Chapter 9 A Bit of Truth

The voice in his mind startled Yu Sheng, who was already somewhat dazed by the cold wind in the valley—then he became even more bewildered.

Stupefied until Erin yelled in his head a second time, shaking him awake.

"…Erin?" Yu Sheng blinked, carefully observing the situation in the valley while cautiously approaching the dilapidated, crumbling old temple, trying to find a temporary safe corner for shelter, all the while trying to respond internally, "How did you… manage to contact me? I mean, you speaking directly in my head…"

"Is it that hard?" Erin's tone was especially assertive, "I am one of Alice's dolls!"

Yu Sheng thought about it but couldn't connect the dots… Did it mean all of Alice's dolls could do this? Speak inside someone else's head?

"Didn't I enter your dreams once before? Once I visit, I know the way," Erin explained patiently noticing Yu Sheng didn't respond. But then her tone changed, "Hey, where on earth have you run off to? I can't sense you at all..."

Yu Sheng fell silent for two seconds, looking up at the surrounding eerie, dense woods. He felt as though this place could spawn a seven or eight-meter-tall monster at any second, complete with a rousing background music, chilling him to the core: "…I might have gone on a long trip, guessing it won't be easy to return…"

Erin also paused momentarily, her voice delayed for a few seconds: "…Didn't you say you were just going out to throw out the trash? Were you scooped up by the garbage truck?!"

Yu Sheng didn't know where she got such wild imagination from...

But, he had to admit that after hearing Erin's voice, his panic at being thrown into this desolate place somewhat settled down... just a bit.

This voice at least proved that his connection with the original world hadn't been completely severed. Since Erin could contact him, there must still be a possibility to return—although he had no idea how and couldn't think of any reasons to support this belief, he must keep believing it for now.

As for the present, his priority was to ensure his safety.

The valley was very quiet, with only sporadic hollow wind sounds reaching his ears, but Yu Sheng always felt an awkward and oppressive sensation. He felt as if something was watching him, a kind of... cold, empty, and hungry gaze, sweeping over the area, over him repeatedly.

This made him increasingly uneasy, urgently wanting to find a corner to hide, at least not to stand so openly in the clearing.

In his line of sight, the only place that seemed feasible for hiding was the almost completely collapsed ruined temple—The forest in the distance was dense but felt even more eerie and sinister. Moreover, "venturing into the primeval forest at night" was a classic way to court disaster in horror stories, and he was very reluctant to go near.

But, unfortunately, hiding in a ruined temple at night was also a standard disaster-inviting element. The difference between the two options was that the forest was likely to spawn wild beasts, and the temple was likely to spawn monsters...

Both were likely to trigger stirring background music.

Yu Sheng gritted his teeth and still made his way toward the only relatively intact corner of the ruined temple.

At the same time, he kept in touch with Erin in his mind, roughly explaining the situation on his side—actually, there wasn't much to explain, because he didn't even know how all this happened. From start to finish, he had just opened a door...

After listening, Erin was silent for a long time before hesitatingly speaking, "It sounds like you've fallen into the 'Exotic Realm'?"

Standing amid the ruins of the temple, Yu Sheng was startled, suddenly realizing, "Exotic Realm? You call this place Exotic Realm? You know where I am?"

Erin's voice sounded somewhat confused, "Huh? There are many Exotic Realms, how would I know which one you fell into..."

Listening to Erin's mumbling, Yu Sheng frowned, suddenly realizing he had learned some more about the 'Supernatural Realm', and even more importantly, realized:

Had he not been thrown into "another world" but encountered some sort of natural phenomenon that Erin thought was not unusual?

With these thoughts in his mind, Erin apparently thought of something, speaking in a somewhat incredulous tone in his mind, "…You really haven't ever heard of 'Exotic Realm'?"

With a bizarre expression, Yu Sheng responded, "…Should I have heard of it? Is this something that ordinary people should know as common knowledge?"

"Oh, it's normal for ordinary people not to know about the Exotic Realm; after all, most people will never encounter such matters in their lifetime," Erin said casually, but her next sentence startled Yu Sheng, "But you shouldn't be unaware of it."

"Me? Why should I know about it?" Yu Sheng was confused, "I'm just an ordinary person..."

"...But you live in the Exotic Realm every day."

...

Shadows shuttle through the night, hunters take shape within them, a ferocious wolf leaps out from the shadows, agilely jumping across the uneven rooftops of the old city, and lands silently in the empty street, looking around left and right in the middle of the road.

"Come back!" came a slightly annoyed female voice from the shadows of a building in the corner of the alley.

The wolf instantly ducked its head, whimpering softly, and hurriedly trotted into the shadows beside the road.

A young girl in a dark red coat and black skirt stood in the corner between two old houses, she reached out to rub the head of the wolf that had just run back, and raised her eyes to look at the houses at the end of the old street.

It was a very short street, with only dozens of households, clearly visible from end to end on the street, and even without the eyes of a wolf, she could determine the situation here at a glance.

The girl frowned, and just then, her phone rang timely—it was still the classic '86 Journey to the West theme song. She answered just as the monkey was making its second somersault, "It's me, yes, I'm in the old city, on Wutong Road."

The voice coming from the phone was that of a middle-aged man slurring from overtime work, babbling on.

Little Red Riding Hood patiently listened for a while, then tugged at the corner of her mouth, "I'm here, but I haven't found anything—my wolf has already searched this entire street back and forth three times. There are no traces of the Exotic Realm being opened, nor any signs of creatures from the Exotic Realm appearing."

The phone was silent for two to three seconds before the voice on the other end said, "But surveillance personnel can confirm that there was a reaction of the Exotic Realm opening on Wutong Road in the old city, there must have been a brief passage to the Exotic Realm..."

"I believe," Little Red Riding Hood said somewhat helplessly, "I do recognize the professionalism of your Special Service Bureau's surveillance personnel, but I also trust my wolves—perhaps there really was a brief passage here, but now it's definitely gone without a trace... Considering that under normal circumstances an Exotic Realm wouldn't disconnect from the present world so quickly, maybe someone else intervened and dealt with it."

"There are not many people capable of disconnecting the Exotic Realm in such a short period of time, and most of their forces have records and channels of communication with the Special Service Bureau," the voice on the phone sounded tired, "but tonight I haven't received any communication about this..."

"It might be the people from the Hermit Association, they are always enigmatic..."

The girl casually spoke, then inevitably heard another string of ramblings from the phone, and sighed continuously in agreement, "Fine, fine, I understand, they are all respected scholars, okay... I always respect scholars. Let's leave it, I'll take my Wolf Pack and search through the shadows again, after all, Wutong Road isn't large, just sixty-five house numbers, searching again won't be a hassle..."

She hung up the phone, finally relieved from the incessant chatter, Little Red Riding Hood looked at her turned-off phone and sighed, then lowered her head to glance at the dog heads—rather, the wolf heads—surging around her in the shadows, and sighed again.

"I still haven't done my homework... Ah, the life of a freelancer is tough..."

...

Yu Sheng sat in a corner under a seemingly sturdy wall of the ruined temple, blowing the cold wind that came through a large hole in the wall, looking up at the murky dark sky outside the roof hole, trying to empty his mind, but without success.

Just then, he learned a truth.

The only place he felt stable in Boundary City, the safest and most normal place in his heart, was actually an abnormal "place" called "Exotic Realm."

In Erin's words, the so-called "Exotic Realm" is a domain beyond normalcy, a dimension at the edge of reason—while the world where ordinary people live, governed by order, may seem like a mountain with a firm foundation and stable structure, in reality, this mountain is filled with tiny "holes" leading to irrational and disorderly realms.

For the vast majority of people, they will never come into contact with these "holes" in their lifetime, never seeing the bizarre sights on the other side of those holes.

But the faint light leaking from those holes always catches the eyes of some— for them, the moment they accidentally glimpse those sights, some things can never go back to the way they were.

—However, even for a seasoned figure in the painting like Erin, someone living in the Exotic Realm for a long period is rather odd...