Chapter 13: Encounter

Chapter 13: Encounter

Ah, the familiar darkness, the familiar crushing pressure, and the familiar sensation of consciousness continuously sinking.

Yu Sheng’s thoughts drifted deep within a chaotic darkness. Along with the pressure surging in from all directions came an overwhelming sense of helplessness and exhaustion.

He had thought there would still be many twists and turns before he could leave that “Other Domain.” He had even considered the possibility that he might have to “die” more than once. He had guessed the beginning and the ending, but not the process. While floating and sinking through the darkness, he could not help recalling the final scene he had seen before losing consciousness. He remembered that fleeting instant, those golden-red pupils that had entered his field of vision, those magnificent fox tails blooming against the night...

And that subsonic headbutt.

So who exactly was that girl who had headbutted him to death? Where had she come from? And why had she appeared in this Other Domain?

And besides...

What had happened to his body during his fight with that monster?

That inexplicably increased strength, agility, and...

That impulse of hunger.

What exactly had happened to him?

Yu Sheng felt his chaotic thoughts swirling through his mind like a vortex. Freed from the constraints of a physical body, those uncontrolled thoughts even transformed into bizarre and fantastical visions before his “eyes.” Mixed among them were countless memories surfacing from the depths. He saw the monster composed of innumerable limbs. He saw the suddenly appearing “headbutt” girl with fox ears and tails. But in the next moment, he saw an oil painting. Within it, Irene lay shattered into pieces around a chair. Spiderweb-like threads connected the doll’s scattered limbs, while a strange shadow stood vaguely in the depths of the painting...

Suddenly, Irene vanished. New scenes emerged from the depths of Yu Sheng’s memories.

Crimson clouds filled the sky. Sunlight flowed like water, bathing familiar old streets and alleyways.

Ah, that was the place where Yu Sheng had been born and raised, his familiar Boundary City, an unremarkable coastal town. He had left it two months ago...

Yet for some reason, when those images surfaced from his memories, they felt as though they belonged to a very distant past. So distant that they seemed like someone else’s memories, presented coldly before his eyes.

All the images disappeared.

In the end, only gentle darkness surrounded him.

Yu Sheng felt his thoughts become slightly clearer. After a brief hesitation, he tried calling out inwardly, Irene.

There was no response from the darkness.

It seemed that while in his “dead” state, his connection with Irene would be severed.

Next, Yu Sheng attempted to turn his “gaze,” searching the darkness for other objects and confirming whether his limbs still existed.

He saw nothing.

There was absolutely nothing here.

And he himself seemed to exist only as a floating, unattached consciousness, without any physical body at all.

Silently, Yu Sheng continued experimenting.

During his previous two “deaths,” he had possessed no experience at all. He had muddle-headedly returned to the world of the living before understanding anything. But this time, he consciously began observing the process, testing various hypotheses.

He knew that during this period he had been living in a constant daze. An unfamiliar world, bizarre phenomena, mysteries surrounding himself, death and resurrection... Too many incomprehensible things had been piled together, leaving him completely lost.

But ever since Irene had told him about the concept of the Other Domain, he knew he once again had a goal.

He wanted to return.

He wanted to return to the normal side.

When the openings of the Other Domain occasionally revealed themselves to people, the moment ordinary individuals glimpsed the scenes leaking through those openings, they crossed the edge of reason and arrived on the other side of normality. This process might begin because someone got off at the wrong stop while riding a bus, took one extra step while descending stairs, turned one page too many in a book, misread a single word, or...

Opened the wrong door.

But regardless of the cause, the most important thing was that this process was not irreversible.

According to the information Irene had revealed, there were people in this world studying the Other Domain. There were people who had summarized its laws and patterns. There were even specialists dedicated to solving problems related to the Other Domain. And even ordinary people had a chance to return after falling into one.

This valley shrouded in eternal night was an Other Domain.

The Wutong Road 66 where he currently lived was an Other Domain.

But Yu Sheng believed that his first encounter with the Other Domain had occurred even earlier.

When he had pushed open the door of his home two months ago, he might already have fallen into an Other Domain centered around himself, one called Boundary City.

Now he intended to explore as much as possible.

To understand as much as possible about these strange phenomena.

To learn everything related to the Other Domain.

And then...

Leave this wrong world behind.

So he opened his eyes.

Cold night wind blew through the large hole in the wall. Beyond the half-collapsed roof stretched a murky sky.

He was sitting in a corner of the ruined temple. Yet he did not immediately stand up. Instead, he maintained the posture of someone newly awakened, remaining completely motionless as he cautiously sensed everything around him while trying to grasp the memories and impressions rapidly slipping away from his thoughts.

He was attempting to recall the sensation of the instant he awoke.

To identify the boundary he had crossed when returning from the darkness to the real world.

He felt this might be the key to understanding the process of his resurrection.

At the very least, it would bring him a little closer to the truth behind these mysteries.

Vaguely, he began recalling certain scenes he had “seen” in the instant before awakening.

He remembered rising out of the darkness, crossing a hazy boundary, then descending toward reality...

But what came after that?

Between “descending toward reality” and “opening his eyes,” what had happened?

During that brief interval?

He seemed to have seen several fleeting images.

Fast.

Blurred.

Among them, however, a few had been relatively clear...

A small path near his home.

The front gate of Wutong Road 66.

And...

This corner deep within the ruined temple.

Yu Sheng lowered his eyelids slightly. The thoughts in his mind gradually calmed. Certain conjectures emerged, only for him to set them aside temporarily. Then he let out a gentle breath and began making small movements with his hands and feet.

This body was pure and strong.

He could feel tremendous power flowing through his veins.

He could hear clearly.

He could see far.

His limbs overflowed with strength.

Even though not long ago he had been decapitated from the neck down by a subsonic headbutt, he was now completely restored and full of vitality.

He rose from the corner of the wall, preparing to call for Irene.

But in the very next second, he forcibly halted his movement.

Because a rustling sound had come from outside the wall.

Upon hearing it, Yu Sheng’s first reaction was:

Had that delicious-smelling monster actually followed him into the ruined temple?!

But he quickly realized something was wrong.

That monster’s movements had always been earth-shaking, not cautious like this.

Taking a quiet breath, Yu Sheng slowly moved toward the hole in the wall with measured caution and looked outside through the opening.

The night was deep.

Yet his eyes could see clearly.

He saw a girl carefully walking among the ruins of the temple.

She wore a tattered robe-like dress. It had once seemed to be a beautiful garment, but now only filthy, ragged scraps remained. Long white hair that had clearly gone untended for a long time hung in a tangled mess, covering much of her face.

And atop the girl’s head...

Was a pair of pointed fox ears.

But compared to those furry ears, Yu Sheng’s attention was drawn more toward what lay behind her.

Those tails.

Fox tails.

More than one.

From his angle, however, it was difficult for Yu Sheng to count exactly how many there were. And given how disheveled the girl looked, he even suspected it might simply be one enormous tail tangled into multiple clumps after going unwashed for too long.

By now, of course, Yu Sheng had recognized her.

It was that subsonic headbutt.

Yet the headbutt seemed unaware that Yu Sheng was nearby.

She merely wandered cautiously through the temple ruins, occasionally twitching her nose as if trying to identify and locate something.

After a while, she seemed to find what she was looking for.

Her eyes lit up, and she immediately ran toward a certain spot.

The sound of a plastic bag being rummaged through echoed in the night.

Yu Sheng widened his eyes.

It was the bag of kitchen scraps he had brought with him when he had been “thrown” into this valley.

He had casually tossed it into the ruins.

Inside were vegetable leaves and eggshells discarded while cooking dinner, along with leftovers cleaned out from the refrigerator.

Leaning against the wall, he watched as the fox-tailed girl clumsily yet excitedly tore open the plastic bag.

She accidentally spilled everything onto the ground.

Then he watched her grab a handful of leftovers without hesitation and stuff them directly into her mouth.

As though she had been hungry for many, many years.

Yu Sheng suddenly felt a suffocating sensation.

He did not know why.

But he felt terrible.

He felt...

That no one should be starved to this extent.

Even if she did not seem entirely human.

Even if she had headbutted him.

She had been trying to save him at the time.

And at that moment, the girl finally seemed to notice the presence of a living person inside the ruined temple.

Squatting on the ground with a rotten vegetable leaf hanging from her mouth, she turned her head in shock and alarm.

Yu Sheng stood amid the collapsed corner of the ruined temple.

Separated by the ruins, their eyes met.