About the favor Little Red Riding Hood wanted him to do, Yu Sheng had guessed at several possibilities, all more or less tied to the supernatural—after all, though the girl looked to be only seventeen or eighteen, she was also a professional "spirit realm detective," so whatever she needed should at least be professional in nature. Honestly, Yu Sheng was rather looking forward to it; he had to deal with foreign domains himself, and treating this favor as a chance to tag along with a "little senior" and build up some experience wouldn't be a bad thing...
He was just a little nervous, unsure whether he'd be able to handle whatever Little Red Riding Hood needed, and if it turned out too hard, he'd have to think up a face-saving way to fudge his way through it...
And then, in a roadside café, he found himself staring blankly at what the girl had pulled out.
She wanted him to copy out a math test booklet for a high school girl.
What a thick booklet!
Yu Sheng looked at the math test paper in front of him, then up at the short-haired girl across from him, his gaze bouncing back and forth several times, thoroughly conveying his confusion.
It really was hard—if the test hadn't come with answers in the back, this thing would be far harder than going into a foreign domain to brawl with monsters. After all, no matter how tough an entity was to beat, he could die a few more times and eventually drag it down; but with math, if he didn't know it, he truly didn't. Even if they shot him dead on the spot and he opened his eyes and came back to life, he still wouldn't know it...
Hu Li, meanwhile, stood off to the side holding Irene and watching, not understanding what was going on either.
"You just stay here and copy out this whole booklet for me. The answers are all in the back, and your handwriting can be a bit sloppy—as long as it's all filled in, that's fine," Little Red Riding Hood said with a perfectly calm face. "Then I'll take Hu Li to the mall next door to buy some clothes—oh, right, you'll need to give me some cash first. I don't have much on me. Once we're done shopping, I'll bring the receipt back and settle up with you—any change comes back to you, or you cover the difference."
Yu Sheng opened his mouth and finally put his words together. "Uh... so the favor is helping you do your homework? This... is that really appropriate?"
"Of course it's appropriate. I'd already finished my homework, but then an entity tore it up—except the teacher doesn't believe me," Little Red Riding Hood said, looking glum, but when she turned to Yu Sheng, a smile crept back into her eyes—the joy of being saved. "I came out today just to buy a new test booklet. I'd already resigned myself to pulling an all-nighter, and I never expected to run into you."
Yu Sheng pulled a bitter face. "My handwriting is nothing like yours. Even if I imitate it as closely as I can, it'll probably still be spotted."
"It's fine, no one looks closely once it's turned in," Little Red Riding Hood said with a wave of her hand. "Mine still counts as the diligent type—at least I actually wrote the first draft myself. Some of my classmates just get someone else to do it for them..."
"All right then," Yu Sheng sighed at last, accepting the fact that many things in this world simply wouldn't unfold the way he expected. He got up, took out his wallet, and handed it to the girl in front of him, then turned to look at Hu Li. "Go with her. If there's anything you don't understand, just ask her. And take Irene along—if anything comes up, get in touch with me through Irene."
Hu Li glanced at Little Red Riding Hood, seeming a little uneasy, but after hearing Yu Sheng's instructions, she still gave a small nod.
Little Red Riding Hood, after taking the wallet, paused for a moment. Her eyes flicked to the side, and then she looked up and said jokingly, "Just like that, you're handing both a person and your money over to me—aren't you afraid I'll run off?"
By now Yu Sheng had already lowered his head to the test paper. At her words, he lifted his eyelids. "Planning on never going near a single door for the rest of your life?"
Little Red Riding Hood's expression instantly went taut, the corner of her mouth twitching. "Okay, now that's a little scary..."
"This booklet of yours is scarier," Yu Sheng said with a sigh. "Ah... I really never thought that one day I'd be facing high school homework again under these circumstances. I mean, we didn't even have this much back when I was in school..."
Little Red Riding Hood immediately grabbed Hu Li's hand and started backing away, waving as she went. "We're off to buy clothes, then!"
Hu Li froze for a moment, then hesitantly lifted Irene and waved her toward Yu Sheng—she'd wanted to wave with her other hand too, but that hand was being tugged along by Little Red Riding Hood.
From several meters away, Yu Sheng could see Irene secretly baring her teeth and grimacing.
...
Passing through layer after layer of isolation doors and safety airlocks, Song Cheng felt as though he were burrowing through the belly of a colossal beast cast from reinforced concrete. Only after clearing several checkpoints in succession did he finally arrive at his destination.
At the end of a brightly lit underground corridor stood a heavy alloy gate. Fully armed Special Affairs Bureau guards stood to either side of it, and its surface was covered with dense, intricate patterns, the kind that made one's head swim faintly at a glance. Above the gate, a light sign glowed a reassuring green, bearing the words "Deep-Dive Zone—D2 Dive Port."
Song Cheng took out his ID card and swiped it on a card reader beside the gate marked "Customs Verification." As the gate opened, the scene beyond came into view.
A faintly distorted curtain of light covered the inner side of the gate. Through it, he could see that beyond lay an extremely vast hall, brightly lit, with many large devices arranged in neat rows like "water tanks." Each "water tank" was a container three meters on every side, its base a structurally complex black metal pedestal, and each was filled with some kind of pale blue liquid.
Many people in white uniforms moved back and forth between the "water tanks," checking the operating status of certain containers.
Song Cheng stepped through the gate.
The instant he passed through that distorted curtain of light, he felt a brief weightlessness and dizziness, followed by a ringing in his ears that lasted several seconds. When the ringing faded, he heard a soft system chime from the earpiece he wore: "D2 Dive Port entered. The current deep-dive zone is located entirely at Paning-III Station. Average depth in the hall: L-1. Environment: stable."
Song Cheng shook his head to clear the lingering dizziness, then walked straight toward several neatly arranged "water tank" devices not far off.
He saw a figure already standing there—clad in a white skirt suit, grayish-white long hair tied into a ponytail.
"Director!" Song Cheng strode over, surprise in his tone. "You came in person?"
"After all, this is a situation that's never come up before," Baili Qing turned her head, her colorless eyes glancing at Song Cheng. "Your team members are already prepared."
Song Cheng nodded and looked at the six "water tank" devices before him.
Six fully armed "deep divers" were slowly entering the tanks with the aid of mechanical arms. They wore pitch-black power armor, full-face helmets concealing their features, with only dark red displays flickering faintly across the faceplates. Each of them also carried an extra miniature reactor backpack, used to power their mind shields and their specially made observation and recording equipment.
The deep divers were hoisted down into the water tanks from above by the mechanical arms, then suspended in the pale blue liquid. Moments later, a faint humming came from the black metal pedestals beneath the tanks, and the operating hum gradually rose in pitch.
A broadcast sounded around them: "Configuring 'deep sea' environment. All personnel, prepare for the dive... 'Umbilical' ready, awaiting manual command."
A technician in charge of monitoring the "water tanks" watched the readings on the device in his hands, and after a few seconds called out loudly, "Connect the 'umbilicals'!"
Several white-robed staff immediately stepped forward and began manually inputting commands into each "water tank."
The pale blue liquid in the tanks began to ripple slightly. At the same time, tube-like objects made of black metal, resembling spines, rose from the bottoms of the water tanks. Faint dark red light flickered between their metal segments, and as a whole they seemed alive as they swam and extended through the pale blue liquid, then connected precisely to the chest of each deep diver.
The broadcast sounded: "'Umbilicals' connected. Injecting inducing agent... beginning the dive."
Ripples spread through the water tanks, and the pale blue liquid seemed, in the blink of an eye, to turn into "seawater"—or rather, each water tank seemed to become a small "cut-out" section taken from some ocean, all surging in unison at a specific frequency.
And the next second, all the deep divers vanished from Song Cheng's sight, leaving only the "umbilicals" connected to their power armor still floating in their original positions, rising and falling gently in the liquid, as though indicating that the deep divers were still inside the tanks—except they could no longer be observed by anyone outside.
"Do you think this will work? What will they see?" Baili Qing turned her head and looked at Song Cheng.
"...The inducing agent will make them sink into the spirit realm, and this works very well for certain specific types of foreign domains, especially those that use the mind, dreams, or emotions as their entrances. But honestly... Nightfall Valley is a bit special," Song Cheng said, shaking his head. "We still haven't found a stable way to enter and leave Nightfall Valley. With the inducing agent, all observers can do is catch a glimpse of its shadow in a hallucination. And now that place is even showing a 'mutation,' and not even Passenger No. 22 knows the specifics. I suspect... the deep divers will come back empty-handed."
Baili Qing nodded.
Song Cheng wanted to say something more, but just then a sharp buzzing suddenly erupted!
"Whoa—contamination!" A technician practically leapt up on the spot and dashed like the wind toward the master emergency stop button nearby. "Pull them back!"
The emergency stop button was slammed down, and a piercing noise rose from the bottom of every "water tank." The pale blue liquid in the tanks was drained almost in the blink of an eye, and immediately after, the surface of every "umbilical" burst into dazzling sparks. The next second, the figures of the six deep divers instantly reappeared in the real world—they collapsed into the tanks in a sorry state, bodies curled up. One yanked open a faceplate and, dropping to all fours, began vomiting violently, while another struggled to his feet and staggered to the edge of the tank, pounding hard on the reinforced polymer container as if wanting to shout something to the people outside.
Song Cheng and Baili Qing immediately went over.
"We reached the end of the passage!" the deep diver who had struggled to his feet shouted. Through the safety barrier of the "water tank," his voice sounded distorted and warped. "The end of the passage! A single beam of light! There's no Nightfall Valley—there isn't! At the end of the passage there's only, only... only math problems! It's all math problems! They're damn real, full-scale exam questions!!"
Chapter 69