Chapter 055

Chapter 55: The “Professionals” Are Right Here

The giant eye left. It went without a sound and left no secrets behind.

People in the cave looked at each other, unsure what to do. The pressure that strange eye had brought was so heavy that even after it was gone, a thin chill still clung to their hearts, along with plain disbelief.

Irene kept muttering, not reassured at all: “It really just left? What if it’s hiding behind the clouds?”

Yu Sheng shook his head: “It really left. At least, it’s no longer inside this Otherworld.”

He was sure. He could feel that the gaze that had blanketed the Valley had vanished.

“Why though?” Irene kept fussing: “What did it even come for? It hid here for so long, then suddenly woke up and scared everyone, messed with the Entities, and now it’s gone… What’s the point?”

Yu Sheng thought for a moment and shrugged: “Maybe it was resting here. Now it’s rested enough and left.”

Irene stared at him, dazed: “Is… that so?”

Yu Sheng gaped back at her. [She actually bought that?]

Xu Jiali’s voice cut in and saved them from a pointless debate: “No one knows the goals of Dark Angels. In fact, we can’t even be sure they have goals. Their appearances are always random. Sometimes you pay a huge price to drive one away. Sometimes… it leaves on its own. Trying to analyze a Dark Angel’s actions is pointless. We should be glad this one isn’t the active kind.”

Yu Sheng made an “oh” and rubbed his chin, thoughtful. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Li Lin still watching the outside from the cave mouth.

That odd feeling of familiarity rose again. Yu Sheng frowned, memory stirring. Suddenly, an image flashed through his mind.

He stepped forward, eyes wide with recognition: “Wait! Haven’t we met? Recently, for sure! Where was it… the corner store, right, the corner store!”

He leaned in and studied Li Lin’s very average face, the kind you would lose in a crowd unless you thought hard. This time the memory lined up perfectly: “You bought a case of instant noodles, didn’t you?”

Li Lin’s mouth tugged sideways. He had known the moment they met in the ruins of the broken temple that Yu Sheng might recognize him. He wasn’t nervous or surprised now. As a trained agent of the Special Affairs Bureau, his memory and observation were much stronger than most.

Recognizing each other was only a matter of time.

Seeing Li Lin’s reaction, Yu Sheng made several quick connections in his head. He glanced at Xu Jiali, then at Little Red Riding Hood resting not far away.

He asked with a small frown, voice steady: “So where are you from, really?”

Li Lin sighed, straightened up, and pointed at himself like it was a formal briefing: “Li Lin, Second Action Squad of the Special Affairs Bureau under the Borderland Council.”

Xu Jiali walked over and adjusted his stance, answering in a low voice: “Attached Special Operations Group of the Second Action Squad. Veteran Deep Diver. Xu Jiali. That really is my real name.”

Yu Sheng stared with his mouth open for a while. Then he turned to the girl who looked like a high schooler: “So you’re also special duty…?”

Little Red Riding Hood crossed her arms and lifted her chin toward Xu Jiali: “I’m not. I’m their hired child worker.”

Yu Sheng blinked and looked back at Xu Jiali, stunned: “Your Organization hires child labor?”

“What child labor!” Xu Jiali shot Little Red Riding Hood a glare: “Holiday temp! At least call it work-study!”

Yu Sheng’s head felt foggy. His first thought was that Borderland high schoolers were hardcore if their holiday jobs meant fighting monsters in the Otherworld. His second thought was that he had finally met the “professionals” Irene had mentioned. His third thought…

He looked at the three “professionals” and felt like he was finally putting things together: “So you came for me? You followed me all the way into this Otherworld just to find me?”

The words were barely out when Xu Jiali and Li Lin let out the same long sigh. Even Little Red Riding Hood lowered her head and switched from crossing her arms to covering her face.

Xu Jiali pulled out a cigarette, face full of worry. He lit it and took a long drag.

“If we could help it, we wouldn’t. This wasn’t our plan at the start…”

Yu Sheng made a small questioning sound. He could tell the big guy wasn’t happy, so he didn’t press. It didn’t matter. Things here were settled for now. The remaining questions could wait until they all got back to the real world.

Irene hopped from Foxy’s arms onto Yu Sheng again. Yu Sheng carefully held the battered little doll and was the first to walk out of the hiding place.

Irene hugged his head with her broken arms from her perch on his shoulder and stared at the depths of the Valley, eyes wide: “It’s completely quiet now… what a mess.”

“Yeah, a mess. But at least the Hunger Entity is gone,” Yu Sheng said, looking over the Valley that had been “chewed” a layer down. “By the way, will that thing show up again later?”

“It will. As long as the Otherworld exists, Entities will appear again. And the Otherworld will never vanish. Even if you bomb it ten thousand times, it returns to how it was,” Irene answered softly as she held his head. “It’s just… this time it will probably take a long while.”

“It’s time to leave,” Yu Sheng said with a long breath. With the Hunger Entity gone for now, even the air in the Valley felt fresher. A cold wind blew from far away. Bright daylight pushed back the eternal night here. The scene was broken and scattered, but he still felt his heart ease. He looked back at Foxy: “Foxy, how do you feel now?”

The Fox Maiden, who had been close behind him the whole time, lifted her head at once: “I feel good. Not cold, not hungry. I just ate a lot!”

Foxy smiled, happy in a simple, sunny way for the first time, as if a weight had fallen off her shoulders.

Yu Sheng smiled back and reached out to the air beside him: “Then let’s go home.”

Right as he was about to pull open a Door home, Foxy stepped forward without warning and lightly tugged his sleeve.

Yu Sheng stopped, puzzled, and looked at the Fox Maiden.

“Are you worried about the food we left at the ruined temple? The Hunger Entity probably ruined most of it. Do you want to go fetch it back?”

Foxy nodded, then shook her head.

She spoke softly, words stumbling like she feared asking too much or being selfish: “benefactor, I want to go to a place. I…”

Yu Sheng watched her hesitate and at first didn’t get what she wanted. Then, all at once, he remembered something he had seen deep in Foxy’s dreams.

After a short silence and some thought, he nodded: “I know. It’s in that little grove, right?”

Foxy looked up at him in surprise and met his eyes.

Then she gave a small, firm nod.

The three from the Bureau didn’t know what was going on, and they glanced at Yu Sheng in question. Yu Sheng didn’t explain in detail. He only waved a hand: “Don’t worry. I have a way to send everyone back in a bit. But first, I’m taking Foxy somewhere. If you’re worried, come along.”

“Then let’s go together,” Xu Jiali agreed at once. “This miss seems to have stayed here for a long time. People have things to settle before they leave. I get it.”

They left the back hill, went around the even more broken, nearly bare ruins of the temple, crossed the stone flats of the Valley Floor riddled with ravines and Rifts, and finally reached where the little grove had been.

The grove was gone. The dark, mutated plants had been devoured in the feast before. Only a black, empty waste remained, pitted with holes and scattered with suspicious black fragments.

Yu Sheng glanced at Foxy and asked in a low voice: “Is it here?”

Foxy nodded slowly: “My father and mother are here.”

Only then did Irene finally understand why Foxy had come. The doll’s eyes widened as she recalled the scenes deep in Foxy’s dreams, those temptations, those blurry half-true memories, and those cold phantoms in the Hunger. For some reason she felt uneasy, and the many pits around them made the feeling grow fast.

She couldn’t help raising her voice, like volume alone could make it less harsh: “We might not find it! A whole layer of ground got chewed away! Maybe those tendrils that came up from the earth already…”

Foxy shook her head and gently cut her off: “No. I buried them very deep. My father and mother told me to bury them deep. I buried them very deep.”