Alien Hotel.

Chapter 515 Infiltration and Spread
The wall receded very little; if Yu Sheng hadn't been watching it intently, he probably wouldn't have noticed the change immediately—but he was certain he wasn't hallucinating.

The wall is receding.

After a moment of stunned silence, Yu Sheng raised his hand and tried to move closer to the wall.

The wall retreated again, and this time by an even greater margin—even Zheng Zhi, who was standing next to it, noticed the anomaly at a glance.

"Brother Yu, this thing... something's not right!" The young (and not yet officially a member) Special Operations agent stared blankly at the high wall in front of him, and visibly tensed up again. "The wall is moving backward!"

Even Little Red Riding Hood, Luna, and Hu Li, who were waiting behind, couldn't stay still any longer. Several of them squeezed into the narrow gap between the two buildings. Under the watchful eyes of several people, and in Yu Sheng's "test" once again, the high wall leading to the dark alley retreated by several centimeters.

After nearly half a minute of silence, Yu Sheng finally turned his head and looked at Little Red Riding Hood behind him: "...Has this ever happened before?"

"How could that be!" Little Red Riding Hood's eyes widened, looking at Yu Sheng as if she had seen a ghost. "How could you possibly scare the alien world into closing its gates...?"

"How could I have scared it!" Hearing the outdated JK's complaints, Yu Sheng couldn't hold back any longer. "Even if I hadn't done anything to it yet, and even if I were the one to blame for the 'used bookstore' collapsing last time, a foreigner shouldn't have this kind of reaction, right?"

As he spoke, he heard a slight rustling sound from the side. He subconsciously turned around and saw that the wall had retreated a few centimeters in front of everyone—the parts of the high wall that connected to the building on both sides still had grayish-white marks that looked like they had been torn.

Suddenly, everyone fell silent. Not only did Little Red Riding Hood forget about complaining about Yu Sheng, but even Eileen, who usually chattered for ages over a sneeze, quieted down, unsure of how to react.

After a while, Yu Sheng suddenly stroked his chin thoughtfully: "Hey, I suddenly have an idea. You guys think if I keep moving forward, how far can this wall go? It can't be infinite, right—can it go all the way out of the Boundary City?"

The high walls were deathly silent, but for some reason, Yu Sheng found the silence deafening.

“If the aliens could swear, they would be swearing horribly right now,” Little Red Riding Hood said, her eyes twitching as she looked at Yu Sheng. “You’re a human, after all.”

Yu Sheng didn't say anything, but simply pressed his hand against the mottled, old brick wall.

This time, the wall did not retreat again.

Perhaps it's because its retreat has its limits, or perhaps for some other reason... In any case, there's no sign of the entrance to the "dark alley" being opened.

However, Yu Sheng has his own problem-solving approach.

He groped along the rough wall, imagining the existence of a door that would lead directly to the "dark alley".

Then he touched a doorknob.

Originally, Yu Sheng did not want to use this method because the dark alley is a typical "layered" structure. Its inherent spatial rules determine where each intersection leads. Rashly using external force to "open the door" may interfere with the mapping rules of the entire dark alley, and may even lead to a situation like last time where all intersections can only leave the alien world, making exploration impossible.

But now he couldn't worry about that anymore—this alien realm was clearly undergoing some kind of "mutation," and its original spatial laws were probably already malfunctioning.

An illusory door appeared out of thin air. Yu Sheng pushed it open and saw a dimly lit alleyway extending out from the doorway. The alleyway was dimly lit and shadowy.

He stepped inside, leaving the door open on the other side, while the others filed in.

The king was the first to leap in, and the moment he landed, he waved his claws, summoning the hero carrying the Muramasa sword and his teammates into this world.

Next to enter were Zheng Zhi, Luna, Hu Li, and Little Red Riding Hood.

A chilly breeze blew through the alley, and the twilight air was damp with cold. An unusual, oppressive atmosphere pressed in from all directions, as if some thick, viscous liquid had seeped into the air.

Little Red Riding Hood felt her hair stand on end, and the moment she entered, a pair of wolf ears popped out on her head—this was the body's instinctive reaction after entering a dangerous environment—before she suddenly raised her head and looked at the sky above the dark alley.

Soft inhalations rang out one after another.

The dense, crisscrossing black spider silk came into everyone's view.

"Holy crap..." Expired JK almost bit her tongue. She saw that the entire dark alley was covered by a chaotic spider web. The sky, which was already in the twilight, was now covered by a large web, making it look even more eerie and dark. Many messy threads were haphazardly emerging from the roofs of the shops on both sides, intertwining and tangling irregularly about three or four meters above the ground, tangling the flashing colored lights, the illegible signs, the colorful flags fluttering in the wind, and... countless "cats".

The jet-black "cats" were entangled in a maze of black spider silk in mid-air, trembling and writhing like captured insects within the chaotic web. The discontinuous movement unique to such physical entities created a dizzying sense of dislocation throughout the web, as if every second a cat was trying to escape, only to be caught and suspended in mid-air by the same number of others. This scene mirrored the description given by the blind prophet Kondalman: on the great spider web known as "The End," the end of all things was already marked.

Who is the blind prophet Kondalman?

Yu Sheng was momentarily dazed, feeling as if some inexplicable sentences had popped into his mind, but the next second those contents turned into some kind of rapidly dissipating "impression." He felt someone ruffling his hair, and when he turned his head, he saw Eileen, looking nervous and uneasy, staring straight into his eyes.

Zheng Zhi's voice came from the side: "Yu...Yu...Yu..."

“Don’t use so many ‘Yu’s, it sounds like you’re herding livestock,” Yu Sheng interrupted Zheng Zhi’s stammering. Whether it was a misperception or not, the moment he spoke, the oppressive and cold atmosphere that permeated the air, like some kind of glue, seemed to dissipate a lot. “Don’t ask me, I don’t know what’s going on either.”

“I was almost out of breath just now,” Hu Li gasped, then frowned and looked up at the air, “the threads here…”

Before the fox spirit girl could finish speaking, the little doll hurriedly waved her hands, "I didn't do it!"

“I know you didn’t do it,” Yu Sheng reached out and patted Eileen’s head, his expression equally grave as he looked at the threads. “It seems this is the reason for the changes in the ‘Dark Alley’…”

“It seems that the ‘erosion’ here has expanded further since we left last time,” Little Red Riding Hood quickly realized, recalling the eerie scene that Yu Sheng and the King saw after digging a large hole in the old bookstore when they last explored the alley. “Before, these spider webs were only wrapped around the edges of the ‘alley,’ but now they have almost covered the entire alley.”

Yu Sheng subconsciously exchanged a glance with the king, hesitated for a couple of seconds, and then spoke with a somewhat subtle expression: "...Could it be because of the hole we dug last time?"

The king cat's face turned grave, and after a moment he shook his head: "I don't know anything. I'm just a cat, I can't carry such a heavy burden..."

Yu Sheng choked for a moment, then turned to look at the little puppet on his shoulder: "Can you control these spider silks?"

“I, I’m trying,” Eileen was still a little nervous, but holding Yu Sheng’s head made her feel a bit more at ease. She raised her hand and made a couple of strokes in the air, and black threads spread out from her fingertips, slowly and cautiously approaching the spider web in the alley. “It doesn’t seem to be working. I can ‘feel’ these threads, but they don’t really listen to me… They’re too stiff to pull.”

Yu Sheng frowned, but his gaze involuntarily fell on Eileen's head.

Where's your ball?

"Ominous Planet?" The little doll paused for a moment. "It stayed at home. I was training it to fetch takeout..."

Yu Sheng's face immediately darkened: "If you have so much free time, why don't you let it come over and try to do something useful?"

As he spoke, he casually pulled on the air beside him, opening a small door leading to No. 66 Wutong Road. A moment later, Eileen, who was on the other side of the door, ran over holding the Ominous Star and threw the stone ball over there.

When the ominous star passed through the small door, it was visibly "dazed" for a moment, hovering in mid-air, at a loss. But the next second, it sensed Eileen on this side, immediately found its target again, and flew to the little doll's head to start circling around it.

Eileen blinked, then quickly realized the change.

"Hey! Yu Sheng, Yu Sheng, these threads are starting to obey!" Her eyes lit up as she looked up at the crisscrossing black spider silk above the dark alley. "It really works—Yu Sheng, how did you know this method?"

As they spoke, everyone saw a faint glow spreading across the spiderweb covering the dark alley—the glow originated from the silk thread in Eileen's hand, and it was rapidly expanding its coverage area as if it were invading and changing the dominant force!

“I don’t know either, but I think we can give it a try,” Yu Sheng waved his hand, but his eyes were still fixed on the ominous star that was circling around Eileen’s head. “At least it’s an extra accessory, you can think of it as adding stats.”

He was just making this up, but the little doll immediately believed him, its eyes lighting up: "Oh, okay! So what's next?"

“Find a way to get these ‘cats’ down,” Yu Sheng said quickly, “and then have the king find out what’s going on.”

"Good!"

The little doll happily agreed, and then began to try to control the spider webs that were trapping the "cat" in the dark alley. After a few clumsy attempts, she finally managed to loosen some of the spider silk in mid-air and let it fall to the ground.

A trapped "cat" entity broke free of the spider web, rolled onto the ground, turned towards Yu Sheng, and arched its back high.

"what--"

(End of this chapter)