know your situation or your house’s situation,” Little Red Riding Hood sent a large block of messages. “As for that metal device, I haven’t seen one before, but I’d suggest you stop asking around on Frontier Communications like this. On one hand, the reliable information you can provide is too little, so you probably won’t find out much anyway. On the other hand, Frontier Communications has all kinds of people — don’t get scammed by someone unreliable.”

After a short while, Little Red Riding Hood sent another message: “You can hold onto it for now. If a collector who likes gathering curiosities shows up later, that thing might fetch a good price. You could also spend this time observing whether similar new things ‘drop’ out again. That thing looks like a component — there might be other parts…”

Yu Sheng was stunned when he saw her messages, then rapidly typed out: “This kind of junk can actually be sold for money?!”

Little Red Riding Hood’s reply this time was noticeably delayed: “…There are always collectors interested in all sorts of strange things, especially items brought out of Otherworlds that don’t carry any inherent danger. As long as you can prove it’s genuinely an ‘Otherworld recovery item,’ that’s enough.”

“Oh, so how do you prove that? Is there somewhere that does this kind of appraisal?”

“The Special Operations Bureau has appraisal qualifications. Large organizations like the ‘Academy,’ the ‘Barmosa Hermit Society,’ or the ‘Curiosities/Antiquities Association’ also have appraisal experts in this field. Certificates issued by them carry very high credibility… Are you short on money?”

Yu Sheng hesitated for a moment, then turned to glance at the fox girl who had just pulled another drumstick out of her tail to gnaw on.

He felt a bit embarrassed even as he typed: “As you know, I’m supporting two people right now, and Hu Li has a very large appetite… As for my personal work, I’ve hit a bit of a ‘bottleneck.'”

The main reason for this bottleneck was the sudden discovery that his fans had developed extremely outrageous fetishes from his works, to the point where he’d begun seriously doubting both his creative direction and his personal abilities.

Little Red Riding Hood’s reply came quickly — she didn’t inquire about what Yu Sheng’s “personal work” was: “Then you could try getting the Special Operations Bureau to issue an appraisal certificate. They’d definitely believe the thing came from an Otherworld — unless they refuse to acknowledge that No. 66 Wutong Road is an Otherworld.”

A smile appeared on Yu Sheng’s face as he mused that Hu Li’s food expenses and Eileen’s new television suddenly had a source of funding. But just then, something stirred in his heart.

An extremely bold, extremely creative, extremely tempting and practically valuable idea slammed into his mind with a clang.

This idea gleamed with golden light — and an unusual brilliance burst from his eyes along with it: “Wait, does that mean anything brought out of an Otherworld that isn’t dangerous can get this kind of appraisal?!”

It took nearly half a minute before Little Red Riding Hood sent back a single “Huh?”

Then, before Yu Sheng could type anything more, she immediately followed up with: “Wait, I think I can guess what you’re about to do! Are you seriously thinking of…”

Yu Sheng surveyed the living room.

Everything he looked at seemed valuable.

Even the moldy, peeling wallpaper in the corners seemed to be gilded in gold…

But the next second, his phone began vibrating continuously as Little Red Riding Hood fired off a barrage of messages: “Collectors have standards when it comes to collecting things, okay?! At the very least, it has to look like some kind of rare item with a story behind it! At the absolute minimum, when someone shows off their collection, they can’t be holding up a pair of plastic flip-flops, old newspapers, and soda bottles, right? How did you even come up with that idea—”

Yu Sheng was left blinking in stunned succession by this string of messages. He could practically feel, just from the words on screen, the enormous shock and astonishment of a certain high school girl.

At the same time, on the outskirts of another part of Boundary City’s Old City District, Little Red Riding Hood lay in her room staring blankly at her phone long after sending those messages, unable to snap out of it.

Her face was indeed filled with shock and astonishment.

“Still not asleep?” A young woman’s voice came from above, and then a face appeared over the edge of the top bunk — a girl with long black hair who looked a year or two younger than Little Red Riding Hood. She glanced at the phone in Little Red Riding Hood’s hand and recognized the interface on the screen. “Frontier Communications? Any new messages? Got a job?”

“No, just chatting with someone. Completely stunned,” Little Red Riding Hood said offhandedly.

“Someone who can leave you completely stunned? Did somebody post a nude run on the public message board?”

Little Red Riding Hood didn’t even look up: “There’s an entity trying to sell off household belongings to get rich.”

The girl on the top bunk’s elbow instantly slipped, losing her grip on the edge of the bed and tumbling down — but fortunately, halfway through the fall, her hair wrapped around the support posts on both sides of the metal bunk bed frame. She ended up dangling beside Little Red Riding Hood’s bed like a midnight vengeful spirit, swaying back and forth as she spoke: “Is this some new horror discussion thread?”

“Long Hair, could you please not talk to me in such a terrifying state?” Little Red Riding Hood couldn’t help but shoot a glare at the “roommate” hanging from the bunk bed. Late at night, a girl in a white nightgown suspended by her hair and swinging around the dormitory — any visitor would probably be scared half to death. “And I’m not joking. Let’s discuss this seriously. If there’s an Otherworld, and living inside it is an entity just like a human being, and this entity can not only leave freely but also has a legal identity in the human world, couldn’t he potentially…”

The girl hanging from the bed thought seriously for a moment, her face filling with shock: “I get it — it’s the one you’ve been in contact with recently, isn’t it… This is bad! He’s actually found a way to exploit the loophole!”

(End of Chapter)