Alien Hotel.

Chapter 516 Suspicious Clues
几分钟后，国王悠然自得地坐在流浪法师大姐姐的肩膀上舔着自己的爪子，而冒险者小队里的青年剑客、村姑牧师和神秘静步男（潜行者）则在不远处围了个圈，一边喊着什么“为了村子里的大家”、“不要小瞧了我们的羁绊”、“这就是我们互相信赖的力量”之类让人听不懂的句子，一边在那叮咣哐当地揍猫。

Judging from the sounds alone, you'd think those three were attacking the Demon King's castle.

“That’s how cats are, even the ‘physical’ ones,” the king lazily glanced at Zheng Zhi beside him, who seemed hesitant to speak. “If you save it, it will hiss at you; if you’re polite to it, it will still hiss at you; if you ignore it, it might still hiss at you. So sometimes it’s better to give it a good beating—but that only works right after you hit it. The next time you see it, it will still hiss at you…”

Zheng Zhi held back for a long time, but finally couldn't help but say, "But you're a cat too."

“I would say the same if I were a cat—because the differences between cats are sometimes greater than between you and me,” the king said, stretching out and yawning before nimbly jumping off the wandering mage and walking gracefully forward. “Alright, alright, we can stop now. This level should be enough for a proper conversation.”

The village priestess, who was swinging her short staff with an excited expression, was the first to stop. She then quickly pulled the young swordsman and the rogue aside, and the three of them respectfully turned around, bowed to the king, and walked quickly to the side.

The black cat, who had just been hissing at everyone in its Spinosaurus form, now lay obediently on the ground, showing a submissive and submissive attitude to the tabby cat that was walking towards it.

Then the king began to communicate with the local cat by meowing and asking about the situation in the alley—interspersed with gestures, heated arguments, clawing at each other, and the king's frustrated growls at his mentally challenged fellow cat's poor language skills and limited vocabulary.

Yu Sheng then took this opportunity to have Eileen quickly deal with the remaining spider webs covering the dark alley.

“…It’s not working well, Yu Sheng,” the little puppet said, fiddling with a handful of threads for a while before stopping with a worried look. “It seems to have reached its limit—even with the Ominous Star ‘amplification,’ I can only control the nearby threads. The further away I go, the more I can feel a kind of… ‘resistance,’ as if something is constantly pushing the threads I’ve extended back.”

"Resistance?" Yu Sheng frowned instantly upon hearing this, and subconsciously glanced up into the depths of the dark alley—of course, he saw nothing. "Can you find the source of that 'resistance'?"

“I can’t find it,” Eileen said, taking a deep breath and shaking her head. “I just feel like it’s everywhere.”

While the two were talking, Luna suddenly leaped out of the group. She lightly stepped onto a nearby rooftop, passed through the crisscrossing black spider webs, and quickly arrived at the tallest building next to the dark alley. After observing it for a few seconds, she gracefully returned to Yu Sheng's side.

“The spider web extends infinitely,” the saintess said of her discovery, “its structure is like a cocoon.”

Hu Li also came to a spider silk hanging from mid-air. She hugged a large tail, rubbed the tip of the tail, and produced a bright, almost blinding blue-white flame. She used argon welding to burn the seemingly delicate and fragile silk thread.

Foxfire spread along the spider silk, and the black silk threads disappeared into the air for a moment, but the moment Hu Li took away the foxfire, the burned spider silk returned to its original state.

The fox spirit girl raised her head: "It can't be burned, benefactor, this thing will regenerate instantly."

Yu Sheng felt that there seemed to be a problem with the punctuation of the fox girl's sentence...

But before he could speak, the king had finished communicating with the local cat. Seeing the serious look on the cat's face as it approached, he quickly stopped his wild thoughts: "How is it?"

“According to ‘Cat,’ these ‘threads’ first appeared suddenly from the crossroads, and then, starting from the crossroads, they began to emerge from every building in the alley,” King Cat said gravely. “They have actually stabilized now, at least they are no longer increasing.”

Eileen immediately poked Yu Sheng's head: "Hey, it seems it wasn't your fault for making holes in the old bookstore, it started appearing at the intersection."

Little Red Riding Hood looked up and glanced at the black cats trapped in spider silk, still struggling and writhing in the dark alley.

"Then why do these spider silks 'catch' the 'cats' in the dark alley?" she frowned in confusion. "We've been testing this here for half a day, and these spider silks don't seem to react much to external stimuli."

The king licked his paws: "Pure scum."

little Red Riding Hood:"……?"

“They saw something they didn’t recognize appear in the alley, so they pounced on it,” the king said lazily, “and then they all hung here.”

Everyone was speechless. At the same time, Yu Sheng seemed to suddenly think of something, and a thoughtful look appeared on his face.

The little doll quickly noticed the change in his expression: "What are you thinking about?"

“According to the rules of the alley, ‘cats’ don’t normally spawn on the first level,” Yu Sheng broke the silence, looking up at the dimly lit shops with blurred signs in the alley as he spoke. “Only when someone activates a deeper level of the alley at the crossroads will entities start to spawn here—including the large number of ‘cats’ we saw in the alley last time, which was because the collapse of the old bookstore caused everyone to directly enter the deeper alley.”

Upon hearing Yu Sheng's reminder, Little Red Riding Hood suddenly realized what was happening and looked up into the depths of the alley.

When they first came in, everyone noticed the eerie scene of the place being covered in spider webs, so much so that even Little Red Riding Hood, a seasoned spirit detective, didn't notice certain environmental details beneath the spider webs. But now, she finally realized what was causing that persistent sense of unease.

The shop signs along the street were blurry, and the words on them seemed to have been illegible and chaotic from the beginning; the string lights entangled in cobwebs shone with an eerie glow, and the shifting, ghostly light was not the result of the cobwebs; the puddles on the road were covered with dirty moss, which spread all the way to the nearby walls, forming all sorts of strange outlines.

The light in the alley was dim, and the twilight sky was mixed with a hint of blood.

All of the above are typical characteristics of the "dark alley" having entered a deeper level!

"No wonder there are so many cats!" Little Red Riding Hood took a deep breath. "When we first came in, this place was already in a deep state!"

Zheng Zhi thought for a moment, then hesitated before speaking, "Could it be the influence of these spider silks? This place has become so strange; perhaps the rules governing its operation have changed as well..."

“While we can’t rule out that possibility, it’s best not to easily attribute unexpected situations in other realms to ‘rule failure’,” Little Red Riding Hood said immediately, reminding Zheng Zhi, this naive newbie, “Rules are the most stable ‘underlying structure’ in other realms. Among all the possible causes of accidents, ‘rule failure’ must be ranked last.”

Zheng Zhi opened his mouth: "Then, so what's the situation now..."

“Someone must have entered the alley and triggered the conditions for generating an entity here,” Little Red Riding Hood said, her eyes gleaming warily in the twilight like a wolf’s. “And I don’t know what that person did, but the alley is clearly being ‘maintained’ in a deep state.”

The king seemed to understand as well, and quickly said, "Perhaps this is why these spider silks can spread over such a wide area—normally, the alien realm resets itself periodically, but now it's the time of day when the dark alley has just opened, yet the state here seems to be stuck..."

A slight chill permeated the air, and Zheng Zhi subconsciously rubbed his arms. However, when he looked up into the depths of the alley, he could only see crisscrossing spider webs, a silent and deserted street, and shops with their doors and windows tightly closed on both sides. There were no "other visitors" in sight.

“The person… must have already left, right?” he said hesitantly. “Could it be some other spirit detective or investigator? One of your colleagues…”

But before he could finish speaking, Little Red Riding Hood interrupted him: "Impossible. After we returned from the alley last time, we reported the situation here to the Secret Service, and the Secret Service suspended access to the alley. Currently, only 'The Inn' and 'Fairy Tale' have access here. Other investigators and spirit detectives will trigger an alarm if they approach the node device here."

Zheng Zhi fell silent. Yu Sheng couldn't help but recall the information about the Black Dot Group that Baili Qing had mentioned when she contacted him earlier. After a brief pause, he broke the silence: "Let's go to the crossroads—if the spider webs started spreading from there, there might be some traces there."

“But the road to the crossroads seems to be completely blocked by spider webs,” Little Red Riding Hood looked up at the end of the alley, her eyes glowing faintly in the dim light. “The further you go, the more spider webs there are.”

Yu Sheng didn't speak, but simply turned his head slightly and glanced at the little doll on his shoulder.

"I, I'll try my best," Eileen nodded immediately, but the usually fearless and arrogant little doll was clearly a little unsure of herself. "It might not work. These threads don't really listen to me."

Yu Sheng was quite open-minded: "We'll go as far as we can. If we really get to a place we can't go any further, we'll let Hu Li bombard us with a saturation attack. It'll be good to at least get a glimpse of the situation at the crossroads."

Upon hearing this, Little Red Riding Hood opened her mouth as if she had a bellyful of complaints, but after glancing at Yu Sheng, who looked completely matter-of-fact, and then at the nine-tailed fox demon beside her whose eyes were already shining, she swallowed back all her complaints.

Well, every organization has its own corporate culture...

(End of this chapter)