Chapter 276

Chapter 276: And Just Like That, It Was Over

For ordinary people, Wu Tong Road 66 was invisible.

But for Special Operations Bureau agents with a certain spiritual talent and focused training, the “keep out” open ground Wu Tong Road 66 occupied—and that strange wall at the end of it—were visible.

And now, that open ground and the wall had both vanished, disappearing into the calm night without making a single sound, as if they had never existed.

The two agents practically teleported out of the station and rushed outside. Then they stood there, dumbstruck, staring at the narrow alley ahead. Cold night wind hit their faces, yet sweat ran from the backs of their necks all the way down to their feet.

Their trained, razor-sharp observation let them quickly judge the condition of the nearby houses in the dark. They confirmed that every building had shifted and warped to varying degrees. Some structures that had originally been on the far side of the open ground had moved to within arm’s reach. Some empty homes that hadn’t even been adjacent before now stood as a row of connected units.

And the feeling it gave…

It was as if the space here had once been forcibly propped open by something, and now that foreign object had suddenly left. So the distorted spacetime that had quietly stayed warped for a long time, unnoticed by anyone, restored itself back to normal without a sound.

One agent wiped the cold sweat off his forehead and turned to his partner. “…What do we do?”

“What else? Report it,” the other agent said, looking just as bad. “This is definitely going to reach the director.”

“…Damn. How do we even say this?”

“Say what we saw. This is already beyond what the two of us have authority to handle,” the young agent sighed, then tensed again. “It wasn’t because we did something that pissed him off and made him leave, was it?”

“Probably not. When Yu Sheng took Foxy out for a walk, I even said hello to them. They looked like they were in a great mood…”

…

Thick fog flowed and rose over the street like some viscous liquid with weight. Yet all of it stayed several meters away from Wu Tong Road 66, forming a sharp boundary. Not a wisp of fog infiltrated inside.

“So it really works!” Yu Sheng was genuinely pleased. He turned to Irene and Foxy, who had come to watch the excitement. “With that door opening, we’re on the foggy side!”

Irene didn’t speak right away. She cautiously stepped two paces out of the house, scanned the surroundings, then looked back. Only then did she stare at Yu Sheng with suspicion.

“Tell me… you really did just open a door? Why does this feel wrong? No, wait—the entire house is standing here! And the stuff around us is off, too. That utility pole over there should’ve been a bit farther left…”

Yu Sheng finally took a hard look around. He frowned as if sensing something, then after a long moment, rubbed his chin without much confidence. “Maybe I opened it a little crooked.”

Irene’s eyes narrowed. “…What did you open crooked?”

“The house.”

“…Holy shit?!”

“If the theory’s right, I should’ve successfully landed the entire Wu Tong Road 66 on the foggy side, and the whole process was controllable,” Yu Sheng said, scratching his hair as he explained. “Didn’t we say the whole house was falling into the Otherworld? I figured, if the house can ‘descend’ like a person, then it really is moving like a person. Maybe it’s like you said—people have souls, machines have machine spirits, houses have house souls. So I tried it. I wanted to see if the process could be guided and controlled, so when I did the door opening, I treated the entire Wu Tong Road 66 as part of the doorframe…”

Irene’s eyes nearly popped out. “…That works?!”

Then she glanced around again and immediately hopped back two steps. “You’re not messing with me, right? This isn’t some shadowspawn of Wu Tong Road 66 that also exists on the foggy side? You really brought the real house over here?”

Yu Sheng raised an eyebrow. “Do you think Wu Tong Road 66 would form a projection in this fog like normal buildings do?”

“…Uh, yeah, I guess not. Wu Tong Road 66 is an Otherworld, and a special one at that,” Irene muttered, scratching her head. “And you even opened it crooked…”

“You don’t need to emphasize that part.”

“Benefactor, what do we do next?” Foxy blinked at Yu Sheng. She didn’t look nervous at all. If anything, her big eyes held eager anticipation, and her tails swayed back and forth. “Are we going out?”

“Hold on. Go back first,” Yu Sheng said, not rushing out. He shut the door. “Let’s confirm what’s going on in the valley.”

“The valley? Oh, right!” Irene suddenly remembered. “You ‘opened’ the whole Wu Tong Road 66 away! We don’t know if the connection to the valley got affected!”

Very quickly, Yu Sheng took the fox and the doll down to the basement and pushed open the fixed teleportation door leading to the valley.

The quiet valley under “nightfall” came into view.

Yu Sheng stepped onto the portal platform and looked up at the sky. Thick clouds formed an artificial night over the entire valley, and of course, that was his doing.

By now he was used to it. Every day when it got dark in the real world outside, he “pulled the curtains” in the valley too, then let the sky back out early the next morning. It was a simple, direct way to keep a normal day-night cycle in the valley—and it solved two major problems at once: the crops growing badly and the dollheads refusing to sleep at night.

He didn’t even need a greenhouse.

Then Yu Sheng sensed the teleportation door in Little Town.

“Looks fine. Seems like Wu Tong Road 66’s movement doesn’t affect the teleportation doors that are already established,” he said, satisfied. “The valley itself hasn’t changed either.”

The three of them went back to the living room.

Yu Sheng pulled out his mobile phone and glanced at it. “Signal’s normal, too.”

“The whole house is on the other side, and your phone still has signal?” Irene leaned over in disbelief, peering at it with her head tilted. “What kind of house even is this…”

“How would I know?” Yu Sheng shrugged. “Having signal inside this house has been an unsolved mystery since day one. Now you want it solved?”

“I don’t care if it’s solved. I just suddenly remembered something,” Irene said, thinking. Then she stiffened. “You brought the whole house to this side—does the Special Operations Bureau need to…”

Yu Sheng froze. “Oh crap. That’s a good point—”

Before he could finish, an urgent ringtone cut him off.

The caller was Bai Li Qing—recently at the top of Yu Sheng’s call log.

Irene glanced at the screen. “You should just get a family plan with her and save on the bill.”

Yu Sheng waved a hand to hush her, then answered carefully, wearing an awkward, guilty smile even though the director on the other end couldn’t see it. “Uh, good evening, Director Bai Li.”

Maybe it was his imagination, but the moment the words left his mouth, he heard a faint exhale from the other side, as if Bai Li Qing had suddenly relaxed.

Then that cool, calm voice came through the receiver. “I got a report from the Wu Tong Road Station… It says the entire plot where your house is located is gone.”

Yu Sheng went silent.

Honestly, he hadn’t expected it to be that dramatic. The entire plot was gone?

He’d thought the Special Operations Bureau might just get another alarm or something. This time his door opening had been pretty unconventional, and the newly launched automatic filtering system might not even recognize it.

During Yu Sheng’s brief silence, Bai Li Qing spoke again. “What happened?”

Yu Sheng lifted his head, glanced at the fog-filled street outside, and tried hard to arrange his words into something factual and remotely sane. After weighing it a few times, he finally said, “I saw fog outside just now. The abnormal kind. So I came out to check.”

“…Uh, and?”

“And I brought the house along.”

On the other end, Bai Li Qing went very, very quiet.

Irene nearly jumped off the coffee table. “You held it in that long just to say that?!”

“I know it’s hard to understand, because I only just figured out this new feature,” Yu Sheng said, tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t worry. Nothing happened. I’m fine here—and my house is fine too.”

Bai Li Qing’s silence was deafening.

Irene sat cross-legged on the coffee table, nodding like she totally understood. “She’s cursing. The really nasty kind. It hits at least three generations of relatives.”

Yu Sheng ignored the doll.

He heard Bai Li Qing let out a soft breath.

“You’re coming back, right?” she asked, unusually calm, then added in a slightly awkward tone, “I mean, you and your… house. Are you both coming back?”

Yu Sheng answered just as awkwardly. “Uh, yeah. We’re coming back.”

“About when?”

“Maybe… before tomorrow morning?” Yu Sheng said, not very sure. “Mainly, I want to go out and check what’s going on first. You don’t even know how thick this fog is out there, and I don’t know if things will go smoothly…”

“Do you need support? I can send a deep-diving unit over.”

“No need. I’m just bringing Irene and Foxy. Fewer people is more convenient.”

“Fine. Remember to turn on the environment recording function in Border Comms. And message me when you’re back.”

“Uh, okay.”