Investigator

He was back. Back in this strange and bizarre "Boundary City."

Not long ago, this had been a vast, eerie, unsettling city to him. Yet now, seeing the familiar streetlamps and buildings, the streets and sky in the faint morning light, Yu Sheng felt an emotion he could hardly believe himself: "nostalgia."

Being trapped in Nightfall Valley had made even returning to Boundary City feel like coming home.

But in the next second, the daze brought on by his life slipping away interrupted Yu Sheng's emotions. He lowered his head sluggishly and saw bright-red blood slowly spreading beneath his body.

His body had been pierced. The horrifying wound was enough to kill him in a short time. Even though this body now possessed astonishing recovery abilities and vitality, he knew he was about to die again—and he had become very practiced at using "again" in this regard.

The culprit behind this terrible wound was right beside him. The scaled "tail" he had cut from the monster had fallen out of the gate together with Yu Sheng. It seemed to retain a trace of vitality, and even "thought," as it slowly writhed in the pool of blood, trying to crawl away from this place.

Yu Sheng even felt that the thing was trying to get away from him... This piece of flesh was afraid of him.

Yu Sheng frowned, then struggled to rise from the ground. He glanced at his home's front door nearby, casually picked up the scaled severed tail writhing beside him, and staggered forward.

As he walked, he muttered, "Wasn't it supposed to be all good once the protagonist escaped alive from a desperate situation? The map's already been cleared, so why are the injuries still here? What kind of crappy setting is this... Damn, it hurts like hell..."

The constant blood loss gradually clouded his consciousness. His fading strength made every step unsteady and incredibly difficult, as though he might collapse at any moment. During the last few steps, Yu Sheng was almost moving forward on instinct. He did not even know why he was so determined to go home—perhaps to say hello to Eileen? Or perhaps to keep himself from being discovered as a "corpse" by people heading out in the morning?

Everything before his eyes gradually darkened. The morning light took on a deep-red hue, and Huli's golden-red eyes surfaced in Yu Sheng's mind. At the end, those eyes had been filled with the bloody light of hunger, yet the final trace of humanity had remained, struggling to persist in the depths of that red.

That fox... I wonder how she's doing. She said she wouldn't die, but I wonder if that was true...

These thoughts surfaced in Yu Sheng's mind as he finally staggered to his front door. It was unlocked. He tugged at the handle, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

He saw the dining room diagonally opposite the entrance. He saw the oil painting still resting against the wall. Eileen was lifting her head from the painting, staring at the doorway in surprise before slowly widening her eyes.

Yu Sheng forced a radiant smile at her. "Eileen, I'm back."

He knew his injuries were severe. If not for this body's astonishing recovery ability and resilience, he would probably already have died outside the house.

The instant this thought arose, Yu Sheng's vision tilted. His entire body slid down along the doorframe, while familiar darkness pressed in from all directions—and along with it came Eileen's terrified scream.

Now he had died inside the house.

Accompanied by the faint sound of brakes, two electric scooters stopped deep inside Wutong Road. Two figures got off and looked at the old, quiet streets before them.

One of them was a steady, reliable-looking middle-aged man. He wore a coffee-colored long coat and had a tall, sturdy build, slightly dark skin, and short black hair. An irregular scar near his neck made him look even more intimidating. Yet the weary expression and dark circles beneath his eyes clashed sharply with his tall, powerful physique and vicious scar. His face looked exactly like someone who had worked overtime for three straight months without taking a day off.

The other was a young man who looked barely over twenty. He had the same short black hair, but was much smaller and thinner than the middle-aged man beside him. His appearance was ordinary—the kind that would vanish instantly if he were tossed into any crowd. He wore a black-and-blue jacket and trousers, and his expression was somewhat tense, carrying the nervous awkwardness of someone who had been dragged out on field duty by a superior only a few days after starting work.

The two had ridden into this quiet old district and were observing the seemingly unremarkable buildings around them. Residents occasionally passed by in the distance at the ends of the streets, but very few even looked in their direction.

"This place doesn't look strange at all..." the black-haired young man muttered. "Captain Song, are you sure this is it?"

"There was a boundary alert just now. The coordinates definitely point here," the middle-aged man addressed as Captain Song nodded. "The signal vanished in an instant, but we can confirm it was an Otherworld reaction."

"We rushed here as fast as we could and still missed it," the young man said, glancing at the electric scooters beside them before hesitantly speaking. "Should we have driven here?"

Captain Song glanced at him. "All the bureau's cars are out on assignments. The only one left was Xu Jiali's beat-up seventhhand car. You want to drive that? Even with the accelerator floored, it might not be faster than your electric scooter."

The young man gave a dry laugh and stiffly changed the subject. "Uh, that person from before... Her codename was 'Little Red Riding Hood,' right? The one from the Fairy Tale Organization. She didn't find anything here either?"

"Mm. She found nothing at all, which makes it even more certain that something's wrong with this place." Captain Song nodded slowly. "'Little Red Riding Hood' has done plenty of work for the Special Operations Bureau. I know what she can do. Her wolf can sniff out even the faintest, tiniest trace of 'abnormality' in the surrounding environment. But she searched this place all night and found absolutely nothing."

The young man blinked, apparently failing to understand for a moment.

"Nothing at all. You didn't get that?" Captain Song reminded him. "It's too 'clean.' Too 'normal.' There isn't a single patch of land in the Crossroads that's this clean! Little Red Riding Hood's wolf can smell abnormality everywhere in this city, even when the scent is incredibly faint. But here... From an occult perspective, this entire street is so 'clean' it's practically a vacuum!"

At that, the young man finally understood. The material he had studied during his training at school had finally matched up with reality.

"Either this place really is that clean, and a 'pure patch of land' has appeared in the Crossroads that runs deeply parallel to the 'outside world'—which isn't impossible, since this is the Crossroads, and every place in the world might be connected to it." Captain Song waved his hand and spoke wearily. "Or this place is hiding a... 'big thing.' That thing is constantly altering the environment of the entire area, and Little Red Riding Hood's wolves encountered a boundary vacuum here."

The tension already visible on the young man's face tightened even further.

"I won't approve your transfer to logistics," Captain Song lifted his eyelids and glanced at him. "Nor will I approve a transfer to another team."

"I never said I wanted to run!" The young man hurriedly waved his hands. "I was prepared from the moment I joined the team. I'll definitely devote myself to my duty, love my job, work diligently, and earnestly fulfill..."

A sudden ringtone interrupted their conversation. It was a pleasant melody—the classic tune from a wildly popular new anime.

The young man froze when he heard it, then looked strangely at his superior. "...You watch that too?"

The middle-aged man addressed as Captain Song visibly twitched. As he reluctantly pulled his phone from his pocket, he muttered, "My daughter must have changed it without telling me. She's been watching it lately..."

The young man's expression shifted subtly. After holding it in for a long while, he still could not bring himself to say, "Isn't it a bit inappropriate for a middle schooler to watch a bunch of girls who like girls form a band..."

Captain Song answered the call and listened for a few seconds before speaking. "Yes, Li Lin and I have arrived at the site. It's the same as what Little Red Riding Hood found during her investigation. This place is disturbingly 'clean.' Make the arrangements. We may need to establish a permanent monitoring station here. I'll decide on the personnel after I return. Also, contact the 'Fairy Tale' side and see if they can send someone else over. This may be a long-term assignment..."

After hanging up, Captain Song let out a long breath. When he turned, he saw that the young man named Li Lin was still looking at him.

He paused, then could not help saying, "My daughter really did change it. I don't usually watch cartoons."

Li Lin quickly cleared his throat twice. "Ahem... I believe you. I believe you."

The two stood in awkward silence for a while before tacitly choosing to skip the subject.

Just then, Li Lin seemed to notice something.

His brows furrowed slightly as he hurried toward a corner of the wall nearby.

"Captain Song, come take a look at this!" He lowered his head to examine it, then immediately looked up and called out.

Captain Song walked over and looked toward where Li Lin was pointing.

A patch of dark-red marks appeared in the corner. It looked like dried blood. The area was very small and easy to overlook from a distance, and it was currently shrinking at a visible rate.

It was not soaking into the concrete. It was vanishing into thin air at an astonishing speed.

"Blood?" Captain Song immediately frowned, then quickly reacted. He pulled a plastic tube and a portable scraper from the pocket of his long coat. "No, not blood. Take a sample!"

"Got it." Li Lin accepted the sampling tools and prepared to scrape the dark-red "bloodstain" remaining on the wall. However, before the scraper in his hand touched the surface, the final tiny patch of red suddenly gave off a hissing sound, then vanished completely.