Chapter 269
Chapter 270: Research Conclusion
Song Cheng stood in front of Bai Li Qing’s extra wide desk and gave his report: “That is the situation. The trapped citizens have been sent home. The mall will stay sealed until tomorrow, and the assessment team will use that time to confirm there is no leftover risk in the cordoned zone. The Technical Department is rushing to analyze all the data sent back by the Deep Diving Unit, along with the audio and video from their operation.”
Sitting behind her desk with a calm, unreadable face, Bai Li Qing waited until he finished, then nodded lightly and asked: “Do we have any conclusions yet?”
“We can confirm it is a brand new Otherworld, one we have never seen. Deep Diver sensors logged a depth range of L-1 to L-2. The scene looks like a neighborhood under thick fog. That neighborhood may be a ‘reflection’ of the real world. The full area is still unknown, and our first guess is that the depth increases as you move deeper into the fog.
“This Otherworld will randomly generate Entities that should belong to other Otherworlds. So far we only confirmed three: Ink Stain, Carnival Revelers, and Tree Granny. Based on that, we are temporarily rating the danger at level 3. But since our sample size is small, the rating is only for reference. We do not advise anyone except ‘experienced teams’ like Fairy Tale and Hotel to go there. Spirit Realm Detective organizations or individual investigators should not enter on purpose.
“Also, you do not need to worry too much about others barging in. No one else should be able to get inside. We have not found a stable way to open this Otherworld. Right now there are only two entry methods: either Yu Sheng uses his Door Opening ability, or we rely on the Locator the Deep Divers planted before they withdrew and then send Deep Divers back in.”
He paused to collect his thoughts, then continued: “Besides how to open it, the urgent questions focus on how this Otherworld generates Entities. This is our first time seeing an Otherworld that can generate Entities from other Otherworlds. We must understand the mechanism. How many Entities can it make? Can it produce level 4 or even higher Entities? In the action report, Ink Stain, the Carnival Revelers, and Tree Granny appeared one by one, but we cannot rule out the chance they show up together in the fog.
“Depending on the answers, the danger might be much higher. Level 3 could be the lower limit.”
When he finished, Bai Li Qing stayed quiet for a long time, as if she was thinking. After a while she looked up and asked: “Little Song, besides the Entity generation rules, do you feel the strange signs before and after this new Otherworld opened are also very suspicious?”
“What do you mean?”
She tapped her desk with a finger and said: “Those hundreds of tiny tremors that our instruments almost ignored, each so short that the opening lasted only one second, and the traces afterward that were cleaned spotless.”
Song Cheng’s eyes widened as he blurted: “You mean the traces were cleaned?”
“Human-caused,” she said, stopping the tapping as her face turned serious. “Doesn’t it look that way? Those short tremors feel like someone was running some kind of experiment, and the goal was to open this Otherworld.”
“What about the trapped citizens?”
“They could be part of the experiment, test subjects picked at random,” she said in a low voice, “used to confirm whether the entrance truly opened.”
Song Cheng frowned hard and asked: “Who would be bold enough to pull this off in the Borderland? And who has the power to…”
He stopped mid sentence, shot a quick, awkward look at Bai Li Qing, and she looked back.
They both shifted their eyes away in silent understanding.
“Of course it is not him,” said Bai Li Qing.
“I never said it was him,” said Song Cheng.
They fell silent together for a few seconds.
“In short, treat ‘deliberate sabotage’ as a real possibility,” said Bai Li Qing evenly. “We have many enemies. The vision on the night of Angel Fall was seen by many eyes. Some foolish people may have bold ideas. In times like this, we must be extra alert.”
“Yes, Director.”
After finishing his report, Song Cheng left. Bai Li Qing stayed seated, still thinking.
After a while, she opened her computer and pulled up a series of video files.
Fog thick on a street, intense firefights, clusters of Carnival Revelers destroyed into confetti.
These were all first hand clips recorded by the Deep Dive Team’s body cams, dozens of videos from different angles.
She skimmed them, then stood up from her desk and tapped a spot on the corner of the tabletop.
A soft hum came from the ceiling.
The lights went out. Hidden projectors unfolded from the ceiling and floor. Dazzling holograms washed over the walls and furniture. Light swallowed the room. In a blink, dozens of videos covered the entire space. They split again by timeline and turned into hundreds of frames, filling every inch around Bai Li Qing.
All the images started to play at once, fast forward.
She poured herself a glass of water and, sipping slowly, analyzed each moment and each view the Deep Divers had captured, frame by frame.
Outside the big floor to ceiling windows, the mist boiled and rolled. It began to reassemble into a restored picture of that fog shrouded neighborhood.
A pair of phantom eyes floated inside the street scene that Bai Li Qing had “rendered” with her power and darted quickly through the changing views.
“Stop,” said Bai Li Xue.
The view outside the window froze, and the holograms paused at the same time.
Those eyes slipped through the glass, came to hover behind Bai Li Qing, and the two “people” focused on a certain frame nearby.
It looked ordinary. The camera faced a street side shop sign. Colored confetti from the shattered Carnival Revelers drifted at the edge of the frame. On the sign, the bright words “XX Fresh” were clear.
“…The words read correctly,” said Bai Li Xue softly.
Bai Li Qing nodded and said: “Right. If it were a mirror, the text would be reversed.”
“So the essence of this Otherworld is not as simple as ‘a few streets mirrored.’ The entrance just happens to be a ‘mirror’,” said Bai Li Xue, her voice a little livelier. “It is more likely a separate space, a…”
She hesitated.
Bai Li Qing finished the thought: “A real time copy of the real Boundary City. Or, to go further, another Boundary City.”
The sisters went quiet together.
Several minutes passed before Bai Li Xue asked carefully: “What do you guess… its size is?”
Bai Li Qing turned off the holograms with a flick, sat back down, and rubbed her temples: “I do not want to guess at all.” [Her head was starting to ache.]
The pair of eyes drifted to the window glass behind her and stuck there. After a while, the two spoke at the same time: “Why do ridiculous things always happen when he is involved?!”
A knock at the door sounded.
Bai Li Qing straightened up, put away her slightly lazy posture, and returned to her usual cool calm. She said in a steady voice: “Come in.”
The on duty secretary walked in and placed a stack of documents in front of her.
“Director, these just came from the Technical Department. It is about those Anka Aila crystals.”
“Crystal test data?” Bai Li Qing raised an eyebrow, took the file at once, and flipped a few pages. Her expression turned… complicated.
“According to the tests, the Anka Aila crystals, including the Mother Crystal and the Secondary Crystal, did not show any special response to mental attacks,” said the secretary seriously. “That includes, but is not limited to, common Hypnosis and Consciousness Guidance, higher level Memory Manipulation and Mind Control, or direct Psychic Shock released by the Entity known as the Enthralling Butterfly. The testing division basically tried every kind of Psychic Shock they can produce in the lab on the crystals. The conclusion is what you see in the report: no defensive effect.”
Bai Li Qing drew a slow breath.
She reread the file with extra care and noticed another line in the conclusion from the testing team:
Aside from mental attacks, so far the samples also showed no special response to any other kind of ‘stimulus.’ As a ‘specialized defense,’ they have no special properties.
“So,” said Bai Li Xue inside her mind in the same flat mechanical tone, though with a hint of dry humor, “the crystals only protect against that Doll… right? Otherwise they do nothing?”
Bai Li Qing could barely keep a straight face as she muttered: “So it is tailor made to target her alone…?” [This is a bit much.]
…
Irene laughed so hard at the silly variety show on TV that she fell off the coffee table with a thud, then complained while struggling to climb back up.
Watching this, Yu Sheng rolled his eyes and said: “Go on, keep watching. You already are not that smart, and if you keep watching this, your brain will melt.”
“I am a Doll, where would I get a brain?” said another Irene, hands on hips, standing on the sofa. Then she noticed the row of small knives laid out in front of Yu Sheng and asked: “Hey, why do you have so many fruit knives and box cutters here? And you keep testing them… I am telling you, that is kind of creepy.”
Yu Sheng sighed, picked up a fruit knife, dragged it over his palm twice, then put it down and said: “The knife I usually carry for blood letting stopped working, so I was going to switch. I tried everything I could find at home.”
“The final conclusion is not that the knives are the problem, it is you,” said Irene, grinning as she hugged a little knife and poked the back of his hand with the tip, dulling it in a few jabs. “You eat anything, and that Silly Fox keeps stewing weird stuff for you. I told you your diet is a problem.”
Yu Sheng snatched the knife from the Doll’s hand and said: “If my body gets tougher from eating, how is that a problem?”
“You are too tough. Next time you get appendicitis, the hospital physician will not be able to cut you open, and you will not be smiling then.”
Yu Sheng blinked and, [okay, that imagination was creative,] waved a hand and said: “If that really happens, I will open a Door to a volcano and jump in. Thirty minutes later I come out as a man without an appendix. Faster than surgery.”
Irene stared and said: “…You would risk death to treat appendicitis?!”
“What can I do?” Yu Sheng tossed the small knife onto the table and said: “At this rate I will have to carry a chainsaw, and the low power ones will not do.”
Just then his phone buzzed on the table and cut them off.
Irene glanced at the caller ID, hugged the phone, and handed it over: “For you. It is Bai Li Qing again.”
Yu Sheng exhaled, put the phone to his ear, and asked: “…What do you mean by ‘Anti Irene Crystal’?” [He did not like the sound of that at all.]