Chapter 92: Accumulating Knowledge

Chapter 92: Accumulating Knowledge

The girl in the red coat stood under the streetlight. The light spilled across her slightly thin frame, while shadows beneath her feet and around her writhed. Within those shadows hid pairs of alert, probing eyes. One of them noticed the approaching outsiders, and Little Red Riding Hood immediately became aware of Yu Sheng’s group.

“Sorry, the ride was a bit slow,” Yu Sheng waved at her. “Have you been waiting long?”

“Only a few minutes,” Little Red Riding Hood replied casually, then turned her gaze aside. “I already sent my wolf to scout around. No unusual changes were found. The Museum should be stable today. A good day for an operation. By the way, did you read the materials I sent you?”

“I did,” Yu Sheng nodded, following her gaze toward the large building standing quietly in the night.

But it was not actually a museum. It was an old theater that had stopped operating for the public many years ago. The entrance to the so-called Museum was inside this theater.

“After the ‘Museum Night’ begins, do not touch exhibits that emit breathing sounds. Do not maintain prolonged eye contact with portrait paintings. Do not enter red rooms. If you see plastic mannequins in guide uniforms, pay attention to their gestures and do not enter any doors they indicate or imply. Those are basically the main rules,” Little Red Riding Hood continued, still a little uneasy. “The Museum is a relatively stable Other Domain. Its Depth has long been maintained around L-2. As long as the rules are followed, its danger is controllable, so its Danger Level is rated as level two…”

Listening to her repeated reminders, Yu Sheng recalled the introductory materials he had seen in the Boundary Communication database when he first familiarized himself with it.

Those materials were the biggest gain he had obtained after registering with the Special Operations Bureau: a structured foundation of information about the supernatural world, including the concepts of Depth and Danger Level that Li Lin and Xu Jiali had mentioned before but he had never fully understood.

Depth, in simple terms, refers to the degree of deviation an Other Domain has from the real world. The real world is defined as zero, and Depth increases from L-1 up to L-5. An L-1 domain may only be slightly strange, where even ordinary people might accidentally walk out. An L-5 domain, except for extremely rare and irreproducible survivor records, is essentially impossible to survive, and even whether an L-5 domain truly has an “exit” is uncertain even to experts.

In general, the Depth of an Other Domain is relatively stable, but it may fluctuate slightly due to time or specific conditions. Exploring shallow-depth domains is relatively safe, while sudden changes in Depth are a major cause of death for many spirit-world investigators and researchers.

Danger Level is another important parameter used to measure the threat of an Other Domain. In most cases, Danger Level is proportional to Depth: shallow domains are safer, deeper ones more dangerous. However, this is not absolute. Some shallow domains can generate extremely terrifying entities, and some L-3 domains, already considered high-risk, may even contain stable safe zones.

Because of these exceptions, Danger Level and Depth are treated as independent parameters.

At the same time, Danger Level is not only used for domains, but also for evaluating the threat level of entities themselves.

The group walked toward the entrance of the old theater.

“To be honest, by the rules, I shouldn’t be bringing a newcomer like you into an L-2 Museum-type Other Domain. New spirit-world investigators usually start from L-1 domains since shallow ones are more stable and easier to retreat from,” Little Red Riding Hood said as they walked. “But you two are not ordinary rookies. Even Nightfall Valley was handled by you. Apart from lacking experience and knowledge, your actual capability is already above standard.”

“No problem. It’s just for gaining experience,” Yu Sheng replied casually, then glanced curiously at the girl beside him. “By the way, I suddenly feel like you’re quite used to taking care of people.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You seem mature and cold normally, but once you start working you keep explaining everything, especially when guiding newcomers. You’re like a team leader or a parent.”

Little Red Riding Hood stopped walking for a couple of seconds, her expression slightly subtle.

But she said nothing, only clicked her tongue softly and continued forward.

“You understand the concepts of Depth and Danger Level now, right?” she broke the silence after a few steps.

“Yeah. Depth is basically ‘how weird this place is,’ and Danger Level is ‘how deadly it is,’ right?” Yu Sheng waved a hand. “Pretty easy to understand.”

“That interpretation is crude, but quite accurate,” Little Red Riding Hood nodded. “The Museum is L-2 Depth, a standard Other Domain level. It already deviates significantly from the real world. The environment itself is distorted and very dangerous for ordinary people. However, its internal structure still largely follows common sense and human cognitive logic. As long as you follow the rules, nothing will happen…”

Before she could finish, Yu Sheng added, “Danger Level 2 means it won’t actively kill people, it doesn’t have inherent or indiscriminate hostility, but if the rules are violated, it can still cause serious injury or death, right?”

“Not bad. You remembered it well. Then I won’t worry.”

Little Red Riding Hood spoke casually, then stopped.

They had already entered the old theater. After passing through the slightly ajar iron gate, the interior revealed a hall paved with dark green tiles. Corridors led deeper into the theater on both sides, and directly opposite the entrance were several dark, empty ticket windows.

But what first caught Yu Sheng’s attention was a strange device placed in the center of the hall.

It was a black-gray metallic quadrangular pillar, wider at the bottom and narrower at the top, about half a person tall. At its top, several lights flickered faintly. Inside, a low, intermittent buzzing sound could be heard, indicating it was running.

“This was placed here by the Special Operations Bureau. We call it a ‘node,’ officially a Constant-Type Node Generator,” Little Red Riding Hood said, pointing at the device. “The low-frequency cognitive interference it emits affects ordinary people, making them avoid known dangerous locations in the Boundary Zone. The effect is weak, but sufficient for people without spiritual awakening.”

“…Are there many of these in the city?” Yu Sheng looked at it in surprise. “I’ve never noticed them…”

Little Red Riding Hood glanced at him. She almost instinctively wanted to say, “Because you were an ordinary person before, you wouldn’t go near these things,” but swallowed the words back.

Because she felt even the fox beside him had more “human presence” than Yu Sheng…

“How effective are these things? Do they really keep ordinary people out?” Yu Sheng asked again.

“They work, but no safety measure is perfect. Even if you sealed this place with steel and concrete, there will always be people trying to break in with hydraulic cutters and drills,” Little Red Riding Hood sighed. “Some are stubborn, some are naturally reckless, and some are just unlucky or highly sensitive to spiritual perception and unaffected by nodes. So people occasionally fall into Other Domains, and we end up rescuing them. They either become payment for investigators, become internal case reports, or, in rare cases, after psychological treatment, become new investigators or Bureau personnel.”

“Why not just dismantle this place?” Hu Li asked suddenly.

“If you dismantle it, things get worse,” Little Red Riding Hood said helplessly, since she knew Hu Li lacked common sense. “You only remove a known entrance. The Other Domain itself is not in the physical world. If you destroy a controlled entry point, nobody knows where it will open next time.”

Hearing this, Yu Sheng could not help but reflect that human curiosity really was uncontrollable.

At that moment, Little Red Riding Hood stepped forward and swiped her ID card across the top of the node.

“Entry registration,” she said, turning back and shaking the card. “In case someone dies inside, retrieval teams know where to look. Once you enter an Other Domain, external communication is mostly cut off. Registering at a node is the last trace you leave in the real world.”

Yu Sheng followed suit and registered with Irene and Hu Li. While operating it, he could not help but remark, “Good thing we got them registered…”

A faint hum came from the node.

Then Little Red Riding Hood led them past it toward the far end of the hall.

She stopped in front of the empty ticket windows.

The old theater had long been abandoned, so all ticket booths were out of service. Two of the four windows were sealed with crossed plastic tape. One was empty except for discarded junk. The last still held a ticket machine, covered in dust.

Little Red Riding Hood stood in front of that window and checked the time on her phone.

Two or three minutes later, she knocked on the glass.

“Night session. Museum Night. Four tickets.”

Light suddenly appeared inside the empty ticket window. Even though the lamp was shattered, a warm glow filled the dusty compartment.

It was as if an invisible ticket clerk, lost in time and memory, was still sitting behind the window.

The old ticket machine creaked loudly. The empty paper feeder spun again and again, beginning to spit out admission tickets.