Alien Hotel.

Chapter 506 Ripples of Unease

"What do you mean Zheng Zhi disappeared when you went back to your room to get a can of Coke and came back?"

At the entrance of No. 66 Wutong Road, Yu Sheng stared wide-eyed at Li Lin, completely dumbfounded.

Li Lin, on the other end of the line, looked just as bewildered as he did: "I don't know either! It was just here a moment ago! And everything was normal when we were chatting—now the phone is unreachable, and the locator has no signal..."

Yu Sheng clicked his tongue as he listened, then turned to look at the curb beside him. After a long pause, he finally blurted out, "No way, I haven't even had a chance to take him to work yet, and he's already gone... What were you two talking about? Did he say what he wanted to do?"

Li Lin: "We were talking about the weather, and then he asked me to get him a can of Coke, an ice-cold one..."

Upon hearing this, Yu Sheng became even more worried...

At this moment, Hu Li also ran out of the house. After hearing that Zheng Zhi was missing, he started searching the surrounding area with Little Red Riding Hood. The two of them led seven or eight wolves and sniffed around almost the entire area around No. 66 Wutong Road. Finally, Little Red Riding Hood returned with a frown: "The last scent is at the intersection—this is the 'area of ​​influence' of your house, you know. This area should not be affected by 'external forces'."

Yu Sheng was still racking his brains about what had happened to his nephew that caused him to suddenly disappear again when he heard Little Red Riding Hood's mutterings and suddenly had a thought.

"Yes... this vacant lot was also an extension of No. 66 Wutong Road, so it can only be effective within this area..."

He muttered to himself, his gaze slowly sweeping across his surroundings, and then several pairs of eyes around him almost simultaneously met his gaze.

In the open space not far away, there was a small dent in the cement ground.

The main reason is that this is the only relatively conspicuous "trace" near the place where Zheng Zhi last stayed.

"W-what are you doing?" The little doll sitting on Yu Sheng's shoulder suddenly shrank her neck unconsciously. Although she herself did not know what she was guilty of, she still felt a little guilty. "This, this is my grinding ball."

"...You even gave this pit a name?!" Yu Sheng was taken aback, then carried Eileen to the pit, squatted down, and touched the rough cement ground, muttering thoughtfully, "From a mystical perspective, when something strange happens, the thing closest to the scene is the most suspicious..."

Eileen was taken aback by Yu Sheng's unfathomable attitude: "Yes, yes... wait! When did you become so knowledgeable about the occult?!"

Yu Sheng didn't answer, but just frowned deeply. As his fingers once again ran over the rough cement surface, a somewhat familiar chill suddenly appeared in his senses.

Yu Sheng touched the cold sensation, and after a moment's thought, he closed his eyes slightly and focused all his attention on the location from which the coldness emanated.

After a moment of concentration, he suddenly felt as if he had grasped something, so he raised his hand accordingly.

When he opened his eyes again, a jet-black thread was already wrapped around his fingertips.

Eileen stared at the scene in disbelief, stunned for several seconds. Suddenly, the little doll shouted, "Hey! Yu Sheng, how come you can pull strings too! You stole my skills..."

“Steal my ass! This is your spider silk. You’ve been grinding this stone ball all day, and it’s left marks!” Yu Sheng turned and glared at the little puppet. “Zheng Zhi probably ran into this thing, and with his constitution taking effect, he was ‘taken away’—you should come over and examine it to see where this thing leads.”

Eileen then realized what was happening and quickly jumped to the ground to grab the spider silk floating in mid-air. She started shaking her head and swaying her body like she was taking a pulse through a thread. Although it was uncertain whether she could come up with a result in the end, she looked quite professional.

Li Lin, standing to the side, was visibly stunned by what he saw. After roughly understanding the meaning of Yu Sheng's words, he was even more confused. Looking around, he realized that no one seemed to have any questions, so he could only whisper to Little Red Riding Hood, who was closest to him, "What does this mean? What's the principle behind it?"

“Don’t ask me, I don’t know how to explain it to you either,” Little Red Riding Hood sighed. “Anyway, Zheng Zhi’s constitution is hard to explain. The boundary between reality and the surreal is particularly blurry for him, and even the barriers of other realms are as fragile as if they don’t exist for him.”

Yu Sheng, who was standing next to Little Red Riding Hood, couldn't help but nod in agreement as he listened to her exclamation. He had truly witnessed his nephew's physique at the Taixu Lingshu, where he could appear and disappear like a ghost even under the nose of Yuan Hao, a master of the Supreme Dao Realm.

Well, sometimes he even suspected that his nephew was a relic of Ankaela—inheriting the "penetrating" property of the Dark Angel…

Just then, the little puppet that was squatting next to the "grinding ball" and shaking its head while taking pulses suddenly exclaimed "Eh!", interrupting everyone's actions.

"I think I sense something," Eileen's eyes lit up. She quickly stood up, grabbed the black spider silk floating in mid-air, and pulled hard. At first, she couldn't budge it, so she grabbed Yu Sheng's clothes with her other hand and pulled again. "I got it! I got it! This thread leads to a very far place..."

The little doll paused mid-sentence, staring blankly in a distant direction, as if she had suddenly forgotten what she was doing.

Yu Sheng immediately noticed the abnormality (mainly because it was really unusual for Eileen to suddenly stop talking halfway through): "What's wrong?"

"Ah, this direction!" The little doll blinked and pointed in a certain direction. "My eyes were blurry just now, and I almost missed it... Wait a minute, this thread isn't strong enough. I need to weave a few more threads to strengthen it, otherwise it will break if I pull too hard..."

As it spoke, the little puppet began to rapidly draw black threads in the air, the spiderweb-like lines quickly weaving and building around the floating spider silk...

……

Deep inside the Secret Service building, in the director's office.

Countless holographic projections floated in the spacious office, each displaying a different scene from various parts of Boundary City—from "focal events" in certain areas of the city to changes in a spacetime rift near the distant border, from "crossing the line" on a certain floor of the Secret Service building to real-time images transmitted back by the deep-sea team carrying out an exploration operation in "Boundary City in the Fog"—enough to make ordinary people dizzy and dazzled.

But for Baili Qing, this was just an ordinary "work scene".

She held a cup of coffee, leaning against her large desk, watching the rapidly updating projections around her, while a communication interface was directly in front of her.

The image showed a tall figure wearing a white coat, with a large spherical fish tank fixed to the figure's head. A goldfish was swimming slowly in the tank, its translucent fins appearing to tremble slightly.

“…I understand the situation. This is indeed your fault, but the more important thing now is to find out the cause,” Baili Qing said calmly, looking at the “Director” on the communication interface. “Find out who or what sneaked into the sanatorium—don’t mess this up.”

"Yes, I understand."

The tall figure in the communication interface slowly receded, and the holographic projection gradually dissipated into the air, soon being replaced by a set of surveillance footage from the Fog City.

In the scene, a team of deep-sea divers are setting up communication relay devices on a fog-shrouded street. In the distance, the faint flashes of weapons can be seen, suggesting that the explorers ahead are fighting against entities generated in the fog.

Bai Liqing waved her hand gently, and the nearby holographic projections were reassembled. The monitoring focus then shifted to a certain border area—outside the light curtain formed by the continuous boundary markers, a surveillance drone was monitoring a spatial rift leading to a million light-years away. Distant starlight escaped from that spatial rift, appearing somewhat distorted.

A pair of pale eyes quietly appeared among the layers of holographic projections, and Baili Xue's voice suddenly rang out: "Feeling uneasy?"

“Things have been a bit unsettled lately,” Baili Qing said calmly. “Several spatial rifts along the border have experienced several unusual fluctuations in recent days, suspected to be caused by human interference… This doesn’t seem like something an ordinary ‘smuggler’ could do.”

“…The border is the most heavily guarded place in the world, and also the most vulnerable to invasion—frankly, considering the impact of the ‘Angel Fall’ incident and the fact that the truth behind it is gradually spreading throughout the universe, it wouldn’t be surprising if anyone wanted to sneak in and do something,” Baili Xue said. “Our place is literally like a sieve—didn’t we just intercept a smuggling ship belonging to the Black Dot Group at the port a few days ago?”

Bai Liqing frowned but didn't say anything. She simply dismissed the holographic projection array in the office.

“I still need to go to the ‘archives’ again soon.” She broke the silence after a moment of thought.

"Are we still going to investigate the 'descent' event from 3,700 years ago?" Baili Xue asked curiously. "Do you think there might be other information in the archives that we've overlooked?"

"Three thousand seven hundred years ago, a different god named 'Ominous' was voluntarily 'invited' to this world by the people of the borderlands at that time. Although that descent was ultimately not completed, the entire operation, from the initial planning to the specific implementation, was undoubtedly a grand undertaking. Even the 'Boundary Bridge' left behind at that time reappeared three years ago, and an investigator even died from witnessing the knowledge pollution brought about by the 'Boundary Bridge'..."

"All indications suggest that the information related to the 'Goddess of Omens' has not been completely erased by the 'era stratification' of the border region. This information still remains in the border region, but it is hidden. In any case, we need to go to the archives again to examine those fragments from the 'classical era'."

"What if it can't be found in the archives either?"

Baili Qing frowned slightly upon hearing this.

"Then we can only hope that Yu Sheng and his amazing team of troublemakers can break through the fog of history."

(End of this chapter)