Chapter 21

Chapter 21: Once Is Strange, Twice Is Familiar

The truth was, the moment Yu Sheng learned that the Otherworld existed—dangerous, widespread—and that this enormous “boundary city” was a special place called the Borderland, he’d already guessed there had to be people dealing with it.

Not lone wolves scraping by on instinct alone. Organizations. Systems. Professionals.

There would be official ones, and there would probably be private ones, too.

But just like Irene said, under normal circumstances, those people wouldn’t have any contact with ordinary people.

The Otherworld was beyond common sense, beyond reason—countless tiny, dangerous holes punched into the mountain of reality that everyone pretended was stable and orderly. Most people could live their entire lives without ever touching what lurked inside those holes. But the moment you accidentally caught a glimpse of the scattered light leaking out…

There was no going back.

That was the “knowledge” Irene had given him from the very beginning. And from those descriptions alone, Yu Sheng could tell the specialists would do everything they could to keep ordinary people away from anything related to the Otherworld—including the existence of the specialists themselves.

But if something happened, they should have some kind of response mechanism.

Yu Sheng looked up again at the cold, empty street outside the window.

“Honestly,” he asked, “how long does it usually take for those ‘professionals’ to react?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember…” Irene hugged her teddy bear and rocked in her chair, her smugness somehow extra annoying. “But in my memory, it was fast. They’ve got tons of ways to sense abnormal situations. There should be monitoring all over the Borderland. There was when I got sealed, and now it’s probably even more advanced.”

Yu Sheng didn’t respond. He just stared at her.

“Okay, okay.” Irene’s smugness cracked. She immediately looked guilty. “Professionals are still people. Maybe they’re sloppy sometimes. Maybe they react a bit slow once in a while?”

Her voice got smaller. “Or maybe… they didn’t notice what happened on your side. Even though the commotion you made was pretty big…”

“Doesn’t sound reliable.” Yu Sheng frowned, then sighed. “By your logic, this whole house is an Otherworld, but nobody’s shown up yet. I seriously doubt the ‘professionalism’ of your so-called professionals.” He rubbed his face. “In the end, I think I still have to rely on myself.”

Irene blinked. “I-Is that so?”

Then she asked, curious, “So what are you going to do? From what you’re saying… you’re still going to deal with the valley, and the entity in the valley?”

“It’s not that I want to.” Yu Sheng tugged at the corner of his mouth. He thought of the icy rain, the frogs in that rain. “It’s that it’ll come looking for me again sooner or later. I can feel it. And didn’t you say it yourself? Once you’ve dealt with the Otherworld, there’s no turning back—and I’ve probably been in contact with it longer than you think.”

“This…” Irene muttered. “Fine. You’re not wrong. Plenty of people who handle Otherworld incidents started out as ordinary people who got dragged into one.” She paused, then added in a tone far too casual, “I mean, you’re basically haunted by dirty stuff at that point.”

Yu Sheng lifted an eyebrow. “Only one in ten turns into an expert, you said. What about the other nine? They go back to normal life?”

Irene tipped her chin up. “They die.”

Yu Sheng stared at her. “….”

“A-And some survive!” Irene flailed, suddenly panicked by his expression. “They rescue plenty of people every year. I just—” She hesitated, then finished weakly, “I think more people die.”

“…Irene.” Yu Sheng’s voice was flat.

“Huh? Huh?” she squeaked.

“If you can’t talk, you can also just not talk.”

“Is… is that so?” Irene said, as if honestly considering it.

Yu Sheng pinched the bridge of his nose and stood from the table.

“Whether I die or not doesn’t really matter to me.” That part came out calm, even honest. “But I do need more information about the Otherworld. Those professionals you mentioned… if they’re not coming, then I’ll have to go find them.”

Irene’s eyes lit up. She ignored the part about her being unreliable. “Go find them? Then—then why don’t you check the utility poles nearby and see if there are ads for some kind of Otherworld security company?”

Yu Sheng gave her a look. “…I’m being serious.”

“I’m serious too!” Irene blinked. “They really do leave contact methods like that for people like you—ordinary people who ran into an Otherworld once and got lucky enough to come back. It’s just that normal people usually can’t see them. They hide them with technical means. But for people who’ve been in contact with the Otherworld, it’s different. You’ll have some kind of change from a ‘spiritual awakening,’ so there’s a good chance you’ll notice the hidden sigils.”

She paused, then looked Yu Sheng up and down, suddenly more serious. “Haven’t you felt any… changes in yourself?”

Changes after contacting the Otherworld?

Yu Sheng’s heart jumped. He leaned forward, voice dropping. “When you say changes, do you mean being strong enough to crush rocks, healing from a slash in a few breaths, sensing other people’s memories and thoughts… and, you know, resurrecting and stuff like that?”

Irene stared at him like he’d grown a second head. “…What?”

“…No?” Yu Sheng tried.

“At most you can see some things you couldn’t see before!” Irene snapped. “What you’re describing isn’t even human. You’d have changed species! Stop reading so many novels and watching so much anime, okay?”

Yu Sheng opened his mouth, then shut it again.

Fine. Topic dropped.

Something about his situation was definitely off. Even in the supernatural world, it seemed a little too supernatural.

Fortunately, Irene didn’t dwell on it—probably because she’d been trapped for so long. The doll girl’s brain didn’t seem particularly sharp.

Yu Sheng let out a breath and glanced toward the kitchen.

A flicker of struggle crossed his face. Then he forced a crooked smile and walked in.

Irene immediately hopped down from her chair. “Hey, are you making breakfast?”

Yu Sheng didn’t even look back. “I’m dealing with that ‘local specialty’ I brought back earlier.”

“Oh, go ahead, go ahead—” Irene waved, then froze mid-gesture.

What “local specialty” could there be in the Otherworld?

“Wait!” Irene suddenly shrieked, making Yu Sheng stop at the kitchen doorway. “What the hell kind of ‘local specialty’ is that?!”

He turned his head with a faint, almost gentle smile. “Take a guess.”

Irene stared wide-eyed as Yu Sheng tied on an apron. In those crimson eyes, horror slowly surfaced—along with a very clear thought: Is this guy’s brain actually breaking?

“W-Wait, what are you doing?” she stammered. “You can’t be planning to… No, that thing really came off that entity?! How did you, an ordinary person, pull that off?! Hey, you’re not seriously going to—”

Yu Sheng shut the kitchen door without hesitation, cutting off her frantic babble.

A moment later, her faint yelling drifted in from the dining room. “Hey! Don’t shut the door! At least come reset the TV first! The TV doesn’t work anymore!”

Yu Sheng ignored her.

He went to the sink, lifted the pot lid, and found the severed tail was almost completely still. Only the torn muscle at the stump twitched once in a while, like a dying reflex.

He stared at the thing that had once burrowed into his stomach, and that old sensation rose again from deep in his bones—

Hunger.

But this time, it wasn’t violent. It flickered lightly, almost pleasant. Anticipation. A restless excitement.

Could he really do it?

Was this normal?

Was he still normal?

Yu Sheng thought it all through, but his hands didn’t hesitate.

He gathered scallions, ginger, and cooking wine. He set out a cutting board and a cleaver. Then, carefully, he rinsed the tail under clean water, scraped off the scales, laid it on the board, and brought the blade down.

It cut more easily than he expected.

When it had been attached to the monster, it had felt hard as stone. Now the knife slid through like firm beef.

And there were no bones.

Yu Sheng had thought about it. The first time he’d felt his body “strengthen” was after he’d bitten into that monster.

Later, during his second clash with it, he’d torn and bitten its flesh again, and afterward he’d felt another shift—smaller, but real.

That led him to a bold and… delicious idea.

If he cooked it, what would happen?

Yu Sheng worked fast, dividing the meat into neat pieces, his mood lifting with each cut.

Even Irene’s shouting outside the door stopped feeling so annoying.

And compared to resurrection, a suspicious piece of meat really wasn’t a big deal.

“I’ve eaten it raw before,” Yu Sheng murmured as he chopped. “Once is strange… twice is familiar…”