Chapter 30 Door Opener

The door of the small supermarket slammed shut, isolating the scorching heat from the scorched planet and the sudden surge of killing intent from the two black-armored soldiers. Yu Sheng stood silently at the entrance, feeling a bit dazed.

After zoning out for several seconds, he sharply inhaled and turned his head to look around.

There were not many pedestrians on the street, and those who passed by seemed to completely ignore the abnormalities here. Only Yu Sheng, who faced that bizarre scene head-on a few seconds ago, still stood disheveled in the wind.

After being disheveled for a while, Yu Sheng slowly turned his head back to look at the storefront of the small supermarket.

He had been here more than once in the past two months. This little supermarket located in the old district didn't have a wide variety of items, but it did have the basic daily needs and food staples. The owners were a young couple, with whom Yu Sheng had grown somewhat familiar.

The storefront of the small supermarket had nothing special about it; it was just an ordinary ground-level shop. The side facing the street had a large glass display window, almost completely filled with various promotional information and shelves of small goods placed behind the glass. The hinge of the glass door was a bit faulty on one side, and half of the door had an A4 paper stuck on it that read "This door is broken." Through the door, one could see the somewhat cramped shelves and the owner who was moving things around next to them.

It looked very normal, there could be nothing more normal than this scene.

But Yu Sheng would never consider what he just saw as some kind of "hallucination" - he could still feel that scorching, faintly sulfuric breath lingering in his nostrils.

He was about to step forward, but fortunately, the side effects of falling into the Exotic Realm still lingered, making him not only wary of the door to his home but also slightly nervous about any door he encountered, always hesitantly pausing subconsciously after opening one. Another reason for his hesitation at the entrance was the sudden "jolt" he felt deep in his heart the moment he opened the door.

Yu Sheng stood at the entrance of the supermarket to collect his thoughts. After pondering for a moment, he reached out again to grasp the doorknob, then pushed the door open slightly with a bit of force, and peered inside.

Inside was a very normal supermarket, not many people around at this time, and the owner was still busy behind the shelves, seemingly unaware of the movement at the door.

Yu Sheng stepped back, closed the door again, and then gripped the doorknob tightly, took a deep breath as if steeling himself, and pushed the door open with force.

A tall, blonde woman wearing a silver-white robe stood on a platform opposite the door, turning her head in surprise to look at Yu Sheng.

She was beautiful, but beneath her golden hair, her ears were not human-like but elegantly elongated and pointed — several radiant pipes and data cables extended from behind her ears, connecting to something behind her.

However, what Yu Sheng was more interested in was the wheel-like structure extending from the hem of her silver-white robe, and the mechanical limbs behind her that were grabbing various tools and moving around in the air.

A voice came from somewhere opposite the door: "…Boss! The customer is asking if the Hyperlight Core delivered last week is fixed yet."

Yet, the blonde lady did not respond, just stared straight at Yu Sheng, who was standing at the door, and after a long silence, she finally yelled —

"How the hell did you get in?!"

Yu Sheng slammed the door shut.

But the next second, he pushed it open again fiercely — because he had not seen clearly just now; was that creature across the door an elf? He had never seen an elf in his entire life! Was that indeed an elf?! Was there something freaking wrong with that scene?!

As the door opened, a small child dressed in a brown Daoist robe was standing face to face with Yu Sheng, surrounded by a ring of smoke and scorch. The child halfway through fanning with a fan, his eyes wide as if they were about to pop out.

The next second, before Yu Sheng could say a word, the child, as if seeing a ghost, threw the fan away and started jumping and shouting as he ran out: "Master! Master! The big brother has done it! There's a human head from big brother's Pill Furnace! With a nose and eyes! And it even breathes!"

"I…"

Yu Sheng let out an exclamation, forcefully closed the door, and staggered back several steps before coming to a standstill.

He turned to look at the street again and saw a few pedestrians looking in his direction with curiosity — but it seemed they had only noticed Yu Sheng's strange behavior, as the door was closed quickly, and no one saw what was beyond it.

Yu Sheng could only quickly adjust his expression, pretending as if nothing had happened, and moved to the side to catch his breath after no one was paying attention to him, standing somewhat dazed at the street corner, pondering life.

The situation was too chaotic and eerily strange, so much so that he didn't even know whether at this moment he should consider himself as having had a narrow escape from peril, undergoing a paradigm shift, or as a survivor post-calamity. He only knew that his mind was like a vortex of twelve storms — or as if two hundred Erins were buzzing simultaneously, buzzing and clattering with all kinds of chaotic thoughts crashing around in his heart; and it took him seven or eight minutes to snap back to reality.

But one thing he quickly ascertained.

Those places beyond the door… they were not the Exotic Realm.

At least, the location inhabited by that elf woman, who looked somewhat like a mechanical monster, and that Daoist child holding a fan was definitely not the Exotic Realm. As for the two soldiers, obviously engaged in combat, in Power Armor earlier... the environment around them was indeed harsh, and it was hard to say if that place was or was not the Exotic Realm...

After a long time, Yu Sheng's chaotic mind finally calmed down, his wild and surging theorizations forcefully organized and suppressed. Then, he lowered his head to look at his hands.

After hesitating repeatedly, he slowly reached out his hand toward the side—

He was standing in a corner of an alley at this moment, with only a wall beside him, a bare cement brick wall.

He caressed the bare, coarse surface of the wall, slowly clenching his hand, imagining... there was a door there.

Just like at the end of the corridor in his house, where he discovered the hidden doorknob outside Erin's room, just like in that valley under the night sky, where he was tossed into the air by a monster and subconsciously grabbed in the air, pulling open the door back to the real world—

He found it, a door.

He couldn't see it, but the door appeared; he grasped the handle, and so the door began to slowly materialize, gradually finding its position, his expression stiff as he slowly turned his head—there, the door flickered with a faint glow in his vision, as if it could be easily opened in the next second.

"Damn it, shit!"

Yu Sheng exclaimed in a low voice, and as soon as he got nervous, his hand subconsciously released, and that "door" instantly vanished silently from the wall.

Yu Sheng's heart was pounding wildly, as if it might jump out of his mouth any second.

He took several deep breaths before calming down, recalling the feeling of grabbing the doorknob just now, and crooked his mouth.

"Erin." He called out in his heart, with... a complex emotion and hesitation that he couldn't even explain himself.

"Hey?" Erin's voice immediately rang out, as lively as ever, "I was just about to contact you, you've been out for a while, isn't the supermarket just at the corner... did you buy too much?"

Yu Sheng: "...I haven't gone into the supermarket yet."

Erin: "Did you get lost?"

"I just wanted to tell you, I probably won't consider moving anymore," Yu Sheng said, not minding Erin's offbeat guess.

"Ah?! Really?" Erin sounded a bit happy, but also curious, "Why? Didn't you say you felt something was off with this house? Especially that whenever you open a door, you never know where you might be 'thrown' to..."

"It's nothing, I just suddenly realized... on this biggest issue, what might be off isn't the house," Yu Sheng sighed, "It seems that what's off is me."

Erin: "…?"

She didn't speak, but Yu Sheng could still imagine the person's baffled expression full of question marks at this moment.

"It's a bit complicated to explain, in short, you don't have to worry about moving anymore," Yu Sheng leaned against the wall, rubbing his forehead, "I'll tell you about it when I get a chance later."

Erin's curiosity was peaked, but she sensed that Yu Sheng didn't want to continue explaining in detail, so she just responded with an "Oh."

Afterward, Yu Sheng ended the conversation with Erin.

He didn't reveal to her the specifics of when he "opened" the door, not because he was concerned about something else, but mainly because his thoughts were a mess at the moment, and many details about the "door opening" had not yet been carefully considered—everything had been too chaotic at the time, he had overlooked many details, which needed to be slowly recalled and sorted out afterward.

Yu Sheng decided to wait until he got back to communicate with Erin about it.

Of course, he also knew that even if he told Erin, she would probably be just as confused as him, and then they'd both be muddled together, but in any case, discussing it with someone else was better than racking his brains alone.

After all, that person had some knowledge of the Supernatural Realm—albeit not much.

A few minutes later, Yu Sheng walked away from the street corner, perked up his spirits in the gradually cooling night breeze, and looked toward the direction of the little supermarket not far away.

Hesitating for a moment, he still took steps toward the supermarket.

He decided to still go through with today's shopping plan—the matter of the "door" was unsettling, but he couldn't just stop opening any doors from now on.

However, this time, he was more cautious than ever when pushing open the door of the supermarket.

He concentrated hard, sensing every single detail of the door opening—from the touch transmitted through his hand, to the thoughts in his heart, the intuition that warned him, even the sound of the wind around him, the shadows reflected on the glass door...

If anyone else were present at the time, they might feel Yu Sheng's door opening proceeded like a slow-motion scene.

Afterward, the supermarket door opened.

Amidst the slightly crowded shelves, the young store owner looked up and smiled upon seeing Yu Sheng: "Oh, what do you want to buy?"