Chapter 260

Chapter 261: Call for Help

News that the Door had opened spread quickly through the Valley. Cursed Children came to see it and tried walking in and out of the new portal. Soon the littlest ones were hauled back to the town by their “parents.” The Orphanage site was still a rubble field full of heavy machines. For kids who couldn’t control their powers well or hadn’t awakened yet, it was too dangerous to play there.

Snow White led a few older kids through the ruins, searching wherever they wouldn’t get in the cleanup crew’s way.

Even though the Orphanage had been leveled and the two main buildings had twisted when they turned into an “Umbilical Cord,” they still found the occasional intact item buried in the wreckage. These things weren’t useful, but to the members of Fairy Tale they were full of memories.

“Rapunzel!” Dorothy called from a distance: “I found a few novels. See if they’re yours! Two smashed figures next to them…”

Rapunzel shrieked and ran over.

Snow White directed the Thunder Titans to move lumps of concrete that looked half-melted and fused together. Under the debris, they found part of a classroom. They uncovered a graffiti board and a wooden box of toys from the storage room.

Yu Sheng stood not far away with Little Red Riding Hood, quietly watching the work. After a bit, he said softly: “Aren’t you going to look? You might still have something here.”

“The important things are already out,” Little Red Riding Hood said, shaking her head. After a short pause, she looked at Li Lin: “Could you keep an eye out? If you find anything mostly intact, please collect it for us.”

“Of course,” Li Lin said at once, then added: “We’ll try our best, but we’ll be using heavy machines. Most workers can’t be as careful as you.”

“Doing your best is enough.”

“Then no problem.”

Yu Sheng listened without cutting in. Just then, a phone rang in his pocket and broke up the talk.

He checked the screen. Unknown number.

He hesitated, then answered.

A young man’s voice came through, familiar and nervous: “Hello? Hello! Can you hear me, Brother Yu? I %?%%@-”

Static chopped the words to pieces. Yu Sheng blinked, then remembered where he had heard that voice: “My… nephew?”

Little Red Riding Hood frowned: “Who is it?”

“Old Zheng’s nephew,” Yu Sheng said quickly. The noise in the speaker felt wrong, so he asked at once: “It’s Yu Sheng. What’s happening there? Are you in danger?”

More static, then two or three seconds later the voice grew clear again: “I’m at a mall. Something’s off. A lot of stuff moved. People changed too. There are so many mirrors. This is my first time with something like this. I don’t know any other experts. Can you come %?@%#?-”

Yu Sheng hit speaker. Noise surged again. Before he could talk, Little Red Riding Hood leaned toward the phone and shouted: “Skip the extra words! Which mall?”

Static burst from the speaker, with the young man’s voice drifting further off-key: “Heyang District… @#? at Wanxiang Ji… but I went in through a weird door. Inside doesn’t look like… &**&?-”

The noise swallowed him. His words melted into the hiss, and then the signal died.

Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood stared at each other. Before either spoke, Li Lin had already grabbed his phone. He dialed fast and held it to his ear: “Second Unit, Li Lin. Abnormal Situation III, suspected person trapped at Wanxiang Ji, Heyang District. Yes, signal one minute ago but comms are now lost. Likely sinking into an Otherworld. Copy. Patrol Unit en route? Copy.”

Yu Sheng watched Li Lin’s reflexes with some surprise. Li Lin noticed the look and got a bit awkward: “Uh, what?”

“You’re pretty reliable,” Yu Sheng said casually: “Handle this kind of thing a lot?”

“Not a lot, but we trained for it. The Special Affairs Bureau does exactly this,” Li Lin said quickly, face a bit stiff: “Honestly I’m nervous. First time reporting a Level III on my own.”

“I’m going to check it out,” Little Red Riding Hood cut in. Shadows of a wolf pack stirred around her: “Coming?”

“Together,” Yu Sheng said at once: “He called me.”

“I’m on duty. I have to stay,” Li Lin said with a helpless shake of his head: “My colleagues are there. Ask them if you need help.”

Yu Sheng nodded, then waved to Foxy and Irene. He followed Little Red Riding Hood as the wolf pack folded them into shadow.

The shadow wolves raced between bands of light and dark, leaping through abstract city slabs as if they were tiles. In seconds they had crossed several blocks.

Foxy, copying Yu Sheng, sat on a shadow wolf, eyes wide at the mono-color silhouettes of buildings sliding by. Irene clutched Yu Sheng’s shoulder, scanning the world and muttering, tense: “What is going on… Is the nephew okay?”

“High sensitivity and low stability can look like this,” Little Red Riding Hood said, sounding annoyed with herself: “I should have asked for Special Affairs Bureau protection for him. But his high-sensitivity low-stability is extreme. After Old Zheng’s case he barely touched anything supernatural. He only got close to the scene. How did the other side latch on to him again?”

“No one could see that coming,” Yu Sheng said, voice mixed. It was his first time seeing a normal person get tangled up again after exposure to the other side’s information: “We finished Old Zheng’s case and told him to go home. I thought he’d be fine.”

He paused, then looked over: “You know that mall he said? Is there an Otherworld there?”

“Wanxiang Ji? I know it. I’ve been twice. The place itself isn’t an Otherworld. But many Otherworld entrances move at random. When conditions fit, an entrance can pop up right in front of a victim’s face. It can happen anywhere,” Little Red Riding Hood said, serious: “You ran into a sudden freezing rain once. Remember?”

Yu Sheng blinked, remembering the frog in the rain. His expression turned odd: “Right. I forgot till you said it. It feels like a long time ago.”

He shook his head and set the warm memory aside: “You’re the pro. From that call, what can you tell? Is the nephew in real danger?”

“When the call first connected, his voice was clear. That means he hadn’t sunk all the way yet. He was sliding from L-0 toward L-1,” Little Red Riding Hood said, then shook her head: “If he were an experienced Spirit Realm Detective or an investigator, he could have run out at that stage. The depth between zero and one is almost linked to reality. Safe Rifts are visible.”

“After that, the static hit and the signal got jammed. That means he passed L-1. At that point, getting out is luck. The surroundings usually aren’t lethal at level one. Things just look wrong. There are safe paths back. But again, it’s luck.”

“What worries me is how fast the call cut. The whole thing lasted about a minute, then the noise swallowed his voice, and he started to babble. That means he sank fast. He might skip past L-1. I hope he lands in some L-2 Otherworld and stays there long enough for rescue.”

Yu Sheng listened carefully. He had lived through a Dark Angels level event, but these basics of domain work were new to him. The database couldn’t teach this kind of field sense. Only long-time pros like Little Red Riding Hood knew it.

Foxy glanced back and added: “He also said people and things changed, and there were a lot of mirrors.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down. Warping is the most common sign of falling into an Otherworld. Often it’s not the world that changes but the victim’s view. As for mirrors, there are too many mirror-themed Otherworlds,” Little Red Riding Hood said with a wave: “I know at least a dozen. We need to judge on site. The Bureau should be there already. They’ve got bigger scanners around the city. They might have caught his signal while he sank.”

Irene looked from Little Red Riding Hood to Yu Sheng and finally asked what she couldn’t hold back: “You keep calling him ‘nephew,’ but he has a name, right? What is it?”

Little Red Riding Hood and Yu Sheng looked at each other and answered together: “We don’t know!”