A boss's encouragement and empty promises don't necessarily soothe the physical and mental exhaustion of pulling overtime all the way out in some foreign domain—but paid leave certainly does.
The two hapless operatives walked out of the office beaming, leaving Song Cheng behind his desk to let out a long breath and go right back to frowning at his computer screen.
Just then, he noticed an icon in the corner of the screen suddenly begin to flash, and the next second a video window abruptly popped up on the display.
A young woman appeared in the frame, dressed in a white skirt suit, her grayish-white hair pulled into a single ponytail. Through the screen, her pale gray eyes—as if drained of all color—looked into Song Cheng's. "Done with your work?"
A bigger boss had arrived.
"Director," Song Cheng instantly sat up straight, his expression a little tense, "you're not off work yet?"
"I'm working overtime today," Baili Qing said flatly. Her voice, like her faded eyes, carried no fluctuation at all. "I saw the materials the Archives Department just sent over, and I wanted to hear your take on them."
"About that 'Yu Sheng'?" Song Cheng frowned slightly, then shook his head after a moment's thought. "I don't think we're in a position to make any judgment right now. We need to make a formal contact with him before we can assess what kind of... individual he really is. But the hard part is whether we approach him by the standards of a 'human,' or by the standards of an 'entity'..."
"By the standards of a human." Baili Qing said it without hesitation.
Song Cheng looked a little surprised.
"Because his self-perception is that of a 'human,'" Baili Qing said, calm and patient. "So whether or not he is one, we have to make sure he goes on thinking he is."
"...Preserve the target's self-perception, is that it?" Song Cheng said thoughtfully, seeming to grasp what the Director was getting at. "You think that... if this individual's self-perception were to shift, it could have very serious consequences?"
"We still can't say for certain what abilities the target actually has, or what effect he'll have on the future of the boundary zone. But one more standing on the 'human' side means one fewer on the 'non-human' side. Foreign domain entities that are naturally friendly toward humans are hardly common—especially one that has been 'living' in the boundary zone since long ago. We should count that as a stroke of luck."
Song Cheng nodded at once. "All right, I understand what you mean, Director. Then I'll go ahead and arrange a contact plan with 'Yu Sheng'... I'll handle it myself."
On the screen, Baili Qing gave a slight nod, then continued: "As for the newly appeared 'Murky Angel,' the Council has already been informed. We can now more or less confirm—it's a new one."
Song Cheng's pupils contracted in an instant.
"It's not in the old records?" He leaned forward without thinking, his expression unusually grave. "What about the records of other factions?"
"We've already asked the Algelaid Astrology Society and the 'Academy.' The huge, eyeball-shaped Murky Angel described in the report—the one that can blot out the sky—has never once appeared in their official records. The Bamosa Hermit Society hasn't gotten back to us yet, but if even the Academy's records have nothing, then the Bamosans probably don't either." Baili Qing shook her head. "We can't entirely rule out the chance that some minor faction has encountered this Murky Angel, but... the likelihood isn't high."
Song Cheng's brows furrowed so tightly they nearly knotted together; he looked quite anxious.
"This is bad... a brand-new 'angel' with no records of any kind, and it ran off before we could gather a scrap of intelligence—and on that scale, no less," he muttered. "Big enough to cover the entire sky above Nightfall Valley... judging by Nightfall Valley's official records, this thing has probably been parasitizing that foreign domain for a very long time..."
"Yes. High-level camouflage, deep parasitism—so complete that the investigators who entered that valley in the early days actually believed the sky there was simply meant to look like that. That's where the name Nightfall Valley came from," Baili Qing said slowly. "In terms of physical scale alone, this newly appeared 'Murky Angel' can probably rank in the top three of all known angels."
Song Cheng couldn't help sinking into thought. After a brief pause, he spoke: "...According to the intelligence my two team members gathered, the fox spirit at Yu Sheng's side who calls herself 'Hu Li' seems to have been trapped in Nightfall Valley for a very long time. Might she know something about that 'Murky Angel'?"
"That's a lead, but be careful when you investigate."
Song Cheng bowed his head slightly. "I understand."
Baili Qing gave a soft "mm," as if about to end the call.
But Song Cheng suddenly spoke up. "Actually, Director, there's one more thing."
"Go on."
"...I'm planning to ride the 'train' once," Song Cheng said, his expression serious. "To see whether I can find out anything about 'Yu Sheng' aboard the 'train.'"
"...Approved—but be careful. Even with a relatively rational, friendly entity, you must be cautious when you make contact."
"Understood."
...
Yu Sheng, who was helping Hu Li tidy up her bed, suddenly sneezed hard several times in a row, startling Irene—who had been walking along the footboard with her arms out like on a balance beam—so badly that she nearly fell off.
"You scared me!" the little doll said, eyes wide.
"My nose was tickling," Yu Sheng said, rubbing his nose. He casually plucked Irene off and tossed her onto the bed. "Don't just watch—come help. Sit in the middle of the bed; I'll pull the sheet taut."
Irene let out an "oh" and happily scampered to the middle of the bed, plopping down cross-legged and looking up at Yu Sheng bustling about beside her.
Hu Li, meanwhile, stood a little farther off, watching rather helplessly as her 'benefactor' tidied up her bed.
"Benefactor... I can help too," the fox spirit girl said, rubbing her hands together, her tail swaying uneasily behind her. "Tidying a room is easy—I've watched and I've got it now!"
"Then you can tidy your own room from now on. Not today, though," Yu Sheng said without looking up. "I'm nearly done here."
Hu Li let out an "oh" and pushed down the unsettled feeling that had welled up in her at being looked after. Then, carefully and curiously, she looked over her new room.
This was the second-floor room that had originally been piled with quite a bit of junk. Now, though, the cardboard boxes that had held the junk had all been carried down to the basement, and after a bit of cleaning the room had been brought back to a livable state—but "livable" as it was, the furnishings were still very crude. Apart from the bed and a table—which had been in the room all along, though buried under piled-up things until now—the only proper 'furniture' left in the room was a single chair in the corner.
To that end, Yu Sheng had just now dug a folding wardrobe out of the basement, and it had taken him and Irene a long while of puzzling over it before they fit the metal tubes and canvas together and set it in the corner to serve as the fourth piece of furniture here.
Not that Hu Li had any clothes to put in it right now—she had almost no belongings to her name at all, only the tattered 'dress' she'd brought out of the valley, and even that was little more than a knot of rags. Unwilling to throw it out, she'd washed it clean and, with some difficulty, folded it up and placed it at the very bottom of that ugly folding wardrobe. It counted as the first possession of hers in this 'home.'
And yet, even a little room this plain—almost shabby—made her overjoyed.
She could sleep in a bed now. She'd lain on it for a bit just now, and it was more comfortable than the softest, most even pile of hay. There was a whole roof over her head, and walls to block the wind. The room was warm—not cold everywhere like in the valley—and even without hugging her tail she'd be plenty warm as she slept. And there was a bright electric light, brighter even than foxfire.
And most important of all—no matter what she did here, it wouldn't draw that monster, and if she got hungry, she could find something to eat at any time.
There was plenty of food in her tail right now.
Hu Li sat down on the floor, a happy smile on her face.
Yu Sheng finished smoothing the sheet, and the moment he turned his head he caught the fox spirit grinning foolishly on the floor. "Why are you back on the floor? There's a chair right beside you—what are you grinning about?"
Hu Li let out an "oh," got up off the floor, and settled onto the chair at the side. "Happy."
"You've got reason to be." Yu Sheng nodded, then straightened up and looked around the room with a faint sense of accomplishment.
The room's furnishings were crude, but they'd taken a lot of effort to put together—the product of a good two hours' labor, at least.
—Though it was still a bit too crude.
"Tomorrow I'll head to the mall and buy you a spare set of bedding, and a couple of outfits. We can swap the curtains for new ones later—these have holes in them... For now, just make do with this wardrobe; a new one's pretty expensive, and money's a little tight lately," Yu Sheng planned out. "Mm, and down the line we can get a nightstand too, put a lamp on it."
"No need, no need for so many things," Hu Li said hurriedly, waving her hands, a little flustered. "It's already very good like this."
"Don't fuss over it. These are all everyday things—you should have what you're meant to have," Yu Sheng said with an offhand wave of his hand. "You're going to be my number-one enforcer, after all. Your setup can't be shabby."
Irene, sitting in the middle of the bed, looked up at this and shot Yu Sheng a glance. "Before you think about buying furniture, you should first think about how you'll get anyone to deliver it to you. This 'No. 66 Wutong Road' of yours—looks like you can forget a new television too; there's no way it'll get through. Or... are you planning to open a 'big' door and haul a pile of furniture home on your own back?"
Listening to the little doll's nagging, Yu Sheng's enthusiastically drawn-up 'plans' suddenly cooled.
His expression turned a touch serious along with them.
Yu Sheng recalled what the two 'Special Affairs Bureau operatives' had said to him before they left.
...Right. Delivery was still a problem. After all—
There was no No. 66 on Wutong Road.
Chapter 63