Chapter 103: A Quiet Sleepless Night

Chapter 103: A Quiet Sleepless Night

The night was already deep.

In a high-rise apartment somewhere in the central district of Boundary City, Baili Qing, dressed in a nightgown, poured herself a glass of strong liquor and walked slowly to the large floor-to-ceiling window.

The room lights were off. Only the dim yellow glow from a corner night lamp outlined the contours of the furniture. Outside the large window was a breathtaking nightscape. The vast city was lit by neon lights, its brilliant colors flickering, flowing, and shimmering between densely packed buildings like some kind of living, breathing organism. The ground seemed endless. The light and shadow of the urban sprawl stretched infinitely into the distance, dissolving into a hazy night. In this darkness, Baili Qing’s reflection in the glass looked especially thin and fragile.

Fog began forming outside the floor-to-ceiling window.

Thin mist appeared as if generated out of nowhere in the air, rapidly and evenly covering the night. It gradually turned into a surging gray-white curtain. The scenery of Boundary City became blurred and unreal within the fog. Then a pair of indifferent eyes appeared outside the window, quietly staring at Baili Qing standing before it.

Those eyes had human-like contours, but were severely lacking in color. The extremely pale pupils were almost identical to Baili Qing’s own eyes. They seemed to float within the mist outside, yet also appeared directly imprinted on the glass, filling the entire window surface.

“Drinking at night is not a good habit, sister.”

A voice entered Baili Qing’s mind directly. Mechanical, rigid, yet identical to her own voice.

“This helps me stay calm,” Baili Qing said casually, shaking the glass in her hand, “Especially after being woken from a nightmare by a phone call.”

“A nightmare?”

“I dreamed that I eventually became you.”

“Oh, that would indeed be a nightmare,” the faded eyes blinked in the fog outside, “Be careful. Don’t be seduced or controlled by me. Although you’ve been doing fairly well so far. So, what do you want to call me out for now?”

“I just woke up suddenly. I thought I might as well ask you about something, about that ‘single eye’ that appeared in Nightfall Valley. Did you find anything?”

The eyes narrowed slightly. Then the voice entered Baili Qing’s mind again: “I searched through everything I have ever observed, including the Other Domains we experienced together and those ‘death cavities’ in deep space pierced by the Dim Angel. I found no information related to that giant eye. It has never appeared in any of those locations.”

“So you also couldn’t find it…” Baili Qing sounded slightly disappointed, “Forget it. That’s expected.”

“Your mood is worse now, sister,” the eyes said, “And also somewhat anxious.”

“…Because more and more clues indicate that the giant eye entered this world without anyone noticing. And given the ‘traces’ of another unknown angel discovered by Argleid a few months ago in deep space, it is likely that more Dim Angels have already pierced through our world. More cavities remain undiscovered, and even at this moment, new ones may still be forming.”

As she spoke, Baili Qing swirled the glass in her hand, absentmindedly watching the vortex formed by the liquor. She asked softly:

“What do you think I am most worried about?”

“You are worried that more Dim Angels are hidden within the real universe?”

“No. That is everyone’s shared concern. What I worry about more is what lies behind the Dim Angels themselves. Whether they are a species, whether they form an organization, whether they have learning ability, whether they are gradually learning the rules of our world and mastering more efficient ways of piercing death cavities, and… whether they have learned to conceal themselves.”

“That does sound worth worrying about.”

Baili Qing drank the strong liquor in one gulp, feeling the burning sensation spread through her mouth, then casually placed the glass on the floor beside her.

“Also, I asked you to scan the old district. Any findings on the hidden Wutong Road 66?”

“I found some distorted traces, but I cannot see clearly,” the eyes said, their mechanical voice carrying a trace of frustration.

A hint of surprise finally appeared on Baili Qing’s face: “Even you can’t see clearly?!”

“Yes,” the eyes in the mist blinked, “Whenever I try to focus, my vision feels as if something is suddenly… absorbed. When I come to my senses, I realize I had been distracted the entire time. However… I have a hypothesis.”

“What hypothesis?”

“That so-called Wutong Road 66 may not be there at all. It is only an entrance…”

“That is not surprising,” Baili Qing interrupted, shaking her head, “The Special Operations Bureau operatives who investigated it already reached that conclusion. They believe it is a special space within a spatial fissure, like other fortress-type Other Domains in Boundary City, drifting in the cracks of Boundary Zone space-time structure…”

“No,” the eyes interrupted her abruptly, “That is not what I mean. It might not even be in the Boundary Zone at all. It is not drifting anywhere. It is simply… too deep, too far, so the Wutong Road 66 reflected in the Boundary Zone is only a very thin shadow. When I feel my vision being swallowed, it is actually because I am looking at a place so distant it cannot be seen.”

Baili Qing’s expression stiffened slightly.

“Too deep, too far?” Her tone carried rare hesitation, “Do you understand what that implies? Your vision… can even perceive the subspace.”

“So it is deeper and farther than that. That is a logical conclusion, sister.”

Baili Qing blinked.

After a moment, she heard the mechanical voice in her mind again: “So, what exactly is the ‘person’ living at Wutong Road 66?”

“I don’t know,” Baili Qing said softly, “All current intelligence suggests his personality and self-awareness are extremely close to that of a human. And just now, he even called me.”

“Oh. So that call that woke you from your nightmare was from him. What did he want?”

“He said he wanted to open a ‘door’ and report it. According to intelligence from the operations department a few hours ago, he should have gone to the museum.”

“…Interesting.”

The eyes slowly faded within the fog, and the mist outside the window quickly dissipated as well. The boundless city nightscape once again filled the window.

Yu Sheng barely slept at all during the second half of the night.

He lay in bed, tossing and turning. All kinds of thoughts, knowledge, and information swarmed through his mind like countless crawling Irines, wriggling, climbing, jumping around, and screaming chaotically…

Of course, that description might be exaggerated. If there were truly countless crawling Irines everywhere, things would have been even more chaotic.

But his mind was indeed a mess.

New knowledge about the Other Domain, Little Red Riding Hood and the organization behind her Fairy Tale, Angel Cultists and the Dim Angel, the unfortunate victim in the white exhibition hall, and… the moment the dead spoke to him.

Yu Sheng opened his phone and searched the Border Communication database for entries related to “communicating with the dead,” and actually found some records.

It mentioned that there are indeed “extraordinary individuals” outside the Boundary Zone who possess the ability to communicate with the dead. Some so-called necromancers can, after performing a series of complex rituals, temporarily anchor a dead person’s soul in the real world and conduct face-to-face conversations.

But none of the descriptions matched what he experienced in the white exhibition hall.

Those techniques either required extremely complex rituals, highly advanced equipment, or were closer to something like “holographic reconstruction,” using technology to gather massive amounts of data to reconstruct pre-death scenes. Even the so-called direct “communication with the dead” methods only produced vague, crude results, often limited to simple “yes” or “no” responses derived from residual brainwaves or so-called “souls.”

None of them involved touching blood on the scene and having a corpse suddenly turn around and deliver a rap-like monologue.

Yu Sheng put down his phone, sighed softly in the dark room, and then heard rustling sounds on the bed.

He turned his head.

Irene was writhing and rolling at the foot of the bed, kicking one leg into the air before flopping back down with a thud.

Yu Sheng’s expression went blank.

The second reason he couldn’t sleep was that there was a constantly crawling Irene on his bed.

And she was kicking in circles.

The next second, Irene suddenly rolled over again, sat upright, pointed forward with her eyes still closed:

“I! From Alice’s Cottage! Pay up—or I’ll hit you!”

Then she tilted over and fell off the bed with a thud, crawling back up while muttering:

“Don’t kick me… I fell down…”

Yu Sheng sighed.

He was not sleeping tonight.