Chapter 36

Chapter 36: The One Who Stayed Up All Night—Not Yu Sheng

Whether he could get used to him or not, Li Lin had to admit Xu Jiali was the best Deep Diver he’d ever seen. Having a powerhouse show up as backup at a time like this at least meant the bureau hadn’t forgotten the newcomer.

The problem was enduring Xu Jiali’s volume and his endless war stories—especially after every mission.

“Let me tell you, this one was some real cursed nonsense,” Xu Jiali said, helping himself to a bottle of water on the coffee table and twisting it open. “I caught that angel cultist who snuck into Aimein. Took forever to corner him in the wasteland. We’re fighting, and then I look up—guess what?”

Li Lin rolled his eyes. “Big Mouth, is this really something you should be saying out loud?”

“Sure it is. I already filed the report. This part of the intel got cleared for you.” Xu Jiali waved him off and barreled ahead anyway. “So I look up and—holy shit—there’s a guy just standing there. You know what kind? Shirt and pants. Standing in the toxic hot wind on Aimein-IX. No powered armor. Oh, and there’s a doorframe next to him. I was stunned—one more second and I’d have beaten that cultist to death, but I got startled and he got a chance to breathe.”

Xu Jiali took a long drink, then grinned. “But it’s fine, because in the end I was still better by a hair…”

Li Lin walked back to the monitoring gear by the window, waving him off without looking. “Yeah, yeah. Every story ends with ‘good thing you were better by a hair.’ Can’t you come up with a fresher twist for once?”

“But I really was better by a hair!” Xu Jiali stared at him, offended. “Hey—wait, you’re not even surprised? I saw a guy in toxic hot wind on Aimein-IX, not even wearing powered armor! Even the captain isn’t that hardcore!”

“Last time you claimed you saw someone appear in acid rain on Tata V without protective gear,” Li Lin said, still not turning around. “Turned out to be a professor from the Academy collecting field samples. This world is full of weird people.”

He tapped at the laptop and adjusted a parameter, unimpressed. “Besides, the more you Deep Dive, the more you start hallucinating. I’ve heard your scary stories eight hundred times. I don’t believe a single punctuation mark.”

He paused, then added, “Come back when you’re taking off from the starport and you see someone outside your shuttle window, flying alongside you. At least that would be creative.”

“I’ve seen that.” Xu Jiali flopped onto Li Lin’s bed with a grin. “A Daoist Master from Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain. Damn it, I was about to accelerate and he held up a mirror and flashed it at my monitor, saying he wanted to pass me. Pass my ass. If he’s so tough, let him enter warp with his bare body.”

Li Lin stopped working. He turned and stared at Xu Jiali for a long moment, then sighed. “Your day-to-day life on special field ops is really… colorful.”

“Why don’t you get a Deep Dive license too?” Xu Jiali said, propping himself up on an elbow. “Maybe next time you can run ops with me. What’s so great about staying in the Borderland? It’s dangerous, it’s annoying, and whatever you do, the responsibility is huge.”

Li Lin thought it over and shook his head. “The Borderland is always short-handed. Someone has to guard the biggest hub. And honestly, I don’t think wearing powered armor and fighting angel cultists on a wasteland planet is any safer than staying here and dealing with the Otherworld.”

He glanced back at the window. “Besides… even on special field ops, you still end up dealing with the Otherworld.”

“That’s different,” Xu Jiali said, stretching. “The density out there isn’t this high. It’s not like the Borderland, where a twenty-stop bus route has seven stops that are Otherworld—”

Li Lin almost said that under normal conditions, 99.99% of people could only see the thirteen “normal” stops.

Then he remembered the file on this brute: at twelve, Xu Jiali had accidentally stepped onto an Otherworld Station Platform and survived there alone for six full years. Later, he became a Deep Diver after psychological treatment because he could never shake the Otherworld’s pursuit.

There were two kinds of frontline fighters in the Special Operations Bureau—those trained and assessed through the normal pipeline, and those hauled back from the Otherworld itself.

Don’t show off your knowledge in front of someone with trauma. Even if they acted like they didn’t care.

Li Lin lowered his head and returned to the recorded parameters.

Xu Jiali, bored, sprawled across the bed. He was pure combat muscle. He’d come as backup, and he had no interest in “staking out.”

After a while, he said, “The bureau’s a complete mess right now. Captains from several action battalions got dragged out of bed for overtime. I heard even the Director went in.”

“I know,” Li Lin said without looking up. “This is the Borderland.”

“Is this kind of thing common?” Xu Jiali scratched his head. “Similar abnormal phenomena? I’m always out on field ops. I don’t really know…”

“If you mean tonight’s spatial misalignment, no. That’s never happened before.” Li Lin kept his tone flat. “If you mean abnormal phenomena in general, the Borderland never runs out of them. This place is… the Borderland.”

“Right. Charming Borderland. I just love it.” Xu Jiali rolled his shoulders and flopped back again. The poor single bed creaked under his weight. “The people who want to destroy the world and the people who want to protect it both love this place. Lucky for me I don’t have to do bureau shifts. I heard the captains work overtime every day.”

Li Lin didn’t answer. He kept monitoring, recording, waiting.

Then the sudden ringtone of a phone cut through the silence.

Li Lin glanced at the screen and picked up immediately. “This is Li Lin. Mm. Mm? Okay. I understand.”

Xu Jiali sat up. “What is it?”

Li Lin’s expression tightened as he stared out at the calm night. “The bureau just called. The rift phenomenon… stopped.”

Xu Jiali went still. “Stopped? Just stopped? No follow-up attack? No angel cultists? Not even an Otherworld opening?”

“No. It just stopped. Every monitoring node across the Borderland went quiet.”

Xu Jiali stared at him. “So I pulled an all-nighter for nothing?”

“Not for nothing—and you’re still pulling it.” Li Lin shook the phone once, like it could shake sense into the situation. “Everyone stays on monitoring in case whatever caused the rifts does something else.”

He nodded toward the next room. “Go sleep for now. Six hours from now, I’ll wake you to take my shift.”

“Got it.” Xu Jiali rose at once. The joking edge vanished as if it had never existed. “If anything happens, wake me immediately.”

Li Lin nodded and turned back to the window, eyes on the quiet street outside.

“Another sleepless night…” he muttered.

…

Yu Sheng slept like a rock in the second half of the night.

After he’d successfully recreated a “door” that led to some distant time and space, he’d memorized the sensation and practiced until it sank into his bones. Now he knew how to control spiritual guidance—how to give the door a specific frequency when he opened it, so it would lock onto a chosen location.

It made him feel like most things in this world came down to one truth: practice makes perfect.

Once he’d found the trick, he’d kept going, building and reinforcing the process until he could recreate passage after passage—different routes, different destinations—until exhaustion finally crushed him.

Sleep after that kind of fatigue was deep and merciless. He hadn’t slept this well in years.

He did have one small regret.

He didn’t dream of the fox. Not even once. In fact, he didn’t dream at all.

So it wasn’t something that happened reliably.

The thought left a new knot of unease in his chest—and a faint sense of urgency he couldn’t quite name.

After he woke the next morning, he told Irene.

“It’s fine. Don’t think too much.” For once, Irene didn’t throw trash talk at him. She sounded almost gentle. “That fox has survived in the Otherworld for years. She’s not going to suddenly get into trouble in a day or two. Dreams are unstable by nature. Maybe next time you’ll dream and see her again, right?”

“Hopefully,” Yu Sheng said, and tossed a slice of meat into his bowl.

It was meat he’d cut from that “local specialty.” He’d eaten it for three meals in a row and still hadn’t finished it. He wasn’t sick of it, either.

He just couldn’t feel any more strengthening from it. Whatever effect it had on him, it seemed he’d already hit the limit.

Still, it tasted good.

“What’s the plan after breakfast?” Irene asked. “More door practice? Or are you going to try recreating the passage to the Valley?”

“I need to go out and buy some things first,” Yu Sheng said. “When I get back, I’ll start trying to build a route to the Valley. That might take a while—I don’t remember the feeling clearly anymore.”

He caught the hesitation on her face. “Hm? Something on your mind?”

Irene stared at him. Miss Doll hesitated, as if weighing words that refused to come out. After several seconds, she finally spoke.

“Set aside half a day for me.”

Yu Sheng blinked. It was rare to see that kind of seriousness on her face.

“Half a day… for what?”

“Make me a body,” Irene said, calm and firm.