Chapter 249

Chapter 249: Clue

That torn cloth strip felt like it was drifting between two worlds.

Yu Sheng couldn’t explain how he knew, but the moment he saw it trembling in the corner—half-real, half-illusory—the thought surfaced in his mind as if it had always been there.

The other end didn’t seem anchored. When he pulled, there was almost no resistance. The instant the cloth crossed into this side, it became solid. The fuzzy edges snapped into sharp focus.

At the same time, the wind in the room strengthened—just for a moment—before settling back into its previous, steady howl.

Was it because pulling something over briefly strengthened the connection?

Or had the blizzard on the other side simply surged at the same time?

Yu Sheng kept his eyes on the cloth as those thoughts flickered through his mind.

It looked like it had been torn from a larger piece of fabric. The edges were ragged and uneven. The cloth itself was light and soft, but surprisingly tough. Tearing it off must have taken serious force—and that toughness hinted at high-level craftsmanship.

He flipped it over.

Pale-gold patterns ran along the edge of the deep-blue cloth, arranged like a string of stylized letters. They carried a strange, quiet weight.

After studying it for a moment, Yu Sheng took out his phone and pulled up the photo he’d taken of that iron lump before. He zoomed in on the runes carved into the metal, then compared them to the patterns on the cloth.

The styles looked similar.

But he didn’t trust himself enough to declare anything. He wasn’t a professional.

Hastily, footsteps thudded down the hallway—followed by a doll’s furious yelling.

“Hey! You know he just opened a door and left, but we had to run all the way to the platform to open a teleportation door—your tail is blocking my face—hey, why is it so cold, did the heat shut off or a window—holy—!”

Yu Sheng turned.

Foxy stood in the doorway.

And then a 66.6-centimeter-tall Irene shot out from between Foxy’s tails and skirt like a tiny rocket.

She hadn’t even looked inside. She stepped straight onto the ice-slick snow on the floor, slid forward, screamed, and slammed into the opposite wall with an impressively crisp splat.

A moment later, Irene peeled herself off the wall, sucked in a breath—and No. 66 Wu Tong Road filled with language that was anything but sweet. Her little mouth was spewing curses like someone had greased her tongue and thrown her downhill.

But the instant Yu Sheng walked over and lifted her by the collar, she went quiet.

“What the hell is this? What’s going on? How did it happen…?” Irene dangled in midair, wide-eyed, staring into the room. “This is even more insane than last time. Just straight-up blizzard passing through, huh… sss!”

She finally hugged her arms and shivered, then glanced at the mirror. “Cold. Cold, cold. Yu Sheng, you have to buy me two down jackets…”

“Where am I supposed to find down jackets that fit a 66-centimeter-tall doll?” Yu Sheng shot back. “And why are you even afraid of cold? You’re a doll!”

“Just because I’m a doll doesn’t mean I can’t hate being cold!” Irene wriggled. “I’m hard to freeze to death, not impossible to freeze stiff… Ah, thank you, Silly Fox~”

A cluster of deep-blue fox fire drifted over and circled Irene, quickly driving away the chill. More blue flames swirled around Foxy as she walked in and looked around.

“I’m not silly,” Foxy replied, dead serious. “You’re way dumber than me.”

“This is what I found in the corner,” Yu Sheng said, holding up the cloth strip before Irene and Foxy could spiral into an argument. “I think it was drifting between two worlds. I compared it to the iron lump in my photo just now. The patterns look kind of similar.”

Sure enough, Irene was instantly distracted. She snatched the cloth strip and studied it—and, of course, failed to make sense of it.

“The iron lump we gave the Special Operations Bureau still hasn’t gotten a reply,” she muttered. “Now we’ve got a torn cloth strip too. What do we do—give it to them again? They don’t feel very reliable…”

“We can’t find anyone more reliable,” Yu Sheng said, shaking his head. “We can’t exactly go out and randomly find two ‘masters’ selling fake antiques on the street. These odd items aren’t something you figure out overnight. No reply is normal. We’ll still show them. Maybe if they put it together with the iron lump, they can figure something out.”

Irene dragged out a reluctant, “Oohhh.”

Foxy had wandered closer to the mirror. She stared into the reflected cave, her expression slowly turning serious.

“Silly Fox, what are you looking at?” Irene asked, tilting her head. “Is something weird in there?”

Foxy frowned for a long time, like she’d truly found something. “Benefactor… do those look like footprints?”

“Footprints?” Yu Sheng froze. He hurried over. “Where?”

“These.” Foxy pointed into the cave in the mirror. “There’s a big rock here. In the snow next to it, it looks like there are footprints. And over here, there are marks like someone cleared the snow away. It looks like someone has been here.”

With Foxy guiding his attention, Yu Sheng finally noticed the details he’d missed.

Shallow footprints and traces of disturbed snow lay scattered near the cave entrance. Time had blurred them, but there was no doubt—they were human traces, and they couldn’t be very old.

“…So there’s activity on the other side,” Irene said, blinking as she stared at the mirror, then down at the torn cloth. “And this cloth strip, and the iron lump from last time… what kind of place is that cave? Does someone go there regularly to throw things inside?”

Yu Sheng, of course, had no answer.

And then he noticed the wind and snow in the room weakening fast.

The cold air faded. The snowflakes that had been whipping past his face turned into a faint, cool illusion. The cave scene in the mirror blurred as if a thin fog had drifted over it. Then the fog cleared—and the cave vanished.

The howling stopped.

“…Benefactor,” Foxy murmured softly, “the blizzard on the other side stopped.”

Yu Sheng lifted his head. The snow piled in the corners dissolved into thin air.

But the cloth strip in his hand—like the mysterious metal component from last time—stayed exactly as it was.

“The connection is cut,” Yu Sheng said, frowning as he remembered what had happened the last time this room changed. “Could it be… the connection only opens when there’s a blizzard on the other side?”

No one answered him.

Yu Sheng left the room with Foxy and Irene and carefully locked the door again.

“Later I need to buy a camera and set it up in that room, pointed right at the mirror,” he said. “One with cloud storage and playback.”

“Better buy several and cover every corner,” Irene said casually, flipping onto Yu Sheng’s shoulder with practiced ease. “I suspect when the connection opens, it’s not just the mirror changing. Did you notice? The snow was blowing straight in from the corners of the opposite wall and the ceiling… though even with cameras, we still might not capture anything useful.”

“Let’s install them first and see.”

Back in his bedroom, Yu Sheng spread the cloth strip carefully on the bed, pattern side up, and took several photos in a row.

“What do you think, Bai Li Qing right now—”

He didn’t even finish before Irene poked him in the head. “She’s obviously sleeping. Are you even human? It’s four in the morning! At least pick someone else to torment.”

“…Fair point,” Yu Sheng muttered. “She does seem like she’d hold a grudge.”

So he opened Border Comms, found the Oddity Exchange section, and made another post like last time.

He described the cloth strip, mentioned the snow-drifting room, and referenced his earlier post for context.

His idea was simple. No one recognized it anyway. Sending it to the Special Operations Bureau would take forever. Better to cast a wide net. Posting was free. Maybe one day he’d hook an expert.

Reality proved that experts also slept at four in the morning.

After nearly half an hour, the post didn’t even have a single click.

Yu Sheng finally gave in to drowsiness and lay down, planning to sleep first.

Then his phone buzzed.

Foxy, who had already turned and was nearly out the door, spun right back around. She stared at the screen, read the new notification, then nodded at Yu Sheng.

“Benefactor,” she said, eyes bright, “someone replied. The name is ‘Three Thousand Wayward Disciples.’”

“Perfect timing…” Yu Sheng reached for the phone, then froze mid-motion. He looked up at Foxy in shock. “Wait—you can read those characters?!”

“Yeah,” Foxy said, nodding as if it were obvious. “I can read most everyday stuff now.”

Yu Sheng stared at her. “When did you learn?!”

Foxy pulled out the old phone Yu Sheng had given her. “While messing with this. I learned along the way. And I learned a lot from watching Irene curse people out online.”

Yu Sheng went still. “I was thinking once the fairy tale mess calmed down and I had time, I’d figure out how to teach you… Your learning ability is way too strong.”

Foxy just scratched her hair and smiled sheepishly.

Yu Sheng looked at Irene.

The IQ sinkhole of No. 66 Wu Tong Road had no idea what was happening. She turned and stared at him with a perfectly blank, clueless expression. “What?”

Yu Sheng patted her head. “Nothing. Go play.”

“Oh.”

Yu Sheng opened the message from Three Thousand Wayward Disciples.

There was only one picture.

It was another fragment of cloth—and the border pattern was exactly the same as the one on the strip in his hand.