In the shop window, only an ordinary street was reflected. The avenue, now under emergency lockdown, stood empty, revealing no hint of abnormality.
Yu Sheng pulled out his phone, attempting to redial the number from the earlier call—but as expected, there was no service.
The communication barrier imposed by an Otherworld didn’t weaken merely by approaching its “entrance.” So far, aside from unique exceptions like Wutong Road No. 66 and its affiliated spaces, no Otherworld had broken this rule.
“Any clue? Can you sense anything?” Yu Sheng turned his head, looking at Little Red Riding Hood standing nearby.
With a serious expression, Little Red Riding Hood slowly shook her head.
“The entrance is already closed. Right now, our biggest problem is figuring out exactly which Otherworld this is—without knowing that, we can’t determine how to enter,” she explained. “It really is strange… How could it vanish without leaving a single trace? Normally, there should at least be some residual energy that my Wolves could pick up on.”
“What’s the usual rescue procedure when someone gets trapped in an unknown Otherworld?” Yu Sheng asked.
“First, we’d identify the exact Otherworld the victim fell into, then figure out its entry and exit conditions and current entrance location,” Little Red Riding Hood replied promptly. “If it’s a stable entrance, like the Museum we visited earlier, we just satisfy the entry requirements. But if it’s a shifting entrance, then we have to use tracking methods—my Wolves make that easy, but regular Spirit Realm Detectives and Investigators need genuine detective work. As for the Special Affairs Bureau…”
She paused briefly. Liu Bing, standing beside her, continued smoothly: “Our methods aren’t so different. When facing a shifting Otherworld, we first track down its entry point. But we can leverage Monitoring Devices deployed all over Borderland to quickly detect unstable rifts. Our Deep Diving Unit also uses special techniques to forcibly access Otherworlds that currently lack accessible entry conditions.”
“But this time we’ve hit a wall, just as Little Red Riding Hood said: there’s no trace left at all. We’ve requested a comprehensive scan from headquarters, but the Monitoring Devices across Borderland haven’t found anything. It genuinely existed for just a second and then evaporated from this world.”
Yu Sheng remained silent, turning his gaze once more to the reflective shop window, eyes narrowed in concentration.
In the reflection of the street, he glimpsed a fleeting figure—a Young Man with panic and anxiety written clearly across his face. He dashed down the empty street reflected in the glass, vanishing quickly into an alleyway outside the reflection’s edge.
On Yu Sheng’s shoulder, Irene instantly shouted, “Hey, hey, Yu Sheng! Someone just ran by inside there—”
“I saw,” Yu Sheng replied gravely. “It’s him.”
Instinctively, Little Red Riding Hood glanced back at the actual street behind them. Quickly realizing her mistake, she redirected her gaze to the reflective glass. “…Is he trapped within the mirror’s reflection?”
Yu Sheng opened his mouth to reply, but before he could speak, his phone suddenly blared loudly!
Immediately picking up, Yu Sheng switched on the speaker. A burst of static and interference filled the air, and then the Young Man’s panicked breathing came through, fragmented and distorted: “Brother Yu… escaped from the shopping mall… heavy fog outside! There’s nobody on the street… my calls wouldn’t go through—”
“Go back! Return immediately to the shopping mall’s main door—the large shop window!” Yu Sheng interrupted urgently, seizing the moment before the connection broke again. “Stop wandering around!”
“Return…? Understood… I’ll head back right away—?@#@zzzt…”
And the connection died once more.
“He seems to be lingering around L-1 depth?” Little Red Riding Hood furrowed her brow deeply. “Is the Otherworld behind that mirror fluctuating?”
Liu Bing swiftly stepped aside upon witnessing this scene, pulling out a walkie-talkie to rapidly relay instructions to support personnel elsewhere, seemingly adjusting the Monitoring Devices’ scanning patterns according to the new clues.
Yu Sheng’s gaze returned yet again to the broad expanse of glass.
Minutes passed, and he saw that figure once more.
The Young Man appeared again, looking exhausted and disheveled from running aimlessly. He emerged from the far end of the reflected street, jogging urgently toward the window, nervously scanning the empty surroundings—as if some unseen danger might leap out from thin air at any moment in his world.
Foxy stepped forward decisively, banging on the glass with considerable force.
The Young Man inside the reflection gave no response, seeming not to hear anything.
Foxy knocked again, even harder this time.
“Careful, you silly Fox! Don’t shatter the glass!” Irene called out hastily.
In the reflection of the shop window, only a normal street lay quietly empty under emergency lockdown, with no hint of anything unusual.
Yu Sheng took out his phone and tried dialing back the number from the strange call he’d received earlier—no surprise there, still out of service.
The communication blockage from an Otherworld wouldn’t weaken just by approaching its “entryway.” Until now, apart from special cases like Wutong Road No. 66 and its attached spaces, there had been no exceptions.
“Anything?” Yu Sheng asked, turning to Little Red Riding Hood beside him.
Little Red Riding Hood shook her head solemnly.
“The entryway has closed already. The biggest issue now is that we can’t determine exactly which Otherworld it is, nor the conditions for entering,” she explained slowly. “It’s really odd… how could it vanish without leaving a single trace? Normally there’d be residual energy, something my Wolf could detect.”
And just as Irene finished speaking, Yu Sheng saw the young man in the reflection suddenly turn around. He seemed to have heard the faint knocking on the glass. With tension written across his face, the youth approached carefully and stopped half a meter away from the window, cautiously touching the glass.
The vibrations passed through the mirror, reaching the world beyond.
The young man startled, withdrawing his hand fearfully.
But soon after, he seemed to understand the signal came from “reality.” With cautious anticipation, he lifted his hand again, gently tapping on the glass.
Yu Sheng heard the faint knocking—muted, as if muffled through thick layers—but it indeed reached this side.
Yet before Yu Sheng could figure out how to leverage this slight connection to free the young man from the Mirror, the youth suddenly turned his head in panic, then bolted away!
Irene immediately panicked: “Hey! Didn’t I say not to run around?!”
Foxy responded seriously: “He’s not running blindly. Something’s chasing him.”
“Obviously, I saw that too!” Irene cried, anxiously tugging at Yu Sheng’s hair. “Yu Sheng, hurry up and do something! Our client’s about to bite it!”
“Don’t rush me. I’m working on it,” Yu Sheng muttered, stepping forward and feeling around the window glass.
Little Red Riding Hood stared in astonishment. “Wait… you can open this thing?!”
“He can open it even if there’s nothing there,” Irene smugly interjected, no longer anxious, though it wasn’t clear what exactly she was smug about.
Yu Sheng ignored the little doll’s boasting, focusing instead on locating the Door leading to the Mirror’s opposite side.
He needed a coordinate, some guidance—or at the very least, a shred of information pointing toward “the other side.”
The only thing that could provide that guidance was the young man’s tapping gesture from within the Mirror world.
He placed his hand exactly where the youth had knocked, eyes slightly closed, picturing the vibration that had traveled through the thick glass—a heavy, muted tremor, obscured as though buried beneath layers of reality. He imagined it transferring to his hand, becoming an invisible handle.
There was a Door there, and turning its handle would open it.
Liu Bing watched in stunned silence as Yu Sheng seemingly opened a door right out of the glass window, as though forged from a Mirror itself. The Door opened to reveal the familiar street behind them—except it was shrouded in dense fog, deserted and silent.
“Alright, it’s open,” Yu Sheng said casually, keeping his hand on the door handle as he glanced back at Little Red Riding Hood and Liu Bing. “I’ll head over and see what’s happening.”
Foxy immediately stepped forward. “Benefactor! I’m going too!”
“Me as well,” Little Red Riding Hood quickly added, continuing firmly, “The Wolves’ scouting ability is very helpful in unfamiliar territory.”
“Alright,” Yu Sheng nodded. “But be careful over there. Even though the ‘depth’ doesn’t seem great, the situation feels strange.”
Just as Yu Sheng and the others were about to step through, Liu Bing approached quickly.
The tall Special Affairs Bureau operative pressed something into Yu Sheng’s hand.
Yu Sheng glanced down curiously—a palm-sized box with a black metallic surface, without switches or buttons, just several blinking indicator lights on its side.
“A locator,” Liu Bing explained. “My team has to hold down this side of the block. We can’t follow you in right away. But this is urgent—once you’re on the other side, our backup team from the Bureau will follow the signal and find you.”
Yu Sheng paused, puzzled. “Didn’t you say signals don’t work once the Otherworld depth goes past L-1?”
“Normal communication signals won’t,” Liu Bing smiled faintly. “Or, to put it another way, no information that human rationality can understand would escape. But this locator isn’t transmitting a normal signal—it sends a type of Subspace Vibration called a ‘Deep Sea Echo.’ It isn’t meant for people to hear, but rather for certain Machine Spirits back at the Bureau.”
“…Didn’t quite get it, but I’ll carry it.” Yu Sheng replied earnestly, then tucked the small locator casually into his pocket.
He drew a breath and nodded to Little Red Riding Hood and Foxy. “Let’s go.”
Little Red Riding Hood and Foxy stepped through the doorway opened in the Mirror. Yu Sheng, with Irene perched on his shoulder, followed closely behind.
The door silently closed, restoring the window as if it had never been opened.
Before Yu Sheng’s eyes, endless fog surged forward—inside the mist lay the mirrored reflection of Boundary City.
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation