A voice echoed in Yu Sheng's mind, startling him and disrupting the daze induced by the cold wind sweeping through the valley.
He was momentarily stunned and only regained his senses after a second shout from Eran.
"…Eran?” Yu Sheng blinked, cautiously observing the surroundings while making his way toward the dilapidated old temple, trying to find a temporary refuge.
In his heart, he struggled to respond, “How… did you contact me? I mean, you’re speaking right in my head…”
“Is that so difficult?” Eran replied confidently, “I am Alice’s puppet!”
Yu Sheng pondered for a moment, unable to connect the dots… Does that mean Alice's puppets all have this ability? To speak in others' minds?
“I’ve already entered your dreams once, right? Once is enough to find the way,” Eran explained patiently when Yu Sheng didn’t immediately reply.
However, she quickly switched tones, “Hey, where have you run off to? I can't sense you at all…”
After a brief silence, Yu Sheng looked around the shadowy valley and felt an unsettling chill in his heart as if a monstrous beast would appear at any moment, accompanied by a dramatic soundtrack. “…I might have taken a little trip. I don’t think I can get back easily…”
Eran paused for a moment, her voice taking a few seconds to respond. “…Didn’t you say you just went out to throw away some trash? Did a garbage truck pick you up?!”
Yu Sheng couldn’t fathom how she managed to jump to such conclusions…
Yet, he had to admit that hearing Eran's voice slightly calmed the panic that bubbled within him from being stranded in this desolate place… just a little.
At least the voice proved that his connection to the original world hadn’t been entirely severed.
Since Eran could reach him, there should still be a chance to return—though he couldn’t think of any reason or clue to support that idea, it was a belief he needed to hold onto.
Right now, the priority was ensuring his own safety.
The valley was eerily quiet.
The only sounds were the occasional rustle of wind, but Yu Sheng felt a lurking, oppressive presence watching him.
A certain… cold, empty gaze was scanning the area, and he couldn’t shake the feeling he was being observed.
This left him increasingly anxious, spurring him to find a corner to hide in.
He couldn't continue standing out in the open like a sitting duck.
His choices for shelter seemed limited to the nearly collapsed old temple—a dense forest lay in the distance, its atmosphere more sinister.
Besides, venturing into the “dark woods at night” was a classic recipe for disaster, and he had no desire to draw closer.
Unfortunately, breaking into the old temple at this hour was also a sure way to invite trouble; both options could easily lead to a thrilling but terrifying encounter.
Grinding his teeth, Yu Sheng decided to approach the lone corner of the crumbling temple that still stood intact.
Meanwhile, he contacted Eran in his mind, trying to explain his situation—it wasn’t much since even he didn’t understand how everything had happened.
He had merely opened a door…
After a lengthy pause, Eran hesitantly spoke, “You sound like you've ended up in an ‘Exotic Domain’?”
Yu Sheng stood among the ruins, taken aback. “An Exotic Domain? You really call this place that? Do you know where I am?”
For some reason, Eran sounded a bit confused. “Huh? There are many Exotic Domains; how would I know which one you fell into…?”
Hearing this, Yu Sheng furrowed his brow, suddenly realizing he’d gained more knowledge about “supernatural realms” and it dawned on him something crucial:
It seemed he had not been cast into “another world” but encountered a “natural phenomenon” that, in Eran's view, wasn’t unusual.
As Yu Sheng contemplated this, Eran seemed to connect the dots as well and responded incredulously, “…You haven’t heard of ‘Exotic Domains,’ have you?”
Yu Sheng replied with an odd expression, “Should I have? Isn’t this common knowledge?”
“Oh, it’s normal for ordinary people not to know about Exotic Domains, since most people will never encounter such things in their lives,” Eran casually remarked.
However, her next sentence astonished Yu Sheng. “But you shouldn’t be unaware.”
“Why should I know?” he retorted, bewildered, “I’m just an ordinary person…”
“…But you live in an Exotic Domain every day,” she added.
As shadows moved through the night, hunters lurked unseen.
A fierce wolf leaped from the shadows, agilely springing across the uneven rooftops of the old town before silently landing in the deserted street, scanning the surroundings.
“Come back!” an annoyed female voice echoed from the shadows of a nearby building.
The wolf shrank its neck with a whimper before hurriedly retreating to the shelter of the nearby structure.
Dressed in a dark red coat and black skirt, a girl stood in the corner between two old houses.
She ruffled the wolf's fur, which had just returned, and lifted her gaze toward the end of the street.
This was a short street with only a few dozen families living along its length.
The street was clear, allowing her to quickly assess the situation, even without the wolf's keen eyesight.
Frowning, she was interrupted by a familiar ringtone—the classic theme from the 1986 version of Journey to the West.
Just as the monkey completed its second flip, she answered, “It’s me. Yes, I’m in the old town, on Wutong Road.”
A voice on the other end, sounding weary from working late, droned on with a series of complaints.
The girl listened patiently for a moment before smirking, “I arrived, but I found nothing—my wolf has searched the entire street back and forth; there’s no sign of the Exotic Domain opening, nor any trace of anything escaping from it.”
There was a brief silence of two or three seconds before the other voice replied, “But the monitoring team is certain that there was an Exotic Domain response on Wutong Road; there definitely was a portal to an Exotic Domain that briefly appeared…”
“I believe that,” the girl said helplessly, “I still trust your team’s expertise, but I equally trust my wolf—perhaps there was a brief portal here, but it’s surely vanished now… Considering how an Exotic Domain wouldn’t usually disconnect from the real world so quickly, maybe ‘someone’ dealt with it.”
“Few possess the ability to sever the connection to an Exotic Domain so swiftly, and their organizations are usually registered and have communication channels with our task force,” the tired-sounding voice continued. “But I haven’t received any communication tonight regarding such matters…”
“Maybe it was the hermit society; they’re always so mysterious…”
The girl casually remarked before, unsurprisingly, hearing a rant from the phone again, prompting her to sigh and repeatedly concede, “Alright, alright, I understand; they’re all esteemed scholars, right? I respect scholars a lot. Enough said. I’ll take my wolf pack to search the shadows again. Wutong Road isn’t very big—there are only sixty-five houses; searching again won’t be much trouble…”
After hanging up, her ears finally fell into silence.
The girl looked at her now-dark phone screen and sighed before glancing down at the restless wolf heads surrounding her, unable to suppress another sigh.
“I haven’t even finished my assignments… Sigh, the life of outsourcing truly is tough…”
Yu Sheng sat tucked away in a relatively sturdy corner of the dilapidated temple.
The cold wind blew through the gaping holes in the wall as he gazed up at the pitch-black night sky, attempting to clear his mind but failing.
Just moments ago, he had uncovered a truth.
The only stable place he had found in the city was actually an abnormality known as an "Exotic Domain."
In Eran's words, an "Exotic Domain" was a realm outside the norm, a dimension at the edge of rationality—while the world ordinary people inhabited seemed like a sturdy mountain, solid and secure, countless tiny “holes” led to the irrational and the chaotic.
For most people, they’d live their lives without ever encountering these “holes,” never seeing the bizarre wonders beyond them.
Yet the faint light leaking from those holes always caught the eyes of a few—once glimpsed, certain things could never be reversed.
—Even for a well-versed puppet in the picture, living in an Exotic Domain for an extended period was still somewhat ridiculous…
(End of Chapter)