Li Lin stared blankly at the empty corner of the wall, his hand gripping a sampling scraper, feeling as if he had forgotten what he was doing.
The middle-aged man known as "Team Leader Song," head of the Special Operations Bureau's Second Team, furrowed his brows tightly when the bloodstains vanished before his eyes.
Something had slipped from his memory, leaving only vague impressions behind.
These impressions stirred his intuition, making him notice something was off.
A glimmer of chaos flickered in Song Cheng's eyes.
He quickly regained control of his mind, trying to solidify that last bit of lingering impression so that it wouldn't disappear along with his memories.
Years of professional training kicked in at that moment.
After hesitating, Li Lin looked up and said, "Leader, I feel like I suddenly forgot what I was supposed to do. Did something happen here just now?"
"There’s some sort of mental disturbance!" Song Cheng responded quickly, reminding him fast, "Check the 'depth' here immediately."
Without a word, Li Lin put down the scraper and swiftly took out a small pitch-black box from his belt.
He pressed a few buttons on the surface and pulled out a thin "tube" from the side, connecting its needle-like end to his eye.
After doing all this, he raised his head and slowly scanned the surroundings with the eye connected to the tube.
A faint buzzing sound came from the black box, and it seemed that some liquid flowed slowly through the tube.
Li Lin’s eyes gradually turned pitch black, and in his spirit vision, everything in the old street began to dress itself in shades of black and white.
“Depth L-0, no otherworldly reaction,” Li Lin reported while observing, “I don’t see anything running out from the 'otherworld' or any residue.”
Song Cheng frowned as he glanced at the box Li Lin held.
This was a portable depth gauge, far less sensitive than the standard suitcase-sized equipment.
However, even with this portable version, it should still have detected any changes in 'depth' in the vicinity.
He felt certain that something had indeed interfered with his memory and thoughts just moments ago.
That lingering impression was still forcibly locked in his mind, and there was definitely something bizarre exerting an influence on him here, but... the equipment couldn’t detect it.
Just as he was about to speak up and ask Li Lin to adjust the gauge's sensitivity, Li Lin suddenly seemed to have discovered something.
He stared intently at a spot at the end of the alley.
The eye connected to the tube was as dark as ink, and in that deep blackness, another layer of vision mirrored back to him.
He noticed that between the black-and-white-covered buildings in the street, there faintly appeared a hint of color — that color was extremely vague and faint, making it hard to tell what it was, but its scale was quite large.
After squinting for a while, he roughly determined that the nearly transparent outline he saw was about the size of a house.
"Team Leader Song, there’s something ahead, but it’s vague, looks like a house," he said carefully as he moved forward, "The depth reading is still 0, and there’s no pollution response... I'm almost in front of it, can you sense anything?"
Song Cheng followed behind Li Lin, his right hand clasping a badge in his pocket, ready to intervene if things went awry, shaking his head.
"Nothing alarming from my spirit perception."
Li Lin stopped at a certain point, feeling as if he had arrived before that misty patch of color.
After a moment's hesitation, he slowly extended his hand forward—
Suddenly, a sharp buzzing sound erupted from the black box, followed by a few crackling noises and a puff of blue smoke as the depth gauge came to a halt.
The thin tube fell away from his eye, and a thick, muddy substance poured out, rapidly evaporating upon contact with the air.
The sudden stinging pain in his eye made Li Lin involuntarily exclaim, “What the...,” as he tossed aside the now burning box, instinctively reaching to rub the eye with which he had established a connection.
Seeing this, Song Cheng quickly stepped forward and pressed a hand against Li Lin’s temple. “Don’t rub it! Just wait a moment!”
Li Lin froze in place, feeling a burning sensation around his temple, while the discomfort in his eye swiftly faded.
Moments later, he recovered, spotting the depth gauge on the ground, still emitting wisps of blue smoke.
“… Should I report this to the bureau?”
“Report it.”
“Good, I was startled,” Li Lin sighed in relief, then turned his head, looking back towards the direction where he had reached out.
However, there was only a small patch of open space, bordered at the end by a wall — the wall was marred with haphazard colorful graffiti, depicting doors, windows, houses, trees, and stones in vibrant paint.
He waved his hand in front of him, but touched nothing.
“There must be something here; the equipment already detected it, but before I could confirm it, it broke,” Li Lin murmured, “Before it broke, the reading was still L-0.”
“... Let’s head back to the bureau,” Song Cheng pondered for a moment before deciding, “We’ll report this to the council when we return. This place needs to be monitored for a while; it could be some unregistered 'otherworld.' We’ll likely need large equipment and specialized ‘deep divers’ to handle it. By the way, how’s your eye?”
“… If there’s a problem, can I get half a day off?”
“No way, the bureau needs personnel.”
“Then it’s fine; I’ll just put some eye drops when I get back.”
Song Cheng nodded, while Li Lin bent down carefully to pick up the now non-smoking wreckage of the depth gauge, and the two made their way back to where they had parked their electric scooter.
Li Lin twisted the key in the scooter’s ignition, and the LCD screen flashed once before going out.
He paused for a moment, looking up at Team Leader Song, whose gaze mirrored his own.
“My scooter is broken… you too?” Song Cheng silently nodded.
“… Do you think it’s a coincidence?”
Song Cheng gently shook his head and spoke in a deep voice, "Those from the 'Academy' have a specific term to describe this phenomenon."
Li Lin froze for a moment, recalling some documents he had seen before —
“Machine soul is unhappy.” / “The machine soul has faltered.”
Both of them muttered, then shared a brief silence before simultaneously stating, “You remembered it wrong.”
“Let’s talk about it later,” Song Cheng waved his hand, pushing the scooter as they slowly headed back, “Let’s leave this place first.”
Li Lin followed behind, pushing the scooter, “... Leader, we’re just going to push it back like this?”
“Unless you want to abandon your scooter?”
“Doesn’t the bureau have a little truck? We could call for that electric tricycle from downstairs in the logistics department… This pushing back is going to kill me…”
“Stop talking nonsense; you’re young, and your stamina is worse than mine?”
The two seasoned operatives of the Special Operations Bureau pushed the electric scooter farther away, their figures gradually disappearing at the end of Wutong Road.
…
Yu Sheng was quite familiar with the boundless darkness surrounding him.
Recently, he had come here more frequently and had begun to feel a sense of home amidst the chaos.
Erin’s screams still rang in his ears.
He thought, the scene of himself bleeding with a hole in his stomach as he pushed the door into the house and died inside must have terrified the doll in the painting — it seemed that even as a "cursed item," Erin's mental endurance was not that impressive.
This further made Yu Sheng look forward to what might happen when he "returned."
When he came back to life and reappeared before Erin... what would the doll's response be?
Would she… remember that scene of him pushing the door into the dead house?
Floating in the darkness, Yu Sheng's mind conjured the figure of Hu Li, recalling the time when he had met her in that ruined temple, when she had completely forgotten about the headbutt that had killed him — though for some unknown reason, she remembered later on, initially, Hu Li had indeed completely forgotten about his "death."
Yu Sheng was unsure how this "forgetting" worked, nor did he know if it was his issue or Hu Li's.
After all, that fox girl’s thoughts seemed rather jumbled, and it was reasonable for her to suddenly forget things.
But if Erin also didn't remember the scene of him pushing the door into the dead house, it could practically confirm... that the problem lay within himself.
Time passed endlessly in the floating darkness, so after organizing his experiences so far, Yu Sheng cleared his mind, letting his tension ease a bit while patiently waiting for the moment the darkness ended.
Then, he felt that familiar sensation of falling, the sense that he was quickly "returning" to the mortal realm.
Prepared in advance, Yu Sheng immediately focused his mind, trying to capture the impression of crossing the "boundary" at that precise moment —
Familiar scenes surfaced before him, and a vague guiding feeling urged him to "fall" in a specific direction.
He struggled to distinguish through the myriad fleeting images, but before he could grasp anything, he "saw" one picture sharply enlarge before him —
No. 66 Wutong Road, the living room just inside the door.
Yu Sheng suddenly opened his eyes.
The familiar furnishings of his home met his gaze.
In the adjacent dining room, the exquisite old oil painting stood quietly on the dining table.
In the painting, Erin broke the silence.
“Yu Sheng! You’re finally back!”
(End of this chapter)