Alien Hotel.

Chapter 499 The Poster's Message
Yu Sheng was woken up by a small doll hitting him on the head just as dawn was breaking.

He suddenly opened his eyes and sat up, only to see Eileen next to him, her head resting on his pillow. Although she had just hit him with her head, the little thing still didn't open her eyes, and after a few random head movements, she fell back into a deep sleep, snoring softly and evenly.

Yu Sheng himself couldn't sleep.

He sat on the bed, dozing for a while, then leaned back against the pillows. The faint impression of the dream he'd just had before Eileen's headbutt woke him still lingered in his mind. He felt like he'd had a whole night of bizarre, chaotic dreams, all sorts of strange scenes playing out in his head like a slideshow, and they hadn't completely faded away yet—

It started with walking a raccoon on the riverbank, while a bunch of mermaids and snake spirits splashed around in the river. Xuan Che was undergoing a lightning tribulation on the riverbank, causing the mermaids and snake spirits in the river to jump around in shock. Suddenly, it changed to him helping the locals dig stones in Shuji. Mo Ran erected an eighty-meter-tall statue of him in the city center, and the raccoon was eating offerings under the statue, known as the Cleansing Altar Messenger. Then it changed to him taking the kids on an outing in the valley. Everyone went to the Black Forest to pick mushrooms. When they were halfway through picking mushrooms, a squirrel ran over and said that a huge spider was dismantling the king's cat tree. That spider was huge, 666 meters tall...

Yu Sheng had a series of chaotic dreams, one scene after another. The last scene he remembered was that he had somehow returned to that "dark alley" and back to the collapsing old bookstore. The books and bookshelves in the bookstore seemed to come alive and were rushing out, while dense text was running around on the walls and ceiling, making small but piercing screams.

Immediately afterwards, the old bookstore began to deform. The walls stretched, the roof bulged, and a spiral, broken staircase extended from behind the bookshelves. Cracks of all sizes quickly filled the entire room—and a scarlet glow flashed past from outside those terrifying fissures, with the phantom of a spider in the red light.

Then came the little doll's headbutt.

Yu Sheng rubbed the spot on his forehead where Eileen's head had hit him earlier, still feeling a bit dizzy. He blinked, and between the closing of his eyelids, he could almost still see that crimson gaze.

The little doll rolled off the pillow, grabbed a corner of the blanket and wrapped it around itself, muttering to itself, though no one knew what it was talking about.

Using the morning light filtering through the curtains, Yu Sheng quietly looked at the doll for a while before his gaze fell on the bedside table beside her.

The ominous star remained quietly there, leaning against the frame of the oil painting next to it.

Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then picked up the grayish-white stone ball and slowly stroked its pitted and rough surface. He then calmed his mind and tried to establish a connection with it again.

Since the day he obtained it from the Taixu Lingshu, Yu Sheng has "bleeded" the stone ball several times, and has made more than one attempt to establish a "connection" with it.

To this day, he still cannot control the stone sphere by giving it blood, just like he can with other "ordinary objects." Sometimes, he even inexplicably "bothers" Eileen while trying to contact it. But after all this time, he has not come up with nothing.

As the mind settles and emotions settle, that familiar sense of emptiness and the faint whistling noise once again permeate from the edge of perception.

Yu Sheng narrowed his eyes slightly. In his perception, everything in the bedroom was gradually becoming distant and blurred. Only the Ominous Star in his hand became more real. With further focus of his mind, this "little ball" seemed to become the only real object in the entire world, quietly floating in the depths of darkness.

Yu Sheng's senses wandered around this "only existence," but just like his previous attempts, he still couldn't penetrate the outer shell of the Ominous Wanderer Star and see what was inside.

Only hollow noise kept coming from that sphere, like billions of overlapping chaotic murmurs.

Yu Sheng raised his head again in the darkness, looking around at the ominous wandering star.

After pondering for a long time, he suddenly tried to break the silence towards that gray "lone star"—

What does it mean to say, "The quality is not good enough"?

His only response was still an empty howl.

Yu Sheng suddenly opened his eyes and saw Eileen sitting cross-legged beside him, the little doll staring at him with wide eyes, motionless.

It was already broad daylight outside the window.

"Wow!" the little thing exclaimed dramatically, then pointed at the Ominous Star in Yu Sheng's hand, "You secretly played with my ball!"

“I let you wake me up with that headbutt so I could study this thing,” Yu Sheng said casually, placing the stone ball on the track next to the little doll’s head. “Although I still haven’t figured it out.”

"Yes, really?" The little doll blinked, then pointed to the bedside table. "By the way, your phone was ringing just now, it sounded like someone sent you a message!"

Yu Sheng raised his eyebrows, waved to Eileen to let the little doll go comb her hair and wash up, and curiously picked up his phone. When he opened it, he found several unread messages—all from Little Red Riding Hood.

"Yu Sheng, are you awake yet?" "We found that spirit detective named 'Sun Chen,' but the situation is a bit complicated." "Reply when you're awake, I'll come find you directly." Yu Sheng looked at the message on the screen, then turned to look at the fact that it was already bright outside, and was a little dazed for a moment—he had only tried to communicate with the Ominous Wanderer Star as usual, and so much time had passed?
He quickly suppressed his doubts, hurriedly replied to a message, then got up to wash and get ready. He also wiped the faces of the little dolls that were lining up by the sink. When he ran downstairs, he saw the raccoon dog eagerly waiting to be fed in the dining room...

"My benefactor, you got up so late today," the fox-spirit girl whimpered, lying on the table with her ears drooping. "I'm hungry."

Yu Sheng looked helpless: "Hey, if you're hungry, go to the intersection and buy some steamed buns or fried dough sticks."

Hu Li continued to lie on the table: "That won't do, we have to eat breakfast together..."

The fox girl seemed to have all sorts of strange obsessions about food, but Yu Sheng was already used to it. He didn't say anything at this moment, but quickly opened a door next to the dining table, peeked out and rattled off a string of orders to the person opposite: "Five bowls of noodles with soybean paste, plus braised eggs, ten sesame cakes, twenty chicken legs, three baskets of steamed buns, a bowl of seaweed and egg soup, plus two plates of fried tofu, and six grilled sausages, no chili, extra cumin."

Not long after he finished speaking, trays began to be pushed over from the other side of the door like a flowing stream—that was the Secret Service canteen's food window, serving food specially provided by Hu Li.

The fox girl, who had been hungry all morning, suddenly perked up and began to devour the food on the dining table. At almost the same time, Yu Sheng heard footsteps coming from the direction of the stairs.

Turning his head, he saw a girl in red walking out of the basement.

"Have you eaten?" Yu Sheng raised his hand to beckon. "If you haven't eaten, come and have some—and by the way, tell me what's going on with that spirit detective who posted the message."

Little Red Riding Hood didn't stand on ceremony. At eighteen, she was at the age where she had a big appetite. As soon as she sat down at the table, she grabbed a steamed bun for herself. Hu Li only glanced up at her. Although she usually had a habit of guarding her food, when she saw that it was her good friend dog who was eating, she just grunted and pushed the plate of sesame cakes to the side.

“To put it simply, that spirit detective named ‘Sun Chen’ is currently living in ‘Jinglin Sanatorium’,” Little Red Riding Hood said. “He moved in a few months ago, which is why there haven’t been any updates on the border communications lately.”

As she spoke, she took a bite of the steamed bun, only to burn her tongue. She blew on it frantically, then looked up to see that Hu Li had already started eating the second steamer.

Yu Sheng frowned slightly: "Jinglin Sanatorium?"

Little Red Riding Hood: "...You can simply think of it as a mental hospital."

Yu Sheng was stunned for a moment, then realized: "...He's gone mad?!"

“I’m not sure. What I found out is that he checked in voluntarily—and he was conscious when he checked in,” Little Red Riding Hood shook her head. “This is very unusual, because most spirit detectives who end up in mental hospitals are usually far removed from being human on a mental level. They are usually taken to special containment and treatment facilities by the Secret Service or special ‘recoverers’.”

She paused for a moment, then added, "In addition, the 'Jinglin Sanatorium' is also a rather special place."

Yu Sheng asked with some curiosity, "Is it special?"

“You know, being a spirit detective or investigator is a ‘high-risk profession’,” Little Red Riding Hood said, raising her eyelids. “Those who do this work are constantly exposed to all sorts of strange things, so when a spirit detective or investigator develops mental problems, their ‘mental problems’ are probably the least of their problems—do you think such people would be sent to a ‘regular’ mental hospital?”

Yu Sheng seemed to be deep in thought.

Little Red Riding Hood continued, "Therefore, the Secret Service has established many specialized treatment and containment facilities—as the name suggests, they are both treatment institutions and containment units. They use 'professional methods' to deal with patients' 'special mental problems,' and there are also special measures to prevent patients' 'mental problems' from escaping from the wards. The 'Jinglin Sanatorium' I just mentioned is one of the treatment and containment facilities established by the Secret Service, and at the same time... it is also the most special one."

"That place is an alien realm with an average depth of L-1."

Yu Sheng almost choked on his noodles.

This time, it was Little Red Riding Hood's turn to complain: "Why are you so surprised—isn't the valley we're living in now also a foreign land?"

“One thing at a time—my valley is at least a beautiful and peaceful place, and it doesn’t take in mentally ill people,” Yu Sheng coughed twice, his expression strange. “There has to be an explanation for concentrating a group of ‘special people’ who already had mental problems due to contact with foreign lands in a foreign land.”

The girl eating a bun across the table smiled slightly upon hearing this: "It's very simple, because one of the characteristics of 'Jinglin Sanatorium' is that 'patients' who enter the sanatorium will be affected by the rules of the sanatorium, and will only be affected by the rules of the sanatorium."

(End of this chapter)