Exploration and Escape

The Hero Association was trying to analyze the video Lilac had obtained.

Meanwhile, in the alternate space, Hyacinth calmly ascended the outside of the office building floor by floor, observing the interior through the shattered glass curtain wall for clues about the missing people.

The interior decor also gave her a profound sense of just how strange this alternate space was: the computer monitors were the old-fashioned bulky kind, dusty gray office desks occasionally held a few dust-covered keypad phones, and here and there she spotted an old-model smartphone—but it seemed to be several years older than Nan Xiaofeng herself.

Frosted glass partitions separated the offices of different companies. Occasionally, she saw fluorescent tubes that had fallen from the ceiling and were barely hanging by their wires. The tiny starter beside them made Hyacinth ponder for quite a while what it was.

There was a landline beside the water dispenser, a fax machine and a stack of CDs beside the landline, and a poster stuck to a cabinet door. It bore a portrait captioned, "Debut Commemoration for New Magical Girl Bai Lili." The magical girl in the poster was still as youthful and beautiful as she was now.

Hyacinth recalled a rumor that Bai Lili had been under ten when she debuted. That was why the Hero Association had not dared to mass-produce merchandise for her at the time—it was simply a little too young, and could easily invite some strange remarks.

The poster's rather blurry image quality was also full of the distinctive atmosphere of magical girl merchandise from that era, when such products had only just emerged and were still immature.

"So this really is Rongcheng from over twenty years ago..." Hyacinth muttered softly before flying up another floor.

The offices on every floor had entirely different scenes