Alien Hotel.

Chapter 534 Superposition
Fog blanketed the area outside the intersection, obscuring the distant streetscape in a hazy and grotesque manner. The distant streetlights swayed slightly like the eyes of living beings, and amidst the interplay of light and fog, suspicious shadows would occasionally flash by—perhaps entities generated from the fog, tactical walking robots patrolling the Secret Service, or simply illusions.

Without a doubt, it is extremely dangerous for someone to venture into that fog alone.

So Li Lin obediently stayed within the "safe zone" around No. 66 Wutong Road, observing this fog-shrouded foreign land while waiting for Zheng Zhi and Yu Sheng to return.

The good news is that the wait isn't too lonely—thanks to the widespread use of the new "Spirit Fox" relay node, he can still contact the real world from here, and at the same time, he can connect to the Special Operations Bureau's dedicated channel within the Fog City area. Currently, there are hundreds of deep-sea teams operating in this vast otherworldly city. Although the fog isolates them from each other, seeing the messages from various action groups that are refreshed from time to time on the public channel makes him feel somewhat at ease.

"...So, I'm guarding this place now," Li Lin said, sitting at the entrance of the express delivery point, holding his phone and sending a message in the Special Operations Bureau's Second Detachment's group chat. "To be honest, this thick fog is really a bit creepy. If you're alone for a long time, you always feel like something is going to come out of the fog. No wonder the bureau issued a notice prohibiting solo exploration of this place."

The phone vibrated, and a new message popped up. Xu Jiali replied in the group chat: "Don't even mention soloing, there's a risk in a team. Last time I led a team and we almost messed up when we encountered 'The Clown.' That thing can teleport in the fog and even the bell can't lock onto it. Luckily, I'm more skilled..."

"There's a deep-sea diving team operating near Wutong Road. Have you seen them?" another colleague asked.

“They came by my side fifteen minutes ago and said hello,” Li Lin typed quickly. “Sister Liu’s team—they were all startled because they didn’t know that No. 66 Wutong Road had come. The team originally planned to take a shortcut through this alley, but now they couldn’t take the shortcut and have to write a report when they get back…”

"What report to write?" Ren Wenwen suddenly popped up—as a logistics clerk, she was particularly sensitive to these words.

“It’s the contact report from No. 66 Wutong Road. They’ve entered the cordon,” Li Lin said with a smile. “Although Brother Yu isn’t here, that’s the rule. It’s their fault for not being on the permitted list.”

Xu Jiali: "...The world is a huge makeshift operation."

Ren Wenwen: "Who says it isn't?"

Li Lin looked at the messages in the group with a smile, and then unconsciously rubbed his fingers together.

The temperature around him had dropped without him noticing; it was a slow and imperceptible drop—a strange chill gradually seeped into the fog, making his fingers feel numb.

Suddenly triggered by a spiritual intuition, Li Lin instantly woke up, quickly put down his phone, and looked around.

Everything around was as usual; nothing changed in the fog.

But that faint, chilling feeling was seeping out of the fog little by little, and it was becoming more and more obvious.

Something's not right—let's go inside and hide.

With this thought popping into his mind, Li Lin turned around without hesitation and headed towards the outpost disguised as a parcel collection point.

Just as he was about to take a step, he suddenly caught a glimpse of a shadow emerging from the fog out of the corner of his eye.

Above No. 66 Wutong Road, high in the misty sky, a huge and slender shadow suddenly swept across.

Immediately afterwards, two more equally slender shadows appeared nearby.

The shadows moved slowly across the sky, stirring up the fog high above.

In the next few seconds, Li Lin felt a terrible numbness spreading through his brain—human imagination was working uncontrollably, and his brain was piecing together some possible, hidden structure from the fleeting glimpse of the shadowy figure. His brain was fighting against the sudden fear rising in his subconscious to make that terrifying image emerge completely in his mind, and then he finally realized what he had actually seen.

A giant spider, an alien god, is strolling through the sky above the city of mist.

A massive black spiderweb appeared and disappeared amidst the mist, and the alien god slowly crawled on it. Perhaps due to the obscuring mist, or perhaps because it had not fully "entered" this dimension, no matter how wide Li Lin's eyes were, he could only see a small part of its existence. He could only see a few huge limbs moving blindly above the Wutong Road as if sleepwalking, and each swing of those limbs seemed to cut through this space-time, stirring up layers of ripples at the edge of the spiderweb.

"Oh my god..."

Li Lin desperately tried to pull his gaze away and take a step, but found that his whole body was frozen and unable to move. A strange chill had seeped into his bones. The moment he saw the spider web, he seemed to have become an insect caught in it. In a series of futile struggles, he could only watch helplessly as the limbs passed through his sight again and again. Then suddenly, the huge shadow stopped in the mist.

He saw two crimson lights.

A few seconds later, he realized that there were two eyes—the spider swooped down from the sky, revealing a blurry female upper body. Large black curtains surrounded her, making it impossible for Li Lin to see her appearance clearly. Only those eyes, which seemed like the end of the world, were looking down at the small insects on the ground through the mist.

The end of the world is coming.

Li Lin spent a second deciding where he should be buried, then quickly sorted out the wishes he hadn't yet fulfilled in his life. He even wanted to strike a brave and fearless pose so that when the body collectors came, they might put a few good words for him in the operation report—he didn't aspire to be a beautiful girl in a gacha game years later, but at least he wanted to become a typical case in the year-end Special Operations Bureau's work summary, a positive one at that…

He felt his brain trembling, his reason evaporating, his blood freezing, and his soul beginning to escape uncontrollably from his body. But suddenly, those scarlet eyes seemed to dazed for a moment—the terrifying pressure abruptly dissipated.

Li Lin heard a faint murmur coming from the mist.

"whee……"

Li Lin: "...?"

"Yu Sheng's friend..."

The giant spider swayed its body, muttering to itself as if in a dream, then inexplicably laughed, a strange laugh tinged with its tone: "Hehe~"

He seemed quite happy, swaying on the spider web, and then slowly crawling deeper into the mist, muttering to himself as he went.

"Aren't you going home yet... Where did the silly fox and C-shaped clip go... Weaving net, weaving net, oh, glue it up, glue it up and it'll be fixed... It took everyone a lot of effort to make, we have to fix it, let's collect the pieces first... Hehe, last hit a minion, awesome, crawl, crawl, crawl over %￥%#@..."

The large spider slowly crawled away along the web, muttering to itself as it went, as if it were speaking whatever it was dreaming about.

The bone-chilling coldness vanished abruptly, and his near-boiling rationality quickly subsided. Li Lin took a deep breath and felt himself regain control of his body—without even having time to sort out the chaotic mess of information in his mind, he instantly pulled out two large doses of sanity-blocking agents that were specially distributed to Secret Service agents, injected them into his body with perfect accuracy as if by muscle memory, and then ran into the outpost, quickly pulling out his phone at the same time.

His first instinct was to call Yu Sheng, but no one answered.

So he immediately dialed Zheng Zhi's number.

This time the call was answered quickly.

"Something's happened to me!" he said quickly as soon as the call connected. "I saw a giant spider crawling across the sky. Its lower body was a spider, and its upper body was a human—I tried calling Brother Yu but couldn't get through. Tell him about this, and you guys come back right away!"

Zheng Zhi was clearly startled by the sudden news, and after a two-second delay, he hurriedly said, "Ah, we're on our way back, Brother Yu..."

Zheng Zhi hesitated for a moment, as if he didn't know what words to use. Then Eileen's loud voice came from the receiver. She seemed to have snatched the phone away: "Hey, Yu Shengyou has gone out. He'll be back in a bit. You should find a safe place to stay—go to No. 66 Wutong Road. I'll open the door for you."

Li Lin was stunned for a moment, then quickly came out of the sentry post. He then saw the door of No. 66 Wutong Road being opened from the inside—three Eileens stacked on top of each other opened the door for him.

As the door opened, Eileen, who was at the very top, lost her grip and got caught on the doorknob. She was dangling there, yelling, "Hey, Little Lin, where did you hide here..."

Li Lin took two meters and then stumbled, his expression strange: "Could you please use a different form of address?"

"You've really gone for it!" Eileen, who was hanging on the door, turned her head and glared at Li Lin. "Why don't you just keep standing outside?"

Those scarlet eyes, seen through the thin mist at the intersection, resembled two leaping stars.

Li Lin hesitated abruptly as he walked toward No. 66 Wutong Road. For a moment, he even felt as if he had seen the phantom of that enormous spider again.

But the figure of a short man hanging on the doorknob, swaying back and forth, quickly washed away the tension and hesitation that had risen from the bottom of my heart.

He breathed a sigh of relief and quickly walked forward.

After all, survival is paramount—it's best not to become a typical case if possible.

The door to No. 66 Wutong Road slammed shut. Eileen jumped off the doorknob and casually said to Li Lin, who had just entered the house, "Go pour yourself a drink. The TV in the living room is mine, the TV in the dining room is mine, the sofa is mine, the coffee table is mine—otherwise, just find somewhere else to stay."

Another Eileen ran to the living room window, climbed onto the windowsill, and looked out at the fog-shrouded streets through the glass.

"Where are the spiders..." the little doll muttered to itself as it sat on the windowsill, its scarlet eyes flickering.

In the doll's ruby-clear eyes, the phantom of the enormous spider was slowly fading away.

(End of this chapter)