I'm back, back to this strange "Boundary City."
Although not long ago, this place was a huge, bizarre, and unsettling strange city to him, at this moment, seeing the familiar streetlights and buildings, seeing the streets and sky in the faint morning light, a feeling of "nostalgia" that even he himself found hard to believe welled up in his heart.
The experience of being trapped in that night-shrouded valley made him feel a sense of homecoming even when returning to "Boundary City."
But in the next second, the daze brought by the passing of life interrupted the emotion in Yu Sheng's heart. He lowered his head somewhat sluggishly and saw the bright red blood slowly spreading under his body.
His body was pierced, and the terrifying wound was enough to be fatal in a short time. Even though his body now had strong recovery ability and vitality, he knew that he was about to die again—he was now very skilled at using the word "again" in this matter.
And the culprit that caused this terrible wound was right next to him. The scaled "tail" that had been cut off from the monster fell out of the door with Yu Sheng. It seemed to still have some residual vitality and even "thoughts." At this moment, it was slowly writhing in the pool of blood, and it was trying to wriggle away from this place.
Yu Sheng even felt that this thing was moving away from him… this piece of meat was afraid of him.
Yu Sheng frowned and struggled to get up from the ground. He glanced at the door of his home not far away, then casually picked up the scaled severed tail that was slowly writhing next to him and struggled to walk forward.
As he walked, he muttered, "Didn't they say that the protagonist is all good after escaping from a desperate situation… What kind of crappy setting is this where the injuries are still there after the map is cleared… Damn it, it hurts like hell…"
The continuous loss of blood made his consciousness gradually blur, and the loss of stamina made every step he took shaky and extremely difficult, as if he would fall down in the next second. In the last few steps, Yu Sheng was almost moving forward on instinct. He didn't know why he had to go home—perhaps to say hello to Irene? Perhaps to avoid his "body" being discovered by people who went out in the morning?
Everything in front of him gradually fell into darkness, and the morning light was dyed with a layer of dark red. In Yu Sheng's mind, Hu Li's golden-red eyes appeared—in the end, those eyes were filled with the bloodlight of hunger, but there was also a last trace of humanity, struggling to maintain itself in the depths of the blood-red.
That fox… I wonder how she is now. She said she wouldn't die, I wonder if it's true…
Many thoughts appeared in Yu Sheng's mind. He finally struggled to the door of his home. The door was not locked. He pulled the doorknob, pushed the door open, and then stepped in.
He saw the dining room diagonally opposite the entrance, and the oil painting that was still leaning against the wall. Irene looked up from the oil painting. She looked at the door in surprise, and then her eyes slowly widened.
Yu Sheng pulled out a final, fleeting smile at her. "Irene, I'm back."
He knew that he was seriously injured. If it weren't for the amazing recovery ability and strength of this body now, he would have died outside the house.
As soon as this thought popped into his mind, Yu Sheng felt his vision tilt. He slid down against the door frame, and the familiar dark pressure came from all directions—along with Irene's terrified scream.
Now he was dead in the house.
…
With a slight braking sound, two electric vehicles stopped deep in Wutong Road. Two figures got off the vehicles, looking at the old and quiet alley in front of them.
One of them was a middle-aged man who looked calm and reliable. He was wearing a long khaki coat, was tall and strong, had a slightly dark complexion, and short black hair. An irregular scar near his neck added a bit of formidability to his temperament, but the tired expression and dark circles under the man's eyes were at odds with his strong and tall physique and狰狞的伤疤—that face looked like he had been working overtime for three consecutive months without a break.
The other was a young man who looked to be in his early twenties. He also had short black hair, but his figure was much smaller than the middle-aged man next to him. His appearance was ordinary, the kind that would immediately be lost in any crowd. He was wearing a black and blue jacket and pants, and his expression was a little tense, with the nervousness of a newcomer who had been dragged out for fieldwork by his leader just a few days after starting work.
The two rode their vehicles to this quiet old district, observing the seemingly ordinary buildings around them. Occasionally, residents who lived here would pass by from the intersection in the distance, but very few people looked at them.
"This place doesn't look strange at all…" the black-haired young man muttered. "Captain Song, are you sure this is the place?"
"There was a boundary alarm just now. The coordinates are indeed this place," the middle-aged man known as Captain Song nodded. "Although the signal disappeared in an instant, we can be sure it was an Otherworld reaction."
"We rushed here, but we still didn't make it," the young man glanced at the electric scooter next to him and hesitated to speak. "Should we have driven here…"
Captain Song glanced at him. "All the cars in the bureau are out on fieldwork. The only one left is Xu Jiali's seventh-hand wreck. You want to drive it? That thing probably won't be as fast as your electric scooter even if you floor it."
The young man laughed dryly and awkwardly changed the subject. "Well, that who… was it code-named 'Little Red Riding Hood'? The one from the Fairy Tale Organization, she didn't seem to find anything here either?"
"Yes, she didn't find anything, which is why we can be even more sure that there's something wrong with this place," Captain Song slowly nodded. "'Little Red Riding Hood' has done a lot of work for the Special Operations Bureau. I know her abilities. Her wolves can sniff out even the faintest and smallest 'unusual' scent in the surrounding environment. But she searched this place all night and found nothing."
The young man blinked, seemingly not reacting for a moment.
"Didn't find anything, you don't understand?" Captain Song reminded him again. "It's too 'clean,' too 'normal.' There's no place in the Boundary that's this clean! Little Red Riding Hood's wolves can sniff out something unusual in every part of this city, even if the scent is very, very weak. But only here… from a mystical perspective, this entire street is as 'clean' as a vacuum!"
Hearing this, the young man finally understood—the content he had been trained on in school finally matched the situation in reality.
"Either this place is really that clean, and a 'pure land' with a depth parallel to the 'outside world' has really appeared in the Boundary—this is not impossible. After all, this is the Boundary, and all places in the world may be connected to here," Captain Song waved his hand and said with some fatigue. "Or, there's a… 'big thing' hidden in this place. That thing is constantly changing the environment of the entire area. Little Red Riding Hood's pack encountered a boundary vacuum here."
The already tense expression on the young man's face visibly tightened even more.
"I won't approve your transfer to the logistics department," Captain Song raised his eyelids and looked at him. "And you can't transfer to another team either."
"I never said I wanted to run!" the young man quickly waved his hand. "I was prepared when I joined the team. I will definitely be loyal to my duties, love my job, and conscientiously perform…"
A suddenly ringing cell phone interrupted the conversation between the two. It was a pleasant melody—the classic theme song of a popular new anime.
The young man was stunned for a moment when he heard it, and looked at his leader with a strange expression. "…You watch that too?"
The middle-aged man known as Captain Song's face visibly twitched. He reluctantly took out his phone from his pocket and muttered, "My daughter must have secretly changed it for me. She's been watching it recently…"
The young man's expression changed subtly. He held it in for a long time but didn't say the words, "Is it really okay for a middle school student to watch a bunch of lesbians form a band?"…
Captain Song answered the phone, listened for a few sentences, and then spoke, "Yes, Li Lin and I are already at the scene. It's the same as what Little Red Riding Hood investigated before. This place is 'clean' to the point of being strange. You make the arrangements. We might need to set up a fixed monitoring point here. I'll decide on the specific personnel when I get back. Also, contact 'Fairy Tale' and see if they can send someone else over. This might be a long-term task…"
After hanging up the phone, Captain Song let out a long breath and turned to see the young man named Li Lin still looking at him.
He was stunned for a moment and couldn't help but speak, "My daughter really changed it for me. I don't usually watch anime."
Li Lin quickly coughed dryly. "Ahem, I believe you, I believe you."
The two were awkward for a while, and tacitly chose to skip this topic.
And just then, Li Lin seemed to have suddenly discovered something.
He frowned slightly and quickly walked towards a corner of a wall not far away.
"Captain Song, come and see this!" He lowered his head to check and immediately called out.
Captain Song walked over and looked in the direction Li Lin was pointing.
A patch of dark red marks appeared at the corner of the wall. It looked like dried blood, and the area was very small. It was easy to overlook from a distance, and it was now shrinking at a visible speed.
It wasn't seeping into the cement, but was quickly disappearing into thin air.
"Blood?" Captain Song immediately frowned, then reacted quickly. He took out a plastic tube and a portable scraper from his long coat pocket. "No, it's not blood. Take a sample!"
"Okay," Li Lin replied. He took the sampling tool and prepared to scrape the remaining dark red "bloodstains" on the wall. However, just before the scraper in his hand touched the wall, the last small piece of red suddenly let out a hissing sound and then disappeared completely.