Chapter 262

Chapter 262: The Abnormal Incident

The phantom shadow wolf pack raced through cracks between light and shadow, block after block, past misaligned skyscrapers and roads that seemed to cut straight through the air. In the reflected world, the city became a nightmarish map of shifted layers—and the wolves knew exactly how to find an exit.

Yu Sheng’s vision flashed.

The wolf beneath him leapt out of the black-and-white mirror world into full-color reality, and the distant roar of traffic poured into his ears, like someone had flipped a switch.

Irene lifted her head and looked around. They were in an empty alley.

Foxy appeared right after him. She hopped down, then, amused, patted the shadow wolf’s head. “Benefactor, Little Red Riding Hood’s spirit beast has real tricks. Not much intelligence, but that kind of shadow-travel speed would be useful even back in my homeland…”

The black wolf answered with a muddled grunt, bobbing its head and wagging its tail at her.

“It’s still wagging!” Little Red Riding Hood strode over and smacked it on the head. “She just said you’re not very smart, and you’re still happy? I’ve never seen you this eager with anyone else. Usually when I tell you to interact with people, you act like you can’t be bothered!”

Irene lay draped over Yu Sheng’s shoulder, took one look around, and muttered, “Normal. Both canines. Easy to communicate.”

Foxy didn’t react—either she didn’t understand, or she simply didn’t care. She kept rubbing the wolf’s head like she was polishing it.

A moment later, Little Red Riding Hood withdrew her pack, checked their direction, and led the group forward. “The Wan Xiang Collection mall is up ahead. A few minutes on foot,” she said. “I had the pack go invisible and spread out to check the area. When Big Nephew fell, he said he was at Wan Xiang Collection, but when an otherworld opens, it can mess with a person’s sense of location. He might’ve been pulled in through a nearby entrance and only caught sight of the mall’s shadowspawn in the instant he was dragged inside…”

As she spoke, they stepped onto a main road. The most prominent building in sight was exactly what you’d expect: a massive shopping mall. Several black Special Operations Bureau vehicles were parked at the intersection.

Inside, bureau staff were already organizing an evacuation. Groups of customers and employees filed out through different passages, orderly enough for an emergency.

Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood quickly found the person in charge at the scene—a tall, broad man in his thirties with neat, short hair. He looked only one size smaller than Xu Jiali.

Little Red Riding Hood stepped forward and began the formal introductions. “Hello. We’re Spirit Realm Detectives working under commission from the involved party, with an existing cooperation arrangement with the bureau. I’m Little Red Riding Hood from Fairy Tale—”

Yu Sheng, a complete rookie in this lane, watched from behind. Seeing Little Red Riding Hood in a high school uniform talking to a fully armed, one-ninety bruiser was like watching a lost middle schooler ask a police uncle for directions. Her usual cool, sharp image collapsed in an instant.

The agent looked just as thrown. He’d received Li Lin’s message, but he clearly hadn’t expected a girl in a school uniform to walk up and start negotiating. He blurted out, baffled, “…So you’re a high school student?”

Little Red Riding Hood stared at him. “…We’ve been working with your bureau for so long. You didn’t know I’m a high school student?!”

The big man rubbed the tip of his nose, awkward. “…I knew. I just didn’t realize it.”

“I’m never wearing this uniform out again,” Little Red Riding Hood muttered, turning back to Yu Sheng with a thoroughly offended face.

“I’m in charge of this district. Liu Bing.” The tall agent smoothly changed the subject. He checked his gear and led them toward the mall entrance as he spoke. “I heard the general situation from Li Lin. A distress call, right? The caller used to be your… customer. But this case is a bit strange. We’ll need Spirit Realm Detectives to coordinate with the bureau. Oh, right—you two are…?”

Only halfway there did he seem to remember he hadn’t asked Yu Sheng and Foxy’s names. Irene had been clinging motionless to Yu Sheng’s shoulder, playing dead, so she was probably mistaken for an accessory.

“Oh, I’m Yu Sheng. Yu Sheng from Hotel,” Yu Sheng said first.

“I—I’m Foxy. Foxy from Hotel!” the demon fox girl added quickly.

“Irene.” The little doll suddenly lifted her head. “Irene from Hotel.”

Liu Bing stopped walking.

He stared at the three of them in stiff silence, scanning them from head to toe. His facial muscles twitched. He took a quiet breath.

“This case is a bit strange. We’ll fully cooperate with your operations…”

Little Red Riding Hood’s eyes widened. “That’s not what you said just now!”

“To be honest, we should be the ones cooperating with you,” Yu Sheng said, laughing helplessly. He waved a hand. “I don’t know what rumors your bureau spreads, but I’m genuinely a rookie. Dealing with dark angels and handling an otherworld incident are two different lanes. I don’t have much experience with the second. Just treat the three of us like super soldiers.”

“Super soldiers are hard to kill…” Irene muttered under her breath.

Liu Bing studied Yu Sheng for a moment. Seeing how serious he was, he finally nodded. “All right, then.”

Little Red Riding Hood glanced between him and the mall. “You said this case is strange. How strange?”

“The otherworld expanded extremely fast, but the affected area was extremely small. After the entrance appeared, it likely lasted only an instant before it closed. It didn’t go through the normal expansion period you see in typical otherworld leakage,” Liu Bing said.

The moment he turned to business, his expression sharpened.

“Specifically, when the otherworld appeared, our boundary alarms detected only a single shock lasting one second. The amplitude wasn’t even enough to trigger an automatic alert. A duty officer caught it because they were paying close attention. That one-second shock was the entire duration of the entrance—which means the person who called you was unbelievably unlucky. He just happened to be standing in the ‘right’ place during that one second…”

Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood exchanged a look.

“That’s what high sensitivity, low stability looks like…” they said in unison.

“And there’s more.” Liu Bing’s voice lowered. “We reviewed the recorded data. In the few minutes before and after that ‘shock,’ there were hundreds of smaller shocks around the mall—weaker and shorter, each lasting less than a second.”

Yu Sheng nearly jumped. “What? Hundreds of entrances? That’s like turning the place into a sieve!”

But Liu Bing shook his head. “No. Each shock was far too weak. They couldn’t reach the strength needed to open an otherworld. In theory, only that one stronger shock opened a single entrance. Those weaker signals are normally filtered out by the back-end system. It’s only because they appeared so densely in a short time that the system’s fuzzy judgment kicked in and flagged the data instead of discarding it.”

Irene sighed and tipped her face toward the sky. “And the one entrance that actually opened just had to be the one Big Nephew walked into, huh…”

“High sensitivity, low stability doesn’t fully explain this,” Yu Sheng muttered to Little Red Riding Hood. “After we rescue him, we should tell him to go worship something. Do the ancient holy spirits have one in charge of luck?”

“There’s one in charge of a good mindset,” Little Red Riding Hood muttered back. “Doll Progenitor Alice is in charge of a good mindset. Or you can worship Star Thrower Ma’am. Star Thrower and her hounds are in charge of surviving and taking hits.”

Yu Sheng had no words.

Were those ancient holy spirits seriously… sick in the head?

A spark of curiosity flared in him about this world’s faith system, where ancient holy spirits were treated as real gods—what those beings actually did, and how they influenced the world. But obviously, now wasn’t the time.

“Are the shocks still continuing?” Little Red Riding Hood asked suddenly.

“They’ve stopped,” Liu Bing said. “They stopped before we arrived.”

“Has anything like this happened before?” Yu Sheng asked.

“First time in recorded history,” Liu Bing said grimly. “Normally, when an otherworld entrance opens, there’s one stronger energy fluctuation, and it lasts from minutes to hours. After it opens, it keeps expanding. That’s why the bureau has to organize evacuations immediately—to prevent the danger from spreading. So, in a sense, although this incident is strange, its impact is actually small. At least, it looks small right now.”

Yu Sheng’s brows slowly drew together. For some reason, even with Liu Bing insisting the danger was limited, Yu Sheng felt a wrongness in his gut.

That way of opening an otherworld entrance… felt deliberate.

The bureau clearly shared the suspicion. Even though the entrance seemed to have vanished, they still set up high-level defenses and dispatched reinforcements.

At the mall entrance, Yu Sheng saw a node device mounted directly on a special vehicle, along with monitoring and_attachment and protective equipment that had obviously just been rushed over.

Fully armed agents sealed off the main doors and several side exits.

The mall had other entrances, too. Those were probably all under control.

“This is where we recorded the entrance opening,” Liu Bing said, leading Yu Sheng to a wall near the main entrance and pointing at a huge tempered-glass display window. “If we’re right, the involved party ‘walked into’ the mall he described through this glass.”

Yu Sheng drew a quiet breath, stepped up to the glass, and looked inside.

The glass reflected nothing but a normal street.