The door of the small supermarket slammed shut, cutting off the searing heat from that scorched planet and the sudden burst of murderous intent from the two black-armored soldiers. Yu Sheng stood quietly at the entrance, somewhat dazed.
After freezing for several seconds, he drew in a sharp breath and turned to look around.
There were few pedestrians on the street. The occasional passerby seemed not to notice anything amiss here at all. Only Yu Sheng had stood face-to-face with that bizarre scene just seconds earlier, left reeling in the breeze.
After a moment of disorientation, he slowly turned back to look at the storefront.
Over the past two months, he had visited more than once. Located in Old Town, this small supermarket didn't carry a huge selection, but basic daily necessities, rice, flour, grain, and oil were well-stocked. The owners were a young married couple, and Yu Sheng was reasonably well-acquainted with them by now.
There was nothing unusual about the shop's facade. It was just an ordinary ground-floor storefront with large street-facing glass display windows, crammed full of promotional flyers and shelves of small merchandise pressed against the panes. The hinge on one side of the glass double doors was stiff, and an A4 sheet reading "Out of Order" was taped to that half. Peering through the glass, one could see somewhat crowded aisles and the owner moving stock beside a shelf.
It looked completely normal—nothing could be more ordinary.
Yet Yu Sheng would never mistake what he had just seen for a hallucination. Even now, that searing breath laced with a faint scent of sulfur seemed to linger in his nostrils.
He had nearly stepped through. Fortunately, the lingering trauma from previously falling into a foreign domain had left him hypervigilant—not just about his front door at home, but about any door. Every time he opened one, he instinctively hesitated a beat. The other reason for his hesitation had been the sudden jolt that had shivered through his core the moment he pulled the door open.
Yu Sheng steadied himself outside the supermarket. After a moment's contemplation, he reached out again and gripped the handle. Applying a little force, he pushed the door open slightly and poked his head in to look.
Inside was an ordinary supermarket. There were no other customers at this hour, and the owner was still busy behind the shelves, seemingly unaware of any commotion at the door.
Yu Sheng pulled back, shut the door tight, and then gripped the handle firmly once more. Drawing a deep breath, he gritted his teeth as if daring himself, and shoved it wide open.
A tall, fair-haired woman in a silvery-white robe stood on an elevated platform across the threshold, turning her head in surprise to look at Yu Sheng.
She was beautiful, but beneath her golden hair, her ears were far from human—long, slender, elegant pointed ears. Several faintly glowing conduits and data cables extended from behind them, connecting to something behind her.
What caught Yu Sheng's attention even more, however, were the wheeled assemblies extending from beneath the hem of her silvery robe, and the mechanical limbs swaying in the air behind her, gripping an assortment of tools.
A voice called out from somewhere across the threshold: "...Boss! The client wants to know if the faster-than-light core sent over last week is fixed yet!"
The blonde woman didn't respond. She simply stared straight at Yu Sheng standing in the doorway, choked on her words for several seconds, and finally screamed:
"How the fuck did you get in here?!"
Yu Sheng slammed the door shut with a bang.
Yet the next second, he yanked it open again—because he hadn't gotten a clear look earlier. Was that an elf across the door? This was the first time in his life he'd ever seen an elf! Was it really an elf?! And wasn't that art style completely off?!
The door swung open. A young boy dressed in a coarse brown Daoist robe found himself staring face-to-face with Yu Sheng. Smoke and soot curled around the doorframe. The boy held a feather fan frozen mid-stroke, his eyes bulging as if they were about to pop out.
Before Yu Sheng could utter a word, the boy threw the fan down as if he'd seen a ghost. Leaping and hollering, he bolted away: "Master! Master! Eldest Senior Brother succeeded! A human head popped out of Eldest Senior Brother's alchemy furnace! It's got eyes and a nose! It's even breathing!"
"What the fu—"
Yu Sheng let out a strangled cry, slammed the door with all his might, and stumbled back several paces before catching his balance.
He glanced back at the street and noticed several pedestrians eyeing him in confusion. But they seemed only puzzled by his bizarre antics; because he had shut the door so swiftly, no one had noticed what lay beyond.
Yu Sheng quickly composed his expression, pretended nothing had happened, and stepped aside. Only after the onlookers lost interest did he lean against a wall, panting heavily, and stand at the street corner contemplating his entire existence.
The situation was so chaotic and bizarre that he didn't even know whether he was scared out of his wits, undergoing a complete paradigm shift, or recovering from a brush with death. All he knew was that a dozen storms were raging in his head—or perhaps two hundred Irenes were yammering all at once. An overwhelming clamor of wild thoughts collided inside his mind, and it took him seven or eight minutes just to regain his senses.
Yet one thing became clear very quickly.
Those places beyond the door... were not foreign domains.
At the very least, neither the workshop of that mechanical elven beauty nor the room with the fan-wielding Daoist boy could possibly be foreign domains. As for the two imposing soldiers in power armor engaged in a firefight at the beginning... the environment around them had been harsh, so it was hard to say whether that had been a foreign domain or not...
After a long time, Yu Sheng's scrambled thoughts finally settled. He forcefully sorted through and suppressed the wild flood of conjectures, then lowered his head and looked at his hands.
After much hesitation, he slowly reached out toward the side—
He was standing at a corner of the alley, right next to a wall—a bare brick wall coated in concrete.
He ran his hand over the bare, rough masonry, slowly curled his fingers, and imagined... that there was a door there.
Just like the hidden handle he had found at the end of the corridor in his rented home, right outside the room where he discovered Irene; just like when he had been flung into the air by the monster in that dark valley, instinctively grabbing at empty air to pull open a door back to reality—
His hand touched one: a door.
He couldn't see it, yet the door appeared. He gripped the handle, and the door began to materialize, gradually taking form. With a rigid expression, he slowly turned his head. The door was faintly shimmering in his field of vision, appearing ready to open at any moment with the slightest push.
"Holy shit!"
Yu Sheng let out a low gasp. In his sudden panic, his grip instinctively loosened, and the "door" instantly vanished into the wall without a sound.
His heart pounded furiously, feeling as though it might jump straight out of his mouth at any second.
He took several deep breaths to calm down, recalled the tactile sensation of grasping that handle just now, and gave a faint, wry twitch of his lips.
"Irene," he called in his mind, his voice tinged with a complex mix of hesitation and emotion he couldn't quite name.
"Yeah?" Irene's voice chimed in at once, as brisk as ever. "I was just about to contact you. You've been out for quite a while. Didn't you say the supermarket was right at the corner... Did you buy too much stuff?"
Yu Sheng: "...I haven't gone inside the supermarket yet."
Irene: "Did you get lost?"
"I just wanted to let you know that I probably won't be looking to move anymore," Yu Sheng said, ignoring her silly guess.
"Huh?! Really?" Irene sounded somewhat pleased, yet curious. "Why? Didn't you say the house felt off? Especially since opening the door might randomly throw you who-knows-where..."
"Nothing much. I just suddenly realized... regarding that biggest problem, the house might not be what's off," Yu Sheng sighed. "What's off seems to be me."
Irene: "...?"
She said nothing, but Yu Sheng could readily picture the doll's face plastered with question marks.
"It's a bit complicated to explain. In any case, you don't need to worry about moving anymore," Yu Sheng leaned back against the wall, rubbing his forehead. "When there's a chance later... I'll tell you about it."
Irene's curiosity was brimming, but sensing that Yu Sheng didn't want to elaborate right now, she merely replied, "Oh."
With that, Yu Sheng ended their exchange.
He hadn't shared the specifics of opening doors with her, not out of any wariness, but simply because his own thoughts were still a jumble. He hadn't had the time to properly process many details about opening the doors—everything had unfolded so chaotically that he had overlooked plenty of things, which he needed to reflect on and organize later.
He decided to wait until he returned home and caught his breath before discussing the matter with Irene.
Naturally, he knew that even if he told Irene, she would likely be just as bewildered as he was and end up equally confused. Still, having someone to talk things over with was better than puzzling it out entirely on his own.
The doll possessed at least some supernatural knowledge—even if not much.
A few minutes later, Yu Sheng stepped out from the street corner. Refreshing his spirits in the cooling night breeze, he looked toward the small supermarket not far away.
After a moment's hesitation, he strode toward it.
He decided to finish his shopping errand first. The business with the doors was unsettling, but he couldn't simply refuse to open another door for the rest of his life.
This time, however, he was more cautious than ever as he pushed the supermarket door open.
He concentrated with all his might, sensing every minute detail of the action—from the tactile feedback in his hand to the thoughts in his mind, the warnings of his intuition, and even the rustle of the wind and the reflections in the glass...
If a bystander had been present, Yu Sheng's motion would have looked almost like slow motion.
Then, the supermarket door opened.
Between the slightly crowded shelves, the young shopkeeper looked up. Spotting Yu Sheng, he smiled. "Oh, what can I get you?"
Chapter 30