Chapter 252

Chapter 252: The Real Face of the Borderland

Yu Sheng’s mind churned for a long time. He tried to imagine what Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain was like, what life was like on the Grand Void Spiritual Axis, how a force ruled by cultivators operated beyond the Borderland, and how it dealt with other powers.

He wasn’t doing it for any special reason. It was just habit. He couldn’t help thinking there were at least a million words he could write about it.

Bai Li Qing watched him with faint curiosity. “You seem to care a lot about Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain.”

“Uh… it’s just my first time dealing with an outside force like that, and someone there gave me an important clue,” Yu Sheng said quickly. “I’m curious. That’s all.”

Bai Li Qing looked like she wanted to say more, but a ringtone cut her off.

She answered, exchanged a few brief lines, then looked up. “Since you’re here today, do you want to come with me to another lab? There’s something there you’ll definitely be interested in.”

Yu Sheng blinked. “What is it?”

“The recovery team that returned from outside the city has finished inspection. What they brought back has been transferred to the containment zone lab,” Bai Li Qing said. “The remains left after Anka Aila fell. You can see them now.”

Yu Sheng’s expression shifted. Then he nodded, calm and serious.

“Then come with me,” Bai Li Qing said, already walking.

After a few steps, she paused at a vending machine, bought a bread roll, and handed it to him. “Sorry. Just eat a little for now. We probably won’t have time to sit in the cafeteria.”

Yu Sheng paused. He hadn’t expected that. Then he smiled and took it. “It’s fine. The main reason I said I wanted to mooch your cafeteria was to feed Foxy. She seemed pretty happy over there.”

On his shoulder, Irene muttered, “Of course. She’s happy eating anything. Food equals happy…”

Guided by Bai Li Qing, Yu Sheng wound through several transfer points in the time-maze of the headquarters building. After crossing a corridor that always seemed to tilt slightly wrong, they finally reached what she called the containment zone.

Or rather, one of the countless containment zones linked to the building.

The headquarters of the Special Operations Bureau was like a towering tree rooted in the Hub of cosmic traffic. Most people—even many of its own staff—only ever saw the trunk. Its branches and roots stretched through the Borderland’s chaotic spacetime, and nearly every offshoot led to some different function: deep dive facilities, storage zones, neutralized otherworlds, hideouts for otherkind, containment vaults, customs ports, alien embassies, abandoned stations, dangerous floors…

Everything you could imagine, and plenty you couldn’t. Yu Sheng even suspected that Bai Li Qing herself, despite controlling this tree for a hundred years, couldn’t name every branch or the stories attached to them.

So when they passed through the final door and he saw a massive cubic structure floating in dark emptiness, Yu Sheng didn’t even flinch. He’d long since gone numb to whatever scenery might appear “inside” this place.

“This is the highest-security containment zone directly connected to headquarters,” Bai Li Qing said, raising her hand toward the vast cube. “Most of its structure is even outside the Borderland’s border, on the other side you can’t see with the naked eye. Its shell has been captured by a star and held in balance.”

She pointed back toward the corridor they had come from. “This corridor is controlled directly by my mind. If something in that cubic container breaches containment, the corridor will sever, and the entire facility will instantly fall out of the Borderland into the star’s sea of fire on the other side.”

Yu Sheng listened, impressed—and baffled. “Isn’t that classified? You’re just telling me?”

“You’re a friend of the Special Operations Bureau,” Bai Li Qing said evenly. “After you resolved the threat the dark angels posed to the Borderland, there’s almost nothing we need to keep secret from you anymore—especially anything about dark angels and containment. You might not feel it yet, but for future cooperation, sharing this kind of intelligence is necessary for both sides.”

Yu Sheng mulled that over, then stared at the immense cube across the suspension bridge. He held his question in for a long moment before finally letting it out. “If that’s the case… there’s something I’ve been wondering for a while. Your tech level—what’s going on?”

Bai Li Qing slowed. “You mean how what you see here doesn’t match what you see in everyday life in Boundary City.”

“Yeah,” Yu Sheng said, spreading his hands. “Boundary City is a modern big city, sure, but everything’s… normal. Cars still need wheels. There’s no strong AI. But here? This bridge. Floating structures. That prison energy barrier. It all feels like black tech.”

He paused, then gestured an obvious gap with his hands. “It’s jarring. That’s multiple generations of difference.”

“I assumed you didn’t ask because you didn’t care, or you didn’t notice,” Bai Li Qing said after a brief silence. Then she shook her head. “It’s not hard to explain. The facilities you see in this building aren’t black tech. They’re the real technological level possessed by the Councilor Council and the Special Operations Bureau. As for what you see in Boundary City…”

She looked at him steadily.

“That is the Borderland in its baseline state.”

“…Baseline state?” Yu Sheng frowned. “What does that mean?”

“You can think of it as an anchor,” Bai Li Qing said. “Boundary City is a society built on normalcy, rationality, and order—a society that, without external interference, has developed to this day at a low and controllable speed. Based on that, it was designed as a massive cognitive stability anchor. This anchor pins the entire Borderland firmly at L-0 level. And if it didn’t exist…”

Her eyes sharpened.

“How deep do you think this city could sink?”

Yu Sheng stared. “What the hell?”

On his shoulder, Irene slapped him instantly. “Vulgar!”

“You’re more vulgar than I am most of the time!” Yu Sheng batted her hand away and looked back at Bai Li Qing, eyes wide. “Wait—if human society in Boundary City is an anchor keeping the Borderland at L-0, then that whole Anka Aila incident…”

“Yes,” Bai Li Qing said. “For us, that was the most terrifying night in our history. Outside the Borderland, we have massive armed forces and countless defensive lines to resist threats that might come. We’ve always been extremely cautious in maintaining Boundary City’s slow, safe, undisturbed development, to prevent our home from collapsing.”

Her voice stayed calm, but the weight behind it was unmistakable.

“But the dark angels ignored all reason and drilled straight into the heart of the Councilor Council. At that moment, countless people prepared for the worst. I even considered a plan to temporarily exile Anka Aila by fracturing a portion of the Borderland.”

She paused. “Luckily, we didn’t need it.”

“In terms of physical damage, Anka Aila’s descent might only have destroyed one city. But in terms of effect, the city it would have destroyed was the core of the Borderland’s power—unique, irreplaceable, and beyond recovery.”

Bai Li Qing stopped and held Yu Sheng’s gaze.

“So now you understand what you accomplished that day.”

Yu Sheng rubbed his forehead.

He’d thought the news about Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain would be the biggest shock of the day. He’d been wrong.

The Borderland really was a place of outstanding people. How many secrets could this creepy place still be hiding?

“Can I ask one more thing?” Yu Sheng said at last. “The Borderland… how big is it?”

He’d already sensed it, from what the Special Operations Bureau had shown him and from what Li Lin and Xu Jiali sometimes mentioned about “outside.” The Borderland as a power was nothing like what he’d imagined.

“If you mean a simple geographic concept,” Bai Li Qing said, “then the Borderland is exactly what you currently understand: Boundary City, the vast wilderness outside it, and the border encircled by the Boundary Stele. That’s the Borderland—just a Hub space bubble in a special spacetime structure.”

She looked ahead at the darkness beyond the bridge. “But if you mean the Councilor Council’s range as a power… that’s far too large.”

A faint smile touched her lips.

“Think of the Borderland as an egg floating in the universe. The Councilor Council’s branches extend from that egg and claim a place among the stars. And you’ve already seen a small part of those branches with your own eyes—the passages to the outside world, the customs facilities, the ports. They are the vessels that move nutrients between branches.

“It’s easy to infer, really. We occupy the largest natural traffic hub in the universe. We have the largest trading platform for otherworld products. Countless races build liaison stations here and rely on the order constructed by the Councilor Council to establish their trade lines. We also maintain equal relationships with massive ancient powers like the Terra Academy and the Alglade Astrologers’ Consortium.”

She tilted her head slightly. “With so many advantages, why do you think the Borderland can still remain peaceful? Don’t tell me it’s because every race in the universe loves peace.”

Yu Sheng thought it over. His mouth twitched. “Yeah… that makes sense.”