Alien Hotel.

Chapter 494 Used Bookstore

Dark and damp, as if perpetually shrouded in the atmosphere of impending rain at dusk, the dim, chaotic lights illuminating the mottled, old signs of the shops on both sides, creating an exceptionally eerie and sinister atmosphere in the alley.

The adventurer team waded through the puddles beside the road, inspecting every possible suspicious spot in the alley, and demonstrating skillful teamwork and individual competence as they moved forward.

The figures of the stalker assassins would occasionally disappear from Yu Sheng's sight, seemingly melting into the shadows of the buildings, and then suddenly emerge from a corner next to a house, appearing and disappearing like spirits. The wandering mage summoned a ghostly blue eye floating in mid-air, constantly scanning the path behind them. The swordsman walked at the front of the group to guard against entities appearing in the alley ahead of time—although the probability was not high, the alien realm occasionally experienced deep fluctuations, and the probability of any danger occurring prematurely was not zero.

The young priestess with a short staff walked at the very center of the group, constantly muttering something that sounded like a prayer. Each recitation refreshed everyone with a faint blessing of light that had a calming and healing effect.

Curious, Yu Sheng approached the priestess, who was technically the king's "summoned creature," and overheard her muttering the same few lines over and over: "...Holy light is like the wind, blessing the cat; holy light is like a torch, illuminating the cat; only I, the cat, meow meow meow meow..."

It's absolutely mesmerizing.

Little Red Riding Hood was clearly familiar with the various combat units summoned by the "King." Riding on a giant wolf, she directed several wolves to coordinate with the stalkers' actions at the edge of the formation, while also noticing the subtle expression on Yu Sheng's face.

“Impressive, isn’t it? These ‘summoned creatures’ created by the king sometimes seem to possess real intelligence,” she said to Sheng with a smile. “Sometimes they can even have simple conversations with outsiders. The highest-level summoned creatures—such as the sycophant and the ‘prime minister’—can even understand and remember the rules of the ‘outside’ world. It’s difficult for them to be exposed when they go out and interact with ordinary people. But in reality, the essence of these summoned creatures is that they are ‘entities’ generated in the ‘fairytale realm’... My wolf is the same.”

"Interesting," Yu Sheng muttered, then turned to look at the "priest" in the group. This "priest girl," dressed as if she had stepped out of an RPG game or novel illustration from the previous generation, smiled politely at him and continued to awkwardly repeat, "Only I am a cat, meow meow meow meow..."

Then I applied another layer of Holy Cat Blessing to the entire team.

"...To be honest, if you don't interact with people much, there is a bit of an uncanny valley effect."

“We thought so at first, but we got used to it after spending more time with the king,” Little Red Riding Hood said with a smile. “And these rigid combat units are actually more reassuring than the high-level units summoned by the king—I don’t like ‘sycophants,’ those old men are just like living people, even a bit too much. Fortunately, the king doesn’t usually let them out except when he wants to eat dried fish.”

As they spoke, they had already walked halfway through the alley.

Yu Sheng looked up and saw the crossroads ahead, with crisscrossing power lines strung between the shops on both sides. Dimly lit string lights hung from the power lines, and faded colorful flags swayed weakly in the wind. The flags bore auspicious and festive phrases such as "Grand Opening," "Smooth Sailing," "Promotion and Prosperity," and "Happy Family," but when combined in the context of the scene before him, they seemed a bit strange.

Under those dimly lit strings of lights were rows of street-facing shops with their doors and windows tightly shut.

Only the lights outside one shop shone brightly, its door wide open, as if extending a silent invitation.

With a wave of the king's claw, the young swordsman wielding the Village Sword approached the shop along with several Shadow Wolves. The stalker, who had somehow followed, flashed into the shop like a phantom.

"Your Majesty, the area ahead is safe."

"It's a wandering mage in the group," he said in a hoarse voice.

Yu Sheng and his group approached and saw that it turned out to be an old bookstore.

Little Red Riding Hood frowned, a clear look of wariness on her face.

"What do you mean by 'bookstore'?" Yu Sheng asked curiously.

"The most common shops in the 'dark alley' are general stores, pet food stores, and used bookstores," Little Red Riding Hood explained. "General stores are the safest, but they only sell cryptic items that won't help you find the exit, nor will they cause any harm. Pet food stores only sell cat food, and you have to exchange it for a small piece of your skin. Used bookstores are the most dangerous of the three—they might contain useful information, or they might be traps, or even books that are morally corrupting..."

She paused, then shook her head: "Clues and risks go hand in hand, which makes it troublesome and perplexing."

Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then stroked his chin: "Oh...indeed."

Then he casually opened a tiny door, no bigger than a palm, in the air beside him, placed his hand in the doorway, and called out, "Lu..."

A sharp blade flashed out from the small door, stabbing a gash in his palm, before swiftly retracting.

Little Red Riding Hood stared in astonishment at the scene, then saw Yu Sheng stride up to the entrance of the used bookstore with his blood-stained hands. Without saying a word, he slapped seven or eight bloody handprints on the bookstore's exterior walls, door frames, and windows. Finally, he wrote a line of large characters in blood: "Yu Sheng was here, along with Little Red Riding Hood and the cat."

The added portion was clearly blood that hadn't dried yet and they didn't want to waste it. The red-clad girl, who had been a dutiful spirit detective for years, was dumbfounded, finally managing to stammer, "You're really just spreading fungal carpets everywhere you go?"

Yu Sheng immediately lost his composure: "You should spend less time with Eileen..."

As he spoke, he opened another small door from the side, pulled out a fox tail from inside, wiped his hands with it, and then, amidst the protests of the fox girl on the other side of the door, "My benefactor, don't you want it? Let me lick it. It's such a waste," he stuffed the tail back in. After a series of skillful actions, he clapped his hands and strode into the bookstore.

Little Red Riding Hood stood to the side, staring blankly, then turned and poked the king's cat head: "What did I just say—if no one stops him, this door will open wherever he goes, this guy's DNA is a door-shaped helix."

The king's voice was deep: "It's not a big problem. Anyway, it's a door on the same floor, and we're currently at the shallowest part of the alley."

Yu Sheng ignored the murmurs behind him and walked into the old bookstore with its uniquely nostalgic style.

A warm, yet slightly stale, yellowish light illuminated the store. To the right of the entrance was a wooden counter with a few ledgers and dirty A4 sheets of paper piled haphazardly on it. Apart from that, the rest of the store was almost entirely occupied by tall, wide bookshelves lined up against the walls.

Two-thirds of the bookshelf was filled with all sorts of old books, but the remaining third was not empty either—a strange, sticky substance, like some kind of glue, accumulated in the empty space of the bookshelf, coalescing into a soft, mushy pile that looked like the books had "melted," and a dark liquid kept dripping from those piles, which was quickly absorbed by the ground.

The secondhand bookstore was empty. Behind the bare counter was a wooden chair with peeling paint and a piece of paper pasted on it that read, "Read, read, read, read, read, read, read..."

A jumble of words was piled up haphazardly, becoming increasingly blurry towards the end, as if something dark was desperately trying to squeeze out from the depths of the pile.

Yu Sheng frowned.

The blood connection was being established and strengthened. He heard a strange and hollow whistling sound, but the sound... didn't seem to be coming from this bookstore.

It didn't even seem to come from any corner of this "dark alley," but rather from some more distant and secluded place.

Somewhere beyond this "foreign land".

He looked up in the direction the sound came from, but there were only tall bookshelves and the walls of the shop itself, which were almost completely blocked by the bookshelves.

“Be careful of these black liquids,” Little Red Riding Hood’s voice came from behind. “These are ‘rotten knowledge’, which is highly polluting to the mind—even if you’re not afraid of mental pollution, it’s best not to touch them unless you’re willing to listen to ten thousand people babbling wrong chemical and physical formulas in your head.”

Yu Sheng turned around in surprise: "How do you know so much? The details here don't seem to be mentioned in the database..."

Little Red Riding Hood pursed her lips without speaking, but the "King" beside her had already nimbly jumped onto the counter. While rummaging through the odds and ends on the counter with his paws, he casually said, "Because she accidentally touched it once before—and the next day she got eight points on the science section of the midterm exam, which shocked the entire academic affairs office."

Little Red Riding Hood blushed and shouted, "Shut up!"

Yu Sheng was stunned, and before Little Red Riding Hood could bar her teeth, he quickly turned his attention back to the bookshelves around him.

The hollow howling sound, seemingly coming from outside the alley, still lingered in his mind as his gaze swept over the rows of old books on the bookshelf.

Most of the book covers were dusty and gray, with blurry lettering on the spines, making it impossible to read the titles or guess the contents.

"You can read the books on the shelf that are in good condition and intact with caution, but avoid getting too engrossed in them," the king advised. "Sometimes they contain information about emergency exits, or things that seem to be real events that happened somewhere in the border region—they may have happened in the past or they may be happening now, but they won't predict the future, unless it's a weather forecast."

“Maybe they’ll also record things about that ‘broken tower’—theoretically, secondhand bookstores would prioritize recording changes to the alley itself,” Little Red Riding Hood muttered to herself.

Yu Sheng nodded slowly, then glanced at the paper covered with the word "reading" on the chair behind the counter. Despite feeling uneasy, he carefully pulled a dusty old book off the shelf and opened it with a bit of curiosity.

On the yellowed paper, only a few large characters were written—

"The quality is not good enough."

(End of this chapter)