He's back, back to the strange "Boundary City".
Just a short while ago, this place was an enormous, eerie, and unsettling city to him. However, seeing those familiar streetlights and buildings, seeing the streets and sky bathed in the faint morning light, Yu Sheng felt a surge of "nostalgia" so strong that even he found it hard to believe.
Being trapped in Nightfall Valley, the return to Boundary City evoked feelings of homecoming in him.
But in the next second, the dizzying ebb of life interrupted Yu Sheng's reflections. He dimly lowered his head, seeing fresh red blood slowly spreading beneath him.
His body was pierced through, a terrifying injury lethal enough to kill him in a short time. Even though his body now possessed strong regenerative and life-sustaining abilities, he knew he was dying again—he had gotten quite accustomed to using the word "again" in this context.
The culprit causing this dreadful injury was right beside him. The scaly "tail" sliced off from the creature had fallen out the door with Yu Sheng. It seemed to still possess a vestige of life and even "thought," as it was slowly wriggling in the pool of blood, attempting to move away from this place.
Yu Sheng even felt that this piece of flesh was trying to get away from him… it was afraid of him.
Yu Sheng frowned, struggling to rise from the ground. He glanced at his home door not far away, then casually picked up the scaly severed tail wriggling beside him and started walking forward.
As he walked, he muttered, "Didn't they say that once the main character escapes from dire straits, all would be well… Why are the injuries still present after the plot's resolution, what kind of lousy setting is this… damn it hurts…"
The continuous blood loss gradually blurred his consciousness, and the physical drain made each step wavering and extremely difficult, as if he might collapse at any moment. In the final moments, Yu Sheng was almost moving instinctively forward—he didn't even know why he felt he had to get inside his home—perhaps to greet Erin? Or perhaps to avoid having his "corpse" discovered by people setting out in the morning?
Everything in front of him gradually darkened, the morning light took on a dark red hue, and in Yu Sheng's mind emerged the golden-red eyes of Hu Li—In the end, those eyes were filled with a hungry glow of blood, yet retaining a lingering trace of humanity, struggling to survive in the depths of the blood hue.
That fox… he wondered how she was doing, she said she wouldn't die, but he didn't know if that was true…
These thoughts floated through Yu Sheng's mind as he finally struggled to the front door of his home. The door wasn't locked; he fiddled with the handle, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.
He saw the dining room directly across from the entry, and the oil painting still hanging on the wall. Erin was lifting her head from within the painting, looking surprised at the doorway, then slowly widened her eyes.
Yu Sheng flashed a dying man's smile at her: "Erin, I'm back."
He knew his injuries were severe; if it weren't for the remarkable regenerative abilities and strength of his current body, he probably would have died outside already.
Just as this thought crossed his mind, Yu Sheng felt his vision sway, and he slumped against the door frame, with the overwhelming darkness pressing in from all around—the accompanying sound was Erin's terrified scream.
Now, he died inside the house.
…
With a soft screech of brakes, two electric scooters stopped deep down Wutong Road, with two figures dismounting, looking at the aged and quiet alley before them.
One was a middle-aged man who appeared steady and reliable, wearing a coffee-colored long coat, tall and hefty with dark skin, sporting black short hair and an irregular scar on his neck adding a formidable aura, but the tired expression and dark circles on his face did not match his robust physique and fierce scar—it was the look of someone who had been working overtime for three months straight without a day off.
The other was a young man in his early twenties, also with black short hair, but much slighter in build than the middle-aged man next to him, with ordinary looks that would blend into any crowd instantly, unnoticeable. He wore a black and blue jacket and long pants, his expression tense, carrying the nervousness of a newbie sent out on fieldwork by his boss just a few days into the job.
The two had ridden their bicycles into this quiet old district, scanning the ordinary-looking buildings around them, occasionally seeing residents passing by at a distance, but hardly anyone was casting glances at them.
"This place doesn't look unusual…" the black-haired young man murmured, "Captain Song, are you sure it's here?"
"There was a boundary alarm earlier, the coordinates are exactly here," the man called Captain Song nodded, "Though the signal disappeared in an instant, it was confirmed as a response from the Exotic Realm."
"We've rushed slow and rushed fast but still missed it," the young man glanced at the nearby electric scooters, hesitatingly spoke, "Maybe we should've driven here…"
Captain Song gave him a glance: "All the bureau's cars are out on duty, only Xu Jiali's battered, seventh-hand car is left. You want to drive that? Even flooring the gas pedal might not be as fast as your electric bike."
The young man chuckled awkwardly, shifting the topic somewhat stiffly: "Right, that person before... was codenamed 'Little Red Riding Hood', right? The one from the Fairy Tale Organization, she didn't find anything here either?"
"Hmm, she didn't find anything, so it's even more certain that there's something off with this place," Captain Song nodded slowly, "'Little Red Riding Hood' has done a lot of work for the Special Service Bureau. I know her capabilities; her wolves can sniff out even the faintest, tiniest 'abnormal' scent in the environment, but after searching all night, she found absolutely nothing here."
The young man blinked, apparently not catching on immediately.
"Didn't find anything, didn't get it?" Captain Song reminded again, "It's too 'clean', too 'normal'. There's no place this clean in the Boundary Land! Little Red Riding Hood's wolves can detect anomalies everywhere in this city, no matter how weak the scent is, but here... from the perspective of mysticism, this entire street is as 'clean' as a vacuum!"
Hearing this, the young man finally caught on—the content trained in school finally matched up with the real situation.
"Either this place is indeed that clean, truly a 'pure land block' deeply parallel to the 'outside world'—which is not impossible, given that this is the Boundary Land, all places in the world could be connected to here," Captain Song gestured, speaking somewhat wearily, "or, there's something big hidden here... something that's constantly altering the environment of this land, and Little Red Riding Hood's Wolf Pack encountered a boundary vacuum here."
The young man's already tense expression visibly tightened even more.
"I'm not going to approve your transfer to logistics," Captain Song lifted his eyelids to look at him, "Transferring to another team isn't possible either."
"I never said I wanted to run!" the young man quickly waved his hands, "When I joined the team, I was ready to be fully committed, dedicated, and to perform my duties earnestly..."
The sudden ring of a cellphone interrupted their conversation; it was a melodious tune—an iconic melody from a very popular new show.
The young man was momentarily stunned upon hearing it, looking strangely at his leader: "… You watch that too?"
The middle-aged man known as Captain Song visibly twitched his face, reluctantly pulling out his phone while muttering: "It must be my daughter who changed it, she's been watching that lately…"
The young man's expression subtly changed, holding back half-heartedly and not managing to express, "Isn't it a bit off for a middle schooler to be watching a group of girls forming a band…"
Captain Song answered the call and after listening for a few moments spoke, "Yes, Li Lin and I are already at the scene, just like what Little Red Riding Hood investigated before, this place is 'clean' in a strange way. Arrange something, probably need to set a permanent monitoring station here, specific personnel I will decide when I get back. Also, contact 'Fairy Tales' and see if they can send another person here, this might be a long-term task…"
After hanging up, Captain Song sighed deeply and turned to see Li Lin still looking at him.
He hesitated for a moment, unable to help but clarify, "It really was my daughter who changed it, I usually don't watch cartoons."
Li Lin hastily coughed a few times: "Uh cough, I believe, I believe."
The two shared an awkward moment, tacitly deciding to skip past that topic.
Just then, Li Lin seemed to suddenly notice something.
He frowned slightly and hurried over to a corner not far away.
"Captain Song, come take a look at this!" He bent down to check, then immediately looked up and called out.
Captain Song walked over, following the direction of Li Lin's finger.
A dark red stain was visible in the corner, looking like dried blood, small in scope and easily overlooked from a distance, and it was now visibly shrinking.
It wasn't seeping into the concrete, but rather disappearing rapidly into thin air.
"Blood?" Captain Song immediately frowned, then quickly realized, pulling out a plastic tube and a portable scraper from his coat pocket, "No, not blood, take a sample!"
"Okay." Li Lin responded, took the sampling tool and prepared to scrape the remaining dark red "bloodstain" on the wall, but just before his scraper touched the wall, that last small patch of red unexpectedly hissed, and then completely vanished.