Chapter 263

Chapter 263: Crossing the Mirror

The display window reflected nothing but an ordinary street. After the emergency lockdown, the avenue outside was empty, quiet, almost too clean. There seemed to be no anomaly at all.

Yu Sheng pulled out his phone and tried calling the number back. As expected, it was out of service.

The communication isolation caused by an otherworld didn’t weaken just because you were close to its “entrance.” So far, aside from special cases like Wu Tong Road 66 and its attached spaces, there were no exceptions.

“So?” Yu Sheng turned to Little Red Riding Hood. “Can you tell what’s going on?”

Little Red Riding Hood shook her head, expression heavy. “The entrance is closed. The biggest problem now is we can’t confirm which otherworld it is, so we can’t confirm the entry conditions.” She stared at the glass, frowning. “It’s really strange… How can it leave no trace at all? In theory, there should be some residual scent. My wolves should be able to sense it.”

“In a case like this—someone swallowed by an unknown otherworld—what do you normally do? Is there a rescue procedure?” Yu Sheng asked.

“First you confirm which otherworld the victim fell into. Then you determine its entry and exit conditions, and the current entrance location,” Little Red Riding Hood said matter-of-factly. “If it’s a fixed entrance, like the museum we visited before, and you meet the conditions, you can enter directly. If it’s an entrance that keeps moving, you track it. I have a wolf pack, but most Spirit Realm Detectives and investigators don’t have it that easy. They need casework and investigation. As for the bureau—”

She hesitated. Liu Bing stepped in at the right moment. “The bureau’s approach is similar. For a shifting otherworld, we also have to track the entrance first. But we can use monitoring devices spread throughout the borderland to locate unstable fissures faster. And we have a deep-diving unit that can use special techniques to force entry even when conditions aren’t temporarily met.”

He frowned. “But this time we’re stuck too. Like she said—there’s no trace. We requested a full-domain scan. Across the entire borderland, none of our monitoring devices found anything. It really only existed for that one second, and then it evaporated from the world.”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer. He stared at the wide display window, jaw tight.

Then his eyes snapped into focus.

In the street reflected in the glass, a figure flashed past—a young man with a terrified expression, sprinting across the empty road before vanishing into a side street beyond the reflection.

The doll on Yu Sheng’s shoulder shouted almost instantly, “Hey! Yu Sheng, Yu Sheng—someone just ran past in there!”

“I saw him,” Yu Sheng said, voice low. “It’s him.”

Little Red Riding Hood reflexively turned to look at the real street behind her. She immediately realized what that meant, and her frown deepened as she faced the window again. “…He’s trapped inside the mirror?”

Yu Sheng opened his mouth to reply, but his phone rang again, urgent.

He answered at once and put it on speaker. The speaker hissed with static, then the young man’s breathless voice broke through, cracked and tense. “Brother Yu… I got out of the mall… There’s thick fog outside! There’s not a single person on the street… I’ve been calling but—”

“Come back!” Yu Sheng cut him off, speaking fast while the signal still held. “Come back to the mall entrance—right here, the big display window. Don’t run around over there!”

“Come… back? Okay, I got it. I’ll—” The line devolved into static again, then cut.

“He’s wandering around near L-1 depth?” Little Red Riding Hood muttered, brow furrowed. “That mirror otherworld is surging…”

Seeing what had just happened, Liu Bing moved quickly to one side. He pulled out his radio and fired off rapid instructions, apparently adjusting the monitoring scan pattern based on the new information.

Yu Sheng kept his eyes fixed on the glass.

A few minutes later, the figure appeared again.

The young man looked exhausted, panting from frantic running. His clothes were rumpled, his movements jittery. He staggered out from the reflected street and hurried toward the window, scanning his surroundings like something could leap out of the fog in his world at any second.

Foxy stepped up and slapped the glass hard.

The young man didn’t react, as if he couldn’t hear anything from this side.

Foxy knocked again—harder.

“Silly Fox, easy!” Irene blurted. “Don’t crack it!”

At the exact moment Irene spoke, Yu Sheng saw the young man in the reflection jerk his head around. He seemed to catch the faint tapping through the glass. With a tense expression, he approached slowly and stopped about half a meter from the window. Cautiously, he reached out and touched the glass.

Foxy knocked again.

The vibration passed through the mirror and reached the Other Side.

The young man flinched and yanked his hand back.

But then, as if he finally understood the sound was coming from reality, he reached out again—careful but desperate—and tapped on the glass himself.

Yu Sheng heard a faint knock. It was dull, muffled, like the sound was wrapped in something thick, but the vibration really did reach this side.

He was still thinking how to use that fragile connection to pull the kid out when the young man suddenly snapped his head toward something in terror—and bolted.

Irene panicked instantly. “Hey! Hey! I told you not to run around!”

Foxy corrected her with a serious face. “He’s not running around. Something’s chasing him.”

“No kidding, I can see that!” Irene snapped. She grabbed a fistful of Yu Sheng’s hair. “Yu Sheng, do something! The client is about to die!”

“Stop rushing me. I’m thinking,” Yu Sheng said, calm but focused. He stepped forward and began to feel along the glass, searching for something only he could sense.

Little Red Riding Hood froze. “…Huh? You can open this too?!”

“He can open a door when there’s nothing at all,” Irene said smugly, instantly un-panicking, even though nobody knew what she had to be smug about.

Yu Sheng ignored her bragging. He was trying to find the door that led to the Other Side of the mirror.

He needed a coordinate. A guide. At the very least, a trace of information pointing toward the far side.

The only thing that could provide that direction was the young man’s tapping just now—the imprint of his presence trapped in the mirror world.

Yu Sheng placed his hand where the young man had touched the glass, closed his eyes, and imagined the vibration trapped inside the thick pane. He imagined that, on the Other Side, there had been a dull, muffled echo, like sound pressed through cloth. He imagined that echo traveling into his palm, turning into something he could grasp—

An invisible handle.

There was a door there. If the handle turned, the door would open.

The handle turned.

Liu Bing stared, dumbstruck, as Yu Sheng pulled a door out of the display window as if the glass itself were carved into a frame. It swung open without a sound.

On the other side was the street behind them—

Only it was buried in thick fog, empty of people.

“All right, the door’s open.” Yu Sheng kept one hand on the handle as he turned back to Little Red Riding Hood and Liu Bing. “I’m going in to check.”

Foxy stepped forward immediately. “Benefactor! I’m coming too!”

“I’m going with you,” Little Red Riding Hood said. “My wolf pack is useful in an unfamiliar environment.”

“Fine.” Yu Sheng nodded. “Once we’re inside, stay alert. The depth over there doesn’t seem too deep, but it’s weird.”

As they prepared to cross, Liu Bing strode over and shoved something into Yu Sheng’s hand.

“Take this.”

Yu Sheng looked down. It was a palm-sized black metal box. No switches, no buttons—just a few blinking indicator lights along one edge.

“What is it?”

“A locator,” Liu Bing said. “My team has to hold this side of the district, so we can’t follow you in. But time is tight. Take the locator into there first. Once you’re inside, the bureau support unit will track it and find you.”

Yu Sheng blinked. “Didn’t you say there’s no signal in an otherworld past L-1?”

“There’s no communication signal—or rather, no information that human rationality can understand gets through,” Liu Bing said with a thin smile. “But this doesn’t transmit ‘signal.’ It transmits something called a deep sea echo—a subspace shock. It’s not for humans to hear. It’s for certain machine spirits in the bureau to hear.”

“I don’t understand, but I’ll bring it,” Yu Sheng said solemnly, then stuffed the locator into his pocket.

He took a quiet breath and nodded to Little Red Riding Hood and Foxy. “Let’s go.”

Little Red Riding Hood and Foxy stepped through the mirror-door. Yu Sheng followed, Irene on his shoulder.

The door closed without a sound, and the display window became whole again, as if nothing had ever happened.

In front of Yu Sheng stretched an endless wall of fog—the mirrored street of the boundary city, swallowed by white.