Alien Hotel.

Chapter 497 Signs of Invasion
The struggle between cats is fierce and brutal—but sometimes it is accompanied by a very realistic art of compromise.

Once they realized they couldn't outmaneuver the king, the black cats gathered in the alley immediately started meowing, which made them seem even more pragmatic than cats in the real world.

Yu Sheng never expected things to turn out this way. Watching from the side, he felt the whole process was surreal. The King, on the other hand, seemed quite used to it, obviously having dealt with these "cats" in the alley before. After intimidating the group of cats, it turned to Yu Sheng and complained, "The 'cats' generated here have no brains and no memory. Next time I come in, they will still foolishly come up to me."

At this point, it even spat to the side in a rather humane way: "But the good news is that they will act strictly according to several characteristics of 'cats,' including attacking living things within their territory, being bribed by cat food cans, and submitting to stronger cats, which makes them much easier to deal with than many other entities in other realms."

“Then let’s quickly ask about this alley,” Yu Sheng said immediately. “For example, these three emergency exits, and the strange situation in the old bookstore—it would be best to ask them about the broken tower as well.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the king's cat visibly showed a slightly strained expression (it's unclear how it produced that expression). After holding it in for several seconds, the tabby cat finally spoke with some difficulty: "Such complicated questions are hard to communicate... Cats don't have a very rich vocabulary, and their brains aren't that sharp."

Yu Sheng: "..."

“Then I’ll give it a try,” the king said immediately. “Don’t get your hopes up too high. These low-level entities have limited thinking abilities and can’t compare to the likes of ‘Passenger 22’ or ‘Storyteller’—you should stand away from Little Red Riding Hood, cats are easily stressed.”

Watching a perfectly standard tabby cat solemnly tell him, "Cats are prone to stress," felt incredibly strange. But Yu Sheng swallowed back the retort that was already on the tip of his tongue, pulled Little Red Riding Hood back a few steps, and watched the king go forward to negotiate with the strange black cats.

Then came a series of incomprehensible meows, interspersed with the king gesturing with his paw raised and the restless jumping around of the black cats on the other side. At one point, the meowing and whining between the two sides became very intense, as if they were about to start hissing again at any moment, but then it turned into a heated discussion among the cats...

Yu Sheng, watching from the side, was amazed and couldn't help but nudge Little Red Riding Hood's arm: "Why is the king getting a little angry?"

Little Red Riding Hood looked helpless: "How should I know? I can't understand cat language."

Yu Sheng stroked his chin: "...That's true, cats and dogs can't communicate."

No sooner had he finished speaking than he heard a grinding, chattering sound beside him. He turned his head and saw that Little Red Riding Hood's teeth had all turned sharp...

Fortunately, the king managed to communicate with the group of black cats before Wang Jiajia suddenly attacked and bit people.

The black cats seemed to have reached some kind of agreement with the king, this "powerful foreign cat," and retreated a distance, hiding in the shadows of various buildings. They continued to stare at the figures at the intersection with their eerie pale eyes. The king, while instructing the magicians to keep an eye on the movements of the "cats," strode back to Yu Sheng.

"How did the exchange go? Did you get the answers you wanted?" Yu Sheng asked immediately.

“I don’t quite understand. Their logic is all over the place, but they did get some useful information,” the king said, licking his paws. “They did mention that there were ‘some changes’ in the alley, but these cats don’t have a clear sense of time, so they can’t say when the changes started—they mentioned that something was crawling into the alley, and not just near the old bookstore, but almost everywhere in the dark alley.”

The tabby cat raised its head and glanced at Yu Sheng: "It might be those 'spider silks' you saw next to that big hole."

Yu Sheng's heart skipped a beat: "So, the changes in the alley now..."

“It’s probably because we’ve provoked those ‘spider webs’,” the King Cat said solemnly. “This isn’t the normal state of the alley; it’s the result of external interference—this isn’t what those ‘cats’ said. They can’t explain such complex things. It’s all just my guess based on their jumbled information. Now, many changes and mechanisms in the alley have exceeded the ‘understanding’ of these entities. They just want us to leave this place immediately, or rather… the ‘alley’ wants us to leave as soon as possible.”

Yu Sheng frowned and subconsciously looked at the three forks in the road at the intersection.

Even alien realms... feel fear?! They might even send out physical entities to expel uncontrolled invaders out of "unease"?
Is this an inherent characteristic of the "dark alley," or a change that occurred after it was eroded and entangled by those "spider webs"?
As doubts arose in Yu Sheng's mind, Little Red Riding Hood suddenly broke the silence: "What about that broken tower?"

“There is absolutely no communication on this matter,” the king shook his head. “They have no idea about ‘other spaces outside the alley’ or what a tower is—entities cannot know information from outside realms. But if we look at it another way, perhaps we can use this to determine that the tower is not the original structure of the ‘alley,’ but rather part of some kind of ‘invasion’… or even further, that the tower and the ‘spider web’ outside the alley should have the same origin, both having only started to entangle this alley in recent years.”

Little Red Riding Hood rested her finger on her chin, deep in thought: "So, the 'poster' from three years ago was the first unlucky guy to realize the 'intrusion'?"

“Based on my experience dealing with other realms and various erosion events, the post you mentioned may even describe the exact moment when the alley was first ‘invaded’,” the king said professionally. “The moment when an alien invasion is most easily observed by ‘spiritual vision’ is the instant it occurs—and that’s also the moment when people are most likely to get involved.”

Little Red Riding Hood pondered, "It seems we still need to find that person first..."

"So what now?" Yu Sheng looked at the "black cats" who were still gathered by the roadside but had not made any further moves, and then glanced back at the crossroads. "Should we continue searching for the path leading deeper into the area?"

“…Let’s go back first. The dark alley is rejecting us. Its spacetime structure has changed, and there’s no point in continuing to search for the path to the ‘deeper’,” Little Red Riding Hood thought seriously for a moment, then shook her head. “Anyway, we’ve already obtained a lot of information. We need to go back and sort out the clues we have now.”

“We also need to inform the Secret Service about what happened here,” the King muttered, licking the fur on his front paws. “Spirit detectives have an obligation to promptly report any unusual phenomena discovered in other realms to the Secret Service—a single useful piece of information can earn you a lot of cat treats.” …

The TV in the living room was playing a variety show that no one cared about. Hu Li sat cross-legged on the rug next to the coffee table, carefully fiddling with a pile of yarn. Luna was sweeping the living room with a broom, while Eileen was lying listlessly on the armrest of the sofa, muttering to herself as she played with the Ominous Star that rolled around in front of her.

"Ah, why isn't Yu Sheng back yet... He's been out for so long. He clearly said he was just going to check out the situation in that alley, but he didn't take me with him. He suddenly opened the door just now, and I thought he was going to call for backup, but he didn't take me with him either... It seems like he didn't die out there, but he didn't take me with him... He should be done by now and come back, it's already dark... but he didn't take me with him."

No one paid any attention to the little dwarf's rambling. Huli and Luna were busy with their own things. Eileen looked around and, finding no one paying attention to her, climbed up behind Huli and tugged at the fox girl's tail: "What are you doing? You've been making a fuss since earlier... What is this?"

“I want to knit a scarf for my benefactor,” Hu Li said earnestly, pulling out a handful of unprocessed silvery-white fur from her tail. “This is all the fur I recently shed.”

Eileen stared in surprise at what Hu Li was fiddling with, and after a long pause, finally blurted out, "So you've been grooming yourself all this time just for this?!"

Hu Li said smugly, "Yeah, right~~"

"But it's summer now!" the little doll exclaimed, wide-eyed. "Do people knit scarves in the summer?"

“It’s warm in winter and cool in summer, all you need is some magic,” Hu Li squinted. “Now my benefactor also likes to lie on my tail—just because it’s cool.”

“Then people would think he’s crazy if he went out wearing a fox fur scarf in the middle of summer,” Eileen said, her mind suddenly sparking with a sudden inspiration. “Yu Sheng isn’t afraid of death, but he’s not afraid of social death.”

Hu Li was stunned for a moment, as if she hadn't really thought of this. Then she held a pile of yarn and fluff and started thinking. After a few seconds, she looked up and asked, "So what suggestions do you have?"

Eileen thought for a moment, then her eyes lit up: "Why don't you get him some knitted underwear..."

Hu Li raised her head and stared intently at the little doll: "Eileen."

Eileen immediately looked a little guilty: "W-what are you doing?"

Hu Li: "I'm not stupid—that thing will prick you."

The little doll chuckled sheepishly, "I was just making a suggestion, just a suggestion..."

Then she quickly climbed to the other end of the sofa and lay there watching Luna sweep the floor.

After a while, she couldn't resist teasing her again: "C-shaped buckle!"

Luna stopped and turned to look quietly at the little doll.

Eileen: "You look like a robot vacuum cleaner now."

Luna paused for two seconds, as if in a delay, before letting out a long sigh: "Short..."

Eileen didn't realize it either, and started rolling around on the sofa out of boredom again.

When she rolled to her seventeenth lap, the sofa suddenly fell silent again.

Hu Li, who was seriously thinking about how to make her wool underwear less itchy, noticed the change in the movement beside her and looked up towards the sofa.

The little doll was lying quietly in the middle of the mat, hugging the ominous Yusei, with a silly smile on its face and soft snoring.

She fell asleep, dreaming sweet dreams of waiting for Yu Sheng to come home.

(End of this chapter)