Chapter 70: Contact

Chapter 70: Contact

Within the Special Operations Bureau, Deep Divers are combat elites who have undergone strict selection, brutal training, and countless trials to distinguish themselves from ordinary agents.

They are always sent to the most dangerous places, facing challenges so difficult that they often exceed the limits of human reason. They know how to survive in the lethal environments of alien worlds. They know how to pursue mad Angel Cultists through lawless territories. They can even charge into Other Domains to battle the most dangerous entities, or descend into nightmares to rescue fallen souls from bizarre labyrinths woven from mind and consciousness. Diving deep, diving down from the peaceful real world into the dark dimension beneath reason, that is their job.

Yet there are always things in this world that human intelligence cannot understand or oppose.

Even the most elite Deep Divers fail sometimes.

In fact, they often do.

But the current situation still exceeded Song Cheng’s experience.

It even seemed to exceed the Director’s expectations.

The six Deep Divers were transferred out of the tanks immediately. The moment they returned to reality, their powered armor automatically activated emergency medical procedures. Built-in injection systems pumped large doses of rationality blockers and protective drugs into their bodies, rapidly calming them. Support personnel then stepped forward to inspect each diver’s contamination status while confirming that their consciousness had returned to the material world along with their bodies.

And to make sure that nothing else had returned alongside their consciousness.

Song Cheng and Baili Qing stood nearby, watching the scene with tightly furrowed brows.

“Math problems?” After a long silence, Song Cheng finally could not help breaking it. “...Can math problems really cause that much mental trauma?”

Baili Qing shook her head slightly.

“Professors from Terra’s Academy can indeed attack opponents by instantly flooding an ordinary person’s brain with excessive knowledge, but the effects wouldn’t look like this. Our Deep Divers also receive specialized training and are naturally resistant to knowledge-based attacks. Besides possessing considerable learning ability, their brains can actively enter a dormant state when faced with knowledge injections beyond their processing capacity.”

Song Cheng frowned.

“You mean...”

“The ‘math problems’ mentioned by that Deep Diver before he passed out may simply have been some kind of visualized impression they perceived during the dive. The thing that actually caused the contamination was probably something else,” Baili Qing said gravely. “The end of the corridor... no Nightfall Valley... but why math problems?”

Song Cheng did not dare interrupt. He was afraid of breaking the Director’s train of thought.

After a brief silence, Baili Qing suddenly turned to him.

“Xiao Song, you haven’t made contact with that Yu Sheng yet, have you?”

“No. I was planning to contact him today, but then all these unexpected incidents happened...”

“Don’t go.” Baili Qing spoke calmly.

Yu Sheng heard a faint noise.

He looked up and glanced around, but could not locate its source.

Business was slow. There were not many people in the café. Only a few scattered customers sat at distant tables, while two employees nearby absentmindedly scrolled through their phones. The place felt deserted.

Occasionally someone would cast a curious glance in his direction.

Probably wondering why a grown man in his twenties was sitting in a café copying an enormous stack of high school homework.

Yu Sheng sighed and looked at the remaining half of the workbook, feeling a faint ache in his hand.

He had already been writing as carelessly as possible. Many of the solutions beneath the larger questions looked like illegible scribbles. But his hands were accustomed to keyboards. He had not written this many words by hand in years.

The job was proving far more exhausting than he had expected.

Though it was hard to say whether copying homework for a high school student was more tiring, or taking a fox who knew absolutely nothing about the world shopping for clothes.

After thinking about it, Yu Sheng concluded that copying homework was probably the better option.

He genuinely lacked the courage to walk into a lingerie store with Hu Li.

That would make him feel like a pervert.

Especially when Hu Li displayed such innocent ignorance. It would be very easy for a shop assistant to mistake him for a creep and call the police.

Just then, Irene’s voice suddenly echoed in his mind.

“Hi hi, Yu Sheng! How much have you finished over there?”

Without stopping his writing, Yu Sheng replied, “Halfway done. High school students really have it rough these days. Why is there so much homework?”

“Keep it up. I just heard Little Red Riding Hood muttering about it. She actually has a physics workbook too, but she forgot to bring it...”

“Tell her to go home and do that one herself. I’m not dealing with it,” Yu Sheng replied irritably. “How are things on your side? Going smoothly?”

“Pretty much. Hu Li doesn’t really know how to use zippers. Little Red Riding Hood spent ages teaching her. The two of them are in the changing room together now... They left me sitting on a bench outside,” Irene said cheerfully. “Little Red Riding Hood even bought me a hair clip! From a doll shop. It’s red...”

Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then realized something.

“That was bought with my money!”

“I know, I know,” Irene quickly said. “Just treat it as a gift from you... I didn’t ask for anything else. Just a hair clip. It wasn’t expensive...”

“Alright, alright. I never said you couldn’t buy it.” Yu Sheng found himself both amused and exasperated. “Just a reminder. Don’t get too carried away shopping. Also, don’t forget to buy toiletries and things for Hu Li. Bedsheets and duvet covers too. You didn’t forget the measurements, right?”

“We remember, we remember. Don’t worry. My brain...” Irene suddenly paused and changed her tone. “Hu Li’s brain...”

An awkward and bizarre silence filled Yu Sheng’s mind.

This was what happened when a team could not carry itself.

“How big was her bed again?” Irene suddenly sounded completely uncertain.

“One and a half metres by two metres,” Yu Sheng sighed. “Tell that number to Little Red Riding Hood and have her remember it for both of you. Tell her everything else you need to buy too. She’s a high school student. Her brain works better than yours.”

“R-right...”

Yu Sheng helplessly ended the mental conversation and lowered his head to continue copying the workbook.

Then suddenly he sensed that something was wrong.

Silence.

At some point, everything around him had become unbelievably quiet.

Even the low conversations from the few remaining customers had vanished.

Yu Sheng abruptly raised his head and quickly scanned his surroundings.

He was still inside the café.

Countless tables and chairs stood arranged in perfect order, stretching infinitely forward and infinitely backward.

The boundless café was completely empty.

As far as the eye could see, there were only endless rows of tables and chairs.

To his left stood the street-facing windows.

Those windows now extended infinitely in both directions as well.

Beyond them, there was no street scene.

Only endless white fog.

Huge shadows moved slowly within the mist. Occasionally they drifted close to the windows nearby, seemingly casting their gaze into the café. Yet no matter how carefully he looked, the shadows remained vague and indistinct.

Yu Sheng stared at everything in shock as he slowly rose from his chair.

Just as he was about to leave through the door, a voice suddenly came from across the table.

“Hello.”

It was a young woman’s voice, slightly hoarse.

To his surprise, someone was now sitting opposite him.

A woman who appeared to be under thirty years old.

She wore a fitted white skirt suit. Her grey-white hair was tied into a ponytail. She was very beautiful, yet there was an indescribable distance and coldness in her bearing.

What drew Yu Sheng’s attention most, however, were her eyes.

She possessed a pair of pale grey pupils that seemed almost devoid of color. Even the boundary between iris and sclera appeared unusually blurred, making them look...

Not quite like the eyes of a normal human being.

Then Yu Sheng noticed something even more incredible.

Everything around the woman was rapidly losing its color.

Beginning with the nearest table and chairs, then the floor, then the surrounding furniture, everything was being covered by a pale grey-white hue. The fading effect extended more than ten metres before gradually weakening.

In the end, only the woman herself and Yu Sheng retained their original colors.

Yu Sheng steadied himself.

He remembered something Irene had told him.

Intelligent entities could appear within Other Domains. But no matter how human-like they seemed, they always possessed obviously bizarre and inhuman characteristics.

The woman before him looked somewhat unusual, but not to the extent of being bizarre and inhuman.

That meant she was probably human.

And if she was human, and had taken the initiative to greet him, then she was obviously someone he could talk to.

Yu Sheng temporarily abandoned the idea of leaving and sat back down in his chair.

Looking curiously at the woman across from him, he asked,

“You are...?”

“Baili Qing, Director of the Special Operations Bureau under the Boundary Council,” the woman replied with a slight nod. “My apologies for meeting you in this manner. It was done to ensure the greatest possible confidentiality, as well as for certain security considerations.”

Yu Sheng froze instantly.

The Special Operations Bureau really had come looking for him.

But was the level of attention this high?

The Director herself had come?!

While Yu Sheng was still stunned, Baili Qing casually swept her gaze across the table in front of her.

She saw the stack of workbooks lying there.

Her expression immediately froze for a brief moment.

Math problems.

Nothing but math problems.

Authentic national university entrance examination comprehensive-answer questions from previous years.