Homecoming

Li Lin stared blankly at the empty corner of the wall, still holding the scraper he had been using to take samples. His mind was a complete fog, as though he had forgotten what he was doing.

The middle-aged man known as "Captain Song"—Song Cheng, captain of Special Operations Bureau Squad Two—frowned deeply the instant he saw the bloodstains vanish.

Something had disappeared from his memories and thoughts, but a lingering impression remained. Those few remnants stirred his "spirituality," making him sense that something was wrong.

A murky radiance surfaced in Song Cheng's eyes. He immediately took control of his mind and tried to "solidify" the last trace of that impression, afraid it would vanish along with certain memories. Years of professional training proved their worth at that moment. After hesitating, Li Lin, still holding the scraper, raised his head. "Captain, I feel like I suddenly forgot what I was supposed to do. Was there something here just now?"

"Thought interference!" Song Cheng reacted instantly and warned him quickly. "Check the 'depth' here immediately!"

Without a word, Li Lin set down the sampling tool in his hand. He swiftly removed a pitch-black box no bigger than his palm from his belt, pressed it several times on its surface, then pulled a thin "tube" from its side. He directly connected the needle-like tip of the tube to his eyeball. After completing all this, he raised his head and slowly scanned the surroundings with the eye connected to the tube.

A faint buzzing came from the pitch-black metal box. It also seemed as though liquid was slowly flowing through the thin tube. Li Lin's eye gradually took on a layer of pitch-blackness, while in his spiritual vision, everything on the old street began to acquire black-and-white tones.

"Depth L-0. No Otherworld reaction," Li Lin reported as he observed. "I don't see anything that came out of the 'Otherworld,' nor any remnants."

Song Cheng frowned and glanced at the box in Li Lin's hand. It was a portable depth detector. Its detection range and sensitivity were inferior to those of standard devices the size of briefcases, but even the portable model should have been able to detect changes in "depth" within its range.

He was certain that something had truly affected his memories and thoughts. That lingering "impression" was still being forcibly solidified in the depths of his mind. Something sinister here had definitely exerted an influence on him, but... the equipment could not detect it.

Just as he was about to tell Li Lin to adjust the detector's sensing mode, the latter seemed to suddenly discover something.

Li Lin stared fixedly at a spot at the end of the alley.

The eye connected to the tube was as black as ink. Reflected in its deep darkness was another field of vision. Between the black-and-white buildings lining the street, he saw a faint hint of color. It was extremely blurry and pale, making it impossible to tell what it was, but it was very large. After distinguishing it for quite some time, he roughly determined the range of that nearly transparent outline and judged its size to be about equal to that of a house.

"Captain Song, there's something up ahead, but it's very blurry. It looks like a house." As he spoke, he carefully walked forward. "The depth reading is still zero, and there's no contamination reaction... I'm almost in front of it. Can you sense anything?"

Song Cheng followed behind Li Lin, his right hand gripping a badge in his pocket, ready to intervene if anything went wrong. He frowned and shook his head. "My spirituality hasn't given any warning."

Li Lin stopped at a certain spot. He felt that he had arrived in front of that hazy patch of color. After hesitating, he slowly reached out his hand—

A sharp buzzing suddenly came from the pitch-black metal box. Several crackling sounds followed, accompanied by a puff of green smoke, and the depth detector stopped working.

The tube connected to his eyeball instantly fell away. A pitch-black, sludge-like substance flowed out of it and quickly evaporated into nothingness upon contact with the air.

The sudden soreness and stabbing pain in his eye made Li Lin blurt out, "Fuck..." He threw away the black box, which had already begun to burn his hand, and instinctively tried to rub the eye he had just connected. Seeing this, Song Cheng immediately stepped forward and pressed his hand near Li Lin's temple. "Don't rub it! It'll be fine in a moment!"

Li Lin immediately froze in place. He felt a scorching heat near his temple, while the discomfort in his eyeball rapidly faded. A moment later, he recovered and saw the depth detector on the ground still giving off green smoke.

"...The Bureau will reimburse me, right?"

"It will."

"Thank goodness. That scared me." Li Lin immediately relaxed, then turned his head and stared suspiciously at the spot where he had reached out.

Yet there was only a small patch of open ground here, with a wall at its far end. Someone had scribbled graffiti all over the wall, using colorful spray paint to sketch windows, doors, houses, trees, stones, and other scenes.

He waved his hand forward, but touched nothing.

"There has to be something here. The instrument detected it just now, but it broke before I could confirm anything," Li Lin muttered. "Before it broke, the depth reading was still L-0."

"...Let's return to the Bureau first." Song Cheng pondered for two seconds before making his decision. "I'll file a report with the council when we get back. This place definitely needs to be monitored for a while. It can't be ruled out that it's some kind of unregistered 'Otherworld.' I estimate we'll need large-scale equipment and specialized 'deep divers' to handle it. Also, is your eye all right?"

"...If it isn't, can I get half a day off?"

"No. The Bureau is short-staffed."

"Then it's fine. I'll just use some eye drops when I get back."

Song Cheng nodded. Li Lin carefully bent down and picked up the remains of the depth detector, which had stopped smoking. The two of them returned one after the other to where they had parked their electric scooters.

Li Lin turned the scooter's key. Its LCD screen flashed once, then went dark.

He froze for a moment and raised his head, meeting Captain Song's gaze. Their expressions were identical.

"My scooter broke... Did yours too?"

Song Cheng nodded silently.

"...Do you think it's a coincidence?"

Song Cheng slowly shook his head and spoke in a low voice. "The people from the 'Academy' have a specific saying to explain this phenomenon."

Li Lin paused slightly, then recalled some material he had once read—

"The machine spirit is unhappy." / "The machine spirit chickened out."

The two of them spoke at once, yet said different things.

Then they fell silent for a moment before speaking in unison this time. "You remembered it wrong."

"We'll talk about it later." Song Cheng waved his hand and began pushing his electric scooter back. "Let's get out of here first."

Li Lin pushed his scooter behind Song Cheng. "...Captain, are we really pushing these all the way back?"

"What else? You want to abandon your scooter?"

"Doesn't the Bureau have a small truck or something? If not, we could call over the electric tricycle from Logistics downstairs... Pushing this all the way back is going to kill me..."

"Enough whining. You're young, and your stamina is already worse than mine?"

The two veteran Special Operations Bureau agents pushed their electric scooters farther and farther away, their figures gradually disappearing at the entrance to Wutong Road.

Yu Sheng was already very familiar with the boundless, profound darkness surrounding him. He had been coming here more frequently lately, and as he drifted through this dark chaos, he even felt as though he were returning home.

Eileen's scream still rang in his ears.

He thought that seeing him covered in blood, with a hole in his stomach, opening the door, entering the house, and dying inside had probably frightened the person in the painting. It seemed that even Eileen, despite being a "cursed item," had only an average capacity for psychological endurance.

That made Yu Sheng even more eager to see what would happen after his "return."

When he returned to the world of the living and appeared before Eileen again... what kind of reaction would Miss Puppet have?

Would she... still remember the scene of him opening the door and dying inside the house?

As Yu Sheng floated through the darkness, Huli's figure appeared "before his eyes." He recalled his experience in Nightfall Valley. He remembered that when Huli had seen him in the ruined temple, she had completely forgotten the incident of killing him with a headbutt. Although she had somehow recalled it again later, at first, Huli truly had completely forgotten his "death."

Yu Sheng did not know what this "forgetting" was about, nor could he tell whether the problem lay with him or Huli. After all, that Fox Girl's mind already seemed rather confused. It was perfectly normal for her to suddenly forget certain things.

But if Eileen also failed to remember the scene of him opening the door and dying inside the house, then Yu Sheng could essentially confirm... that the problem lay with him.

There was no way to judge how much time passed while drifting through the darkness. After briefly organizing everything that had happened so far, Yu Sheng emptied his mind, letting his tightly wound nerves rest for a while as he patiently waited for the darkness to end.

Then he felt that familiar sensation of falling, and sensed himself rapidly "returning" to the mortal world.

Yu Sheng, who had been prepared, immediately focused his mind and tried to capture the sensation of crossing the "boundary"—

Familiar scenes appeared "before his eyes." Some vague sense of guidance drove him to "fall" in a specific direction. He struggled to distinguish the multitude of images that surged forth in those fleeting moments, but before he could grasp anything, he "saw" one of the images rapidly expand before his eyes—

No. 66 Wutong Road, the living room just inside the entrance.

Yu Sheng suddenly opened his eyes.

The familiar furnishings of his home came into view. In the dining room beside the living room, the antique and exquisite oil painting stood quietly on the dining table.

Eileen in the oil painting broke the silence.

"Yu Sheng! You're finally back!"