Chapter 255

Chapter 255: Anka Aila Crystal

The moment Irene’s black silk threads touched the crystal, they slammed into an invisible barrier and snapped back.

She yelped and toppled off Yu Sheng’s shoulder. He reacted on instinct—hooking a foot out to catch her halfway down.

Unfortunately, that “catch” was basically a kick.

At least she didn’t hit the floor immediately. She hit it after Yu Sheng kicked her once.

Irene cursed like a sailor.

Yu Sheng fumbled, yanking the snarling doll back onto his shoulder. He had no idea how many times she’d bitten him, but his hands were already covered in tooth marks. Still, she was cursing and gnashing with plenty of energy, so she was probably fine. He finally let himself breathe.

Once Irene calmed down a notch, he asked, “Are you okay? What the hell was that just now?”

“How would I know?” Irene glared up at him with blood-red eyes. “Who am I supposed to ask? This is the first time I’ve run into something like this. I got bounced back by some damn thing out of nowhere…”

She bared her teeth again, still furious, then lifted her head and added stiffly to Bai Li Qing, who stood beside them like she’d been carved out of stone, “My silk threads aren’t physical. Nothing’s ever stopped them—at least, not that I remember. I’ve never seen anything that could block them.”

Bai Li Qing’s gaze on Irene was a little odd, as if she’d just been reminded of something. Still, she nodded once. “I know. The doll’s ‘silk threads’ are one of the blessings bestowed by the ancient holy spirit Alice. I’ve never heard of anything that could block them.”

Her eyes drifted back to the “mother crystal” on the floating round dais. It had fallen silent again, as though that clear humming had been a hallucination.

Yu Sheng didn’t speak. He frowned, thinking. Then something clicked.

“Irene,” he said, breaking the silence. “Test the secondary crystal.”

Irene didn’t understand, but his expression was too serious to ignore. She swallowed whatever smart remark was on the tip of her tongue and nodded.

She steadied herself, summoned the black threads again, and reached toward the finger-sized secondary crystal.

The threads hit the same unseen wall.

It wasn’t as violent as when she’d touched the mother crystal, but the result was unmistakable: the silk froze in midair, pressed against something solid that no one could see, unable to inch closer.

Yu Sheng’s spur-of-the-moment “try it again” had just exposed a brand-new property. The researchers immediately surged into motion, recording observations at top speed and cross-checking them against nearby instruments.

“This looks like some kind of protective effect,” one researcher said as he wrote, not even looking up. “Both the mother crystal and the secondary crystals derived from it have the trait. The question is… what exactly is it protecting against?”

He lifted his head, staring through a thick protective mask at the doll on Yu Sheng’s shoulder.

“We’ve tested those regenerating secondary crystals with lasers, physical impacts, all kinds of methods,” he continued, tone still respectful. “We’ve never seen anything like this. Even threats strong enough to shatter a crystal didn’t trigger any ‘protection.’ Ma’am, may I ask what properties your silk threads have? As far as I know, the dolls of Alice little house command many types of ‘doll threads.’ Some control objects at a distance, some create illusions, some interfere with souls… Which kind are yours?”

The man was so polite that Irene visibly brightened. She immediately jabbed Yu Sheng in the forehead. “Hey! Hey, hey, hey—did you hear that? He called me ma’am! Way more polite than you!”

“Yes, yes, I heard,” Yu Sheng said, helpless, prying her claws off his face. “He’s asking you a question.”

“Oh. Right. Ahem.” Irene cleared her throat, turned solemn, and puffed herself up. “My silk threads are amazing. They can connect consciousness, guide dreams, set traps, and even control opponents. Wolf Granny—you know her, right? Boss-level. She can take cruise missiles to the face and still not go down. I can hard-control her for minutes!”

The researcher stared, stunned, like he’d just been handed an entirely new branch of physics. “T-that many abilities?”

“Yeah,” Irene said smugly, wiggling her fingers. Jet-black threads danced at her fingertips. “And I can play cat’s cradle, too. It’s super fun. I know dozens of patterns…”

For someone dealing with the Hotel crew for the first time, keeping up with Irene’s train of thought was clearly a challenge. The researcher took a few seconds to recover, passing through “serious analysis” and “is something wrong with this doll’s brain” before returning to his professional tone.

“Based on our earlier tests,” he said gravely, “we can temporarily rule out physical force. That leaves… for now, we can assume the crystal produces a protective response against forces on the mental level.”

Irene didn’t understand a single word, but she nodded anyway. “Y-yeah. Sure. That makes sense.”

“Then we have our next direction.” The researcher offered a small smile. “Sometimes research is just missing one good angle. Thank you very much for your help, ma’am.”

Yu Sheng went silent.

He was starting to not want to deal with this doll anymore.

After that came a flood of technical discussion. The lab lead rattled off test results, follow-up plans, and the facility’s security status. Yu Sheng couldn’t understand most of it, and he didn’t dare interrupt and look incompetent. This was a restricted area; he wouldn’t touch a thing for fear of breaking it. The longer he stood there, the more awkward he felt.

He couldn’t help envying Foxy, who was probably still in the cafeteria stuffing her face. That young lady was living the dream.

Eventually, the meeting wound down. At the very end, the lab lead asked, “Director, do you think it’s necessary to name these crystals? Right now we’re still filing them under sample numbers, but something this special…”

“Just call it the Anka Aila Crystal,” Yu Sheng said, waving a hand like it was nothing. “The small ones can be secondary Anka Aila crystals. And if we ever end up with even smaller ones, or synthesize them, we’ll call it the Anka Aila Crystal Youth Edition.”

The lab lead stared at him.

“Do it his way,” Bai Li Qing said. She shot Yu Sheng a quiet look, then nodded at the lead. “By rights, he should have naming authority.”

“…All right. Understood.”

…

The moment they left the containment facility, Yu Sheng let out a long breath.

Spending too long inside that massive cube of a container made pressure build in his chest. It was bright, spotless, and spacious, but the weight still accumulated all the same.

He hadn’t noticed much while he was inside. Now that he’d stepped out, it hit him like a wall.

Bai Li Qing didn’t seem surprised.

“That’s normal,” she said. “Everyone who enters the container for the first time feels it. Even trained Special Operations Bureau agents are affected. The container itself is one of the suppression conditions used to hold dangerous items. It isn’t designed to be comfortable. That’s why personnel assigned to a facility at this level have to be carefully selected. Training isn’t enough—they need to endure the container’s environmental contamination and maintain long-term mental stability under that atmosphere. That takes a certain kind of talent.”

“I don’t feel like it’s messing with my head,” Yu Sheng said, waving a hand. “I just don’t like the… vibe.” Then he changed the subject. “By the way. That angel fragment we ‘lost’—still nothing?”

“No.” Bai Li Qing shook her head. “But we can basically confirm it wasn’t taken by anyone in Boundary City, and it didn’t enter the city. It’s very likely still hidden somewhere in the outer suburbs—or worse… it was moved outside the Boundary Stele through some covert method.”

Her expression darkened as she spoke.

“As much as I hate to admit it, the chances of recovering it are slim. The impact point was near the most remote settlement on the edge of the Borderland. Lately, temporal eddies have been sweeping through the outer suburbs with the winds over the wasteland. Those eddies seriously disrupt our monitoring facilities outside the city. And the personnel stationed at the settlements can’t keep their eyes beyond the walls every hour of every day. You could say every disadvantage piled up at once.”

Yu Sheng caught on the unfamiliar term. “Temporal eddies? What are those?”

“A chaotic phenomenon that occasionally appears along the Borderland’s outer edge,” Bai Li Qing said, almost casual. “You already know the wilderness outside the city isn’t as stable as inside. Temporal eddies are that instability made concrete. Within the affected zone, time randomly speeds up or slows down. Communication between the zone and the outside world is severely disrupted—sometimes cut off entirely.”

She paused, then continued, “They usually arrive as a sudden gust of wind. You get swept into it, and it feels like you’ve spent a few seconds—or a few days—inside the airflow. Then the wind vanishes. If you’re lucky, you were out of contact with reality only briefly. If you’re unlucky, your missing-person report is about to expire.”

Yu Sheng stared at her.

“But the good news is temporal eddies don’t directly endanger life,” Bai Li Qing added. “In fact, they preserve it. Inside an eddy, you won’t age, starve, or die. Based on what we currently know, people caught in one enter a kind of material stasis—only consciousness experiences the passage of time. Still, no matter how you look at it, the phenomenon is trouble for us. Like this time.”

Yu Sheng listened, absorbing the new information, then sighed inwardly.

What else could he say?

The Borderland really was one hell of a place.