Chapter 089

Chapter 89: Wildly Creative

“Academy?”

Seeing that word, Yu Sheng first felt puzzled. It sounded familiar. Then he remembered that Bai Li Qing had mentioned it once, and he had also seen something about it earlier while poking around the phone’s info pages. The pieces clicked.

The info said it was an organization beyond the Borderland, with headquarters on a faraway planet called Terra. The Academy focused on passing down knowledge, archaeological discoveries, technology research, and fighting ancient horrors that threaten mortal sanity. It really was like a university, a very large one, and most of its field agents carried the title “professor.”

If they loved studying odd objects, it made sense that they would be interested in Yu Sheng’s strange metal gadget.

There was one problem. The Academy wasn’t easy to reach like other outside organizations. They mostly talked to other organizations through official channels and kept private contact very secret. Yu Sheng was a rookie who barely knew any colleagues. Where would he find an Academy “professor”?

He frowned, hesitated, and sent Wicked Disciple 3000 a message: “How can I reach the Academy? Do you have a way?”

This time he waited a long while, but no new reply came. It felt like the other person had logged off right after sending that last message.

“At least I got a lead,” he said at last. He put away the phone, picked up the black metal gadget, and examined it again.

He found the odd inscriptions Wicked Disciple 3000 had mentioned. He hadn’t even noticed them when taking the photos, but the careful stranger had. The marks looked like writing, worn down in places, but carved deep enough to read. He didn’t understand the rounded, curving script at all.

Just then, his phone buzzed again.

A reply? He pulled it out fast, but it wasn’t Wicked Disciple 3000. It was a direct message from Little Red Riding Hood.

He opened it. She had sent only one line: “I saw your photos and your post. You didn’t pick that up in your own ‘home,’ did you?!”

Yu Sheng answered with perfect honesty, “I did. I just didn’t say that openly so I wouldn’t scare people.”

“Good thing you didn’t. Thanks for protecting normal people’s worldview. So how did you pick it up? Wutong Road 66 is your ‘turf.’ How can something show up there that you don’t even recognize?”

Yu Sheng typed with a sigh, “Plenty of cursed stuff in this house. I picked up Irene from a room too. All sorts of random things pop out.”

Irene had been watching the chat and bonked his arm with a tiny headbutt: “Why drag me into this! And what do you mean random stuff? Am I random?”

Yu Sheng rubbed her head and said, “I was just making a point and adding color to the story.”

He then gave Little Red Riding Hood a quick rundown of how he found the metal gadget and finished with a question: “Have you seen anything like it?”

She replied with a long string of messages: “Man-made objects showing up in an Otherworld is normal. An Otherworld producing a ‘foreign’ man-made object is the weird part. Of course, we still don’t know if it really came from ‘outside.’ It might be part of Wutong Road 66 and you just missed it before. I don’t know enough about you or your house. As for the gadget, I haven’t seen it. I suggest you stop asking around on Border Communications. First, you don’t have enough solid info for people to help. Second, that place has all kinds. Someone unreliable might trick you.”

After a short pause, another message arrived: “You can keep it for now. If a collector shows up later, it might sell for a good price. You can also wait and see if more things ‘drop’ out. It looks like a part. Maybe there are other pieces.”

Yu Sheng blinked at the words and typed fast: “You mean this junk can be sold?!”

She took a bit longer to answer this time: “…There are always collectors who like strange things, especially safe items taken out of an Otherworld. As long as you can prove it’s an ‘Otherworld recovery,’ it’s fine.”

Yu Sheng asked, “How do I prove that? Is there someone who certifies it?”

She replied, “The Special Affairs Bureau has the right to certify. Big organizations like the Academy, the Bamosa Hermit Society, or the Oddities Association also have experts. Their certificates carry a lot of weight. Do you need money?”

Yu Sheng hesitated, looked over at Foxy, who had just pulled another drumstick from her tail and was nibbling happily, and typed with a bit of embarrassment, “You know I’m supporting two people now, and Foxy eats a lot. My own job has hit a small bottleneck.”

[Main reason for the bottleneck: discovering that my fans developed very strange tastes because of my work, which made me doubt my direction and my skills.]

Little Red Riding Hood replied quickly and didn’t ask what his “job” was: “Then try getting a certificate from the Special Affairs Bureau. They will believe you found it in an Otherworld, unless they deny that Wutong Road 66 is one.”

Yu Sheng smiled. He could already see Foxy’s food budget and Irene’s new TV being covered. Then a thought flashed through his mind.

A bold, wildly creative, very tempting, very practical idea slammed into him like a bell.

It shone bright gold in his head, and his eyes lit up: “Wait, so anything brought out of an Otherworld, as long as it isn’t dangerous, can be certified, right?!”

Half a minute later, Little Red Riding Hood sent back a single “Huh?”

Before he could type again, her next message raced in: “Hold on, I think I know what you’re planning! Don’t tell me you want to…”

Yu Sheng looked around the living room.

Everything suddenly looked valuable.

Even the peeling, mildewed wallpaper seemed covered in gold.

The phone buzzed nonstop as her messages poured in: “Collectors have standards, okay! It needs to look like a rare item with a story. At the very least, when people show it off, they can’t be waving around plastic slippers, old newspapers, or empty bottles. How did you even get this idea?”

Stunned by the flood, Yu Sheng could almost feel the huge shock and disbelief of a certain high school girl through every word.

At the same time, on the edge of another old neighborhood in Boundary City, Little Red Riding Hood lay in bed staring at her phone for a long time after sending those messages, still in a daze.

From the upper bunk came a young girl’s voice: “Not sleeping yet?” A face popped over the edge. It belonged to a girl with black hair that hung like Rapunzel’s, a year or two younger than Little Red Riding Hood. She glanced at the screen and recognized the app: “Border Communications? Any new leads? Got a job?”

Little Red Riding Hood answered casually, “No. Chatting with someone and I am very shocked.”

The girl on the top bunk teased, “Something still shocks you? Did someone streak in the public feed?”

Little Red Riding Hood said without looking up, “An entity wants to sell off his household and get rich.”

The other girl’s elbow slipped. She dropped off the bunk, but in midair her hair wrapped around the iron frame and caught her. She ended up hanging beside Little Red Riding Hood’s bed like a midnight ghost, swaying as she asked, “Is this a new horror thread?”

Little Red Riding Hood rolled her eyes at her “roommate” dangling there in a white nightdress: “Rapunzel, can you please not talk to me while hanging like that? If anyone walked in right now, we would scare them half to death. Also, I’m not joking. Let’s think seriously. If there is an Otherworld where an entity lives like a human, can go in and out freely, and even has a legal identity in the human world, then could he…”

Hanging there, the girl thought hard, then her eyes went wide: “I get it. You mean the one you’ve been dealing with lately… oh no! He just found a bug!”