The group filed one after another through the gate leading back to the real world. As usual, Yu Sheng stayed at the rear. Before stepping through, he turned back one last time and glanced at the "district in the mirror," blanketed in thick fog.
The Otherworld's self-repair properties had begun to take effect. The streets damaged in the battle were slowly recovering amid the fog. No new entities had appeared yet, and everything around them was quiet—so quiet that the bizarrely clamorous cluster entity and the perilous battle from before seemed like nothing more than an illusion.
After a moment's thought, Yu Sheng bit hard into his finger and flung several drops of blood onto the nearby road. At the same time, he checked the coordinates for opening a gate in this unfamiliar "Otherworld" once more. Only then did he pass through the gate and return to reality.
In front of Myriad Phenomena Market, the special "ambulance" sent by the Special Operations Bureau had already arrived in the plaza. The young man who had narrowly escaped with his life was taken aboard by several Special Operations Bureau agents the moment he came through the gate—
First came an emergency examination to check for any lingering mental contamination or other "aftereffects" of contact with the Otherworld, along with a safety scan to ensure that nothing that should not enter the real world had followed him out. Then they helped clean the "resin" remaining on his body and had professionals provide some psychological counseling, explaining precautions for first-time contact with an Otherworld and its entities, and so on...
The most important precaution was to keep an open mind.
Clearly, the Special Operations Bureau had a highly professional procedure for handling this sort of thing.
By the time Yu Sheng and the others