Chapter 268

Chapter 269: Aftermath

The group crossed the Door back into the real world. As usual, Yu Sheng took the rear. Before stepping through, he turned one last time to look at the fog covered “mirror of the streets.”

The Otherworld’s Self Repairing Trait had kicked in. Streets torn up by battle were mending slowly in the mist. No new Entities had appeared. Everything lay quiet, as if the earlier uproar of Entity swarms and fierce fighting had been a hallucination.

After a moment of thought, Yu Sheng bit his finger hard, flicked a few drops of blood onto the road to anchor it, rechecked the Door Opening coordinates in this strange Otherworld, then stepped through the Door.

In front of Myriad Plaza Mall, a Special Affairs Bureau special ambulance was already in the Plaza. The moment the young man came through the Door, several Bureau staff hustled him aboard.

First came emergency checks for lingering mental contamination or other aftereffects from contact with the Otherworld, plus a security scan to be sure nothing that shouldn’t enter the real world had followed him out. Then they helped clean off the leftover resin and had a professional counselor give him some early guidance, explaining what first timers should know after meeting the Otherworld and its Entities.

The biggest rule was simple: keep your mind relaxed.

The Special Affairs Bureau clearly had a complete, professional workflow.

When Yu Sheng and the others saw the young man again, an hour had passed.

He held a cup of Medicinal Tea said to calm the nerves and sipped slowly. His gaze was a bit blank. Only when Yu Sheng’s trio and Little Red Riding Hood sat across from him did he snap out of it and manage a smile, still shaken and exhausted.

“How do you feel now?” Yu Sheng asked.

“Sticky. The resin won’t wipe clean. I want to shower as soon as I get home,” the young man sighed. “And tired, like I ran three thousand meters. Well, I did run for a long time. A bunch of weird things were chasing me in the fog.”

“A bunch?” Yu Sheng raised a brow. “What kind?”

“Didn’t see clearly and I can’t remember,” the young man groaned. “I don’t dare think about it; it’s too scary. I only remember a big tree with legs, like an old lady, caught me at the end. A branch smacked me down, then it spat resin all over me. Next thing, I opened my eyes and saw you all… and this miss here was a three or four meter tall Fox.”

He glanced at Foxy again, still a bit rattled, like a ghost of that moment clung to his mind. Then he caught himself and apologized: “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it, I just got spooked.”

Foxy didn’t care; she was busy digging cookies out of Yu Sheng’s pocket.

She kept plenty of food in her tail, but sneaking snacks from her benefactor was her favorite hobby.

“His words are still a bit stiff and his short term thinking is sluggish,” Little Red Riding Hood whispered to Yu Sheng, “the meds haven’t worn off yet. Even though Sanity Treatment Medication for first timers is heavily reduced, it still lingers.”

Yu Sheng nodded, then asked the young man: “Big nephew, do you remember how you fell into the other side?”

“The two from the Special Affairs Bureau already asked, but I really can’t recall the details,” he said, looking apologetic. “I don’t even know when things started going wrong. I zone out a lot. I wasn’t paying attention this morning.”

He paused, searching his memory: “I remember using a side Door into the mall. It looked newly opened. I walked in with my head down, thinking. After a bit I noticed how quiet it was. I looked up, and everyone inside the mall had turned into fuzzy shadows. Fog was rising. I blinked, and even the shadows were gone. I was the only one left. My phone had no signal. I tried several numbers and none went through.”

Irene chimed in: “Do you remember knocking on the window at the mall’s Door earlier? Did you hear anything? Besides the sound, did you see anything?”

“I didn’t even hear it clearly. Everything in the fog felt like a hallucination. I only felt the glass shift, so I knocked. I couldn’t see anything in the window, just the fog on the street,” the young man said, thinking hard for a while longer before shaking his head. “Nothing else comes back.”

“Then big nephew, you…”

“I do have a name,” he said, finally cracking a shy smile as he pointed to himself. “I’m Zheng Zhi.”

Everyone went quiet for a beat, the mood even stranger than before.

“So you’re still Big Zhi!” Irene stood on the seat, hands on hips, righteously indignant. “Who gave you that name?”

“My grandmother,” he said, helpless. “She wanted me to be upright.”

“Ahem,” Yu Sheng coughed twice and killed the pointless thread. “Zheng Zhi, got it. Looks like you can’t recall useful details right now, so we’ll stop here. Head home and rest. The Special Affairs Bureau will send a car. If you remember anything later, contact us at once.”

“Okay,” Zheng Zhi nodded, then hesitated with a worried face and asked carefully, “also, since you rescued me, I should pay you, right? I’ve heard you’re professional Spirit Realm Detectives and you charge for jobs.”

He stopped, afraid they’d take it the wrong way, and rushed on: “I do have money, just not a lot. I don’t know what your rates are…”

He looked tense and unsure, his voice thin.

Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood traded a look and a laugh.

“Don’t worry about that,” Little Red Riding Hood said, exasperated but kind. “Spirit Realm Detectives aren’t soulless cash machines. Unless someone hires us ahead of time to go into the Otherworld for a paid rescue, we always save people we run into by accident, whether there’s profit or not. The Special Affairs Bureau rewards us for that. They have incentives for these cases.”

“Oh,” Zheng Zhi said, scratching his head with an awkward grin.

“But I do need to remind you of something,” Little Red Riding Hood added. “I don’t know what the Bureau folks told you, but from now on, be careful.”

Zheng Zhi’s face changed. He gave a bitter smile and opened his hands: “They warned me.”

“Once you deal with ‘the other side,’ you’ve made a connection with things beyond the edge of reason. It’s irreversible,” Little Red Riding Hood said. “From now on, you’ll be more likely to see what ordinary people can’t see, to spot hidden entrances and lurking anomalies. Given your body’s ‘high sensitivity, low stability,’ it will probably be worse for you. There’s a high chance you’ll fall into the Otherworld again.”

“The Special Affairs Bureau told me the same,” Zheng Zhi said, fingers clenched so tight the knuckles whitened. “They said the community will register me, I can get meds from an ‘anomalist’ doctor, and after an adjustment period I can use reduced Sanity Blocking Agents to weaken my link with the other side. They’ll also arrange follow up training to teach me basic occult knowledge so I can protect myself a little if something happens.”

He sighed: “My uncle was always most afraid of this. I still ended up in it.”

“As long as you know, I won’t pile on,” Little Red Riding Hood said, nodding lightly. “Go home. Shower. Sleep. Eat and drink. Anxiety won’t help. Trust the Special Affairs Bureau and the Council. If anything happens, call the help number they gave you, or contact us directly.”

With a worried face, Zheng Zhi left in the Bureau’s car.

Yu Sheng stepped out of the vehicle and watched it go, murmuring: “What rotten luck.”

“It is,” Liu Bing said beside him, “but in the Borderland, cases like his aren’t rare.”

He turned to Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood: “I’ve reported the basics to my superiors and submitted the reward application. You saved someone, discovered a brand new Otherworld, and collected raw data in it. The bonus won’t be small, three to four hundred thousand. It’ll go straight into the Fairy Tale and Hotel accounts.”

Yu Sheng’s smile bloomed from the heart.

He was that simple and pure.