Chapter 71

Chapter 71: Learn More

Yu Sheng didn’t know why the woman had gone momentarily blank. He simply watched her, curiosity edging into caution. When she didn’t speak, he broke the silence himself.

“So the Special Operations Bureau really goes big when you ‘make contact’ with someone, huh? I thought Li Lin and the others would be the ones to meet me. Didn’t expect the director to show up right away. Is it always like this?”

Bai Li Qing returned to her usual calm. “No. Only when the situation is special.”

“Special?”

“For example, a ‘weirdo’ who lived in Otherworld for a long time, yet spent more than twenty years living in Borderland as an ‘ordinary person.'” Bai Li Qing held Yu Sheng’s gaze. “Sorry, Hope. I hope you don’t mind me calling you that.”

“Uh, I don’t really mind, but am I really that weird to you guys?” Yu Sheng said awkwardly. “Li Lin and Xu Jiali reacted like that too. I get why it surprised them, but still…”

“Maybe you haven’t felt it yourself,” Bai Li Qing said with a quiet sigh. “In the Special Operations Bureau, a lot of people have been watching your movements. In the last few days… a large number of agents have been busy because of it.”

Yu Sheng’s mouth fell open. “…Huh?”

Bai Li Qing looked at him steadily. “You have an ability to open ‘doors,’ right?”

“Yeah.” Yu Sheng nodded and reached into the air beside him. A door formed out of nothing next to his chair. “Li Lin and the others used this to get back—”

Before he could finish, Bai Li Qing raised a hand sharply. “No need to demonstrate!”

For someone so cold and composed, her reaction was unusually forceful.

Yu Sheng let go of the doorknob, understanding dawning. “So… when I open a door, it affects you guys?”

“When you open a door, the entire Borderland detects an unknown space-time disturbance at the source,” Bai Li Qing said bluntly. “The monitoring staff have been complaining a lot lately. You really haven’t noticed?”

Yu Sheng stared at her, his expression slowly turning strange. After a long moment, he shook his head. “I didn’t feel anything… So the impact reaches the entire Borderland? Does that mean I shouldn’t use this ability anymore?”

He clearly didn’t like saying it. The door was genuinely useful. He’d only recently gotten used to it—tasted the convenience. Now someone was telling him it disturbed the peace.

That was hard to swallow.

Bai Li Qing seemed to notice his mood. After a moment of thought, she shook her head. “I’m only making a suggestion. Hope, I hope you can control the frequency of ‘door opening’ as much as possible from now on. At least… don’t open hundreds of rifts in one night like you did before. Or at minimum, report it in advance.”

“After all, it’s your ability. And it hasn’t caused real damage to Borderland. In principle, we can’t forbid this kind of behavior—assuming you’re willing to cooperate with registration under a legal identity. We’ll also adapt our monitoring methods with technical adjustments.”

Yu Sheng blinked, surprised.

Director Bai Li Qing looked like the kind of person who would be strict, cold, impossible to bargain with. He hadn’t expected her to be… reasonable.

When she mentioned “opening hundreds of rifts in one night,” Yu Sheng immediately knew what she meant. He hadn’t felt anything at the time, but even imagining it now, he could picture the chaos it must have caused. And yet she was still here, speaking calmly, negotiating, even coming in person.

Yu Sheng wasn’t fifteen. From an official standpoint, he understood what kind of gesture that was.

He’d braced for a battle of wits the moment she brought up “disturbing the peace.” Before he could throw a punch, she’d shoved a pillow into his hands.

It made him feel weirdly embarrassed. “Then sure. Registering is no problem… but I have a few questions. Can you answer them first?”

Bai Li Qing nodded. “Of course. What do you want to ask?”

“First, the Special Operations Bureau—what kind of organization is it?” Yu Sheng said, the questions he’d been holding back spilling out. “What’s its nature? How big is its scope?”

“Is that all you’re curious about?” Bai Li Qing looked faintly surprised, but she answered without hesitation. “The Special Operations Bureau—its full name is the Special Security and Service Bureau. It’s directly managed by Borderland’s highest authority, the Council. It’s also Borderland’s highest-level official department for handling Otherworld, entities, and all kinds of supernatural incidents.”

“If you split Borderland into a ‘natural’ side and an ‘unnatural’ side, you can think of us as the highest unit responsible for the unnatural side.”

“But our jurisdiction isn’t limited to Borderland. I don’t know whether you already understand what makes Borderland special…”

She paused, watching him closely.

“Borderland’s special nature…” Yu Sheng frowned, thinking of everything Irene had told him, and of what he’d realized while opening doors to faraway places.

This world held far more than one Borderland. Outside this strange city, there were countless faraways.

“I know a bit,” Yu Sheng said slowly. “From the name, it seems connected to lots of places? I heard all kinds of weird stuff exists here, just hidden under a ‘normal’ surface…”

“Hiding the things that go beyond common sense, beyond Borderland’s baseline, and keeping this city running under standard parameters—that’s one of our jobs,” Bai Li Qing said with a small nod. “And yes. As you understand it, this place connects to many places, and the number and scale of those connections… are beyond anyone’s imagination.”

“You can imagine the whole world as a giant web, woven from countless transit lines. Those lines don’t exist in the real dimension, and ordinary people can’t sense them. But on the unnatural side, they tangle together, affect each other, and there is one place where every line converges.”

“That place is Borderland.”

She paused again, as if making sure the idea had landed, and then continued.

“And the Special Operations Bureau’s work is, first, to maintain the boundary between natural and unnatural within Borderland, ensuring order on the unnatural side. Second, to deal with threats that spread through the transit web—threats aimed at this convergence point—whether they come from inches away, or from deep space thirty-six billion light-years away.”

Yu Sheng’s eyes widened. After a few seconds, he blurted, “…Isn’t that distance range kind of insane?”

“For Borderland’s special attributes, distance is the same,” Bai Li Qing said calmly. Then she raised a hand and pointed at him. “For you, isn’t it the same?”

Yu Sheng froze—then understood.

“Among those hundreds of rifts, the ones pointing tens of billions of light-years away were at least in the double digits,” Bai Li Qing said lightly.

Yu Sheng didn’t speak.

Outwardly he stayed calm, but his thoughts churned.

He wasn’t shocked by the idea itself. When those doors had opened, he’d already guessed: just how far away were those distant sights?

He’d never had a clear answer, but when he excitedly talked about it with Irene, he’d felt some of them might be as far as imagination could reach.

Now Bai Li Qing’s number dropped onto that old guess like a footnote.

What truly stunned him was the scale of the Special Operations Bureau.

He’d met Li Lin—an agent who stocked instant noodles with him at the supermarket, who could even tail someone by squatting at the roadside and scrolling short videos. At best, the vibe was “neighborhood cop.”

Now the person in front of him was telling him that organization’s job reached the stars and beyond.

Yu Sheng hesitated, then decided not to voice that thought. Mostly because he didn’t want to ruin Li Lin’s career.

He stayed quiet. Bai Li Qing stayed quiet, too. For a moment, the cafe held a brittle silence.

Half a minute later, Bai Li Qing spoke first. “Anything else you want to ask?”

“Yes.” Yu Sheng gathered himself. “Next question—Boundary City… is there only one?”