Chapter 89

Chapter 89: Highly Creative

The Academy?

Seeing Three Thousand Wayward Disciples mention it, Yu Sheng was confused for a moment. The term felt familiar. Then he remembered Bai Li Qing casually bringing it up before, and also some intel he’d seen earlier while exploring the phone’s functions. At last, he matched the name to what he’d read.

According to the files, it was an organization outside the Borderland, headquartered on a distant planet called “Terra.” The Academy specialized in knowledge inheritance, archaeological discovery, technological research and development, and fighting ancient anomalies that threatened mortal sanity. In essence, it really was a university—an enormous one. Most of its field personnel held the title of Professor.

If it was an academic organization that loved researching oddities, it made sense that they’d be interested in the strange metal device Yu Sheng had found.

But there was a problem. The Academy wasn’t as easy to contact as other outside organizations. They mostly dealt with other organizations through official channels and were very secretive in private. Yu Sheng was a newcomer who barely knew any “colleagues.” Where was he supposed to find an Academy Professor?

Yu Sheng frowned. After a brief hesitation, he replied to Three Thousand Wayward Disciples: “How do I contact the Academy? Do you have a channel on your end?”

This time, he waited a long time and got no reply. It seemed the other person had gone offline after sending that last message.

“At least it’s a lead,” Yu Sheng muttered. Regretful, he put away the phone for now, then picked up the black metal device again and examined it closely, turning it over and over.

He found the strange inscriptions Three Thousand Wayward Disciples had mentioned—he hadn’t even noticed them when taking photos. He hadn’t expected his careful online friend to spot them.

They looked like some kind of writing. It was worn down, but the marks were carved deep enough that they were still visible. Yu Sheng couldn’t understand it at all, and he’d never seen this kind of curving script made of so many arcs.

Just then, the phone vibrated again.

A reply?

He pulled it out fast, but it wasn’t Three Thousand Wayward Disciples. It was a private message. Little Red Riding Hood’s avatar was bouncing.

He opened it and saw a single line: “I saw the photos and your post—that thing didn’t happen to be something you picked up from your own ‘home,’ did it?!”

“Yeah,” Yu Sheng answered calmly. “But I didn’t want to scare people, so I didn’t say that.”

“Good thing you didn’t. You saved normal people’s worldview. So how did you even pick it up? Wu Tong Road 66 is your territory. Something you don’t recognize showed up inside that house?”

“That house has a lot of weird stuff,” Yu Sheng typed with a sigh. “I even picked up Irene from a room. Random things pop up all the time.”

Little Doll leaned in to watch and immediately headbutted Yu Sheng’s arm. “Why are you dragging me into this? And what do you mean ‘random things’? Am I random?!”

Yu Sheng casually ruffled Irene’s head. “I’m just saying it as a rhetorical device. It deepens the theme and strengthens the imagery…”

Then, in his chat with Little Red Riding Hood, he briefly described how he’d found the metal device. He ended with a question: “Have you seen something like it?”

“It’s normal for manmade objects to appear in an otherworld, but it’s very strange for an otherworld to produce foreign manmade objects,” Little Red Riding Hood replied in a long message. “Of course, we can’t confirm yet whether it really came from outside. It might’ve always been part of Wu Tong Road 66 and you just never noticed it. I don’t really understand you or your house’s situation. As for that metal device, I haven’t seen it. But I suggest you stop asking around so openly on Border Comms. One reason is that you don’t have enough reliable data to provide, so you probably won’t get useful answers. Another is that Border Comms has all kinds of people—don’t get scammed by unreliable ones.”

After a short pause, she sent another message: “You can keep it for now. If someone who likes collecting oddities shows up later, it might sell for a good price. You can also observe it during this time and see whether similar new things drop out again. It looks like a part, so there may be other pieces…”

Yu Sheng froze when he read that. Then he typed fast: “This junk can be sold for money?!”

Her reply was noticeably delayed. “…Collectors are always interested in strange things, especially items recovered from an otherworld that don’t seem dangerous. As long as you can prove it’s an otherworld recovery item, it works.”

“Then how do I prove that? Is there some kind of appraisal?”

“The Special Operations Bureau has appraisal qualifications. Big organizations like the Academy, the Bamosa Hermit Society, or the Oddities and Relics Association also have appraisal experts. The certificates they issue have strong credibility… do you need money?”

Yu Sheng hesitated, then glanced at Foxy, who had just pulled another chicken leg out of her tail and was happily gnawing on it.

Even while typing, he felt a little awkward. “You know… I’m supporting two people right now, and Foxy eats a lot. And my personal work is going through a tiny bottleneck.”

The main cause of that bottleneck was discovering that his fans had cultivated an extremely absurd taste from his work—so absurd that he was starting to doubt his creative direction and even his own ability.

Little Red Riding Hood replied quickly. She didn’t pry into what his “personal work” was. “Then you can try getting the Bureau to issue an appraisal certificate. They’ll definitely believe you got it from an otherworld—unless they refuse to acknowledge Wu Tong Road 66 as an otherworld.”

Yu Sheng smiled faintly, already imagining Foxy’s food budget and Irene’s new TV getting solved in one go. But then his mind suddenly clicked.

A bold idea—extremely creative, extremely tempting, and extremely practical—slammed into his head with a loud clank.

The idea glittered with gold, and even his eyes flashed with a strange light. “Wait. Does that mean anything brought out of an otherworld, as long as it’s not dangerous, can be appraised like that?!”

Little Red Riding Hood didn’t reply for almost half a minute. Then she finally sent: “Huh?”

Before Yu Sheng could type again, she followed up immediately: “Wait, I think I know what you’re trying to do! Don’t tell me you want to—”

Yu Sheng looked around the living room.

Everything looked valuable.

Even the moldy wallpaper peeling up at the corners seemed to shine like it was plated in gold…

Then his phone started vibrating nonstop. Little Red Riding Hood bombarded him with messages: “Collectors have standards, okay! At least it has to look like a rare thing with a story! Or at the very least, when they brag to someone, they can’t be holding up plastic slippers, old newspapers, empty drink bottles, and stuff like that! How did you even think of this?!”

Yu Sheng was stunned by the flood of messages. Between the lines, he could practically feel the shock and awe of a high school girl losing her mind.

At the same time, somewhere else in Boundary City, on the edge of the old quarter, Little Red Riding Hood lay in her room. After sending those messages, she stared at her phone for a long time, unable to recover.

Her face really was full of shock and awe.

“Still not sleeping?” a young woman’s voice came from above. A face appeared at the edge of the upper bunk—a girl with long black Rapunzel hair, who looked one or two years younger than Little Red Riding Hood. She glanced at the interface on the phone. “Border Comms, huh. Any new messages? Got a job?”

“No. I’m chatting with someone. I’m deeply shaken,” Little Red Riding Hood said flatly.

“There’s something that can deeply shake you? Someone posted nudes on the public board?”

Little Red Riding Hood didn’t even look up. “An entity wants to sell off his household to get rich.”

The girl on the top bunk instantly slipped and fell—but halfway down, she wrapped her hair around the metal frame supports and hung there like a midnight ghost, swaying as she spoke. “Is this some new horror thread?”

“Rapunzel, can you not talk to me in such a creepy pose?” Little Red Riding Hood rolled her eyes. This late at night, a girl in a white nightgown swinging around the dorm by her hair was enough to scare anyone half to death. “And I’m not joking. Think about it seriously. If there’s an otherworld, and an entity that looks like a human lives in it, and that entity can freely go outside, and also has a legal identity in the human world… then doesn’t that mean he can…”

The girl hanging from the bed thought seriously for a moment. Then her face went pale with shock. “I get it. It’s that one you’ve been dealing with lately… Oh no. He really found a bug to exploit!”