Chapter 87: Snow Accumulated in the Room

Chapter 87: Snow Accumulated in the Room

The greatest commotion in Wutong Road 66 was usually caused by Yu Sheng losing his temper and Irene screaming while scratching and struggling, with an added element now of Hu Li sitting nearby watching the chaos while loudly crunching potato chips.

Ten minutes later, Yu Sheng successfully subdued and punished the doll, who had been jumping around wildly and even trying to bite him, and hung her from the balcony clothes rack in the living room.

“Yu Sheng, you bastard! Put me down!” Irene flailed in midair with both arms spread. The clothes rod passed through her sleeves and held her up from behind, hanging her like a drying salted fish swinging in the air. “Temporary suspension! It’s just a temporary suspension! Only twelve hours, the account is still salvageable! Are you really going to hang me for twelve hours? Do you even have a conscience? At least hang me in a more comfortable position!”

“If I used clips you’d just break free yourself,” Yu Sheng said, sitting on the sofa nearby and glancing sideways at the dangling doll. “Hanging you up is to teach you a lesson. Don’t mess with my stuff so casually. Don’t worry, I’ll let you down before dinner. But if it happens again, I’ll hang you in the basement.”

The doll immediately erupted into noisy protest, showing her unyielding spirit and resistance to coercion: “I was wrong! I was wrong! I won’t do it again! Let me down, let me down…”

Her resistance mainly consisted of having no resistance. Despite how bad she was at games, how sharp-tongued she was, how bad-tempered and forgetful she was, she surrendered extremely quickly.

Yu Sheng treated her noise as background sound and ignored her completely.

Hu Li cautiously approached, still holding a bag of chips. She looked up at the doll hanging on the rack, then at Yu Sheng, hesitating for two or three seconds before speaking softly, “Benefactor, Irene really knows she was wrong. Can you let her down?”

As she spoke, she handed over the chips. “Eat something, then you won’t be angry anymore.”

Yu Sheng casually grabbed a few chips and tossed them into his mouth. He turned to look at Irene, then switched on the TV.

The doll immediately became quiet and started watching the screen seriously.

“See? She’s just loud when she’s making trouble. Once you ignore her, she’s like that,” Yu Sheng sighed, adopting an experienced tone toward Hu Li. “She’s basically a tough customer.”

“Oh.” Hu Li nodded in partial understanding, clearly not grasping what “tough customer” meant.

At that moment, a sudden “thud” came from upstairs, interrupting everyone in the living room.

Irene, still hanging from the rack, immediately looked up through the ceiling. “Hey, Yu Sheng, what fell upstairs? Did the ladder in the attic corner collapse?”

Yu Sheng stood up from the sofa, his brows furrowing as he looked toward the second floor.

“…No, the sound came from the end of the second-floor corridor,” he said quietly. “We need to check it out.”

Hu Li immediately stood up, her tail snapping out with a faint “buzz”: “I’ll go with you!”

“Hey, let me down too! I’m coming as well!” Irene shouted immediately. “I can hear something’s wrong too. If something happens, I need to protect you all!”

“Who’s protecting who is still debatable,” Yu Sheng muttered, but he still walked over and lifted the clothes rack down from the stand. He tilted it so the doll slid off onto the ground. “Forget it this time. Next time I’ll really hang you in the basement.”

Irene staggered twice before steadying herself on the ground, angrily fixing her clothes and sticking her tongue out at him.

A face that said: I may surrender quickly, but I’ll still dare next time, and I can still jump at you right now.

Yu Sheng ignored her, stretched his limbs, exchanged a glance with Hu Li, and walked first toward the stairs leading to the second floor.

On the second floor, he went straight down the corridor to the room at the very end, the one that had once contained Irene’s hanging oil painting.

The door was shut. Inside, there was no sound at all, as if nothing unusual existed.

But Yu Sheng was now certain that the loud “thud” they had just heard had indeed come from this room.

He still remembered that after the room had been opened once before, it had transformed from an empty space into a normal room with simple furnishings. The only thing that could possibly have produced a heavy impact sound inside was a mirror hanging on the wall. But that mirror had been firmly fixed in place, and even when he used great force, he could not pull it down.

Moreover, if it really had been the mirror falling, there should have been the sound of shattered glass as well.

Yu Sheng stepped forward and grasped the strange handle on the hinge side of the door, slowly turning it.

“Don’t open it yet,” Irene muttered in a low voice, spreading her hands. Thin strands of black “spider silk” extended from her fingertips, creeping through the gap under the door into the room. “I’ll check inside first.”

Hu Li also reacted, pulling off one of her ears with a soft pop. She pressed the fluffy fox ear against the door like a stethoscope, moving it slowly while wearing an extremely serious expression.

Yu Sheng could not help muttering, “Can you two act a bit more normal?”

“I am perfectly normal!” Irene replied in his mind. “That stupid fox is the abnormal one.”

“Benefactor,” Hu Li broke the silence, pressing her ear back onto her head. “There’s no movement inside.”

“I didn’t detect any abnormal aura either,” Irene said, retracting her black threads. “Open it.”

Yu Sheng nodded and slowly pushed the door open a crack.

Honestly, he also felt this was a bit excessive. This was inside their own home, yet just because of a single sound from upstairs, all three of them were treating it like a major threat. It was strange. But he also understood that this caution was necessary.

Wutong Road 66 was an Other Domain, and this room at the end of the second-floor corridor had never been quite right from the beginning.

The door opened. A wave of lingering cold air rushed out.

Yu Sheng shivered from the strange chill and instantly became alert.

Why would there be such cold air in the room? It felt like wind from a snow mountain, mixed with icy frost.

Yet when the door fully opened, he saw that the room was still the same ordinary room.

Simple bed, table, chairs, a mirror hanging on the wall, worn wooden floorboards, faded wallpaper with peeling corners, and plain curtains.

Everything remained unchanged. No intruders from another world. No rift opening into some foreign realm.

But Yu Sheng did not relax. He remained vigilant, carefully observing his surroundings as he stepped inside.

Irene followed in, curiously looking around this room that theoretically belonged to her.

She suddenly noticed something. “Hey! Yu Sheng, look at the floor by the wall! Near the door!”

Yu Sheng immediately turned in the direction she pointed.

He saw, near both sides of the doorway along the base of the wall, scattered small patches of white, along with several damp marks slowly fading on the floor.

“…Snow?” Yu Sheng crouched down to examine it, surprised to find that the white material was indeed snow, already melting into water stains due to the room’s warmth.

Irene looked stunned. “…Snow inside a house? That’s pretty weird, isn’t it?”

“Judging from the pattern of accumulation, it looks like it was blown against the wall by strong wind and gradually piled up,” Yu Sheng frowned, carefully inspecting the remaining snow clinging to the wall, his confusion deepening.

Hu Li crouched nearby and pressed her face close to the wall, sniffing intently.

“The scent of living beings,” the fox girl said seriously. “This snow comes from a place where living beings exist.”

Irene was shocked. “You can even smell that?!”

“Fox nose is very useful,” Hu Li said proudly.

“That’s way more sensitive than a dog’s nose…” Irene could not help but remark.

At that moment, Yu Sheng caught something in his peripheral vision.

He walked to a nearby table and bent down to pick up a black, palm-sized metal object from the floor underneath it.

It was an unknown metal component, resembling a distribution device used to connect multiple pipes and valves. It had several threaded openings and was hollow inside. It was light in the hand but seemed very sturdy.

Irene walked over and stared at it. “Uh… I’m guessing this isn’t something that originally belonged in this room?”

“Of course not,” Yu Sheng shook his head. “Just like rooms don’t randomly get snowfall, there also shouldn’t be a strange part like this… looks like it came off some kind of machine.”

While speaking, he cautiously approached the mirror facing the door.

The mirror reflected the room’s interior.

But Yu Sheng suddenly frowned.

Because deep within the seemingly normal reflection, another image appeared faintly overlaid inside the mirror.

It looked like a cave. A small cave. Outside its entrance, heavy snow was falling.