"Why are they hunting me? Why?" The girl listened to the roar of motorcycle engines, her expression slightly odd. She didn't look frightened or worried so much as puzzled, like a fan of the story confronted with a plot that made no sense.
Good thing it was the Cross Sword Guild. If this had been the Landfill Area from before, the girl would probably be seeing the bizarre spectacle of a bunch of Strong Men riding bicycles.
"Because you're a transmigrator." As Feng Xue spoke, he pulled out his guild ID, quickly checked out of his dorm, then opened his profile and changed his account name from "Xiao Feng" to "Assassin."
He had no idea whether it would help, but it was better than doing nothing.
"Huh? How did they know?" The girl gasped, then immediately clapped a hand over her mouth and muttered under her breath. Feng Xue ignored her. Once his guild ID showed that the checkout was complete, he hoisted the girl onto his shoulder again and ran into the distance.
To be honest, he didn't have any particular destination in mind. But he knew that if they caught him, things would not end well.
Take the doctor in the Landfill Area, for example. By all common sense, he couldn't possibly have stood against an entire gang, and yet he'd still ended up dead. Why?
As he ran, Feng Xue absorbed more knowledge and began to understand the reason—
It was memory.
It sounded a little sad, but the source of a Weird Tale's power was human imagination, faith, desire, and memory.
Ordinary Weird Tales were formed from human thoughts. They slowly accumulated as people passed them on by word of mouth, until they eventually took physical form and became real. In ancient times, such beings were called "gods."
But the [Nothingness] within the Infinite City was different. More precisely, the true Weird Tale was the Infinite City itself, while its residents were merely appendages of the city.
They were [Nothingness]—nothing at all. They had no legends of their own, no thoughts centered on them, and no corresponding faith or fantasies. So if they wanted to become Weird Tales, they needed tags that could anchor their existence.
But that wasn't enough, because the power of a tag always depended on the Infinite City. The [Nothingness] who used tags remained mere appendages of the city.
The first step toward breaking free of that relationship and becoming a Weird Tale was to be "recognized by someone."
That someone meant a person from the Real World.
But reaching the Real World was extremely difficult. Even setting aside the daily cost of hundreds of thousands of towers, simply finding a door to the outside was no easy task.
A door was just a chance overlap of coordinates. Once the person who opened it returned to their own world, the door would immediately disappear. Even if someone who crossed through the door to reality left behind the coordinates of their original world, at most it counted as a one-way ticket back. And a return ticket couldn't bring anyone along.
So in theory, each door could only be used once by a Door Pusher. But, conversely, if you captured the person who opened it and made her open and close the door repeatedly without ever leaving, you could keep control of that door almost indefinitely.
But that wasn't actually why the doctor had been silenced. The real reason was that it was extremely dangerous for ordinary [Nothingness] to enter the Real World.
The [Nothingness] had very little presence to begin with. Even with a tag to help them, many couldn't establish enough "memory" in the Real World quickly, and people soon forgot them. According to the records in the [Gatekeeper] tag, there had even been a strategy of "going on a killing spree as soon as you reach reality," because death, bloodshed, and terror were what people remembered most easily.
But that behavior provoked a backlash. The wanton slaughter carried out by those predecessors led the Real World to form organizations specifically dedicated to fighting the [Nothingness].
And in the Real World, the [Nothingness] couldn't borrow the power of the Infinite City. Before they gained genuine recognition, they were at a disadvantage even against soldiers with guns, let alone police officers wielding batons.
So later on, some people came up with an even more underhanded approach—
Make someone remember them before they even crossed through the door!
It seemed like a paradox. If they didn't go to reality, how could anyone there remember them?
But don't forget: the Door Pusher was also a person from reality.
In other words, as long as they left an indelible memory in the Door Pusher, they could gain a measure of recognition after the Door Pusher returned to the Real World.
And what could make a stronger impression than the otherworldly person you saw the moment you opened the door?
So, for those seeking recognition from Door Pushers, the Gatekeeper had to die!
As a fellow administrator, Feng Xue didn't think the Cross Sword Guild could be much stronger than the administrator in the Landfill Area. Nor could he gamble his life on their mercy.
Still, he wasn't lying when he said they were there to hunt the girl.
After all, even being locked up and forced to open and close the door repeatedly was already a form of torment for a Door Pusher. But that was actually the best treatment a Door Pusher could hope for after being captured by a major faction—
To become a Weird Tale, you had to be remembered by people. Once you were forgotten, you would fall from the realm of Weird Tales.
If you gained recognition directly from the Real World, that wouldn't be much of a problem. There were enough people; even if one person forgot you, others would still remember. But the problem now was that there was only one person to remember you: the Door Pusher...
So how could you make a Door Pusher remember a [Nothingness] with such little presence?
At first, people were fairly gentle about it. But as time went on, all sorts of ruthless tactics emerged, and naturally, the ones that gradually became mainstream were anything but gentle.
After all, tragedies were always easier to remember than comedies.
Torture, interrogation, imprisonment...
Through all kinds of cruel methods too awful to describe, they carved an unforgettable memory into the Door Pusher, then went with them into the Real World. That was currently the surest path to becoming a Weird Tale in the Infinite City.
But that certainty came at the cost of leaving the Door Pusher with a lifetime of psychological scars.
For most [Nothingness], though, that price was nothing. All it took was hurting one person for them to become a Weird Tale. Nothing could be a better deal!
Objectively speaking, if Feng Xue were an administrator, he might do the same thing. The only reason he was being kind to this girl was that, when it came down to it, he didn't have the means.
Even if he really left the girl with a lifetime of psychological scars, he still couldn't send her back to her original world—
He was certain that as long as the Cross Sword Guild's administrator wasn't an idiot, his old dorm—or rather, the door in his old dorm—was already being guarded like a treasure by the Cross Sword Guild.
Getting through that door wouldn't be easy.
Before you continue