Chapter 266

Chapter 267: Lucky to Be Alive

The reveler swarm was starting to fade.

They were not wiped out. In fact, they were almost always respawning. No matter how many died, fresh ones floated from the fog. You could not kill them all. But once the Deep Divers’ kill count crossed a certain threshold, Yu Sheng saw the retreat with his own eyes.

First, Colorful Line Figures at the edges drew back out of sight. Then the Entities near the “battlefield” dissolved into the fog again. At last, the ones on the ground stopped regenerating.

The foggy street slowly fell quiet. Pulse rifles stopped roaring. Beam sabers chopped down the last few revelers. Confetti lay thick across the street, then rose on the wind and quickly turned to dust.

The veteran soldiers did not fully relax. They kept a loose combat layout, eight to twelve per squad, spread around so each group stayed within at least two other groups’ line of sight. That way the whole block stayed watched, and any trick of the fog would get caught. Some soldiers pulled small devices from their Powered Armor and set them up to collect environment data, sending it back through a device linked to their suits called the Umbilical Cord.

Xu Jiali explained these details.

“This is our Umbilical Cord,” the already two-meter-tall man, now nearly two and a half meters in armor, pointed at his chest. A black rope-like thing extended out and floated in midair in an odd way, drifting as if soaked in an invisible liquid whenever he moved: “The other end connects to the Deep Dive pool in the real world. This link keeps our humanity and reason. It also keeps our comms with home.”

Irene stared: “Just hearing the words ‘Umbilical Cord’ makes me jumpy now.”

Xu Jiali smiled helplessly: “Makes sense. After the Anka Aila incident, lots of my coworkers got jumpy too. Some even suggested we rename it to ‘tether’. The higher-ups didn’t agree.”

Yu Sheng nodded with thought: “So communication between the Otherworld and the real world isn’t impossible. First the Locator, now your gear. The Special Affairs Bureau really does have working tech.”

“Regular comms get blocked, but we have ‘irregular’ ones,” Xu Jiali said, watching his teammates clean up the field: “Though those irregular methods have a bit of ‘spook’ on them. If I say that, the folks in the Technical Department will chew me out, but many of us feel that way.

“You saw my Umbilical Cord. When we do a Deep Dive, we choose to dissolve our bodies and minds as people into the Deep Dive pool. Then, like diving into a nightmare, the dissolved stuff ‘jumps’ into the Otherworld while still tied to the cord. That’s how we bring the far end in to send signals. On the way back, we reverse it. We break down again in the Otherworld, the cord reels the pieces in, and takes them back to the pool’s ‘amniotic fluid’. There we’re ‘born’ again.

“I think this borrows a bit of Subspace witchcraft. The Technical Department won’t admit it. They insist it’s all science.”

He rambled, with a proud note under the jokes. Yu Sheng clicked his tongue in wonder and kept eyeing the armor. [This gear is wild.]

Irene muttered: “Your ‘diving’ sounds unreliable. Just the steps feel like a recipe for trouble.”

“There’s risk, sure, but not high. Compared to fighting in the Otherworld, failure during ‘delivery’ or ‘diving’ is almost nothing,” Xu Jiali said easily: “Newbies do get nervous. The first times dissolving and being ‘born’ in the ‘amniotic’ pool are the worst. Veterans have to guide them at least a dozen runs before they’re steady.”

After hearing so much about Deep Divers, Yu Sheng finally had a basic picture of the Bureau’s top force against the Otherworld. Xu added that cases needing Deep Divers were the minority. Most jobs only needed a small team of Conventional Operatives like Li Lin to go into known Otherworlds to pull people out or investigate.

This time was clearly one of the few.

“This place is wicked,” Xu Jiali said, looking up at the heavy fog and the mirror-like street scene flickering inside it: “This isn’t a known Otherworld. It’s new. Folks at the Bureau are going to work late again. Honestly, people work late every day. If it isn’t one unit handling The Door, it’s another.”

“We ran into the Ink Stain before, and now a swarm of Carnival Revelers,” Little Red Riding Hood added: “Both are Entities that only spawn in other Otherworlds, yet they show up in this fog. We still don’t know how they ‘got in’.”

“Either this ‘mirror Otherworld’ has paths that connect to others, like the ‘Train’ that links layers, or that’s its trait,” Xu Jiali said, analysis neat despite his casual tone: “Its trait might be that it can generate the ‘signature Entities’ of other Otherworlds.”

“If that trait is real, the danger jumps,” Little Red Riding Hood said, face darkening: “The fog’s depth might be only L-1 to L-2, but the risk could hit grade three or higher.”

“Let the smart folks at the Bureau handle the analysis. The key is someone is trapped in here, right?” Xu Jiali said, brow furrowing: “I’ll be blunt. From what I see, odds are bad. Ink Stain and Carnival Revelers alone are deadly for normal people. Meet them head on and almost nobody escapes. And I heard the person is…” He tapped his forehead: “Right, high sensitivity and low stability. His chance to draw Entities is even higher than yours. At this point, I’m afraid…” He sighed.

Yu Sheng’s face fell. Foxy’s ears drooped, and she flopped to the ground. In her Nine-tailed Fox form, she was the size of two vans, so the ground shook.

Just as the gloom spread, a call burst from Xu Jiali’s comm, a Deep Diver patrolling the edge: “Boss! Found a trapped civilian!”

Everyone jolted alert. Xu Jiali’s eyes went wide as he shouted into the comm: “Where? What’s his state? Is he alive?!”

The reply came with a wince in the voice: “Alive, but it’s a bit complicated. We’re trying to cut him from… uh, a wall. He got sealed to a wall by amber-like stuff, but he should be fine.”

Yu Sheng and Irene traded looks. Little Red Riding Hood looked thoughtful. Foxy’s face did not show much in Demon Fox form. She just stuck out her tongue and licked Yu Sheng once, almost knocking him over. [What is she thinking?]

Xu Jiali told them to bring the “trapped civilian” over. A moment later, Yu Sheng saw his “big nephew,” missing for days.

He finally understood what “a bit complicated” meant.

The young man, always looking tired, was now wrapped inside a pale yellow, clear block like amber. He was frozen mid-sprint, fear on his face, as if he had been running for his life and got “caught” and sealed in that very instant.

Other than being sealed, he had no visible wounds.

“Uh…” Yu Sheng said, a bit stunned: “You’re sure he’s alive?”

Irene looked worried: “He won’t suffocate, right?”

Little Red Riding Hood relaxed the moment she saw the amber’s shape. She waved a hand: “He’s fine. Still alive. This guy is really lucky.”

Yu Sheng looked up, puzzled.

“A neutral Entity called Tree Granny shows up in the Otherworld named Autumn Forest,” Little Red Riding Hood explained patiently, knowing Yu Sheng lacked some of this knowledge: “She looks like a human-shaped big tree wandering a deep forest, with an old woman’s face in the trunk. She chases any living person in her territory and wraps the ‘intruder’ in resin. It isn’t deadly. The intruder, now ‘amber,’ just gets tossed outside her territory. Inside the amber, you can still breathe and think. The resin even gives strong protection.”

Xu Jiali added: “Tree Granny is one of the rare Entities that are strong and very odd but gentle and harmless. There were even poaching gangs before. They went to the Autumn Forest on purpose to provoke her, sending a member as bait to trick her resin. Some folks claimed drinking it with water cures the three highs, and smearing it on your face makes you pretty.”

Yu Sheng was dumbfounded: “They formed poaching gangs for that? How did it end?”

“Stellar Media brought two lofty ‘experts’ on a show,” Xu Jiali said: “One was a Daoist master from Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain, the other a Bamosian Prophet. On air they said Tree Granny’s resin is radioactive.”

Yu Sheng: “…”