Li Lin stared blankly at the empty corner of the wall, sampling scraper still in hand, feeling so utterly dazed that he seemed to have forgotten what he was doing.
The middle-aged man known as "Captain Song"—Song Cheng, captain of the Special Affairs Bureau's Team Two—frowned deeply the moment the bloodstain vanished.
Something had been erased from his memory and train of thought, yet a faint impression remained. That lingering trace stimulated his spirituality, alerting him that something was wrong.
A murky radiance flickered in Song Cheng's eyes. He immediately reined in his mind, attempting to anchor that last residual impression before it could scatter alongside the lost memories. Years of professional training proved their worth at this crucial moment. Meanwhile, Li Lin, scraper still gripped in his hand, hesitated before looking up. "Boss, I feel like I suddenly forgot what I was supposed to be doing. Was there something here just now?"
"Mind interference!" Song Cheng caught on in an instant and barked a warning. "Check the depth here immediately!"
Without a second word, Li Lin set down his sampling tools. He quickly unhooked a palm-sized black box from his belt, tapped a few buttons on its surface, and pulled out a slender tube from its side. He pressed the needle-like tip of the tube straight against his eyeball. With the connection made, he looked up and slowly scanned his surroundings through the linked eye.
A faint hum came from inside the black metal box, and fluid seemed to flow sluggishly through the slender tube. Li Lin's eye gradually took on an ink-black hue, and through his spiritual vision, everything along the old street shifted into tones of black and white.
"Depth L-0, no foreign domain reaction," Li Lin reported as he observed. "No entities or residues that broke out from a foreign domain, either."
Song Cheng frowned and glanced at the box in Li Lin's hands. It was a portable depth detector—neither its sensory range nor its sensitivity could match standard suitcase-sized gear, but even a portable model should have been able to detect depth fluctuations within its area.
He was certain that something had genuinely tampered with his memory and thoughts just moments ago. He was still forcibly holding that residual impression pinned down in his mind. There had to be something sinister exerting an influence on them, yet... the equipment couldn't pick it up.
Just as Song Cheng was about to tell Li Lin to adjust the detector's sensory mode, the rookie seemed to spot something.
Li Lin locked his gaze on a spot at the end of the alley.
The eye connected to the tube was black as pitch, and within that profound darkness, an overlapping layer of vision was reflected. Amid the black-and-white street and buildings, he caught a faint, indistinct glimpse of color. It was exceedingly blurry and pale, impossible to identify clearly, but it was massive. After straining to make it out, he roughly discerned a faint, nearly transparent outline—judging its dimensions to be about the size of a whole house.
"Captain Song, there's something up ahead, but it's very blurry. Looks like a house," Li Lin said, cautiously stepping forward. "The depth reading still shows zero, and there's no contamination reaction... I'm almost right in front of it. Can you feel anything?"
Song Cheng followed close behind Li Lin, his right hand gripping a badge in his pocket, ready to intervene the second things went south. At the same time, he shook his head with a frown. "My spirituality isn't signaling any warning."
Li Lin came to a stop. Feeling that he was standing right before the hazy splash of color, he hesitated briefly before slowly extending his hand—
A sharp, piercing whine suddenly erupted from the black metal box, followed by several sharp cracks. Trailing a wisp of green smoke, the depth detector died.
The tube connected to his eyeball popped free in an instant. A sludge-like black substance oozed out of it, rapidly evaporating into thin air upon touching the atmosphere.
A sudden surge of stinging soreness flared in his eye, forcing a curse from Li Lin's lips: "Holy crap..."
He dropped the now-scorching black box and instinctively went to rub his connected eye. Seeing this, Song Cheng stepped forward at once and pressed a hand against Li Lin's temple. "Don't rub it! Give it a second!"
Li Lin froze in place. A warm heat spread near his temple, and the discomfort in his eyeball quickly subsided. A moment later, he recovered and looked down at the depth detector still giving off faint wisps of green smoke on the ground.
"...The Bureau covers this, right?"
"They'll cover it."
"Whew, good. Scared me for a second," Li Lin sighed in relief, then turned to look with lingering unease in the direction he had just reached toward.
Yet all that lay before him was a small clearing, bordered at the end by a wall covered in random graffiti. Someone had used colorful spray paint to sketch out windows, doors, a house, trees, and rocks.
He waved his hand forward through the air. He touched nothing.
"There's definitely something here. The equipment caught it just now, but it broke before I could confirm what it was," Li Lin muttered under his breath. "And before it died, the depth reading was still L-0."
"...Let's head back to the Bureau first," Song Cheng said after two seconds of deliberation, making up his mind. "As soon as we get back, I'll file a report with the Council. This place definitely warrants surveillance for a while. We can't rule out an unregistered foreign domain, and dealing with it will probably take heavy equipment and specialized deep divers. By the way, is your eye alright?"
"...If it's not, can I get half a day off?"
"No. We're short-staffed."
"Then it's fine. I'll just put in some eye drops when I get back."
Song Cheng nodded. Li Lin bent down and carefully picked up the now-cold wreckage of the depth detector, and the two walked back toward where they had parked their electric scooters.
Li Lin turned the key on his scooter. The LCD screen flickered once and promptly went dead.
He froze, looked up, and caught Captain Song giving him the exact same look.
"My scooter's dead... Yours too?"
Song Cheng gave a silent nod.
"...Do you think it's a coincidence?"
Song Cheng gently shook his head and said in a low voice, "The folks at the Academy have a specific phrase for this phenomenon."
Li Lin blinked, then recalled something he had once read in the files—
"The machine spirit is displeased." / "The machine spirit chickened out."
The two spoke at the exact same moment, completely out of sync.
A brief silence fell between them before both spoke in unison: "You remembered it wrong."
"We'll talk about it later," Song Cheng said, waving a dismissive hand as he began pushing his scooter forward. "Let's get out of here first."
Li Lin pushed his scooter alongside Song Cheng. "...Boss, are we really pushing them all the way back?"
"What else? You planning on ditching your ride?"
"Doesn't the Bureau have a small pickup or something? If not, we could at least call over that electric tricycle from the logistics office downstairs... Pushing it all the way back is gonna kill me..."
"Quit whining. You're young; don't tell me your stamina's worse than mine?"
The two veteran agents of the Special Affairs Bureau pushed their electric scooters farther and farther away, their silhouettes gradually fading at the mouth of Wutong Road.
***
Yu Sheng was already thoroughly accustomed to the boundless, heavy darkness around him. He had been visiting it rather frequently of late, to the point where floating in this dark chaos felt almost like coming home.
Irene's scream still echoed in his ears.
He figured that walking in covered in blood with a gaping hole in his gut and dropping dead on the floor had probably terrified the doll in the painting. It seemed that even as a "cursed object," Irene's mental fortitude was only so-so.
That only made Yu Sheng look forward to what would happen upon his return.
When he returned to the world of the living and appeared before Irene once more... how would Miss Doll react?
Would she... still remember him walking through the door and dropping dead inside the house?
As he drifted in the dark, Hu Li's figure surfaced in his mind's eye. Recalling his experience in that night-shrouded valley, he remembered that when Hu Li had seen him in the ruined temple, she had completely forgotten about headbutting him to death. Although she had somehow suddenly recalled it later on, she had indeed forgotten his death entirely at the start.
Yu Sheng had no idea how this forgetting worked, nor was he certain whether the issue lay with him or with Hu Li. After all, that fox girl's thoughts had already been in a state of utter disarray, so it was hardly surprising if she abruptly blanked on certain things.
But if Irene didn't remember him dying on the floor either, Yu Sheng could be fairly certain... that the issue was his own.
There was no way to tell how much time passed while drifting in the dark. So, after sorting through his experiences thus far, Yu Sheng emptied his mind to let his frayed nerves rest a bit, patiently awaiting the moment the darkness would end.
Then, he felt that familiar sensation of falling, feeling himself hurtling back toward the mortal realm.
Prepared for it, Yu Sheng immediately focused his mind, trying to capture the sensation of crossing that threshold—
Familiar scenes flickered before his eyes, and an indistinct guiding pull urged him to plunge in a specific direction. He struggled to make out the fleeting images rushing past, but before he could grasp anything, one of the scenes enlarged rapidly before him—
No. 66 Wutong Road, the living room past the front door.
Yu Sheng snapped his eyes open.
The familiar home furnishings came into view. In the dining area beside the living room, that antique, exquisite oil painting was resting quietly on the dining table.
Irene, from within the oil painting, broke the silence.
"Yu Sheng! You're finally back!"
Chapter 19