Alien Hotel.

Chapter 525 Some kind of ominous sign
Everything vanished like an illusion. The massive space station, which had been crushing down like a mountain, passed through the buildings and ground of Fog City, maintaining an skewed angle as it merged into the earth without making a sound. If the monitors on the power armor hadn't faithfully recorded the breathtaking scene, Xu Jiali would have even wondered if it was a mass hysteria.

The girl beside Xu Jiali was trembling slightly, her cat-like eyes gleaming with a tense light in the dim fog. Xu Jiali glanced back at her, and the girl immediately jumped up nearly a meter high—like a cat that had just turned around and suddenly found a cucumber behind it: "Big, big, big boss, what's that? It scared me to death, meow..."

"What did you do with my allowance?"

“Boss, you must have misheard…” Bell said quickly, but then shrank back and turned her head awkwardly. “Then I’ll make it up to you when I get my salary this month, meow…”

Xu Jiali ignored the cat-headed man who was obsessed with catnip and had almost lost all sense of the world. Instead, he frowned and continued to vigilantly observe the situation on the street. Afterward, he checked the various environmental parameters automatically recorded by the power armor and found a lot of inexplicable blanks and brief interferences—something that had never happened before in his service.

"Captain, communications have been restored," a deep-sea diver's voice interrupted Xu Jiali's thoughts. "The signal from the diving port has also been picked up!"

"Everyone, rise to the surface immediately!"

……

Bai Liqing's expression remained unchanged, but if someone familiar with her were here, they would likely have noticed an unusual seriousness in her pale gray eyes—she was carefully reading the report that had just been sent back from the lower port, and it took her a long time before she looked up at Song Cheng, who was standing across the table.

"Have the medical examination results for that team come out yet?"

“The deep-sea divers are in good physical condition and show no signs of contamination. The three briefly experienced soul dissociation, but it was mild and left no aftereffects,” Song Cheng replied immediately. “The accompanying psionic attendants have mild symptoms of mental confusion and spiritual agitation, which may be a mild stress reaction caused by ‘witnessing the overlimit event.’ It’s nothing serious and they can recover on their own after a short rest—I have already arranged for this team to take a leave of absence.”

Baili Qing nodded slightly, then asked, "Xiao Song, what do you think about this?"

After a moment's thought, Song Cheng slowly began to speak: "The black threads they encountered... are likely similar to the situation in the 'Dark Alley,' a sign that the power of the Goddess of Omens is spreading in a foreign land. As for the 'encounter' mentioned in the report, I believe they encountered something from the Black Dot Group—judging from the footage captured by the personnel's personal recorders, it should be a large space station, stylistically similar to the Algerian 'Stargazing Station,' but I didn't see any Star Noble markings."

Bai Liqing didn't speak, but her gaze fell on the screen in front of her again.

The image on the screen was frozen on the moment when a massive alloy wall rolled down the streets of Fog City—a scene captured by a Deepsea diver in his power armor.

"Issue a risk warning to all spirit detectives and investigators: exercise caution when entering other realms deeper than L-2 in the near future. Also, if anyone discovers any traces of what appears to be 'black spider silk' in any other realm, evacuate immediately and report to the Special Operations Bureau," Baili Qing ordered without looking up. "Finally—deploy twenty more deep-diving teams into Fog City to focus on monitoring the boundaries of the dense fog districts and several identified spatial vulnerabilities."

"clear."

After Song Cheng left, the large office quickly returned to silence. Baili Qing sat behind her desk, rubbing her forehead, as if she were deep in thought.

After an unknown amount of time, she seemed to have made up her mind. She casually locked the office and then took off one of her earrings.

A pale purple crystal hangs from an exquisite silver earring; the seemingly naturally formed gemstone conceals extremely intricate and complex patterns.

Bai Liqing turned the crystal face up, ran her fingers along the edge of the earring, and waited for a few seconds.

A stream of light shimmered on the surface of the pale purple crystal, and a holographic projection no bigger than a palm appeared above the crystal. There was no human figure in the projection; it only displayed the words "Channel Encryption in Progress."

There were some noises coming from the other side, followed by a clearly processed electronic synthesized voice that reached Baili Qing's ears: "Rare guest, rare guest—doing business? Or sponsoring?"

“Some things have happened in the border area recently,” Baili Qing said expressionlessly. “Your people are almost crossing the line into ‘petty tricks’.”

There was silence on the other end of the communicator for several seconds.

Baili Qing didn't expect a reply, but instead asked directly, "To be honest, what are you guys doing? Has something already gone out of control?"

"Why are you so sure it's me?" The reply finally came from the earring. "The group has countless project branches, and you and I might not be that familiar with each other..."

“…It seems I’m wasting my time,” Baili Qing seemed to have quickly lost patience, yet also seemed to have gotten the answer she wanted. She shook her head, her fingers resting on the edge of her earring again. “You can continue to hide in one of your secret bases, but you should know that if the Borderlands are in danger, no place that has ever been connected to the Borderlands network will be safe anymore—just a friendly reminder, don’t touch anything that goes beyond the boundaries of reason.”

In the last moment before the communication was cut off, Baili Qing heard a voice enter her ears—

"If one can only remain within the boundaries, then rationality itself is meaningless."

Then, the communication was cut off unilaterally by the other party.

“Ah, as annoying as ever,” Baili Xue’s voice came from the side, a pair of huge eyes appearing on the nearby wall. “If only we knew where those black-dot fanatics were hiding, we could just send two ships of soldiers down and blow them up.” Baili Qing didn’t respond. She simply put her earrings back on calmly, then turned to look at the huge floor-to-ceiling window—there were no phantoms or mist outside, but the normal scenery of the city was reflected in the window like any other window.

She blinked, and deep within her faded pupils, another scene was reflected—a scene only she and her sister could see: countless cracks and hidden paths, large and small, nestled among the endless city buildings.

A network of fissures runs through the entire megacity, with countless hidden paths crisscrossing the earth and sky.

Some of those fissures and paths are alien entrances scattered throughout the city, some are channels that lead directly to certain "waypoints" in the observable universe, and others are hidden passages that function within the boundary area, similar to "shortcuts".

Secret Service technicians can monitor these fissures and paths in the city using a variety of detection devices, pinpoint their locations, and calculate their recent trends, but observing them directly with their "eyes" is clearly a different experience.

What the monitoring department saw as abstract data and blurry radar images was a magnificent and bizarre spectacle in Baili Qing's eyes.

Baili Xue's eyes slowly drifted to the French windows and began to wander in Baili Qing's line of sight.

Baili Qing frowned: "Don't cause trouble, I'm observing..."

She suddenly stopped.

In her field of vision, the countless cracks that covered the entire border outside the French windows suddenly flickered, and then dense, black spider silk suddenly appeared from each crack, like countless intertwined, hidden giant webs descending in an instant. The entire city was instantly shrouded in layers of giant spider webs, and even the sky fell into darkness!

Baili Xue, who was climbing around on the window, suddenly exclaimed and "whoosh" jumped up to the ceiling.

However, in just a moment, the eerie and terrifying scene vanished, and the view outside the French windows returned to normal.

Bai Liqing had just taken a deep breath of cold air when she could only stare in astonishment at the scenery outside the window, which had returned to normal.

Baili Xue floated down from the ceiling: "Sister, what was that just now...?"

“I saw it too. It wasn’t something that was actually happening right now, but it didn’t seem like a hallucination either.”

"Some kind of omen?"

"...some kind of ominous sign."

……

"Ah-"

Eileen, who was sitting on the coffee table holding her smartwatch and passionately arguing with a stupid online friend, suddenly sneezed loudly. The sneeze threw her off balance, and she rolled onto the carpet with a clatter.

Yu Sheng, who was writing and drawing on the sofa with a stack of manuscript paper, felt something bump into his leg. He looked down and saw a small doll lying between the sofa and the coffee table, tilting its head back and blinking its eyes.

"How can a doll like you sneeze?" Yu Sheng casually picked up the little thing, patted off the dirt, and put it on the mat, saying casually, "And it can sneeze so hard."

"I'm not an ordinary doll, I'm the Alice doll!" Eileen said proudly, tilting her head back, clearly having forgotten about the online argument. Then her attention was drawn to the manuscript in Yu Sheng's hand. "Hey, what are you doing? What's this?"

“Weapon design blueprints,” Yu Sheng said, continuing to sketch, “I’m preparing these for myself. I’ll send them to Mo Ran later and have her help me produce a batch…”

Eileen blinked, listening to Yu Sheng's explanation and then looking at the somewhat abstract diagrams on the manuscript paper. After holding back for a long time, she finally couldn't help but ask, "What is all this about... What is a blood tank? What is a blood gun? What is a blood needle launcher? Do all these fancy names have anything to do with these abstract sketches you drew?"

Upon hearing this, Yu Sheng couldn't hide his embarrassment: "...I admit that my drawing is a bit rough, but it's not as abstract as a simple sketch, is it?"

Eileen said "Oh," and pointed to the manuscript: "Then explain what this water gun is for?"

Yu Sheng thought for a moment, then said seriously, "It's for laying down the fungal carpet while trying not to get killed..."

　I'd like to recommend a book, a fanfiction by a fellow reader called "The Guardian of the Unusual Creatures Chronicle." It's already close to a million words long, and I rarely see such a long fanfiction about unusual creatures. The perseverance is commendable, so I'd like to give it a try.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)