Meeting

Ah, familiar darkness, familiar crushing pressure, and the familiar sensation of consciousness constantly sinking.

Yu Sheng's thoughts drifted in The Depths of chaotic darkness. Along with the pressure surging in from every direction came an overwhelming sense of helplessness and exhaustion.

He had considered that there might be many twists and turns before he left that "Otherworld," and had even considered that he might have to "die" more than once. But though he had guessed the beginning and the ending, he had not guessed the process—while floating and sinking in the darkness, he could not help recalling the last thing he had seen before losing consciousness: the pair of Golden-red eyes that had flashed before him in that Vague and fragmented instant, those magnificent fox tails blooming against the night...

And that subsonic headbutt.

So who exactly was that girl who had headbutted him to death? Where had she come from? And why had she appeared in this Otherworld?

And besides... what had happened to him while he was fighting that monster? That sudden increase in strength, agility, and...

That hungry urge.

What exactly had happened to him?

Yu Sheng felt his chaotic thoughts whirl through his mind like a vortex. Freed from the constraints of a body, these uncontrolled "thoughts" even kept taking shape before his "eyes" as bizarre visions, mingled with countless memories rising from The Depths—he saw the monster made of countless piled-up limbs, then the "headbutt" girl who had suddenly appeared with fox ears and a Fox Tail. But the next second, he saw an oil painting. In it, Eileen lay shattered around a chair, the doll's limbs linked by spiderweb-like threads, while a strange shadow stood faintly in the depths of the painting...

Then Eileen vanished. New images surfaced from the depths of Yu Sheng's memories—crimson clouds and sky, sunlight flowing like water and staining familiar old streets and alleys.

Oh, that was the place where Yu Sheng had been born and raised: the Boundary City he knew so well, an unremarkable little coastal city. He had left it two months ago... yet for some reason, when that image surfaced from the depths of memory, it felt as though it had happened a very, very long time ago. So long ago that it seemed like someone else's memory, coldly displayed before him.

All the images vanished, leaving only gentle darkness enveloping everything around him.

Yu Sheng felt his mind clear slightly. After a brief hesitation, he tried calling out in his heart, "Eileen."

There was no response in the darkness.

It seemed that his connection with Eileen would be severed while he was "dead."

Next, Yu Sheng tried turning his "gaze," searching this darkness for other objects and confirming whether his limbs existed.

He saw nothing. There was nothing here, and he seemed to be only a drifting, unsupported "thought," with no body at all.

Yu Sheng silently tried more things.

During his previous two "deaths," he had no experience at all and had returned to the "human world" in a muddle. But this time, he consciously began to perceive the process, testing all sorts of possibilities.

He knew that he had been muddle-headed throughout this period. An unfamiliar world, bizarre phenomena, the mystery of himself, resurrection after death... too many incomprehensible things had been crammed together, leaving him utterly lost.

But ever since Eileen had told him about the concept of "Otherworlds," he had found a goal again—he needed to return, to go back to the "normal" side.

When holes in Otherworlds occasionally opened to people, ordinary people crossed the boundary of reason and arrived on the other side of normality the moment they glimpsed the scenes leaking from those holes. It might happen because they got off at the wrong stop while riding somewhere, because they took one step too many while going downstairs, or even because they turned one page too many, misread one word, or... opened the wrong door.

But regardless of the cause, the crucial thing was that the process was not irreversible.

According to the information Eileen had revealed, people in this world studied Otherworlds. Some had summarized the laws governing them, and there were even specialists dedicated to resolving Otherworld problems. Even ordinary people had a chance to return after falling into an Otherworld.

This valley shrouded in night was an Otherworld. No. 66 Wutong Road, where he now lived, was an Otherworld. But Yu Sheng believed that his first encounter with an Otherworld had come even earlier—

When he had opened his front door two months ago, he might already have fallen into an Otherworld centered on himself, one called "Boundary City."

Now, he needed to explore as much as possible, understand these strange things as much as possible, learn everything he could about Otherworlds, and then... leave this wrong world.

So, he opened his eyes.

The cold night wind blew through the large hole in the wall. Beyond the half-collapsed Rooftop was a murky sky.

He sat in a corner of the ruined temple, but did not immediately get up. Instead, he remained motionless in the posture of someone who had just awakened, cautiously sensing everything around him while trying to grasp the memories and "impressions" rapidly slipping away from his mind.

He was trying to recall the feeling of the instant he awakened, to identify the boundary where he had returned from darkness to the "present world."

He felt that this might be the key to understanding the process behind his "resurrection."

At the very least, it could bring him a little closer to the truth behind these mysteries.

Vaguely, he began to recall certain scenes he had "seen" in the instant before waking. He remembered rising from the darkness, crossing a hazy boundary, then sinking toward reality... but what came after that? What had happened between "sinking toward reality" and "opening his eyes"? In that brief instant?

He seemed to have seen several fleeting images, quick and blurry, though a few were relatively clear... including the small road near his home, the front gate of No. 66 Wutong Road, and... this corner deep within the ruined temple.

Yu Sheng lowered his eyelids slightly as the thoughts in his mind gradually settled. Some guesses came to him, but he temporarily set them aside. Only then did he let out a soft breath and begin moving his limbs in small motions.

This body was pure and strong. He could even feel immense power flowing through his blood vessels. He heard clearly, saw far, and his limbs were full of strength—despite having been practically amputated below the neck by a subsonic headbutt not long ago, he was now completely alive and vigorous again.

He rose from the corner, preparing to call for Eileen.

But the next second, he forcibly stopped himself.

Because a rustling sound came from outside the wall.

Yu Sheng's first reaction upon hearing it was—had that tasty monster actually followed him into the ruined temple?!

But he quickly realized that was wrong. That monster had always moved with earth-shaking force, not such careful caution.

Taking a light breath, Yu Sheng moved slowly toward the hole in the wall with some caution and looked outside through it.

The night was deep, yet his eyes could see clearly.

He saw a girl carefully making her way through the ruins of the temple.

The girl wore a ragged robe-dress. It seemed to have once been a magnificent gown, but now only filthy, tattered scraps remained. Her unkempt white Long Hair spilled down in a tangled mess, concealing most of her face. Yet atop her head... was a pair of pointed fox ears.

But more than those furry ears, Yu Sheng's gaze settled on what was behind her—those tails.

Fox tails, more than one. Yet from his angle, Yu Sheng could not clearly count how many there were—and because the girl looked so disheveled, he even suspected that it was one huge tail, merely matted from having gone unwashed for too long...

By now, of course, Yu Sheng recognized her.

It was that subsonic headbutt.

But the headbutt girl did not seem to notice Yu Sheng nearby. She merely prowled cautiously through the temple ruins, occasionally twitching her nose as if identifying scents and searching. After a while, She seemed to know she had found something. Her eyes lit up, and she ran swiftly toward it.

The sound of a plastic bag being rummaged through carried through the night.

Yu Sheng widened his eyes.

That was the bag of kitchen waste he had brought with him when he had been "thrown" into this valley, which he had casually tossed into the ruins.

Inside were vegetable leaves and eggshells discarded while making dinner, along with leftover food he had cleaned out of the refrigerator earlier.

Leaning against the wall, he watched the girl with fox tails tear at the plastic bag in delighted but clumsy excitement. She accidentally spilled its contents everywhere, then without hesitation grabbed a clump of leftovers and stuffed it into her mouth without a care—

As though she had been starving for many, many years.

Yu Sheng suddenly felt as though he could not breathe.

He did not know why, but he felt terrible. He felt that... people should not be starved into such a state.

Even if she did not look much like a "human."

Even if she had once headbutted him—she had been trying to save him then.

And at that moment, the girl finally seemed to sense the presence of a "living person" in the ruined temple.

She crouched on the ground, a rotten vegetable leaf clenched between her teeth, and turned her head in shock and tension.

Yu Sheng stood in the corner of the temple's collapsed wall, meeting her eyes across the ruins.