Chapter 55: The “Professionals” Are Right in Front of Him

Chapter 55: The “Professionals” Are Right in Front of Him

The enormous eye left.

It departed silently, revealing none of its secrets.

The people in the cave looked at one another. For a moment, none of them seemed to know what to do. The pressure brought by that bizarre eyeball had been so overwhelming that even now, after it had disappeared, a trace of lingering fear and disbelief remained in everyone’s heart.

“So it really just left?” Irene muttered to herself, sounding deeply unconvinced. “Could it just be hiding behind the clouds?”

Yu Sheng shook his head.

“It really did ‘leave,’ at least it’s no longer in this Other Domain.”

He was certain of that, because he could clearly feel that the “gaze” that had constantly blanketed the valley had truly disappeared.

“But why?” Irene continued muttering. “What was that thing even doing here? It hid here for so long, then suddenly woke up and scared everyone, affected the entities here, and now it suddenly left... What was the point?”

Yu Sheng thought for a moment.

“Maybe it was just resting here. Now it’s rested enough, so it left.”

Irene stared at him blankly.

“Th-that makes sense?”

This time it was Yu Sheng’s turn to be shocked.

She actually believed that?!

“No one knows the purpose of Dim Angels,” Xu Jiali’s voice came from nearby, interrupting the meaningless discussion between Yu Sheng and Irene. “In fact, we can’t even be certain they possess a concept like ‘purpose.’ These things always appear randomly. Sometimes enormous sacrifices are required to drive them away. Other times... they leave on their own very quickly. Analyzing the actions of Dim Angels is meaningless. We should consider ourselves fortunate that the eye wasn’t one of the more active individuals.”

Yu Sheng nodded and stroked his chin thoughtfully.

At that moment, the corner of his eye caught sight of Li Lin, who was still observing conditions outside the cave entrance.

That inexplicable sense of familiarity surfaced once more.

Yu Sheng gradually frowned as memories stirred in his mind.

Suddenly, a scene flashed through his thoughts.

“Wait a second! Haven’t we met before?” Yu Sheng suddenly reacted and stared at Li Lin with wide eyes. “Recently too. We’ve definitely met! Where was it... the convenience store, right, the convenience store!”

He stepped forward and carefully examined Li Lin’s utterly unremarkable face, the kind that would disappear into a crowd and be impossible to remember without deliberate effort.

This time, it finally matched the memory in his head.

“You bought a whole case of instant noodles back then, didn’t you?”

Li Lin twitched the corner of his mouth.

The instant Yu Sheng recognized him, Li Lin had already known it.

But he showed neither panic nor surprise.

Because from the very moment they met amid the ruins of the broken temple, he had recognized Yu Sheng as well.

Although they had only brushed past each other once in that small convenience store, as an agent of the Special Operations Bureau who had received professional training, his memory and powers of observation far surpassed those of ordinary people.

It had only been a matter of time before they recognized one another.

Seeing Li Lin’s reaction, Yu Sheng immediately connected many things.

Gradually, he began to understand.

His gaze swept toward Xu Jiali beside him and then toward Little Red Riding Hood, who was resting nearby.

“Where exactly are you people from?” Yu Sheng asked, his brow furrowing slightly.

“Let’s properly introduce ourselves again,” Li Lin sighed, then straightened his posture and pointed at himself. “Li Lin, agent of the Second Operations Team of the Special Operations Bureau under the Boundary Council.”

Xu Jiali also walked over, adjusted his stance, and spoke in a low voice.

“Attached Special Combat Unit of the Second Operations Team. Senior Deep Diver. Xu Jiali. And yes, that really is my real name.”

Yu Sheng stood there with his mouth hanging open.

After a long moment, he turned toward Little Red Riding Hood, who looked like a high school student.

“So you’re also one of those Special Operations...”

“I’m not,” Little Red Riding Hood replied with folded arms. She raised her chin toward Xu Jiali. “I’m child labor they hired.”

Yu Sheng froze and looked at Xu Jiali in astonishment.

“Your organization hires child labor?”

“What child labor?!” Xu Jiali immediately glared at Little Red Riding Hood. “A vacation job! At least call it work-study, okay?!”

Yu Sheng felt as if his brain had turned to mush.

His first thought was that the high school students over in the Boundary Zone were apparently incredibly hardcore, their vacation work-study programs consisting of entering Other Domains and exchanging fire with monsters.

His second thought was that he had finally met the “professionals” Irene had mentioned before.

But these professionals were completely different from what he had imagined.

As for his third thought...

“So you came here for me?” Yu Sheng looked at the three “professionals” in front of him, feeling that he had finally figured out many things. “You followed me all the way into this Other Domain just to find me?”

The moment he finished speaking, Xu Jiali and Li Lin let out a long sigh in perfect unison.

Even Little Red Riding Hood sighed and lowered her head, abandoning her folded-arms pose in favor of covering her face.

Xu Jiali pulled out a cigarette, lit it with a deeply troubled expression, and consumed a third of it in a single drag.

“If possible, we wouldn’t have wanted this either. Our original plan wasn’t this...”

Yu Sheng: “?”

He felt that the burly man in front of him did not seem very happy.

After thinking about it, he decided not to ask further.

Fortunately, things here had finally been resolved.

There were still many unanswered questions, but those could all wait until everyone had safely returned to the real world.

Irene climbed back from Hu Li’s arms onto Yu Sheng.

Yu Sheng carefully held the pitiful little doll and became the first person to walk out of the cave where they had been hiding.

“It’s completely quiet now,” Irene said from Yu Sheng’s shoulder, wrapping her broken arms around his head and gazing toward the depths of the valley with a mixture of amazement and disbelief on her face. “...What a mess.”

“Yeah, a complete mess. But at least the Hunger entities are gone,” Yu Sheng nodded as he looked at the valley, whose surface layer had been entirely “chewed away.” “...By the way, will those things appear again later?”

“They will. As long as the Other Domain exists, the entities will reappear. And an Other Domain can never disappear. Even if you bomb it ten thousand times, it’ll return to its original state,” Irene said softly while hugging Yu Sheng’s head. “It’s just that... this time, it’ll probably take a very long time.”

“It’s time to leave this place.”

Yu Sheng let out a long breath.

Now that the Hunger entities had temporarily vanished, even the air in the valley seemed fresher.

A cold wind blew in from afar.

Bright daylight had driven away the eternal night that once shrouded this place.

Although the scene before him was one of complete devastation, he still felt a sense of relaxation in his heart.

“Hu Li, how are you feeling now?”

The demon fox girl had been following closely behind Yu Sheng the entire time.

She immediately raised her head.

“I’m very well. Not cold anymore. Not hungry anymore. I ate a lot just now!”

As she spoke, Hu Li smiled happily.

For the first time, she smiled without any burden at all.

Bright and radiant as sunlight.

Yu Sheng smiled back.

Extending a hand toward her, he said, “Then let’s go home.”

Yet just as he was about to open a door leading home, Hu Li unexpectedly stepped forward and gently tugged at his sleeve.

Yu Sheng stopped in confusion and looked at the demon fox girl before him.

“Are you worried about the food we left in the broken temple ruins? The Hunger entities probably ruined most of it. Were you hoping to go get it back?”

Hu Li nodded lightly.

But immediately afterward, she shook her head.

“Benefactor, I want to go somewhere. I...”

She spoke hesitantly, as though worried that she was asking too much, and worried that what she wanted to do was too selfish.

She looked deeply conflicted.

Watching the hesitant demon fox girl, Yu Sheng did not understand what she wanted at first.

Then suddenly, he recalled a scene he had witnessed deep within Hu Li’s dream.

After a moment of silence and consideration, he nodded.

“I understand. Is it in that forest?”

Hu Li looked up in surprise and met Yu Sheng’s eyes.

Then she gave a small nod.

Li Lin and the other two had no idea what was going on and cast questioning looks at Yu Sheng.

But he did not explain.

He merely waved a hand at them.

“Don’t worry. I’ll find a way to send everyone back later. But wait a bit first. I need to accompany Hu Li somewhere. If you’re not comfortable with that, you can come along.”

“Then let’s all go together,” Xu Jiali was the first to nod. “This girl seems to have been here for a very long time. Before leaving, there are probably some things she needs to settle. I understand that.”

The group left the rear mountain.

They passed the even more ruined broken temple, now reduced to little more than a few fragments of crumbling walls.

Then they crossed the rocky riverbed at the valley floor, now filled with gullies and rifts.

Finally, they arrived at what had once been a small forest.

The forest had long since disappeared.

Those dark mutated plants had all been consumed during the earlier feast.

Now only a stretch of black wasteland remained.

The barren ground was covered with large and small pits, as well as suspicious black fragments.

“Is it here?” Yu Sheng glanced at Hu Li walking beside him and asked softly.

“Yes.” Hu Li slowly nodded. “My father and mother are here.”

Only then did Irene finally understand why Yu Sheng had accompanied Hu Li to this place.

The little doll’s eyes widened.

She recalled the scene deep within Hu Li’s dream.

She recalled the temptations, the memories that were impossible to distinguish from reality, and the phantoms born from cold and hunger.

For some reason, a sense of unease welled up within her.

The numerous pits scattered across the area only intensified that unease.

“M-maybe you won’t be able to find them!” she suddenly blurted out, deliberately speaking loudly. “An entire layer of ground got chewed away! Maybe those tentacles that came out of the earth already...”

But Hu Li merely shook her head and interrupted Irene.

“No.”

She spoke with absolute certainty.

“I buried them very deep. My father and mother told me to bury them deeper, so I buried them very deep.”