The Investigators

He was back—back in this bizarre place known as "Jiecheng." Not long ago, it had felt like a massive, unsettling, and uncanny city. Yet seeing the familiar streetlights and buildings now, with dawn's dim light washing over the streets and sky, a strange feeling welled up from the bottom of Yu Sheng's heart—a sense of nostalgia he could scarcely believe. His ordeal trapped in that night-shrouded valley made returning to Jiecheng feel poignantly like coming home. A second later, a wave of dizziness brought on by his draining vitality cut his sentimental musings short. He looked down sluggishly to see bright crimson blood pooling beneath him and slowly spreading across the ground. His torso had been pierced clean through. The ghastly wound was enough to kill anyone in a matter of minutes. Even though this body now possessed astonishing recovery and resilience, he knew he was about to die again—the word "again" was something he had grown remarkably used to using. The culprit behind this horrific injury lay right beside him. The scaled "tail" severed from the monster had tumbled out of the doorway with him. As if still retaining a trace of life or even thought, it was squirming weakly in the pool of blood, inching along in an attempt to get away from this spot. Yu Sheng even got the impression it was trying to get away from him... This hunk of meat was afraid of him. Frowning, Yu Sheng struggled to his feet. He glanced at his front door not far away, scooped up the twitching, severed tail beside him, and hobbled forward. As he walked, he grumbled under his breath, "Aren't main characters supposed to be all set once they escape from a desperate situation...? The map cleared and my injuries still carried over? What kind of garbage mechanic is that...? Dammit, this hurts like hell..." The unrelenting blood loss slowly blurred his consciousness. Sapped of all strength, every step he took was a shaky, agonizing ordeal, as though he might collapse at any moment. For the last few steps, Yu Sheng moved forward almost entirely on instinct. He didn't even know why he was so determined to reach his house—perhaps to say hello to Irene? Or maybe just to keep morning passersby from finding his "corpse" on the pavement? Everything in his vision began to darken, the morning light tinged with a murky red. In his mind's eye, Hu Li's gold-and-red eyes resurfaced—at the very end, those eyes had blazed with bloodthirsty hunger, yet the last spark of her humanity had stubbornly clung on within the crimson depths. That fox... He wondered how she was doing. She had claimed she wouldn't die, but who knew if it was true... With those thoughts swirling in his head, Yu Sheng finally dragged himself to his front door. It wasn't locked. He jiggled the handle, pushed the door open, and stepped inside. Ahead and to the side, he saw the dining room opposite the entrance, and the oil painting still resting against the wall. Irene raised her head from the painting, looked toward the door in surprise, and slowly widened her eyes. Yu Sheng mustered a faint, last-wind smile. "Irene, I'm back." He knew his injuries were grave. If his body hadn't gained such terrifying toughness and healing power, he would have collapsed dead on the street already. The moment that thought crossed his mind, Yu Sheng's vision tilted. He slid down against the doorframe, and the familiar heavy darkness closed in from all sides—accompanied by Irene's terrified shriek. Now he had died inside. ... With the faint squeal of brakes, two electric scooters pulled to a stop deep along Wutong Road. Two figures stepped off their vehicles and looked around at the quiet, weathered street. One was a steady, dependable-looking middle-aged man wearing a long brown coat. He was tall and heavily built, with slightly dark skin and short black hair. An irregular scar near his neck gave him a somewhat formidable air, though the exhausted slump of his shoulders and the dark circles under his eyes clashed awkwardly with his burly frame and menacing scar—his face had the look of someone who had worked three months of mandatory overtime without a single day off. The other was a young man barely in his early twenties, also with short black hair. He was much slimmer than his companion and utterly plain-looking—the sort of face that would disappear the moment he vanished into a crowd. He wore a black-and-blue jacket with matching trousers, his expression taut with the nervous awkwardness of a rookie who had been dragged out on a field assignment just days after starting the job. Having ridden their scooters into this quiet old neighborhood, the pair surveyed the mundane buildings around them. A few local residents occasionally strolled past the intersection in the distance, but hardly anyone spared them a second glance. "Doesn't look weird at all here..." the young man mumbled. "Captain Song, you sure this is the place?" "The boundary alarm went off earlier, and the coordinates pointed right here," the middle-aged man named Captain Song said with a nod. "The signal vanished in an instant, but it was definitely a foreign domain reaction." "We rushed over as fast as we could and still missed it." The young man glanced at his electric scooter, hesitating. "Should we have taken a car...?" Captain Song gave him a look. "All the bureau's cars are out on field calls, except for Xu Jiali's beat-up seventh-hand clunker. You want to drive that? Floor the gas and it still might not beat your scooter." The young man gave a dry laugh and awkwardly changed the subject. "Uh, what about that agent from before... codename 'Little Red Riding Hood'? The one from Fairytale? Didn't she search around here and find nothing?" "Yeah, nothing at all. Which makes it even clearer that something's wrong with this place," Captain Song said, nodding slowly. "Little Red Riding Hood has done plenty of work for the Special Affairs Bureau. I know what she's capable of. Her wolves can sniff out even the faintest, most microscopic trace of anomaly in the area. But she combed this place all night and turned up blank." The young man blinked, not quite catching on. "Turned up blank. Don't get it?" Captain Song prompted again. "It's too clean, too normal. In the boundary zone, a plot of land is never this clean! Little Red Riding Hood's pack can pick up anomalies anywhere in this city, no matter how weak the scent is. But here... from an occult standpoint, this whole street is as clean as a vacuum!" Hearing that, the young man finally saw the point—the training from school had finally clicked with the situation in front of him. "Either this place really is that clean, and a 'pure zone' running deeply parallel to the outside world has popped up in the boundary zone—which isn't impossible, considering this is the boundary zone and anywhere in the world could intersect with it," Captain Song said with a wave of his hand, sounding weary, "or there's a... massive anomaly hiding here. Something that's constantly warping the local environment, creating a boundary vacuum that Little Red Riding Hood's wolves ran into." The tension on the young man's face grew visibly tighter. "I'm not approving a transfer to logistics," Captain Song said, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. "And you're not transferring to another team, either." "I didn't say I wanted to run!" the young man quickly protested, waving his hands. "I knew what I signed up for. I'm completely dedicated, loyal to the job, and ready to fulfill my duties—" A ringtone suddenly broke their conversation—a catchy, melodious tune from a wildly popular new anime. The young man froze, looking at his superior with a strange expression. "...You watch that too?" Captain Song's cheek twitched noticeably. He pulled the phone from his pocket with visible reluctance, muttering, "My daughter must have changed it behind my back. She's been watching it lately..." The young man's expression twisted subtly. He held his tongue for several seconds, swallowing the urge to ask whether it was really healthy for a middle schooler to be watching an anime about a bunch of lesbians starting a band... Captain Song answered the call, listened for a few seconds, and said, "Yes, Li Lin and I are on the scene. Same as Little Red Riding Hood's report—this place is unnervingly clean. Make arrangements on your end; we'll probably need to set up a permanent surveillance post here. I'll decide on the personnel when I get back. Also, reach out to Fairytale and see if they can send another operative over. This might turn into a long-term assignment..." Hanging up, Captain Song let out a long sigh and turned to find the young man, Li Lin, still staring at him. He paused, unable to help himself. "My daughter really changed it. I don't watch cartoons." Li Lin coughed dryly. "Uh, right, right. I believe you." After an awkward silence, both tacitly agreed to drop the topic. Just then, Li Lin seemed to spot something. Frowning slightly, he briskly walked toward a nearby wall corner. "Captain Song, come look at this!" He crouched to inspect it, then called out immediately. Captain Song walked over and followed where Li Lin was pointing. A patch of dark red marks clung to the corner of the wall, looking like dried blood. It covered a tiny area that would be easy to overlook from a distance, and right now, it was shrinking at a speed visible to the naked eye. It wasn't soaking into the concrete; it was vanishing into thin air. "Blood?" Captain Song's brow furrowed. Reacting instantly, he pulled a plastic vial and a portable scraper from his long coat. "No, that's not blood. Take a sample!" "On it." Li Lin took the tools and moved to scrape off the lingering dark red "bloodstain." But before the scraper could even touch the surface, the last speck of crimson abruptly gave a faint hiss and vanished entirely.