Not long afterward, there were two more people in Baili Qing's office.
One was the burly Song Cheng; the other had graying hair and looked to be in his fifties. This second man wore a pair of narrow-rimmed glasses and was short and a little on the heavy side, looking for all the world like an ordinary minor office official already coasting toward retirement.
Baili Qing glanced up at the two who had come to her office and gave a slight nod. "You got here quickly."
"So you went to see that man called 'Yu Sheng'?" Song Cheng was the first to speak. "From the look of you... did you find something?"
"I talked with him at length, and it went far from what I'd predicted. 'Yu Sheng' may be the most unusual 'non-natural' individual I have ever encountered. But before we discuss it in detail, I want to show you something first."
As she spoke, Baili Qing's gaze shifted to the graying man—the head of the Confidential Affairs Management Office. "Luo Zheng, close the door." Luo Zheng nodded at once and turned to shut the office door.
The instant the door closed, an invisible pressure spread through the entire room, as though a faint breeze had brushed past. Wherever that breeze passed, even the dust drifting in the air seemed to freeze in place.
Seeing this display, Song Cheng's heart tightened despite himself, and muttering a rueful "here we go," he abandoned his plan to leave work on time that afternoon. Baili Qing, meanwhile, quietly rose once the office was "sealed" and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window beside her.
The window was very large. Beyond it there hung a constant faint haze, and within the haze were ever-shifting scenes—scenes that were plainly nothing that ought to exist in a Jiecheng. Sometimes they were rolling mountain ranges, sometimes boundless stretches of forest, but most of the time it was a calm lake surface, as if without a single ripple, and far across the lake stood a small house, wrapped in mist, hazy as a dream.
And as Baili Qing reached the window, the drifting thin mist beyond it quickly stilled, and the ever-changing scenery within it slowly faded. Song Cheng and Luo Zheng watched that layer of mist with grave expressions, and after only a few seconds of stillness, other things began to appear within it.
Buildings, rooftops staggered at varying heights, a wholly unfamiliar city—and a spreading red glow. "What is this?" Song Cheng asked instinctively.
"This is what 'Yu Sheng' showed me. He says it's another 'Jiecheng,'" Baili Qing said softly, her colorless eyes calmly fixed on the thin mist beyond the window, while the scenes stored in her memory kept surfacing and reassembling within it. "He is fixated on this place—and he has seen it."
A flash of astonishment rose in Luo Zheng's eyes. He took off his narrow-rimmed glasses, wiped them on his shirt, then stared at the drifting play of light and shadow beyond the window. "Another 'Jiecheng'?!"
"Yes, another one. And I could faintly sense his emotions. He seems to think... that this is how a Jiecheng is meant to look—this is the 'normal' version."
Song Cheng and Luo Zheng both fell silent in astonishment, watching the so-called "normal" scenery beyond the window with a trace of unease.
Buildings blackened until only their outlines remained stood arrayed across the land, and towering, grotesque spires rose in the distance, sketching a magnificent silhouette. Mist spread everywhere, and those rooftops and towers were like rows of tombstones set in the thin fog, while a crimson glow pierced the mist, lending the whole sky a strange, dim quality. And the sunlight...
The blood-colored "sunlight" flowed through the city like water, curling into eddies between the buildings, then mixed with the glow and poured down from the rooftops, running and dripping endlessly from the eaves—drip, drip, patter, patter...
Baili Qing's words reached Song Cheng and Luo Zheng's ears, sounding somewhat ethereal. "He says it's a quiet little seaside town with very beautiful sunsets, that the red glow splashes across the sky like water and flows down along the rooftops..."
"...Sounds like a rather poetic description," Song Cheng said quietly.
"Yes, that's what I thought when I first heard it, too," Baili Qing said, shaking her head slightly. "Until I realized—it's literal."
"This can't be any real place that exists in the world," Luo Zheng said, his expression grave. He had already shaken off the unease and tension that came with witnessing such "abnormality," quickly recovering his composure. "There may be many planets in the universe with bizarre landscapes, but no matter how you look at it, this scene doesn't resemble any natural phenomenon. The play of light around those buildings, and that 'sunlight'—the form they take defies the laws of physics. They... it's as if they're melting."
"If I had to liken it to something, it's a bit like when your graphics card driver crashes mid-game and the rendering goes haywire," Song Cheng chimed in, stroking his chin as he analyzed it, then added, "I've seen it happen when my daughter plays games."
"This should be some kind of foreign domain," Luo Zheng said cautiously. "From the scene, it's clearly large-scale, but with no data or reference points, there's no way to determine whether it's classed as a 'wilderness' or a 'kingdom.' In any case, it's definitely not a 'fortress.'"
"Or it could be an 'anomaly,'" Baili Qing said mildly.
"An 'anomaly'-type foreign domain?" Luo Zheng was somewhat surprised and frowned. "Like a 'fairytale' or a 'heroic epic'? But it looks like an actually existing space..."
"'Anomaly'-type foreign domains also form their own form of 'actual existence' within cognition," Baili Qing said, shaking her head. "What I'm seeing is only a scene sketched out in Yu Sheng's mind, so I can't rule out that the essence of this scene is nothing more than a 'memory' or a 'story.' The key point now is that no matter what the essence of this 'foreign domain' is, Yu Sheng believes it to be another 'Jiecheng.'"
Song Cheng and Luo Zheng both fell silent, and the atmosphere in the office seemed especially heavy.
There are countless foreign domains in this world, and those that establish contact with the boundary zone—or even overlap with it—are as numerous as the stars. But no matter what, a foreign domain is only ever a foreign domain. The ways they overlap with the real world are specious at best, their scale always extremely limited. And in all recorded history, never had any foreign domain been able, like this one, to—
—point to "another boundary zone."
Song Cheng stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, staring fixedly at the city beyond, steeped and washed in that red, flowing light.
To be fair, those dark city silhouettes really didn't have much in common with the "Jiecheng" beneath his feet—at least, he couldn't see it. He didn't understand why that "person" called "Yu Sheng" would consider this to be another Jiecheng, but there was one thing he did understand:
Different vantage points make for different worlds in one's eyes.
To the Argelaid, the starry sky is covered with magnificent, orderly lines and patterns; to the Bamosa, the world is lit at once by "light" and by "magnetic fields"; the Jipulo can perceive the outlines of electric fields; and the ancient Senjin, in meditation, embrace time itself, even attaining brief glimpses of the future.
Humans are one of the races with the narrowest "vision" in this world. In the eyes of those gifted races, humans are both deaf and blind, so that of the boundless information of this vast world, less than one percent registers as "useful" intelligence to humans. Yet at the same time, so long as they have the right equipment or methods to assist them, the human mind can process nearly all "knowledge," and when it comes to dangerous information beyond perception, humanity's tolerance and adaptability are absurdly high.
It is precisely for this reason that humans are acknowledged by every race in this world as the natural-born "investigator holy body."
"'The world in his eyes is not the same as the world in ours,'" Song Cheng said suddenly.
"Yes," Baili Qing said, without denying it, only adding, "but 'he' can survive in our world just the same. Apart from being a little awkward at times, he adapts quite well to everything else."
"Possessing both a human and a... 'non-human' perspective at once? Or should we say, two 'cognitive systems'?" Luo Zheng frowned slightly and spoke in thought. "You've made contact with him. What do you think he really is—an 'entity,' or a 'human'?"
"More human—at least, that's how he sees himself right now," Baili Qing said, turning her head, and at the same time reaching out to tap lightly on the glass of the window. As her words fell, the "scenery" beyond it abruptly collapsed and contracted, returning once more to its earlier calm state of wreathed mist, with mountains and water alternating in and out of view. "I think it would be best not to disturb this 'status quo'—until we can determine what No. 66 Wutong Road and 'Yu Sheng' truly are."
"I understand," Song Cheng said, drawing a light breath and nodding with great solemnity. "Then next..."
"Next, Second Division will set aside part of its manpower and energy to handle matters specifically related to No. 66 Wutong Road and 'Yu Sheng.' The first thing is to do some registration for him."
"Registration?"
"The two 'people' around him need legal identities," Baili Qing said unhurriedly. "Second, he himself seems to want to register as a... spirit realm detective."
Song Cheng: "...Huh?"
"He says he wants to maintain order in the boundary zone and stand against foreign domains and entities."
Song Cheng: "...Huh?"
"I know what that 'huh' of yours is about," Baili Qing said, lifting her eyelids to glance at Song Cheng. "The Special Affairs Bureau has always dealt with absurd matters. Go and arrange it—pick someone sharp and reliable to take charge of this. I think those two mentioned in the last report will do nicely."
Song Cheng's expression turned awkward. "I just gave them three days off..."
Baili Qing thought for a moment. "Fair enough—in a situation like this, they do need the rest. Arrange it as you see fit, just don't let it drag on too long."
Chapter 75