Chapter 83: The Permit Officer Has Arrived

Chapter 83: The Permit Officer Has Arrived

In the morning, the sun was bright, with clear skies and sparse clouds.

A dull urban variety show was playing on the television in the living room. Irene was hugging the remote control, watching with great interest. Hu Li was in the dining room licking a bowl, while also using several tails to tidy up the dishes and chopsticks on the table.

Yu Sheng placed his laptop on the dining table and had been staring at it intently since finishing breakfast.

Hu Li was very curious about what the benefactor was doing, but seeing how serious he looked, she did not dare to interrupt. She only occasionally tilted her head while cleaning the table to glance over, and after realizing she could not understand it, she turned back to her other tasks.

This continued until Hu Li ran to the kitchen to wash the dishes. Yu Sheng was still staring very seriously at the screen, while Irene casually wandered over from the living room. Unlike Hu Li, she had no such restraint. Seeing Yu Sheng focused on the computer doing something unknown, she immediately ran over with quick pattering steps, grabbed his trousers, and climbed up.

“Hey, hey, what are you busy with? Can I take a look?”

Yu Sheng casually lifted Irene by the collar and placed her on the table.

“Don’t cause trouble. I’m writing something.”

“…Writing something?” Irene was instantly confused. “Why?”

“…My job. I’m a writer,” Yu Sheng said without looking up, only glancing at her from the corner of his eye. “You didn’t think I was unemployed, did you? I have a proper livelihood.”

Irene listened in a daze. Her little doll face gradually showed surprise, as if she had never considered that Yu Sheng might need to work or where household money came from. It looked like she had suddenly opened the door to a new world.

Yu Sheng did not care about her reaction and continued, “Lately expenses have been a bit high. We’ve bought a lot of things for the house, and I also have two manuscripts overdue by half a month. I need to finish them quickly. Don’t cause trouble, go watch TV properly.”

Irene stood there with her mouth open for a long time, then suddenly reacted. She scooted along the edge of the table under Yu Sheng’s arm and peeked at the screen.

“But you’re clearly browsing a video site…”

Yu Sheng kept a straight face. “…This is a necessary preparatory process before breaking through my train of thought.”

The little doll pointed at the screen. “But you also have a forum page open behind the video site.”

Yu Sheng continued to maintain his composure, though his eyes were slightly awkward. “Reading other people’s articles is also helpful. Forums like this often have very creative ideas. It helps stimulate inspiration.”

Irene raised her head. “But you don’t even have a document open…”

“Why are you talking so much nonsense!” Yu Sheng finally could not hold it anymore. He picked her up and placed her on the floor. “Have you ever written anything? This requires professionalism. Thinking and accumulation before writing are the main work…”

Irene stood beside the table leg with her hands on her hips and looked up. “Then when are you actually going to start writing?”

Yu Sheng glared. “When you stop causing trouble, I’ll start writing.”

The doll girl pouted and walked back to the living room, muttering as she went, “Tch, so many words for procrastination…”

Yu Sheng thought about it and felt that the little thing was actually right. Then he withdrew his gaze and continued staring at the video on the computer screen while emptying his mind.

He was a writer. That was the more respectable way of putting it. To put it bluntly, he was a mediocre second-rate author.

This was one of the few common threads between his remembered “hometown life” and his life in Boundary City. He had always done this job, from a quiet coastal town to this vast and unfamiliar city. The means by which he earned a living had not changed much, which could be considered very fortunate.

But these past days had been full of unexpected events. He found that he could not calm down to write at all. It was not that he lacked ideas, but that there were too many absurd ideas. He could no longer tell which ones belonged in fiction and which ones might actually point toward an Other Domain and attract something unsafe.

After truly encountering so much surreal phenomena, a writer who originally specialized in strange and supernatural fiction instead felt unusually lost.

He sat there in front of the computer with his mind blank. After an unknown amount of time, he finally took a deep breath and quickly closed the video and forum pages.

Yu Sheng, you need to get it together. Think about Hu Li’s appetite. Think about Hu Li’s new clothes. Think about the materials needed to build a body for Irene. And think about the new television that the doll has been thinking about.

A bottom-tier writer does not have that much savings to waste. If you don’t write, you’re going to be eating dirt. Forget being a supernatural investigator for now, you need to figure out how to feed the people in this house first.

So Yu Sheng slapped his face hard, moved the mouse, and opened a game.

Clearing his mind was too tiring. He would play a quick match against AI to relax first.

But before he could even start, something hit his calf. Irene had somehow slipped back from the living room and was now ramming her head into his leg.

“Yu Sheng, you’re playing games!”

“Why are you everywhere!” Yu Sheng immediately felt his dignity slipping. He bent down to chase her away, but before he could move, his pocket suddenly vibrated. Then the phone rang.

He took it out and saw an unfamiliar number.

After a brief hesitation, he answered and put it to his ear. “Hello?”

A young female voice on the other end sounded nervous and hesitant. “H-hello! Is this Mr. Yu? I was sent by Director Baili Qing! I’m here to deliver… deliver registration forms.”

Yu Sheng froze, then immediately reacted. This was the matter he had discussed with that “director” earlier. He had almost forgotten about it.

“Yes, yes, that’s me. That’s the thing,” Yu Sheng said quickly, standing up and putting Irene aside for the moment. He looked out the window while speaking. “I’m at home. Where are you now?”

“I should be right next to your house, but I can’t see it,” the voice said anxiously. “The director told me to call you before coming, but I forgot and only remembered after I arrived…”

“Wait there. I’ll open the door.”

Yu Sheng walked toward the entrance. Irene immediately called out behind him, “Hey, who is it? Should I disguise myself?”

Hu Li also came out somewhat nervously. “Do you need me to transform?”

“No need,” Yu Sheng waved his hand. “It’s the people who are here to handle your ID cards.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he reached the door and looked through the peephole. Sure enough, there was a young woman standing not far outside, holding a phone, looking around in confusion on the empty ground.

She looked very much like an overworked temporary employee who had been thrown out by her superiors.

Yu Sheng casually opened the door.

The short-haired girl in the open space jumped in surprise, then turned to stare blankly at the door that had suddenly appeared, and at Yu Sheng standing there.

“Mr. Yu!” she quickly ran over with small steps, still holding a document bag. “Hello, I’m from the Special Operations Bureau Second Team. You can call me Ren Wenwen. May I come in? I still need to take photos and handle registration… oh right, this is my ID, please take a look.”

While speaking, she hurriedly pulled out a black booklet from her pocket and opened it.

Yu Sheng glanced at it. It looked similar to the ID cards Li Lin and Xu Jiali had shown before.

In truth, he did not even need to verify it. At this point, the only people who knew both his phone number and the address of Wutong Road 66 were the Special Operations Bureau and “Little Red Riding Hood.”

Oh, and the three locksmiths before that.

“Come in,” Yu Sheng stepped aside.

As he did, he could not help but feel a bit strange. This self-proclaimed Ren Wenwen seemed unusually nervous. But not the kind of tension Li Lin and Xu Jiali had when they first entered Wutong Road 66. It was more like…

Hard to describe.

Ren Wenwen entered. Yu Sheng looked outside again, saw nothing in the empty space as always, then closed the door.

Irene and Hu Li curiously looked at the unexpected guest.

Ren Wenwen also curiously looked at the doll and the demon fox.

“How does the process go?” Yu Sheng asked, seeing the three of them frozen in place. “Do we register them first, or handle my registration first?”

“First… first we register their legal identities,” Ren Wenwen finally reacted and quickly took out forms from her bag and a portable device from her backpack. “You are forming an independent team, right? Then each member needs an identity. First fill out these two forms, then I’ll take photos and issue cards. I brought the equipment. The office is ready on the other end, so we can issue IDs and upload everything on-site.”

Yu Sheng watched as she quickly laid out a pile of items on the table, then pulled out two pens and looked up at the little doll standing on the table (66.6 cm) and the demon fox beside her.

“You fill them yourselves?”

Irene blinked, looked at the forms, then helplessly looked up at Yu Sheng.

She could not read these characters…

Yu Sheng sighed and stepped forward, taking the pen.

“I’ll fill them for her.”