Open the supermarket door, then walk inside.
It should have been such a simple, ordinary sequence of actions, yet right now Yu Sheng found it hard to believe. The shocks from his previous few door openings had been so overwhelming that he still suffered from a lingering door-opening trauma. Even seeing the shelves and the shopkeeper before him stirred up absurd notions in his mind—
Could this be an extradimensional nest mimicked by some eldritch monstrosity, looking identical to the small supermarket in his memory? The shelves looked ordinary enough, but maybe the bottles and jars on them were filled with eyeballs floating in formalin. Maybe the shopkeeper across from him would greet him, suddenly whip a chainsword out of his pocket, and charge forward to cut him down behind the checkout counter...
Fortunately, these ridiculous thoughts merely drifted through his head for a moment. Yu Sheng quickly calmed down, first confirming that he had indeed stepped into a normal supermarket, while roughly understanding under what conditions he could "open doors normally and properly." Then he nodded to the young shopkeeper. "I'm here to pick up a few things. Do you have instant noodles and compressed biscuits by the case?"
"We have instant noodles. The unopened cases are stacked under the stairs leading to the second floor. Take a look and see what kind you want." Although the young owner thought Yu Sheng looked a bit odd standing there dazed the moment he walked in, he quickly brushed it off and pointed toward an iron ladder nearby. "No cases left for compressed biscuits. Middle row on the left shelf—see it? That's all of them. People rarely buy those, so I don't stock much."
"Alright, please bag up all the biscuits for me. I'll go grab a case of noodles... and throw in two packs of ham sausages, the big ones."
"Sure thing."
The young shopkeeper answered, turned to grab a large shopping bag, and headed over to the shelves to pack the items. As he worked, he asked offhandedly, "Buying so many instant noodles and compressed biscuits all of a sudden? Eating only this stuff isn't good for you—my wife nags me about it every day."
"Just stocking up at home," Yu Sheng brushed it off casually.
The supermarket owner didn't say anything more. Having packed a large bag of items as requested, he walked back to the cash register. Right then, the supermarket's glass doors were pushed open again—both doors pushed together, one of the hinges letting out an ear-grating screech.
Hearing the sound, the owner, who was counting the compressed biscuits to ring them up, quickly looked up. "Hey, that door is broken! There's a sign on it."
"Uh, I didn't notice." The person who pushed the door open was an ordinary-looking young man with black hair, dressed in casual clothes. Looking a bit embarrassed, he glanced back at the half of the glass door that seemed unable to swing shut automatically, then turned around. "Do you have instant noodles by the case?"
Yu Sheng was carrying a case of instant noodles as he walked out from between the two rows of shelves. Hearing the noise at the checkout counter, he glanced up, but soon looked away.
"Oh, that kind will do," the short-haired young man said, pointing at the instant noodles in Yu Sheng's arms. "I'll take a case of those too."
The shopkeeper didn't even look up. "Under the stairs on your right up ahead. Grab it yourself; let me finish ringing this up first."
Yu Sheng crossed paths with the young man, settled his bill at the register, and with a large shopping bag in one hand and the noodle case hoisted onto his shoulder with the other, stepped out into the deepening twilight outside.
Li Lin found the instant noodles under the stairs the shopkeeper had mentioned. Just as he bent down to pick up the box, he felt a vibration in his pocket. He took out his phone and saw a message from his team captain.
He glanced back toward the register, looked down at his screen, and casually texted back: "I've settled in. Out buying provisions right now."
The phone buzzed twice as a new message popped up on the screen: "Any anomalies detected?"
Li Lin typed: "None. I'll take a walk around the streets tomorrow and interact with the locals."
After hitting send, the young Special Affairs Bureau operative hesitated a moment before typing out another message: "Roughly when will the team's 'deep diver' arrive? Who's being assigned here?"
This time, quite a while passed before the phone vibrated again: "Xu Jiali. Reporting for duty tomorrow."
Li Lin stared at the message on the screen, dumbfounded. Just as he was about to text back to ask, another message from his superior appeared: "He just returned from Emein-IX. Something came up over there, so his mission was cut short. He's currently at the bureau giving a debriefing and undergoing a full screening. He'll be sent to your location tomorrow."
After reading the message, the corner of Li Lin's mouth twitched. He quickly typed: "Assigning him to duty right after field deployment? Not even giving the guy half a day off?"
"Xu Jiali requested it himself. He ran into a peculiar situation over there and has some lingering deep-dive aftereffects right now. He needs to wear a stabilizer continuously for the next few days, so he simply moved his post-deployment leave to next week. There shouldn't be any incidents in your area in the short term, so staying with you counts as rest for him. You two can discuss the specifics when you meet tomorrow."
Li Lin curled his lip, replied "Got it," then stood up, carried the box of instant noodles, and walked toward the checkout counter.
Behind the register, the owner lifted his eyelids to glance at him. Pulling out the barcode scanner, he muttered once more, "Eating only this stuff isn't good for you—my wife nags me about it every day..."
Li Lin chuckled. "Then I won't buy it?"
"That'll be 62.80."
...
Irene heard a sound from the front door—someone had opened it from outside. But as she peeked around the edge of the picture frame toward the entryway, she saw no sign of Yu Sheng for the longest time.
Only after a good while did she finally see Yu Sheng poke his head in through the doorway, acting jumpy and suspicious. First, he looked all around inside for quite some time, then crept into the room as cautiously as a thief, placed the large pile of bought goods onto the floor, and turned around to shut the door.
Irene watched all this in silence. Only after Yu Sheng closed the door did she finally speak up: "Yu Sheng, what are you doing? Why are you coming home like a thief sneaking around?"
Yu Sheng sighed and muttered as he changed his shoes, "Don't even get me started. I've got severe psychological trauma about 'opening doors' right now. If I don't double-check three times, I don't even dare take a step forward."
Listening, Irene's gaze drifted to the pile of items by the door.
"You bought quite a lot," the young doll lady said in slight amazement. "You should've taken a little wagon, like one of those camping carts. Super handy."
Yu Sheng didn't answer right away. He merely looked down at the instant noodles, sausages, and compressed biscuits piled by the door. Then, as if suddenly remembering something, he slapped his forehead hard. "I should've bought some liquid food! She's starved for so long, she can't eat this stuff right away... No good, I'll go buy a flat of eight-treasure congee tomorrow morning... Or should I go right now?"
Irene listened quietly, and seeing that Yu Sheng was genuinely about to open the door and head out again, she spoke up: "Better make it tomorrow."
Yu Sheng had already switched his shoes back on. With one hand resting on the doorknob, he turned back. "She's still starving..."
"Even if you buy it right now, do you have a way to bring it to that fox immediately?" Irene looked straight at Yu Sheng. "Besides... truthfully, I wanted to say this earlier: even if you deliver this stuff, it'll only temporarily relieve her condition. The biggest problem over there isn't the lack of food, but that entity named 'Hunger.'"
Yu Sheng stopped what he was doing.
After a moment of thought, he changed back out of his shoes, walked over to the dining table, and sat down opposite Irene.
"Fair point. The biggest problem is 'Hunger.' While filling her stomach for now would be nice... let's wait until tomorrow. There's no rush for this exact minute anyway. I still have to find a way to enter that valley reliably first."
Irene noticed the solemn, pensive look on Yu Sheng's face as he said that last part. Piecing it together with the snippets he had mentioned when contacting her earlier, she picked up on something right away.
"...What on earth happened?" she prodded. "Do you... have an idea for how to enter that valley?"
"Strictly speaking, it's not an idea for entering that valley, but..."
As Yu Sheng spoke, he reached into thin air right before Irene's eyes and grabbed hold of something.
His hand gripped a doorknob, and a door abruptly materialized in the air. The door itself was completely ordinary in shape, yet its edges trembled and shimmered like a mirage. Then, under Irene's stunned gaze, Yu Sheng yanked the door wide open.
The illusory door swung open. On the other side stood that female elf who looked like some machine-cultist mechanic, with an array of mechanical arthropod limbs sprouting from her back, a wheeled lower body, and a silver-white robe draped over her upper torso.
She was standing in front of some large machining apparatus, turning her head toward him in sheer shock.
The mechanical limbs behind the cyborg elf were still swiftly and precisely adjusting the large, shimmering device on the platform. Her eyes went so wide they looked ready to pop out. She stared at Yu Sheng for two full seconds before screaming:
"So who the fuck are—"
Yu Sheng slammed the door shut with a bang.
"...I didn't expect it could connect to the same place twice in a row," Yu Sheng murmured, a mix of surprise and contemplation on his face. "Wait, maybe this means... I'll try to replicate it in a bit..."
Halfway through his muttering, Irene across the table could finally hold back no longer. The young doll lady looked ready to fly out of the oil painting and bite someone. "What was that just now?! What on earth was that?! Huh?!"
"As you saw," Yu Sheng exhaled, "a door."
"Of course I know it was a door, but the point is—" Irene took a deep breath and practically sprang out of her chair. "WHAT! WAS! THAT?!"
Chapter 31