Chapter 19: Returning Home

Li Lin stared blankly at the empty corner of the wall, still holding the sampling scraper in his hand, his mind so bewildered it was as if he had forgotten what he was doing.

Meanwhile, the middle-aged man known as Captain Song—the leader of the Special Operations Bureau’s Second Unit, Song Cheng—furrowed his brow deeply the moment he saw the bloodstain vanish.

Something had slipped away from his memory and thoughts, yet a lingering impression remained. This faint trace stirred his intuition, alerting him to an unsettling anomaly.

A hazy gleam flickered in Song Cheng’s eyes as he immediately seized control of his mind, striving to “solidify” the last remaining impression deep within to prevent it from dissipating along with the vanished memory. Years of professional training now came into play.

After a moment of hesitation, Li Lin lifted his head. “Sir, I feel like I suddenly forgot what I was supposed to do. Was there something here just now?”

“Thought interference!” Song Cheng responded instantly, urging, “Check the ‘depth’ here immediately!”

Without hesitation, Li Lin set down the sampling tool and swiftly retrieved a small, palm-sized black box from his belt. Pressing a few buttons on its surface, he then pulled out a slender “soft tube” from the side and connected its needle-like tip directly to his eyeball. Having completed this, he raised his head and slowly scanned the surroundings with the eye linked to the tube.

A faint buzzing emanated from the dark iron box, while inside the tube, liquid seemed to flow gently. Slowly, Li Lin’s eye darkened, and through his enhanced vision, the entire old street began to adopt a monochrome hue.

“Depth L-0, no exotic reactions,” Li Lin reported while observing, “No signs of anything escaping from the ‘other realm’ or any residual traces.”

Song Cheng frowned, glancing at the box in Li Lin’s hand—a portable depth detector. Though its sensing range and sensitivity paled compared to the standard suitcase-sized devices, it should still detect any “depth” fluctuations within range.

He was certain something had just tampered with his memory and thoughts. The lingering “impression,” forcibly solidified in his mind, confirmed some sinister force was influencing him here. Yet... the device detected nothing.

Just as he prepared to instruct Li Lin to adjust the detector’s mode, Li Lin suddenly fixed his gaze on the far end of the alley.

His eye connected to the tube was as dark as ink, reflecting another layer of vision. Amid the black-and-white street and buildings, a faint, indistinct color shimmered—blurred and pale, impossible to discern its nature, but vast in scale. After careful scrutiny, he roughly outlined a nearly transparent shape about the size of a house.

“Captain Song, there’s something ahead, but it’s very vague. It looks like a house,” he said cautiously, stepping forward. “The depth reading is still zero, and there’s no contamination response... I’m almost right in front of it. Can you sense anything?”

Song Cheng followed closely, clutching a badge in his right hand, ready to intervene if necessary, but shook his head. “No intuitive warning.”

Li Lin halted at a certain spot, feeling as if he had arrived before that hazy patch of color. Hesitating, he slowly reached out his hand—

Suddenly, the black iron box emitted a sharp buzzing, followed by several crackling sounds. A wisp of blue smoke rose as the depth detector ceased functioning.

The tube connected to his eyeball snapped off instantly, releasing a thick, black, sludge-like substance that quickly evaporated upon contact with air.

A stinging, aching pain surged through Li Lin’s eye, prompting an involuntary exclamation. He dropped the now scorching black box and instinctively reached to rub the eye that had been connected.

Captain Song immediately stepped forward, placing a hand near Li Lin’s temple. “Don’t rub! It will pass soon!”

Li Lin froze, feeling a burning sensation near his temple as the eye discomfort rapidly subsided. Moments later, he recovered and saw the detector’s smoking remnants still on the ground.

“...Should we report this to headquarters?”

“Yes, report it.”

“Good, that scared me,” Li Lin exhaled in relief, then turned hesitantly to the spot where he had just reached out.

But there was only a small empty lot, at its end a wall crudely spray-painted with colorful graffiti depicting doors, windows, houses, trees, and stones.

He waved his hand forward—touching nothing.

“There must be something here. The device detected it, but I didn’t get to confirm before it broke,” Li Lin muttered. “Before it failed, the depth reading was still L-0.”

“...Let’s head back to the bureau first,” Song Cheng pondered for two seconds before deciding. “I’ll report this to the council. This place definitely needs monitoring. It might be an unregistered ‘other realm’—we’ll probably need larger equipment and specialist deep divers to handle it. Also, is your eye okay?”

“...If it were bad, do you think they’d approve me for half a day off?”

“No. The bureau’s short-staffed.”

“Then it’s fine. I’ll just put some eye drops in when we get back.”

Song Cheng nodded as Li Lin carefully picked up the now-cold detector debris. The two walked back to where they had parked the electric scooter.

Li Lin turned the key; the scooter’s LCD flickered once, then went dark.

He paused, looking up to meet Captain Song’s gaze—equally serious.

“My scooter’s broken... yours too?”

Song Cheng nodded silently.

“...You think it’s a coincidence?”

Song Cheng shook his head slightly and spoke in a low voice: “The ‘Academy’ folks have a special term to explain this phenomenon.”

Li Lin was slightly taken aback, then recalled certain past readings—

“Machine soul is unhappy.” / “Machine soul is scared.”

The two said in unison but then simultaneously corrected themselves: “You got it wrong.”

“Let’s talk about it later,” Song Cheng waved his hand and pushed the scooter forward, slowly heading back. “First, let’s leave this place.”

Li Lin followed, pushing his scooter. “Sir, are we really just going to push it all the way back?”

“What else? You want to abandon it?”

“Doesn’t the bureau have a small truck or something? Or we could call up that electric tricycle from logistics downstairs... pushing this all the way back will kill me...”

“Cut the nonsense. You’re young—your stamina shouldn’t be worse than mine.”

The two seasoned operators of the Special Operations Bureau pushed the scooter down the street, their figures gradually fading from view at the Wutong Road intersection.

...

Yu Sheng had grown very familiar with the boundless, profound darkness surrounding him. Having come here frequently of late, floating in this chaotic blackness felt almost like returning home.

Eileen’s screams still echoed in his ears.

He thought the sight of himself, bloodied and with a gaping wound in his belly, pushing open the door and dying inside the house must have frightened that doll in the painting. Even as a “cursed object,” Eileen’s psychological resilience seemed limited.

This only made Yu Sheng more eager to see what would happen when he “returned.”

When he reentered the living world and appeared before Eileen again... how would the doll lady react?

Would she even remember him pushing open the door and dying in that house?

Floating in the darkness, Yu Sheng’s mind conjured the image of Huli and recalled their encounter in the nighttime valley. He remembered that when Huli first saw him in the ruined temple, she completely forgot that she had killed someone with a headbutt — although for some unknown reason, she suddenly recalled it later. At first, however, she had truly erased the memory of his “death.”

Yu Sheng did not know what caused this “forgetting,” nor whether it was his fault or Huli’s—after all, the fox girl’s thoughts seemed quite confused, so sudden lapses were normal.

But if Eileen too forgot the moment he died pushing open that door, Yu Sheng could then be fairly certain... the problem lay within himself.

Time drifting in the darkness was impossible to measure, so after briefly organizing his experiences so far, Yu Sheng emptied his mind to let his frayed nerves rest, patiently awaiting the moment the darkness would end.

Then, he felt the familiar sensation of falling—rapidly “returning” to the mortal realm.

Prepared in advance, Yu Sheng concentrated, trying to capture his perception at the instant he crossed the “boundary.”

Familiar scenes unfolded before him, a subtle guiding force drawing him toward a particular direction. He struggled to discern amidst the flood of images, but before grasping anything, one scene suddenly enlarged before his eyes—

Wutong Road No. 66, the living room just inside the door.

Yu Sheng snapped his eyes open.

The familiar home furnishings came into view. In the dining room beside the living room, the antique, exquisite oil painting stood quietly on the table.

The figure of Eileen in the painting broke the silence.

“Yu Sheng! You’ve finally come back!”