Chapter 268

Chapter 268: Unknown Realm

Clearly, the Big Nephew swallowed by the fog had encountered an entity while running in panic. And as the one lucky break in his streak of rotten luck, he hadn’t run into Ink Mark or Carnival Revelers—he’d met the gentle, harmless neutral entity Granny Tree.

As for why Granny Tree, which was supposed to wander Autumn Forest, appeared here… nobody had the energy to care anymore. In this fog, it felt like anything could crawl out.

“The detectors didn’t find any trace of Granny Tree,” a deep diver reported. His powered armor carried extra support devices; he looked like a support specialist. “It may have wandered elsewhere, or faded on its own. No signs of other entity activity were found nearby, but we did find dried, broken branches around the trapped person. Granny Tree may have tried to plant a tree to hang the person, failed, and then stuck him to the wall instead…”

“So what now?” A huge fox head leaned in beside Yu Sheng. Foxy stared at the crystal-clear resin block on the ground, eyes bright with curiosity. “Do we smash it open to get him out… Slurp. This looks like a sugar block…”

Yu Sheng broke into a cold sweat and grabbed the demon fox’s snout with both hands. “You are not biting that!”

“We can’t smash it,” Xu Jiali said, shaking his head. “He’d shatter with it. And it’s best not to move him anymore. From what I can tell, the resin is already entering a fragile stage. Now we wait.”

He crouched to examine the surface. “Granny Tree resin only seals someone for one to two hours. When time’s up, it melts. From the crystal state, he’s been sealed for over an hour already. It should be soon.”

“All right, then we wait,” Yu Sheng said.

He sat down on the ground nearby, leaning against Foxy’s fluffy front paw. “Good time for me to rest too. Those two waves really wore me out.”

Foxy lowered her head to look at him. Carefully, she tapped him once with her other paw, then rested her head to the side and closed her eyes, dozing along with him.

Xu Jiali couldn’t help blurting, “No… this is still otherworld. How are you two this relaxed?”

“Normal,” Irene said. She climbed onto Foxy’s paw too, found a comfortable spot, and waved at Xu Jiali. “Silly Fox relaxes as long as she’s next to Yu Sheng, and Yu Sheng can relax anywhere.”

She leaned in as if sharing a secret. “Also, Yu Sheng is actually not happy right now. First he ran into Ink Mark and all the split bodies were just ink stains he couldn’t eat. Then the revelers died and turned into confetti he couldn’t eat. He’s definitely sulking about it—ow!”

Yu Sheng didn’t even open his eyes. He smacked the little doll on the head with one hand, cutting off her nonstop chatter.

Xu Jiali’s mouth twitched. But after dealing with Yu Sheng’s crew a few times, he’d gotten used to their weird vibe. He turned back to guard.

Anthropomorphic entities could lie down. He couldn’t afford even the slightest slack while leading deep divers through this fog.

The place gave him a bad feeling. Not just because more entities might appear, but because of the fog itself. It felt far more cursed than it looked.

He lifted his head and noticed that besides his people, only Little Red Riding Hood stayed fully alert. Her phantom shadow wolf pack flickered in and out around her. Now and then, wolf shadows slipped deeper into the fog and returned, as if scouting nonstop.

Honestly, the high school kid was the reliable one.

“You ran from that mall all the way here, right?” he asked. “Has your wolf pack confirmed how big this fog zone is?”

“So far, we’ve confirmed six blocks,” Little Red Riding Hood said seriously. “Centered on Myriad Plaza Mall, this fog contains at least six surrounding blocks’ mirror versions. The farthest we reached was Taiyuan Road.”

Her expression grew heavy. “And that’s not the limit. Further out, there’s still solid ground and buildings, but the fog gets even thicker than here. Even my wolves’ senses feel like something is covering them. They can’t see or hear anything beyond three meters. I didn’t dare go much deeper.”

She reached out and touched a shadow wolf that appeared beside her. “I think there’s something else out there. My wolves… told me fear. But whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to want to come closer.”

“Is it an entity?” Xu Jiali asked.

“Hard to say,” Little Red Riding Hood said, shaking her head. “The fog is too thick. You can’t see anything. Maybe only your director’s ‘eyes’ can see what’s far away in here.”

Xu Jiali nodded grimly, then turned. “What’s the depth here right now?”

A deep diver raised his arm and tapped rapidly on a bracer controller. “Report: current depth L-2, fluctuating by about twenty percent. Overall stable!”

“Depth two,” Xu Jiali murmured. “In theory, that’s not extreme. Most physical laws still match the real world…”

He stared into the haze. “But the worry is that the depth distribution here is uneven. We might just be standing in shallow water.”

A faint cracking sound interrupted him.

Yu Sheng, eyes still closed against Foxy’s paw, snapped awake. Several people turned toward the sound at the same time.

The pale yellow amber was rapidly cracking. Within seconds, the areas around the fractures began to melt, and the whole crystal dissolved like ice under a blazing sun.

It turned into sticky resin. The resin softened further. The young man inside toppled out onto the ground, and as he landed, he finally sucked in a breath—then started coughing violently, jolting into panicked wakefulness.

“Cough, cough…”

He struggled up from the puddle of thinning resin. Instinct made him try to stand, but he couldn’t get leverage. He slipped and fell back, and the jolt cleared his head a little more. He sat there wide-eyed, staring at his surroundings.

Fully armed powered armor.

A wolf pack flickering in fog.

A doll with blood-red eyes staring at him.

A fox the size of two vans—its head alone bigger than his entire body.

While he’d been sealed, his thoughts could still run, but the thick resin had dulled his perception of the outside world to blurry shapes. Now he could finally see what those shapes were.

The unlucky nephew processed it for half a second, then almost flopped backward with a small, strangled sound.

He only got halfway before Irene yanked him back with spider silk.

Cold, bone-chilling silk might have given an ordinary person nightmares, but it also worked like a shock. The young man jolted as if hit with a stimulant, instantly clear-eyed, and blurted, “What the hell?!”

“You’re awake,” Yu Sheng said at last.

Little Red Riding Hood nodded. “We’ve been waiting forever.”

The young man blinked, as if only now recognizing their faces. Everything else around him was too overwhelming. Seeing familiar people, he snapped back from terror and steadied himself.

But the fear didn’t vanish. A residual ringing echoed in his mind, and all kinds of terrifying afterimages stirred at the edges of his vision.

He shook his head and heard a tall figure in powered armor speaking nearby.

“Mild mental contamination. Reduced sanity. 0.5 units of Mindguard, 1 unit of Buffer Tonic. Don’t use Sanity Blockade. He can’t handle it.”

Someone stepped in and grabbed his arm. A faint sting spread under his skin.

“Injection complete.”

The young man’s eyes cleared.

“I…” He blinked, swept his gaze around, and landed back on Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood. “Am I… saved?”

A huge fox head leaned out behind Yu Sheng and spoke in a little girl’s voice. “Yeah! Benefactor brought people to save you!”

The young man stumbled back two steps, legs going soft. “Brother Yu, th-this… this doesn’t eat people, right?!”

Yu Sheng hadn’t even opened his mouth before Foxy shook her head solemnly. “Not eat. I love chicken legs, roasted mushrooms, and Benefactor’s cooking! And noodles…”

As she spoke, she practically started drooling. She lowered her head toward Yu Sheng. “Benefactor, I’m hungry.”

The young man across from them went completely still, like his brain had switched into vibration mode.

“The first time you touch the world on this side is like this,” Little Red Riding Hood said with a smile that carried hard-won experience—even though she was younger than him. “Everything you see can scare you. Anyway, welcome to the everyday world of the other side. Today is your first day officially crossing the boundary. Whatever your reaction is, everyone will understand.”

Her expression sobered. “Save your questions for after we get back.”

“Right,” Yu Sheng said, raising a hand. “We shouldn’t stay here. Let’s go back.”

He began to open the door to Boundary City—then saw Foxy trying to shove her snout into the doorway.

Yu Sheng broke into a cold sweat. “Change back first! You think that’s going to fit?”

Foxy shimmered back into human form, and the young man’s mind promptly went blank again.

Yu Sheng turned to the burly man in powered armor.

“Same way? My door feels way more convenient than your setup.”

“No, no, no,” Xu Jiali said, waving frantically. “We’re going back our own way. If HQ sees our umbilical cord cut, they’ll screech from top to bottom—and then I really will get buried on the spot by the director.”

As he spoke, the deep divers behind him began to fade, disappearing one after another into the fog.

Yu Sheng let out a breath, then waved at the people still with him. “We’re leaving too!”