Chapter 30

Chapter 30: Door Opener

The small supermarket door slammed shut, cutting off the scorching heat of that blasted planet—and the sudden killing intent that had flared from two black-armored soldiers. Yu Sheng stood at the entrance, stunned.

He froze for a few seconds, then sucked in a sharp breath and looked around.

There weren’t many people on the street. Even when someone walked past, they seemed to have noticed nothing strange. Only Yu Sheng had been staring straight into that bizarre scene moments ago, and now he stood there in the wind with his thoughts in knots.

After lingering in a daze, he slowly turned back to the storefront.

Over the past two months, he’d been here more than once. This little supermarket in the Old Quarter didn’t carry much, but it had daily necessities—rice, flour, oil. The owners were a young couple, and Yu Sheng was familiar with them by now.

Nothing about the place looked special. A ground-floor shop with a big glass window facing the street, crammed with sale notices and small-goods shelves stacked behind the glass. One hinge on the glass door didn’t work properly; an A4 sheet was taped to that half that read: THIS DOOR IS BROKEN. Through the glass, he could see the narrow aisles inside and the owner moving around behind the shelves.

Perfectly normal. Too normal.

And yet Yu Sheng couldn’t dismiss what he’d just seen as a hallucination. Even now, he could still taste that scorching air, faintly sulfurous, lingering in his nose.

He’d almost stepped through. Thankfully, the aftereffects of falling into Otherworld were still there. Not only the door at home—any door at all now made his skin crawl. Every time he reached to open one, he hesitated for a beat. And when he’d touched the handle just now, there had been that… jolt in his gut, right at the instant it should have opened.

Yu Sheng steadied himself at the entrance. After a moment’s thought, he reached out again, gripped the handle, and eased the door open a crack, leaning in to peek.

Inside was a perfectly ordinary supermarket. No customers at this hour. The owner was still busy behind the shelves, apparently not even noticing the movement at the door.

Yu Sheng stepped back and closed it again. Then he grabbed the handle hard, drew a deep breath, clenched his teeth like he was daring himself, and shoved it open in one go.

A tall woman with long blond hair stood on the other side, on a metal platform, dressed in a silvery robe and skirt. She turned, startled, and looked straight at Yu Sheng.

She was beautiful—but the ears beneath her hair weren’t human. They were long, elegant points, and several faintly glowing tubes and data cables ran from behind them, linking to something on her back.

What Yu Sheng noticed even more was the wheel-like structure beneath the hem of her skirt, and the mechanical limbs behind her—multi-jointed arms holding tools, working in midair.

A voice drifted from farther inside: “…Boss! A customer wants to know whether the superluminal core delivered last week is fixed.”

The blond woman didn’t respond. She just stared at Yu Sheng in the doorway, holding that look for a long moment—then snapped, “How the hell did you get in here?!”

Yu Sheng slammed the door shut.

The very next second, he yanked it open again—because he hadn’t seen clearly.

Was that… an elf?

It was the first time in his life he’d ever seen an elf.

So was it really an elf?!

And what the hell was that whole vibe?!

The moment the door opened, a child in a brown, coarse-cloth daoist robe was staring at him. The two of them faced each other in stunned silence. A ring of scorch marks and smoke rimmed the doorway, and the kid’s fan was frozen halfway through a frantic fanning motion, eyes bulging like they were about to pop.

Before Yu Sheng could say a word, the child hurled the fan away like he’d seen a ghost, spun, and bolted, shrieking as he ran, “Master! Master! Senior Brother did it! Senior Brother’s pill furnace refined a human head! It has a nose and eyes! It can even breathe!”

“What the fuck…”

Yu Sheng yelped and slammed the door shut, stumbling backward a few steps before he caught himself.

He glanced toward the street. A few passersby were looking at him in confusion, but it was only his strange behavior they’d noticed. He’d shut the door too fast for anyone to see what had been on the other side.

Yu Sheng forced his face into something neutral, pretended nothing was wrong, and moved aside. Once the onlookers lost interest, he gulped down several breaths and stood at the corner, dazed, trying to make sense of his life.

It was so chaotic and cursed he couldn’t even tell what label fit—still terrified, worldview shattered, barely surviving. All he knew was that his head felt like twelve storms were raging at once. Thoughts crashed and roared for a good seven or eight minutes before he finally snapped back into focus.

But one thing became clear fast.

Those places beyond the door… were not Otherworld.

At the very least, the gorgeous elf with the mechanical body and the daoist kid with the fan definitely weren’t in Otherworld. As for the two powered-armored soldiers he’d seen first… their surroundings had looked brutal enough that it was hard to say.

After a long while, the tangle in Yu Sheng’s mind finally loosened. He forced himself to shove the wild guesses down, then lowered his gaze to his hands.

After hesitating again and again, he reached toward the wall beside him.

He was tucked into a corner of an alley. Next to him was nothing but bare cement brick.

He rubbed the rough surface, slowly curling his fingers as he imagined… a door.

Like the hallway at home, when he’d found a hidden handle outside the room where Irene was. Like that valley under the night sky, when the monster had flung him into the air and he’d instinctively grabbed at empty space—only to catch something and pull open a door back to the real world.

He touched it.

He couldn’t see it, but it was there. When he closed his hand, a handle “formed” beneath his fingers. The outline of a door seemed to lock into place. His expression went stiff as he turned his head—

A faint shimmer hung in the air, as if a door could be opened in the next heartbeat.

“Holy shit.”

Yu Sheng swore under his breath. The instant he tensed, his grip loosened on instinct—and the “door” vanished from the wall without a sound.

His heart pounded so hard it felt like it might leap straight out of his throat.

He took a few deep breaths, forced himself steady, then remembered the sensation of that handle and tugged at the corner of his mouth.

[Irene.] he called in his mind, his feelings so tangled he couldn’t even name them.

“Huh?” Irene’s voice answered immediately, bright as ever. “I was just about to contact you. You’ve been out for a while—didn’t you say the supermarket was right at the corner? Did you buy too much?”

Yu Sheng said, “…I haven’t even gone into the supermarket yet.”

“Did you get lost?” Irene asked.

“I’m just letting you know,” Yu Sheng said, ignoring her off-the-rails guesses. “I probably won’t consider moving anymore.”

“Huh?! Really?” Irene sounded oddly pleased—and curious. “Why? Didn’t you say this house felt off? Especially since with one door opening you might get ‘thrown’ who knows where…”

Yu Sheng sighed. “Nothing. I just realized… if there’s a bigger problem, it might not be the house. It might be me.”

“…?” Irene went silent, and Yu Sheng could practically picture a face full of question marks.

“It’s complicated,” Yu Sheng said. He leaned back against the wall and rubbed his forehead. “Anyway, you don’t need to worry about moving anymore. If I get the chance later… I’ll tell you.”

Irene’s curiosity was clearly about to explode, but she could tell Yu Sheng wasn’t in the mood to explain, so all she said was, “Oh.”

Yu Sheng cut the connection.

He hadn’t told her what had just happened—not because he was hiding it, but because his own thoughts were still a mess. He’d missed details. He needed time to recall and sort everything out.

He decided he’d talk to Irene once he got back and had a chance to steady himself.

Besides, even if he did tell her now, she’d probably be just as confused as he was—and then they’d be confused together. Still, having someone to talk it through with was better than spiraling alone.

That doll at least knew a little about the supernatural. Even if it wasn’t much.

A few minutes later, Yu Sheng left the corner. The night wind had turned colder, and he forced his focus back to the present. He looked toward the small supermarket not far away.

After a moment’s hesitation, he started walking.

He still meant to finish today’s shopping. Doors were unsettling, sure—but he couldn’t stop opening every door for the rest of his life.

This time, when he reached the glass door, he was more cautious than ever.

He focused hard, sensing every tiny detail in the act of opening it—the pressure under his palm, the hitch in his chest, the warning in his instincts, even the sound of wind and the reflections in the glass.

If anyone had been watching, they would’ve thought he was opening a door in slow motion.

Then the supermarket door swung open.

Between the narrow aisles, the young owner looked up and smiled when he saw Yu Sheng. “Oh, what’re you buying?”