Chapter 230

Chapter 230: Spacetime Layering

The four of them, now with Squirrel added so the group had even fewer actual people, stood blankly in a silver-white corridor and stared in shock.

After a long pause, Foxy finally broke the silence: “Benefactor, is this what’s behind the ‘stage’?”

“This isn’t what I pictured,” Irene muttered as well, “I thought there would be tentacles, flesh, eyeballs, and creepy whispers everywhere. Wasn’t that the style before?”

“Don’t ask me. It’s not what I pictured either,” Yu Sheng waved a hand, then quickly pointed at a sign on the corridor wall, “but we really are inside Anka Aila… the sign says it: Anka Aila Maintenance Passage.”

Foxy widened her eyes in surprise: “Benefactor, you can read that script?”

“I understand the meaning, but I don’t know these characters,” Yu Sheng frowned, then glanced at the Hunter’s Garb he was wearing, “maybe it’s tied to the Hunter’s vision.”

Irene blinked, then reacted fast: “Maintenance passage? What is that supposed to mean? Like a maintenance passage inside Anka Aila?”

Yu Sheng couldn’t give an answer, so he led the team forward, moving under high alert as they headed deeper along this strange “maintenance passage.”

[What is this place? Are we inside Anka Aila? Or on a path leading into it? Why would the space behind Fairy Tale’s ‘stage’ be a clearly man-made corridor? And in the end… what is ‘Anka Aila,’ the being that carries the name Dark Angels, really?]

Countless questions churned in his mind while the empty corridor echoed only with the steady steps of Yu Sheng and Foxy. Yu Sheng didn’t know where to go, so he followed a quiet pull in his gut, walking toward the depths and, at each fork, picking the direction that felt “most right.”

The Hunter’s bullet in his hand was still faintly warm, pointing him toward a fuzzy target area, and all he could do was judge from its heat that his direction was still correct.

A soft humming rose now and then from underfoot or overhead. It sounded like machines running, but the sound felt unreal, like a dream trying to replay an old memory.

A wave of light dizziness hit, and Yu Sheng looked ahead on reflex.

His vision flickered. The bright white corridor shattered into a torn, twisted wreck. Dark red shadows stabbed through the walls and floor. Mud-like growths gushed from broken pipes and smeared over everything. The ceiling ahead was ripped open, and beyond the hole churned chaotic flashes of light and starry phantoms stretched into infinity.

Squirrel let out a thin scream, and even Irene blurted, “What the heck!” Yu Sheng and Foxy stopped dead, every muscle tensed.

Foxy had already scooped up her two big tails and was about to hose down the front with a Fox Carrot Gatling, but the horrible scene vanished at once, and the corridor returned to its bright, clean state.

Yu Sheng traded a look with Irene on his shoulder. They kept quiet for a moment before the little doll spoke first: “Do you think that was the past or the future?”

“It could also be the present, the real face of this place,” Yu Sheng answered gravely.

“…You’ve become a professional Spirit Realm Detective,” Irene tugged at the corner of her mouth, “you know how to pick the scariest option.”

“Benefactor,” Foxy said as she hugged her two big tails and walked over, nerves in her voice, “I think there’s Illusion Arts here. I saw a horror movie as a kid with a scene just like this.”

“What horror movie?” Yu Sheng asked without thinking.

“I forgot the name. A guy goes out to sea. The people on his ship actually all died in an accident halfway, but he has Observer Effect Offset Syndrome, so he never notices. He keeps sailing with what’s already a broken ship. As the trip goes on, he sinks into ‘another world’ bit by bit, all the way down to a world line where every living thing is gone, and only then does he snap awake and go insane…”

Irene’s hair practically stood on end: “Did you have to tell that story here?”

Foxy sounded wronged: “Benefactor asked me to tell it.”

Yu Sheng suddenly raised a hand and cut off the doll and the fox: “Shh.”

The corridor went still at once.

Then they heard footsteps.

Dense footsteps, like a team running up from behind at speed, already very close.

Yu Sheng’s eyes tightened as he turned his head toward the sound.

But he saw nothing. The corridor remained empty.

Only the footsteps sounded, as if running right past him.

Like the humming in the walls, the footsteps carried a thin, unreal blur.

In them, Yu Sheng also heard the hiss of pressure valves from powered gear and the jostle and scrape of equipment.

“Sounds like a dozen people just ran by,” Irene said nervously as she clutched Yu Sheng’s hair, “people we can’t see.”

“Can a cursed doll not be more nervous than me in a place like this?” Yu Sheng had to pry Irene’s hand off, “and stop pulling. I’ve already started losing hair these past few days.”

“It seemed to go that way,” Foxy’s ears twitched in the air as she pointed toward a fork ahead, “but once they turned right, the sound disappeared.”

Yu Sheng frowned, then decided fast: “We go after them.”

They jogged down the corridor, took the fork Foxy had indicated, and soon came to a silver-white metal gate that had been broken open. The Door loomed suddenly before them.

Yu Sheng hesitated, started toward The Door, and then the footsteps returned right by his ear.

The unseen people seemed to arrive at The Door. Low voices followed-fast, but mixed with heavy static, so the words were unclear. He could only catch bits like “blow it,” “lost contact,” and “keep going.”

Then he heard an explosion, a shriek of tearing metal, a few short shouts, and a far-off alarm.

Yu Sheng’s brow drew tight as, in that moment, something clicked.

“It’s them.”

Irene shot him a puzzled look: “Huh? Them? Who?”

“The Deep Dive Squad from seventy years ago,” Yu Sheng said as he stepped up to The Door and ran a finger over the damage marks, “they left these sounds.”

He set Irene down, then crouched and carefully squeezed through the hole between the two gate panels.

Irene and Foxy crawled in after him.

They stood there, staring at the space beyond The Door.

It was a hall. The floor dipped in the center. A giant pillar-like structure rose at the center like a support. Cables and pipes wrapped around the pillar. A ring of dead display units hung around it. Many lines dangled from the ceiling like nerves and veins long since dead. Around the hall, rows of strange devices stood like lockers or cylinders, full of ports and display panels. Every light and screen had gone dark.

“This looks like a control center,” Irene whispered.

Yu Sheng said nothing. After a careful sweep of the surroundings, he stepped toward the center.

At once the now-familiar dizziness hit, and he froze. The hall blinked into a ruin drowned in darkness and rot. Dark red matter coated every wall and the floor. The cables hanging from the ceiling twitched like nerves and veins. The devices around the hall swelled and squirmed like hearts. The central pillar turned into a massive tentacle-like shadow, and the many displays around it became countless cold eyes that spread across the shadow’s surface.

The shadow bent toward Yu Sheng and the others. Tendril-like tips sprouted from its end.

Then, like Illusion Arts, the vision faded, and the hall returned to what it had been.

Yu Sheng steadied himself and walked on.

Foxy followed close, her tails drifting quietly in the air as she kept watch.

Footsteps sounded again, more scattered this time.

The Deep Divers from seventy years ago seemed to have run into trouble. Yu Sheng heard weapons fire and people shouting. A sick buzz and muttering whispers tangled with the voices.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a figure in heavy protective armor stumble into view and then vanish in a blink.

This place felt like a warped spacetime node. Events from different times overlapped, and even different layers of “reality” piled up together.

Just then, Yu Sheng felt heat.

He raised his hand to see the Hunter’s bullet in his palm trembling. The warmth from it surged, as if it had been fired only a second ago, until it burned so hard he couldn’t stand it.

His hand jerked, and the bullet slipped from his palm.

He bent to grab it.

At that instant, the world around him lost all color.

A strange, blurred voice reached his ear:

“…Final report. This is the Deep Dive Team. Operation codename ‘Adulthood’…”