Alien Hotel.

Chapter 500: Intelligence from Baili Qing
The "patients" who enter Jinglin Sanatorium will be and will only be affected by the rules of the sanatorium—this simple sentence made Yu Sheng think of a certain possible situation almost instantly.

"...Could that independent investigator named 'Sun Chen' be trying to use the 'rules' of Jinglin Sanatorium to evade the influence of that 'tower'?"

“That’s what I guessed too,” Little Red Riding Hood nodded. “After all, he posted before that he was being haunted by that tower and even suspected that part of his mind was trapped in nightmares related to the tower. In this case, the person must have sought help from familiar doctors and psychics, and may even have sought help from the Special Operations Bureau. Hiding in Jinglin Sanatorium may have been someone’s suggestion to him.”

Yu Sheng recalled his previous experiences exploring the "dark alley" with Little Red Riding Hood and the King, the "eroded" old bookstore, and his bizarre and chaotic dream at dawn.

“It seems we need to go to that sanatorium,” he said slowly, “to confirm the situation with that independent investigator in person.”

“Yes, that’s why I came to find you as soon as possible—getting into Jinglin Sanatorium isn’t easy. After all, it’s a special place, and ‘visits’ require special procedures. I can’t get those done, but it shouldn’t be a problem for you.”

Hearing Little Red Riding Hood's words, Yu Sheng quickly realized what was going on, picked up his phone and started sending messages, muttering to himself as he did so: "Sigh, always bothering a bureau chief with all this nonsense..."

Eileen, who was sitting on the edge of the table swinging her legs and lost in thought, immediately turned her head when she heard this: "You never seem to feel guilty when you send messages to people at 11 or 12 at night - at least today is a normal day."

Upon hearing this, Yu Sheng immediately hit it off with the little puppet, becoming its accomplice and colluding with it: "Now that you say it, I feel much more at ease..."

Little Red Riding Hood glanced at Yu Sheng, then at the dolls on the table. She opened her mouth but didn't know how to comment on the two, so she could only continue eating her steamed buns.

The fox-like creature beside it had been eating voraciously the whole time, seemingly oblivious to the conversation. When it heard the surroundings quiet down, it merely looked up curiously before placing a grilled sausage in front of its friend, the dog.

As Little Red Riding Hood ate her grilled sausage and steamed bun, a somewhat peculiar feeling welled up inside her, a sense of being fed a strange sense of being taken advantage of...

Then she saw Yu Sheng, who was sitting across the table, suddenly get up, open a door from the side, and walk in. As he walked, he waved to her and said, "It's hard to explain in a message. I'll go over and talk to Baili Qing in person. I'll be back soon. The three of you wait here for me."

The next second, Baili Qing, who was sitting in the director's office in the Secret Service building, looked up at Yu Sheng, who had pushed the door open and entered on his own, her face as expressionless as usual.

“I know what you’ve been investigating lately, and I know your general progress,” Baili Qing said directly upon meeting him, making no attempt to hide her “concern” for Sheng Ping’s daily activities. “The special investigation permit you requested will be issued soon, and I will personally notify the person in charge at Jinglin Sanatorium to cooperate.”

“That’s a real help,” Yu Sheng said, pulling up a chair from the side and sitting down opposite Baili Qing at the table. He looked up into her eyes. “The paperwork itself is indeed not a problem—so you’ve made me come all this way to discuss something else?”

Baili Qing didn't waste any words, she just nodded slightly, and then turned to look at the huge floor-to-ceiling window behind her desk.

Thick fog billowed and surged outside the French windows, rapidly conjuring up bizarre and fantastical illusions. In the blink of an eye, Yu Sheng saw some familiar sights—

It was that broken, eerie tower, and the blonde dolls charging outside the tower, rushing along the outer wall towards the top.

“Ah, this is the video footage that Marlene sent me before,” Yu Sheng said immediately. “I’ve seen it before.”

Baili Qing stared at the illusion emerging from the thick fog, and as her gaze focused, a part of the illusion was zoomed in and magnified.

That was a small part of the footage that had previously not attracted much attention from Yu Sheng.

Some people were frantically evacuating from the vicinity of the shattered tower, and unstable spatial rifts were expanding and contracting at the edge of the open area, with several corpses abandoned near those rifts.

The clothes worn by those evacuees were clearly not in the style of the current Boundary City. Some of them had a classical or fantasy feel, and some were dressed almost like wizards or sorcerers. Others wore complex armor and carried exaggeratedly designed greatswords and crossbows. Still others had all sorts of odds and ends hanging on their bodies, and it was unclear what their purpose was.

These people were dressed in all sorts of strange and unusual clothes. The only thing that could be seen was that they were not a "regular army" but rather a hastily assembled investigation and exploration team.

“These people are a borderland exploration team,” Baili Qing’s voice rang out from the side, not giving Yu Sheng much time to guess. “From today’s perspective, they are ‘colleagues’ of modern investigators and spirit detectives.” “Oh…” Yu Sheng blinked. Although his attention had been almost entirely focused on the blond doll and the shadows at the top of the tower, and he hadn’t paid much attention to the team hastily retreating in the corner of the scene, he had at least noticed these figures. “This art style is very different from the people of the borderland now… I was wondering before, why are there magicians among them?”

“Because they come from 3,700 years ago—in the unique era division within the borderlands, that is known as the chaotic ‘classical era’,” Baili Qing explained calmly. “During that special period, magic… was widespread in the borderlands.”

Yu Sheng's expression froze for a moment. He turned to look at Baili Qing's expressionless face, blinked, and after a few seconds opened his mouth: "...Huh?"

“It’s not just magic, but also psychic energy, witchcraft, the bloodlines of alien species, and ‘ancient species’ that only exist in certain books,” Baili Qing said calmly. “The ancient species here refer to giants and dragons—and some other strange intelligent creatures whose names are no longer known, but whose existence is only confirmed.”

Yu Sheng's eyes widened slowly. He was stunned when he realized that the female director in front of him had casually mentioned something quite extraordinary: "Hey, wait a minute... 3,700 years, just 3,700 years. You're telling me that the borderlands back then were full of magic, psychic energy, and witchcraft, and a bunch of 'alien' creatures that have nothing to do with the current humans of the border city?! No... does that make sense?"

He gestured for a moment, then hesitated for several seconds before finally managing to put his words together: "Well, even if this place is blessed with outstanding people and resources, it still needs to maintain the 'continuity' of civilization and history, right? At least within the scope of recordable history, it has to have developed from ancient times to the present, it can't just be a huge leap that resets the timeline and jumps straight to..."

“Your reaction is normal, but the boundary does not follow continuity—the ‘big jump’ you mentioned really happened.”

Bai Liqing spoke calmly, cutting off Yu Sheng's unfinished words.

Yu Sheng: "...Okay, awesome."

Bai Liqing sighed, a rare occurrence: "I know you have many questions, and so do I. Even the people of the borderlands themselves are unsure how many secrets are buried in this 'cosmic hub,' which is called 'homeland' and isolated from the outside world. The chaotic classical era is like a shattered piece of light and shadow, reflected in the depths of the mist of history, preventing us from looking back and peering into it."

"As you know, this world has experienced a 'second singularity eruption,' and many civilizations have experienced historical gaps or collective memory confusion to varying degrees. However, even compared to the groups with the most severe gaps, the border region is one of the most extreme cases."

“We were truly ‘reset’ during the second birth of the world, and may even have experienced more than one reset after the world had already been reborn. This chaotic situation only stabilized after the establishment of the Special Operations Bureau, when the previously disordered spacetime of the entire border region was connected into a whole. However, a large number of records about the classical era were seemingly consciously erased during this ‘stabilization’ process, and now the verifiable information is almost non-existent…”

At this point, Baili Qing suddenly shook her head.

"However, today we are not focusing on the 'classical era,' but on this tower and this special 'exploration team.'"

Upon hearing this, Yu Sheng quickly adjusted his posture in the chair, and his expression became serious.

Although Baili Qing just mentioned that the data from the "classical era" was severely damaged and difficult to verify, judging from her current reaction... the all-powerful Secret Service has obviously found some clues in those old documents.

“In the Secret Service’s secret database, we found a very suspicious incident record,” Baili Qing slowly began, “'In the Year of Drifting, the Dark Star and the Dome overlapped. The Other God descended along the Boundary Bridge and met us as promised, but the Boundary Bridge unexpectedly broke, the Other God went out of control and disintegrated… The escort team was severely damaged, and only three people evacuated and brought back news—a powerful individual of unknown origin intervened at the scene, intercepted the Other God and covered their retreat. After that, the Boundary Bridge, the Other God and the Dark Star all disappeared without a trace.'”

A brief silence fell over the office.

"That's all," Baili Qing said.

“…Wait a moment, let me sort this out,” Yu Sheng immediately waved his hand, reviewing what he had just heard in his mind while quickly organizing his thoughts. After several seconds, he looked up again. “So, this passage describes the events recorded in the video that Marlene found in the ‘Garden’ network?”

Baili Qing nodded: "The possibility is extremely high."

Yu Sheng: "..."

Isn't this a bit too much information?!
(End of this chapter)