Chapter 9: A Glimmer of Truth

Page (1/3)

The voice ringing in his mind startled Yu Sheng, who had been momentarily dazed by the cold wind blowing through the valley—then he was even more stunned. He remained speechless until Erin shouted again inside his head, jolting him fully awake.

“...Erin?” Yu Sheng blinked, cautiously scanning the valley while carefully approaching the dilapidated, crumbling old temple, hoping to find a temporary refuge. At the same time, he tried to respond inwardly, “How... how did you get in touch with me? I mean, you’re speaking directly inside my head...”

“Is that so hard?” Erin’s tone was matter-of-fact. “I’m Alice’s puppet!”

Yu Sheng thought for a moment but couldn’t quite connect the dots between those two facts... So, all of Alice’s puppets can do this? They can all speak inside someone’s mind?

“I already entered your dream once,” Erin patiently explained when Yu Sheng didn’t respond, “Once I go in, I can find my way back.” Then her tone shifted abruptly. “Hey, where exactly did you go? I can’t sense you at all...”

Yu Sheng fell silent for two seconds, then looked up at the dense forest surrounding the valley. He had a creeping feeling that a seven or eight-meter-tall monster might suddenly appear next moment, accompanied by a stirring heroic soundtrack. The thought chilled him: “...I might have wandered too far out. I don’t think I can get back easily...”

Erin was clearly stunned too, and after a few seconds, her voice came through again, “...Wait, didn’t you say you just stepped out to throw away some trash? Did a garbage truck scoop you up?!”

Yu Sheng had no idea where she got such a wild imagination...

But he had to admit, hearing Erin’s voice brought a small measure of comfort to his panicked heart after being dumped in this desolate wilderness—just a little.

At least this voice proved that his connection to the original world hadn’t been completely severed. Since Erin could reach him, there was still hope of returning—though he had no clue how or any reason to believe it, he had to hold onto that belief for now.

For the moment, the first priority was to ensure his own safety.

The valley was quiet; only occasional hollow gusts of wind whispered by. Yet Yu Sheng felt an uneasy, oppressive sensation, as if something was watching him—some presence devoid of warmth, a void filled with hunger, sweeping the area repeatedly, fixating on him.

This growing unease pressed him to urgently find a hiding place, at least to stop standing so carelessly out in the open.

The only possible shelter within sight was that nearly collapsed old temple. The forest beyond was dense but held an even more eerie, sinister atmosphere. Besides, “venturing into a wild forest at midnight” was a classic fatal mistake in horror tales—something he was absolutely unwilling to do.

But the problem was that sneaking into the old temple at midnight was also a classic death wish scenario. The difference was that the forest was prone to spawning fierce beasts, while the temple was likely to spawn monsters...

Both equally likely to trigger a rousing heroic soundtrack.

Gritting his teeth, Yu Sheng headed toward the only remaining somewhat intact corner of the temple.

At the same time, he communicated with Erin in his mind, roughly explaining his situation—though there wasn’t much to explain, since even he didn’t understand how all this had happened; he had only opened a door...

Page (2/3)

After hearing this, Erin was silent for a long moment before hesitantly speaking: “Sounds like you’ve landed in an ‘Otherworld’?”

Standing amid the temple ruins, Yu Sheng was momentarily taken aback before realizing something. “Otherworld? You call this place the Otherworld? You know where I am?”

For some reason, Erin’s voice seemed a bit confused: “Huh? There are plenty of Otherworlds—I don’t know which one you ended up in...”

Listening to Erin’s mumbling, Yu Sheng frowned, suddenly realizing he had gained some knowledge of “supernatural realms,” and grasped something crucial:

He might not have been thrown into “another world” at all, but had encountered something seen by Erin as a common “natural phenomenon”?

Yu Sheng muttered to himself while Erin, apparently struck by a thought, said in his mind with some disbelief: “...You haven’t even heard of the ‘Otherworld,’ have you?”

Yu Sheng’s expression twisted oddly: “...Should I have heard of it? Isn’t that supposed to be common knowledge?”

“Oh, it’s normal for ordinary people not to know about the Otherworld. After all, most people never encounter anything related in their entire lifetime,” Erin casually replied, then added a sentence that made Yu Sheng pause: “But you shouldn’t be among those who don’t know.”

“Me? Why would I have to know?” Yu Sheng looked confused. “I’m just an ordinary person...”

“...But you live in the Otherworld every day.”

...

Shadows slipped through the night. Predators took form in darkness. A snarling wolf sprang from the shadows, nimbly leaping along the uneven rooftops of the old district, landing silently on an empty street, standing in the middle of the road and looking around.

“Come back!” A somewhat annoyed female voice called out from the shadows between buildings at the street corner.

The wolf immediately shrank its neck, whimpering softly, then hurried to hide in the shadow of a nearby building.

A girl dressed in a dark red jacket and black short skirt stood in the corner between two old houses. She reached out to rub the wolf’s head, then lifted her eyes to look down the street.

It was a short street with only a few dozen households. The street was open at both ends; the pavement was clear and easy to survey. Even without the wolf’s keen eyes, she could quickly assess the situation here.

The girl frowned, and at that moment, her phone rang—playing the classic theme from the 1986 Journey to the West. She answered on the second monkey flip, “It’s me. Yes, I’m here in the old district, near Wutong Road.”

The voice on the other end was a middle-aged man, exhausted from overtime, rambling.

Little Red Riding Hood listened patiently for a while, then tugged at the corner of her mouth, “I’ve arrived, but found nothing—my wolf has searched the entire street back and forth three times. There’s no sign of the Otherworld opening, and nothing escaped from it.”

Page (3/3)

There was a two- or three-second silence on the other end before the voice spoke again: “But the surveillance team can confirm there was a reaction indicating an Otherworld opening on Wutong Road in the old district. There must have been a brief portal to the Otherworld...”

“I believe that,” Little Red Riding Hood said with some helplessness. “I acknowledge the professionalism of your Special Duty Bureau’s surveillance team, but I also trust my wolves—maybe there really was a brief portal here, but it’s definitely gone now... Considering that normally an Otherworld can’t sever its connection to the real world so quickly, maybe ‘someone else’ intervened and handled it.”

“Few have the ability to sever that connection so swiftly, and their organizations have registered and communicated with the Special Duty Bureau,” the voice sounded weary. “But I haven’t received any such communication tonight...”

“Then maybe it’s the Hermit Society. They’re always mumbling about the supernatural...” The girl said casually, then unsurprisingly heard a stream of rambling from the phone again, so she sighed and replied repeatedly, “Okay, okay, I get it. They’re respected scholars, alright... I’ve always respected scholars. Enough, enough—I’ll have my wolves search through the shadows one more time. Wutong Road isn’t big—only sixty-five house numbers. Another sweep won’t be a problem...”

She hung up, finally enjoying the silence, and sighed as she looked at her phone screen going dark. Then she glanced down at the dog and wolf heads rising and falling in the shadows around her, sighing again.

“My homework’s not done yet... sigh, the outsourced life is really tough...”

...

Yu Sheng sat beneath a relatively sturdy corner of the ruined temple wall, chilled by the cold wind blowing through a large hole in the wall. He looked up at the dark, murky night sky beyond the broken roof, trying to clear his mind but failing.

Just now, he had learned a truth.

The only safe haven in the city he called home—the place he believed was the safest and most normal in the entire city—was actually an anomaly known as the “Otherworld”... a “realm.”

In Erin’s words, the “Otherworld” was a dimension beyond normality, a borderland of reason. The orderly world where ordinary people lived seemed like a sturdy mountain with a solid foundation, but in truth, that mountain was riddled with tiny “holes” leading to the irrational and chaotic.

For most people, they would never come into contact with these “holes” throughout their lives; they would never glimpse the bizarre and fantastical scenes on the other side.

But the faint glow leaking from those holes always caught the eyes of some people—in that moment of careless glance, some things could never be undone.

—Though even for a well-traveled puppet like Erin, it was somewhat absurd for one person to live in the Otherworld for such a long time...