Ah, the familiar darkness, the familiar sense of pressure, and the familiar feeling of consciousness continuously sinking.
Yu Sheng's thoughts floated in the depths of a chaotic darkness. Along with the heavy pressure coming from all directions, there was also a sense of extreme helplessness and fatigue.
He had thought that there might be many twists and turns before he left that "Otherworld," and he had even thought that he might have to "die" more than once. But he had guessed the beginning and the end, but not the process—while floating and sinking in the darkness, he couldn't help but recall the last scene he saw before losing consciousness, recalling the pair of golden-red pupils that had flashed into his eyes in that blurry moment, those gorgeous fox tails that bloomed like flowers in the night…
And that subsonic headbutt.
So, who was that girl who had killed him with a single headbutt? Where did she come from? And why was she in this Otherworld?
Also… what about the changes that happened to his body when he was fighting that monster? The strength that grew out of nowhere, the agility, and…
That hungry impulse.
What on earth had happened to him?
Yu Sheng felt that the chaotic thoughts were swirling in his mind like a vortex. And without the constraints of his physical body, these out-of-control "thoughts" even continuously transformed into various grotesque illusions before his "eyes." The illusions were mixed with many memories that emerged from the depths—he saw the monster made of countless limbs piled up, and he saw the "headbutt" girl with fox tails and ears who had suddenly appeared. But in the next second, he saw an oil painting. In the oil painting, Irene was scattered around the chair, her doll limbs connected by spiderweb-like threads, and a strange shadow stood faintly in the depths of the picture…
Suddenly, Irene disappeared, and new images emerged from the depths of Yu Sheng's memory—crimson clouds and sky, sunlight flowing like water, dyeing the familiar old streets and alleys.
Oh, that was the place where Yu Sheng was born and raised, his familiar "Boundary City," an unremarkable small coastal city. He had been away from there for two months… but for some reason, when the images from the depths of his memory emerged, he felt that they seemed to be from a very, very long time ago, so long ago that they seemed to be another person's memories, presented coldly before his eyes.
All the images disappeared, and in the end, only a gentle darkness enveloped him.
Yu Sheng felt his mind clear up a little. After a moment of hesitation, he tried to call out in his mind, "Irene."
In the darkness, there was no response.
It seemed that his connection with Irene was cut off when he was in a state of "death."
Then, Yu Sheng tried to turn his "gaze," searching for other objects in this darkness, and confirming whether his limbs existed.
He saw nothing. There was nothing here, and he seemed to be just a floating and helpless "thought" here, without a body.
Yu Sheng silently tried more things.
In the previous two "deaths," he had no experience and had returned to the "mortal world" in a daze. But this time, he began to consciously perceive this process and test various conjectures.
He knew that he had been in a muddle for a while. A strange world, bizarre phenomena, his own mysteries, dying and coming back to life… too many things he couldn't understand were all mixed up, leaving him clueless.
But ever since Irene told him about the concept of "Otherworlds," he knew that he had a goal again—he had to go back, to return to the "normal" side.
When the holes of the Otherworld occasionally opened to people, the moment ordinary people saw the scenes leaking from the holes, they had crossed the edge of rationality and reached the other side beyond the normal. This process might be because they got off at the wrong stop when taking a bus, or because they took an extra step down the stairs, or even because they turned one more page of a book, misread a word, and… opened a wrong door.
But regardless of the reason, the most crucial thing was that this process was not irreversible.
According to the information Irene revealed, there were people in this world studying Otherworlds, people who had summarized the laws of Otherworlds, and even experts who specialized in solving Otherworld problems. And even ordinary people had a chance to return after falling into an Otherworld.
This valley shrouded in night was an Otherworld, and the 66 Wutong Road where he now lived was an Otherworld. But Yu Sheng believed that his first contact with an Otherworld was even before that—
When he pushed open his door two months ago, he might have fallen into an Otherworld called "Boundary City" centered on himself.
Now, he had to explore as much as possible, to understand these strange things as much as possible, to understand the knowledge related to Otherworlds, and then… leave this wrong world.
So, he opened his eyes.
The cold night wind blew through the large hole in the wall. Outside the half-collapsed roof was a turbid sky.
He sat in a corner of the ruined temple, but he did not get up immediately. Instead, he remained in the position he had just woken up in, motionless, cautiously perceiving everything around him, while trying to grasp the memories and "impressions" that were rapidly flowing away from his mind.
He was trying to recall the feeling of the moment he woke up, to determine the boundary between his return from darkness to the "mortal world."
He felt that this might be the key to understanding his "death and resurrection."
At the very least, this could bring him a little closer to the truth of these mysteries.
Vaguely, he began to recall some of the scenes he had "seen" in the moment before he woke up. He recalled rising from the darkness, crossing a hazy boundary, and then sinking towards reality… but what happened after that? Between "sinking towards reality" and "opening his eyes"? What happened in this brief moment?
He seemed to have seen a few fleeting images, very fast, very blurry. Among them, there were a few clearer ones… including the small road near his home, the front of the door of 66 Wutong Road, and… this corner deep in the ruined temple.
Yu Sheng's eyelids drooped slightly, and his thoughts gradually calmed. Some conjectures emerged, and he temporarily put them aside. Then he let out a light breath and began to move his hands and feet slightly.
This body was pure and strong. He could even feel the majestic strength flowing in his blood vessels. He could hear clearly, see far, and his hands and feet were full of power—although not long ago, he had been hit by a subsonic headbutt and had his body cut off below the neck, he was now completely alive and kicking.
He got up from the corner, preparing to call Irene.
But in the next second, he abruptly stopped his movements.
Because there was a rustling sound coming from outside the wall.
Hearing this sound, Yu Sheng's first reaction was—that delicious-tasting monster actually chased him into the ruined temple?!
But he soon felt that something was wrong, because the monster's movements were always earth-shaking, not as cautious as this.
Taking a light breath, Yu Sheng, with a bit of caution, slowly moved to the broken hole in the wall and looked out through the hole.
The night was dark, but his eyes could see clearly.
He saw a girl, walking cautiously among the ruins of the ruined temple.
The girl was wearing a ragged robe. It seemed to have once been a gorgeous dress, but now it was just dirty and tattered rags. Her long white hair, which had not been cared for for a long time, was messy and hung down, covering most of her face. And on top of the girl's head… were a pair of pointed fox ears.
But compared to the furry ears, Yu Sheng's gaze fell more on the girl's back—those tails.
Fox tails, more than one, but it was difficult for Yu Sheng to count how many tails there were from his angle—and because the girl looked so disheveled, he even suspected that it was just one big tail, just that it had been matted from not being groomed for too long…
By now, Yu Sheng had of course recognized her.
It was the subsonic headbutt.
But the headbutt didn't seem to have noticed Yu Sheng, who was nearby. She was just cautiously patrolling the ruins of the ruined temple, twitching her nose from time to time as if trying to identify and find something. After a while, she seemed to have found something. Her eyes lit up, and she quickly ran towards a certain place.
The sound of rustling plastic bags came in the night.
Yu Sheng's eyes widened.
That was the bag of kitchen waste he had brought with him when he was "thrown" into this valley, and he had casually thrown it into the ruins.
Inside were the vegetable leaves and eggshells he had thrown away when he cooked dinner, as well as the leftovers he had cleared out from the refrigerator earlier.
He扒在墙边, watching as the girl with the fox tails joyfully but clumsily tore at the plastic bag, accidentally spilling the contents out. Then he watched as she unhesitatingly grabbed a handful of leftovers and stuffed them into her mouth—
As if she had been hungry for many, many years.
Yu Sheng suddenly felt a sense of suffocation.
He didn't know why, but he felt very uncomfortable. He felt that… people shouldn't be so hungry.
Even if she didn't look like a "human."
Even if she had given him a headbutt before—but she was trying to save him then.
And just then, the girl seemed to have finally sensed the presence of a "living person" in the ruined temple.
She squatted on the ground, a piece of rotten vegetable leaf in her mouth, and turned her head in surprise and tension.
Yu Sheng stood in the corner of the collapsed temple, his eyes meeting hers across the ruins.