Chapter 149

Chapter 149: The Unbelievable Special Operations Bureau

It had to be said—Xu Jiali’s car felt terrible, but listening to him ramble about obscure trivia the whole way was surprisingly interesting.

Way more vivid than the stiff, boring entries in the Borderland comms database.

The scenery outside the window slid backward. The broken Xiali drove from the old quarter’s worn-out streets to the city’s main roads, then along those roads through a bustling district full of high-rises and shopping malls. Foxy pressed her face to the window and stared out with wide eyes. Even with her ears and tails tucked away, she looked so excited that Yu Sheng kept imagining a bunch of tails wagging behind her.

“By the way,” Yu Sheng asked, “how long does it take to get from here to your Special Operations Bureau? We’re going to your HQ, right? Or do you call it the central bureau?”

“It’s HQ,” Xu Jiali said with a nod, watching the three of them through the rearview mirror. “It’s quick. Half an hour.”

“Half an hour?!” Yu Sheng blurted. This city was absurdly huge. “Your HQ is near the old quarter?”

Xu Jiali shook his head. “No. The Special Operations Bureau HQ is very, very far away—but from any point in this city to the Special Operations Bureau, the drive is always within half an hour.”

Yu Sheng went blank. “…Huh?”

“Because we use a shortcut,” Xu Jiali said with a grin, a smug edge to it, like he’d finally gotten his chance to surprise Yu Sheng. He turned off the main road and took a route along the edge of the commercial district, heading into a quiet area behind a mall. “The Special Operations Bureau has a few little tricks of our own.”

A parking lot entrance appeared ahead. Xu Jiali drove down the ramp.

The first level looked like a normal garage. Private cars sat in neat rows, and there were signs pointing to the mall, the supermarket, and nearby intersections. But then Xu Jiali twisted deeper into it and, from the back of the lot, turned onto another ramp.

Yu Sheng didn’t even see how that ramp appeared.

A moment ago, it had looked like empty ground at the end of the garage, dotted with puddles whose source made no sense. Then, as they approached, a sloping road emerged within the puddles themselves. Dim lights revealed a passage that felt slightly wrong, descending as if it could run all the way into the deep underground.

As they drove deeper, the lights slowly shifted color. Cold, ghostly blue filled the windows. Everything went unnaturally quiet. Even the engine sounded muffled, distant, as if it were behind a thick curtain. Yu Sheng felt his spiritual intuition start pounding.

Before he could even parse it, Irene reacted faster. “Wait, are we falling into an otherworld?!”

“Strictly speaking, we’re passing through an otherworld,” Xu Jiali said, glancing back. “Depth L-1. Otherworld ‘shortcut,’ covering the entire Borderland. It won’t generate entities. Aside from a tiny risk of getting lost, it’s basically harmless. The Special Operations Bureau is located at the main junction of the shortcut, and we’ve borrowed a bit of this otherworld’s special power.”

He nodded ahead. “We’re here.”

The moment he finished, Yu Sheng felt the car jolt. The pounding in his spiritual intuition faded quickly. The passage was gone. They’d exited through a gate and entered a brightly lit parking garage.

“Get out,” Xu Jiali said as he parked. “We’ll take the central elevator up.”

Yu Sheng hoisted Irene onto his shoulder and followed behind Xu Jiali, with Foxy trotting along, curious and excited. They crossed the massive garage, took several turns through the maze of underground space, and reached an elevator lobby. Xu Jiali swiped his card, and they stepped inside.

The moment the doors closed, Yu Sheng noticed the printed labels and handwritten signs stuck to the walls and around the buttons.

They were full of oddly specific tips and warnings:

“The elevator will not stop on floors 1–3.”

“Lighting control on Floor 4. If you enter a brightly lit Floor 4, return to the parking garage immediately or proceed to Floor 12 security level.”

“Elevator maintenance on Saturdays. Outside this time, if the elevator screen shows ‘maintenance,’ press the blue button and exit. Use Elevator 2 or 5 instead.”

“If you are an upper-level employee, you may only use this elevator to travel to B1, B2, and above-ground floors. If the elevator indicates arrival at B3 or deeper underground floors, greet the deep-level staff riding with you, but do not exit the car.”

There were several more warnings like that.

Yu Sheng stared at the wall for a few seconds, then slowly turned to Xu Jiali. “…Your workplace is pretty high-risk, huh? Coming to work means running a whole rules check?”

“You get used to it,” Xu Jiali said calmly. “The Special Operations Bureau HQ has a lot of special node points connected to a lot of places, and some floors are literally set in other spaces. Besides offices, there are also weird native things wandering around. But it’s not as dangerous as outsiders imagine.”

He spoke like he was discussing the weather. “Most locations and rules here aren’t lethal. If you get lost, there are dedicated help devices or ways to return to the shortcut. The building also has a Peaceful Work Division that coordinates with the security office to escort colleagues who get lost back to their workstations…”

Somehow, that made it feel worse.

Even Irene couldn’t help muttering, “What the hell is ‘Peaceful Work Division’? So if you try to sneak off to a quiet corner to slack, it counts as a ‘lost’ incident, and a bunch of security guards drag you back to your desk?”

Xu Jiali shrugged. “No choice. The work and environment are special. Especially near the special floors—if you leave your post for thirty minutes and don’t come back, who knows if you’re slacking or you got eaten by the office next door. But it’s not that bad. Most floors here are stable, and the higher-stress posts don’t have long shifts. For specially trained Special Operations Bureau employees, this environment isn’t much different from an ordinary person working in an office building.”

“You work in this building too?” Yu Sheng asked.

“No. Most of the time I’m out in the field,” Xu Jiali said, waving it off. “When I’m back, I’m usually on standby in the auxiliary building. Besides that, there are deployment stations and garrisons for regular operational units. They aren’t directly connected to HQ, but you can travel quickly through shortcut floors or special passages.”

The elevator stopped at a floor labeled 54-1/2. A soft announcement chimed, and the doors slid open onto a brightly lit hallway.

Yu Sheng followed Xu Jiali out, with Irene on his shoulder and Foxy close behind. The floor was quiet. A few uniformed people passed by, all looking hurried and serious.

One side of the hallway was lined with tightly shut doors. The other side had wide windows, and through them, Yu Sheng saw the “view” outside.

Outside was a heavy, oppressive layer of rock. Dark stone pillars and massive stalagmite-like structures crisscrossed the space. Far in the distance, near the end of the rock layer, there was a huge rift. Beyond it was a forest, snow-white under a harsh glare of sunlight.

Yu Sheng stopped dead. “…What the hell kind of view is this?!”

Xu Jiali looked completely used to it. He glanced outside and even seemed pleased. “Oh, nice. Clear weather outside Floor 54-and-a-half today. Pretty good. It’s been snowing outside this rift for half a year.”

Foxy’s eyes widened. Even she couldn’t help speaking up. “Does every floor of this building become its own world?”

“Not every floor,” Xu Jiali said, waving a hand. “I told you earlier. Most floors are stable. Only about a third have strange scenery, and it’s not that each one is its own world. It’s just that they happen to not be in the Borderland.”

Yu Sheng went numb. Only a third, and they just happened to not be in the Borderland?

Was this place really that unhinged?

Xu Jiali didn’t seem to notice their expressions. He continued explaining calmly. “The Special Operations Bureau HQ building is like a giant spacetime rift sampling needle. Each floor pierces through many anomalous sites. If the Borderland is this world’s spatial hub, then the Special Operations Bureau HQ is built right on the busiest N-shaped intersection of that hub. That’s why we even have two small customs checkpoints and a border transit station inside this building. If you get the chance later, I can take you to see it. For first-time visitors, it’s pretty interesting.”

“It’s already interesting enough just hearing it,” Yu Sheng said, sounding faintly shell-shocked. “How did you even build this building?!”

“Some magical civil engineering. How would I know the details?” Xu Jiali shrugged. Then he tilted his head, looking at Yu Sheng. “But now you get why every time you do door opening, our entire Special Operations Bureau goes into chaos, right?”

Yu Sheng’s expression froze.

“When we detect spacetime misalignment, the whole building blares alarms from top to bottom,” Xu Jiali sighed, sounding like he was remembering something painful. “Even the auxiliary building and several satellite facilities connected by floors blare alarms too. Later we realized there wasn’t any real damage, but when those alarms go off, it feels like HQ has fallen. On the craziest night, half the building got evacuated…”

Yu Sheng had nothing to say.

He could only keep walking in stiff silence.