Chapter 92 – Accumulating Knowledge

The girl in the red coat stood beneath a streetlight. The lamplight spilled over her somewhat thin and petite frame, while shadows squirmed at her feet and all around her, hiding pairs of vigilant, prying eyes within them. One pair of eyes noticed the “outsiders” approaching, and Little Red Riding Hood immediately became aware of Yu Sheng’s group.

“Sorry, the taxi was a bit slow,” Yu Sheng waved to her. “Been waiting long?”

“Just a few minutes,” Little Red Riding Hood said casually, turning to glance aside. “I already sent my wolves to do a sweep of the area. Nothing unusual detected. The ‘Museum’ should be stable today—a good day for action. By the way, did you read through all the materials I sent you?”

“I did.” Yu Sheng nodded, and following Little Red Riding Hood’s gaze, looked toward the large building standing silently in the darkness of night.

But it wasn’t any “museum”—it was an old theater that had stopped admitting the public many years ago. The entrance to the so-called “Museum,” however, was inside this theater.

“After ‘Night at the museum’ begins, don’t touch any exhibits that emit breathing sounds. Don’t maintain prolonged eye contact with portrait oil paintings. Don’t enter red rooms. If you see plastic mannequins wearing guide uniforms, observe their gestures carefully and don’t enter any doors they point to or suggest. Really, those are the only things to keep in mind,” Little Red Riding Hood reminded them, still somewhat uneasy. “The museum is a relatively stable Otherworld, with its depth consistently around L-2. As long as you follow the rules, its inherent danger is manageable, which is why its danger rating is also classified as Level 2…”

Listening to the girl’s tireless reminders, Yu Sheng couldn’t help but think of the “introductory materials” he’d seen in the information encyclopedia when he’d been familiarizing himself with Frontier Communications.

Those materials were arguably the greatest benefit he’d gained from registering with the Special Operations Bureau—a systematic, comprehensive set of foundational intelligence about the supernatural world. This included the knowledge about Otherworld “depth” and “danger ratings” that Li Lin and Xu Jiali had mentioned before, which he’d never quite understood.

Depth, in simple terms, referred to an Otherworld’s “degree of deviation” from the real world. With the real world as Level Zero, depth increased incrementally from zero to five. An L-1 Otherworld might just be a place that looked a bit strange—ordinary people might even stumble their way back out. An L-5 Otherworld, however, aside from extremely rare and non-reproducible survival records, offered essentially zero chance of making it out alive. Experts weren’t even certain whether L-5 Otherworlds truly had “exits” at all.

Generally speaking, an Otherworld’s depth was relatively stable but could fluctuate within a small range due to time or certain specific conditions. Exploring when an Otherworld’s depth was shallower was the prudent approach, while sudden changes in depth were a leading cause of death for spirit detectives and investigators.

Danger rating was another important “parameter” for measuring the threat of an Otherworld. In most cases, danger rating was directly proportional to depth—the “shallower” the Otherworld, the safer; the “deeper,” the more dangerous. But this wasn’t absolute. Some shallow-layer Otherworlds generated bizarrely terrifying entities, while some L-3 Otherworlds—generally considered high-risk depth—even had stable safe zones within them.

It was precisely because of these exceptions that “danger rating” and “depth” had become two independent parameters.

At the same time, danger ratings weren’t only used to measure Otherworlds—they could also be used independently to gauge the threat level of “entities.”

The group walked toward the entrance of the old theater.

“Honestly, by the rules, I shouldn’t be bringing a ‘rookie’ like you to an L-2 Otherworld like the museum. New spirit detectives and investigators usually start with L-1. After all, shallow Otherworlds are more stable and easier to evacuate from,” Little Red Riding Hood said as they walked. “But you can’t exactly be called ordinary ‘rookies’—after all, you managed to handle the Night-shrouded Valley. Aside from lacking experience and knowledge, your actual abilities are already way above the bar.”

“No big deal. It’s all about gaining experience either way,” Yu Sheng said nonchalantly, then glanced curiously at the girl walking beside him. “You know, it suddenly strikes me… you seem pretty used to looking after people?”

“What makes you say that?”

“You normally come across as mature and aloof, but the moment you start doing things, you go on and on about all these details. Especially when you’re leading us ‘rookies’ around—you’re like a chaperone on a field trip.”

Little Red Riding Hood’s footsteps halted for a few seconds, her expression subtly complicated.

But she said nothing, merely pursed her lips and continued walking.

“You’re clear on the concepts of depth and danger rating, right?” After only a few more steps, she broke the silence again.

“Got it. Basically, depth means ‘how messed up is this place,’ and danger rating means ‘how deadly is this place or this thing,'” Yu Sheng waved his hand. “Pretty easy to understand.”

“That understanding… while crude, is actually pretty apt,” Little Red Riding Hood nodded. “The museum’s depth is L-2, which is considered a ‘standard’ Otherworld depth. It already differs significantly from the real world, and the environment itself begins to distort. It’s extremely dangerous for ordinary people, but overall, the space inside still conforms to ‘common sense’—still aligns with human perception and logical thinking. Stick to the rules and nothing will go wrong…”

Before she could finish, Yu Sheng jumped in: “Danger Rating Level 2 means it won’t actively cause death, doesn’t possess active or indiscriminate malice, but failure to follow the regulations can still result in serious injury or even death—right?”

“Not bad. You’ve got it down solid. I won’t worry then.”

Little Red Riding Hood said casually, then stopped in her tracks.

They had entered through the old theater’s main door. After passing through the half-closed, decrepit iron gate, what greeted them was a hall paved with dark green floor tiles. On both sides of the hall were corridors leading into the theater’s interior, and directly opposite the entrance stood several dark, gaping ticket windows. But what Yu Sheng noticed first was a strange device placed in the center of the hall.

It was a dark gray metallic quadrangular prism, wider at the base and narrower at the top, roughly half a person’s height. Several lights on its top flickered on and off slowly, and from within came an intermittent, low-pitched buzzing sound—clearly in operation.

“This was placed here by the Special Operations Bureau. We call it a ‘node’—full name, ‘Constant-type Node Generator,'” Little Red Riding Hood pointed at the metal prism. “The low-frequency cognitive interference it emits can affect ordinary people, keeping them away from known dangerous locations in the Borderland. The effect is actually quite weak, but it’s enough to deter people who haven’t undergone a spiritual awakening.”

“…Are there a lot of these things in the city?” Yu Sheng stared at the device called a “node” in amazement. “I’ve never noticed one before…”

Little Red Riding Hood glanced at Yu Sheng. She instinctively wanted to say “because you used to be an ordinary person, so you’d never have gotten close to one of these,” but swallowed the words before they left her mouth.

Because she felt that even the fox standing next to him had a higher human content than Yu Sheng…

“How well does this thing work? Can it really keep all ordinary people out?” Yu Sheng asked curiously.

“It works well, but even the best security measures don’t have a hundred percent interception rate. You could seal this place off with reinforced concrete and there’d still be people showing up with hydraulic cutters and impact drills looking to get themselves killed,” Little Red Riding Hood sighed. “There are always the stubborn and the freakishly gifted who’ll push through the dizziness, blurred vision, and leg cramps and insist on ‘exploring.’ Or people who are just unlucky—born with high spiritual sensitivity, unaffected by nodes. So there are constantly poor souls falling into Otherworlds waiting for us to rescue. They ultimately either become compensation for spirit detectives and investigators, or become tragic cases in the Bureau’s internal bulletins. And in rare instances… after much wailing and psychiatric treatment, they become new detectives, investigators, or Bureau agents.”

“Why not just demolish this place?” Hu Li suddenly asked from the side.

“Demolish it? Now that would be real fun,” Little Red Riding Hood knew Hu Li lacked common sense in this area, so she simply shrugged helplessly. “All you’d be destroying is one known ‘entrance.’ The Otherworld itself doesn’t exist in the physical dimension. If you tear down its known, controllable entrance, then nobody knows where it’ll open up next.”

Listening to Little Red Riding Hood’s explanation, Yu Sheng felt a wave of emotion. Courting death truly was a human instinct—there was simply no stopping it…

Meanwhile, Little Red Riding Hood stepped forward, approaching the “node,” and swiped her ID card across its top.

“Registering entry information,” she turned back, flashing her ID at Yu Sheng. “If we die in there, the retrieval team at least knows where to fish us out. After all, once you enter an Otherworld, outside communications basically go dark. Registering at the node is the last stop where spirit detectives and investigators can leave any trace for the real world.”

Seeing this, Yu Sheng brought Eileen and Hu Li forward to register as well. As he operated the device, he couldn’t help remarking: “Good thing I got IDs made for these two…”

A faint hum emanated from the node.

Then Little Red Riding Hood led Yu Sheng’s group of three past the “node” to the far end of the hall.

She stopped before those dark, gaping ticket windows.

The long-abandoned old theater’s ticket windows had of course all been decommissioned ages ago. Two of the four windows were crisscrossed with plastic barrier tape. Of the remaining two, one had been emptied out, its interior visible only as a pile of unwanted junk. The other, however, still housed a ticket-printing machine—coated in a thick layer of dust.

Little Red Riding Hood stopped before the window with the ticket machine and pulled out her phone to check the time.

After two or three minutes, she suddenly reached out and rapped on the ticket window’s glass.

“Evening show. Night at the museum. Four tickets.”

Inside the empty, unmanned ticket window, light suddenly appeared—though the lightbulb had long since shattered, warm and bright radiance filled the dusty little booth.

As if an invisible ticket clerk, forgotten by time and memory, still sat behind that window.

The old ticket-printing machine creaked and groaned. The empty paper feeder spun round and round, and began dispensing admission tickets.

(End of Chapter)