The night grew deeper beneath the quiet sky.
In a tall apartment building at the heart of Boundary City, Bai Li Qing, wearing only a thin nightgown, poured herself a glass of strong liquor and walked slowly to the large floor-to-ceiling window.
Inside her apartment, the lights were off, except for a faintly glowing lamp in the corner. Its soft glow gently touched the outlines of the furniture. Beyond the window stretched a magnificent city nightscape. Boundary City’s neon lights shimmered in endless colors, shifting and dancing across countless buildings that rose and fell like waves. Those lights spread so far and wide that they gradually blurred into the distant darkness. Against this vast backdrop, Bai Li Qing’s reflection in the glass looked almost fragile.
A light fog began to gather outside the window.
It drifted into view from nowhere, spreading swiftly through the night like a thin grayish-white curtain. The city’s scene faded into a dreamy haze. In the mist appeared a pair of eyes, calm and indifferent, staring straight at Bai Li Qing from just beyond the glass.
These eyes, human in shape, had no real color. Their pale irises closely resembled Bai Li Qing’s own. It was hard to say if they hovered in the mist beyond the window or were pressed right against the glass. They filled the entire pane, as if they belonged there.
“Drinking so late isn’t a good habit, Sister,” said a voice in Bai Li Qing’s mind. It sounded flat and mechanical, yet it matched her own voice exactly.
“It helps me stay calm,” Bai Li Qing replied, giving her glass a gentle swirl. “Especially after being jolted awake from a nightmare by a phone call.”
“A nightmare?” asked the voice.
“Oh, that certainly does sound like a nightmare.” The pale eyes outside blinked slowly. “Be careful not to be charmed or controlled by me—though I must say, you’ve done quite well so far. Now tell me, why have you called me out tonight?”
“I woke up suddenly and decided to ask you something,” Bai Li Qing said, looking out at the mist. “It’s about that ‘one-eyed’ thing that showed up in Night Valley. Did you find anything?”
The eyes narrowed slightly. The voice spoke again, each word echoing inside Bai Li Qing’s mind: “I’ve searched every place I’ve ever observed, including all the otherworldly realms we’ve encountered and those ‘dead voids’ carved out by the Dark Angels in deep space, but I haven’t found a trace of that giant eye. It’s never appeared in any of those places.”
“I see, so you haven’t found anything.” Bai Li Qing’s tone carried a note of disappointment. “Well, I thought as much.”
“You seem more unsettled, Sister,” the eyes remarked quietly. “You’re worried.”
“…It’s because the clues keep piling up. Everything points to the idea that this giant eye slipped into our world unnoticed. And when you think of that strange trail the Algladians discovered in deep space months ago—something that seemed to belong to another unknown Angel—it’s likely that more Dark Angels have already found their way here. More voids might be lurking out there, completely unseen, and even now, new ones might be forming.”
As she spoke, Bai Li Qing gazed at the liquid in her glass, watching the tiny ripples. Her voice grew softer. “Do you know what I fear most?”
“You’re afraid that more Dark Angels are already hiding in our universe?”
“No, everyone’s afraid of that,” Bai Li Qing said quietly. “What worries me more is what lies behind the Dark Angels. Are they a species with a structure of their own? Can they learn? Do they understand the rules of our world yet? Have they discovered new, more efficient ways to break through the voids? And… have they learned how to hide themselves more carefully?”
“That does sound quite troubling,” the voice agreed.
Bai Li Qing raised her glass and drank, letting the warmth of the liquor burn down her throat. She placed the empty glass gently on the floor beside her.
“By the way,” she continued, “did you find anything when you scanned the Old City for Wutong Road No. 66, the hidden place?”
“I found some distorted traces, but I couldn’t see them clearly,” the eyes replied. There was a subtle hint of frustration in that emotionless voice.
Bai Li Qing looked genuinely surprised. “Even you couldn’t see it clearly?!”
“Yes,” said the eyes, blinking slowly in the thinning mist. “Each time I tried to focus, I felt as though my sight was… drawn in, absorbed by something. And by the time I realized it, my mind had wandered. But I do have a guess.” 𝙍ÃΝỗВÊS
“What sort of guess?” Bai Li Qing asked.
“That so-called ‘Wutong Road No. 66’ might not truly exist there. It could just be an entrance…”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Bai Li Qing said, cutting in before the eyes could finish. “The Special Affairs Bureau’s investigators reached a similar conclusion. They think it might be a special place hidden in a spatial rift, like those fortress-type otherworldly pockets around Boundary City. They exist in the cracks between spaces…”
“No,” the eyes interrupted, “I mean it might not be floating anywhere in the Borderland at all. It’s not simply tucked away in a hidden corner of our familiar dimensions. It’s too deep, too distant. What we see as ‘Wutong Road No. 66’ in the Borderland might be nothing but a faint shadow. When I felt my sight swallowed, it was because I was trying to look at something so far away it nearly can’t be seen.”
Bai Li Qing’s expression turned still.
“Too deep, too far?” she repeated, her voice unusually hesitant. “Do you understand what that means? Your sight can even reach into subspace.”
“Exactly. Deeper and farther than that, I believe. It’s just a logical analysis, Sister.”
Bai Li Qing blinked, her mind churning over these words.
A moment later, the voice echoed once more inside her head. “So, who exactly is the ‘person’ living in ‘Wutong Road No. 66’?”
“I don’t know,” she replied softly. “All we know so far suggests that this individual’s personality and self-awareness are almost perfectly human. And just now, he called me.”
“Ah, so he’s the one who woke you from your nightmare,” the voice said. “What did he want?”
“He told me he was going to open a ‘door’ and said he just wanted to let me know. According to the action team’s report from a few hours ago, he visited the ‘Museum’ earlier.”
The eyes began to fade into the mist, and the fog outside the window withdrew as if it had never been there at all. In moments, the endless city lights returned to fill the glass once again.
In another part of the city, Yu Sheng spent the rest of the night unable to sleep.
He lay on his bed, tossing and turning, his thoughts crowded with strange facts, half-formed ideas, and scraps of new information. His mind felt as if it were filled with countless tiny versions of Irene, all skittering about, crawling, jumping, squeaking inside his head.
Of course, that was just an exaggeration—if there really were countless Irenes running around, the noise would have driven him mad. Still, he truly felt confused and restless.
He thought about all he had learned of the Otherworld, of Little Red Riding Hood and the mysterious “Fairy Tale” group behind her, of the Angel Cultists and the terrifying “Dark Angels,” of the poor victim in the white exhibition hall, and of that strange moment when the dead man had spoken to him.
Yu Sheng picked up his phone and searched the Border Communications database for cases of “talking to the dead.” He did find some records on it.
They mentioned that some people with special gifts outside the Borderland had the power to communicate with the dead. Certain necromancers could, with complex rituals, temporarily anchor a soul in the mortal world for brief, simple conversations.
But none of these accounts matched what he had experienced in that white hall.
All the methods he read about required complicated ceremonies, advanced devices, or something known as “holographic inference,” where huge amounts of data were gathered to recreate the final moments before death. Even those techniques that supposedly enabled chatting with the dead were vague, often limited to simple yes-or-no answers gleaned from faint echoes of brainwaves or fragments of what might be called a soul.
None described touching a puddle of blood and having the dead person’s head turn to face you and start talking, as if it were perfectly normal.
Yu Sheng sighed softly in the darkness and put down his phone. A moment later, he heard a shuffling noise from the bed.
Turning his head, he saw Irene squirming at the foot of the bed. She rolled about, kicking her legs into the air, then flopped back down again.
Yu Sheng just stared blankly.
Another major reason he couldn’t sleep was because Irene was literally rolling around on his bed. She kicked him now and then, too.
The next second, Irene suddenly sat up, her eyes still closed, and pointed straight ahead. “I! Alice’s little house! Pay up—or else!” she commanded. Then she tipped sideways off the bed with a thump. Still half-asleep, she fumbled at the sheets, mumbling, “Don’t kick me… I fell down…” as she crawled back up.
Yu Sheng sighed yet again.
He knew he wasn’t going to get any rest that night.
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation