Chapter 20: Irene’s Intel and Advice
This novel is translated and hosted on Bcatranslation.
The girl in the portrait, who looked like a perfectly painted doll, greeted Yu Sheng in her usual cheerful manner. Her tone sounded surprised but not in the way a normal person would be if a supposedly dead friend strolled back into the room. There was no gasp, no frantic questions about his being alive again, just a sort of curious warmth. It was almost as if Irene didn’t find it odd at all that he had just returned from a situation that should have ended in his death.
Yu Sheng stood there, pressing the thought down to the back of his mind. He told himself that he shouldn’t be astonished by this anymore. After all, he’d “died” quite a few times lately and each time had somehow made it back. Maybe Irene’s calm reaction was actually reasonable in its own strange way. Still, he knew the real issue probably lay with himself. The rules of life and death clearly weren’t behaving as they should around him.
He gave a casual shrug and said, “Just a lucky mistake,” as if coming back to life were no more than tripping over a doorstep. Then he turned to shut the door behind him. Once he had closed it, Yu Sheng looked down at himself. His body seemed completely fine—no wounds, no pain—and even his clothes were in perfect shape, as though no harm had ever touched him at all.
He frowned thoughtfully. Irene wasn’t behaving as if he had returned from death. Instead, it felt as if that moment of “dying” hadn’t happened at all, as if it had simply been erased. He just stood there with his back against the door, lost in his own puzzling thoughts.
From the painting, Irene’s gentle voice drifted over. “Yu Sheng? Are you alright? You look a bit… out of it. And, well, are you going to tell me how you got back? I kept losing contact with you, and there were all sorts of strange noises. I had no idea what kind of trouble you ran into over in the Otherworld… Oh, and what’s that you’re holding in your hand?”
Her words snapped him out of his daze. He looked down and realized he was still gripping something tightly. It was the severed tail—dark, scaly, and hideous to behold. He’d been so distracted that he hadn’t noticed it squirming slightly between his fingers. Though it was still twitching, it seemed weaker than before, as if it were slowly running out of energy now that it was separated from its owner.
Yu Sheng’s lips twitched with distaste. “Oh, right… this thing.” He hadn’t meant to keep holding such a monstrous trophy. He turned away from Irene’s painting and said over his shoulder, “…Just a souvenir.” Without waiting for her reaction, he headed straight for the kitchen.
Behind him, the doll-like girl’s voice went blank with confusion. “…Huh?”
In the kitchen, Yu Sheng unceremoniously tossed the severed tail into the sink. To make sure it wouldn’t slither away, he grabbed a knife and stabbed it a few times. Once he was certain it was too weak to escape, he covered it with a pot lid so that if it tried to wriggle out, the lid would clatter noisily to the floor and give him a warning. Only after taking this odd precaution did he drag himself back to the dining room.
He dropped into a chair, feeling the exhaustion seep through his bones. His mind felt as tangled as a ball of yarn caught in thorns. There was so much to think about, so many mysteries crowding into his head. But at the same time, he was desperate to stay awake. This was not the right moment for sleep.
Across the table, Irene regarded him carefully. She looked like a tiny, elegant noblewoman inside that oil painting, perched on her velvet-cushioned seat and watching him with big, curious eyes. “Yu Sheng,” she said, “please tell me what happened to you in the Otherworld. And how did you even…”
“I was going to,” he cut in, raising a hand to stop her. He straightened up, trying to be as calm and clear as possible. “I have a lot of questions for you. But first, I should explain what I just went through. I met someone over there—a girl who was trapped in the Otherworld, much longer than I’ve ever been. She told me things, answered some of my questions. And I ran into something else… a creature like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
He told her everything, leaving no detail out. He described the Night Valley where he had found himself, the strange fox-like girl named Foxy who had shared what she knew, and the shapeless, horrifying mass of living flesh he’d battled. He explained all of it—except for the part about him actually dying and coming back. That bit he still couldn’t make sense of, so he decided to keep it quiet for now.
He knew he barely knew Irene. The trust between them was thin, and he was aware that just because she hadn’t harmed him yet didn’t mean she wouldn’t. But he had no other options. She was the only unusual being he had encountered in this entire city who could speak freely about such bizarre things. If he couldn’t talk to her, who else could he turn to? Better to take a small risk and hope that, with a bit of trust, he might learn something useful.
The whole time, Irene listened closely. As he talked about the fleshy horror, her painted face grew serious. Occasionally, her lips parted as if to say something, but she always waited, never once cutting him off. When he finally finished, the doll girl in the painting sat up straight, her slender fingers folded neatly in her lap.
“First of all,” she began, voice steady and calm, “I have to remind you: I don’t remember everything about my past. The painting that holds me here has erased many of my memories. So I can only offer you what I still know.”
Yu Sheng nodded, accepting her honesty. “I understand.”
Irene nodded back. “Alright, let’s start with what I can tell you about the Otherworld. You should know by now that these places are not normal. They twist reality, break rules, and go against everything our common sense would expect. But inside these Otherworlds, there are also things we call ‘Entities.’”
“Entities?” Yu Sheng repeated, puzzled.
Irene’s painted eyes seemed to shine. “Yes. You could think of them as the Otherworld’s native creatures, or beings that it creates. Entities come in many forms. Sometimes they look like strangely shaped people, sometimes like beasts or monsters, and other times they might be more unusual—perhaps a living flame, a gust of wind that thinks and moves on its own, or even a stone that hops about. What matters is that they’re alive in some way and react to outsiders.”
Yu Sheng tilted his head, letting this new information sink in.
“Entities vary widely,” Irene went on, “but they share a common trait: they are all born from the Otherworld itself. As such, they have qualities that break ordinary logic. Many are dangerous. Most don’t think in ways we can understand—they can’t be reasoned with. Still, I believe some might have intelligence… though I can’t quite recall who or what they are.
“In any case, about ninety percent of these Entities are a threat. Some are mild—they might only annoy you or cause a slight inconvenience. Others are deadly, capable of harming you just by being seen. There’s a theory that Entities act like an Otherworld’s defense system. Intruders—like human explorers, investigators, or wanderers—are the real oddities in the Otherworld’s eyes. The Entities, therefore, are there to remove these intruders, much like a body’s immune system fights a foreign virus.”
Yu Sheng thought about this in silence. The creature he had fought—the one whose tail he had brought back—must have been one of these Entities. Born of that twisted valley, it had attacked him mercilessly.
“So, that monster I faced was most likely an Entity from the valley?” he asked.
Irene nodded. “That’s very likely.”
“Can Entities be destroyed?” Yu Sheng pressed.
Irene’s face grew solemn. “They can be killed, at least for a time, but you can’t truly get rid of them forever. Entities are like a natural product of the Otherworld’s rules. If you slay one, given enough time, a new one will eventually appear. The Otherworld needs them, and it will keep producing them as long as it exists. I have heard that sometimes it’s possible to suppress an Otherworld’s power so that it creates fewer Entities, or to delay the appearance of new ones. But I can’t remember the details.”
This was troubling news, and Yu Sheng frowned. Killing the creature once wouldn’t mean he was safe. It would return, or another like it would be born, as if the Otherworld were some terrible factory that never stopped running.
He felt a strange resolve inside himself. Without even thinking too hard, he found himself accepting that he would probably have to go back to that valley. He didn’t know why this idea felt so natural, just that it was there now, firmly rooted in his mind.
“Still,” he said quietly, “at least I can kill it. That’s something.” Then he met Irene’s eyes. “Do you know anything else about Entities? Their weaknesses, maybe?”
Irene shook her head gently. “No single weakness applies to all Entities. Each one might be vulnerable to something different. Sometimes a weakness is hidden in the Otherworld itself rather than in the Entity. Worse still, some Entities can change their weaknesses over time. That’s why venturing into the Otherworld is such a specialized and risky job. Honestly, you should look for a professional—someone who knows how to handle these things. I’m just a girl in a painting, stuck here.”
Yu Sheng sighed and rolled his eyes. “Sure, easy for you to say. Where am I supposed to find professionals? It’s not like they hang flyers on street corners.”
Irene’s voice brightened, as if recalling something. “Actually, they do have ways of making themselves known, though maybe not with ordinary advertisements. Think about it: since Otherworlds pop up everywhere, of course there must be people who handle them. In a city this large, there have to be official teams, secret groups, and private experts who work to maintain order behind the scenes. They exist to keep normal people safe. I don’t remember exactly how they operate, but I know they’re out there.
“Usually, they keep a low profile. Many Otherworlds react to being known or feared—knowledge alone can stir them up. So these experts try to prevent the public from understanding too much. But if someone stumbles into an Otherworld, or if an Otherworld threatens a place full of people, these professionals have ways to sense it and intervene.”
Yu Sheng lowered his gaze, staring at the window and thinking hard. The way Irene described it, there should be people with experience dealing with such oddities, people who would show up to investigate. Yet here he sat, talking to a doll in a painting, waiting for someone—anyone—to appear and explain what was going on.
“Since an Otherworld event already happened right under my nose,” he said slowly, “all I have to do is wait for these so-called professionals to come looking for me, right?”
To his surprise, Irene suddenly sounded uncertain. “Possibly… but they should have arrived by now. That’s what bothers me.”
Yu Sheng picked up on her worry. He frowned slightly. “Then why aren’t they here?”
Irene’s voice grew uneasy. “I don’t know. They should have shown up already.”