Chapter 30: The Opener of Doors

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The convenience store door slammed shut, cutting off the scorching heat rolling in from that scorched planet and the murderous intent that had suddenly erupted from the two black-armored soldiers. Yusheng stood silently at the entrance, somewhat dazed.

It took several seconds before he suddenly drew in a breath and turned to look around.

There were few pedestrians on the street. Those who passed by occasionally seemed completely unaware of anything unusual. Only Yusheng had been confronted, just moments ago, by that bizarre scene rushing straight at him, and he now stood in the wind with his thoughts in complete disarray.

After standing there bewildered for a while, Yusheng slowly turned back toward the storefront.

Over the past two months, he had visited this place more than once. The small convenience store in the old district did not carry much, but it had most basic necessities, including rice, flour, cooking oil, and other staples. The owners were a young married couple, and Yusheng had become somewhat acquainted with them.

There was nothing unusual about the store’s facade. It was an ordinary little street-level shop, with a large glass display window facing the road. The window was almost completely crowded with promotional notices and shelves of small goods stacked behind the glass. One side of the glass door’s hinge did not work properly, and an A4 sheet of paper reading “This Door Is Broken” had been taped to the corresponding panel. Through the door, Yusheng could see the cramped shelves inside and the owner moving things around beside them.

It looked perfectly normal. Nothing could have looked more normal.

But Yusheng would never mistake what he had just seen for some kind of hallucination. Even now, he could still feel that scorching breath, faintly tinged with sulfur, lingering in his nostrils.

He had almost stepped through. Fortunately, the aftereffects of his previous fall into the otherworld were still with him. He had become nervously sensitive not only to the door of his own home, but to every door, and whenever he opened one, he would instinctively hesitate for a moment. The other reason he had paused at the entrance was the sensation he had felt deep in his heart at the instant the door opened—a sudden jolt.

Yusheng steadied himself outside the store. After thinking deeply for a moment, he reached out again and took hold of the handle. Then, applying only a little force, he pushed the door open a crack and leaned inside for a look.

Inside was an entirely ordinary convenience store. There were few customers at this hour, and the owner was still busy behind the shelves, apparently unaware of the commotion at the entrance.

Yusheng stepped back and closed the door again. Then he gripped the handle tightly, drew a deep breath, gritted his teeth as if challenging himself, and suddenly shoved it open.

A tall, slender woman with shoulder-length blond hair and a silver-white robe stood on a platform directly opposite the door. She turned her head in surprise and stared at Yusheng.

She was beautiful. Yet beneath her blond hair, her ears were not human—they were elegant, slender, pointed ears. Several faintly glowing tubes and data cables extended from behind them and connected to something behind her.

What caught Yusheng’s attention even more, however, was the wheeled structure extending from beneath the hem of her silver-white robe, as well as the mechanical limbs behind her, which were waving various tools through the air.

A voice came from somewhere beyond the doorway.

“...Boss! The customer is asking whether the superluminal core delivered last week has been repaired yet.”

The blond woman did not answer. She simply stared fixedly at Yusheng standing in the doorway. After holding it in for a long moment, she finally let out a furious shout—

“How the fuck did you get in here?!”

Yusheng slammed the door shut.

But the next second, he shoved it open again. He had not gotten a clear look just now. Was the person on the other side an elf? This was the first time in his life he had ever seen an elf! Was she really an elf?! And what the fuck was wrong with the style of this place?!

When the door opened, Yusheng found himself face-to-face with a small child wearing a coarse brown Taoist robe. The area around the doorframe was blackened by smoke and flames. The child was holding a fan and had been in the middle of fanning something, his eyes bulging as if they were about to pop out.

Before Yusheng could say a word, the child threw down the fan as though he had seen a ghost and went bouncing away, shouting all the way:

“Master! Master! Senior Brother did it! A human head has been refined in Senior Brother’s alchemy furnace! It has a nose and eyes! And it’s breathing!”

“What the fuck...”

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Yusheng cried out, slammed the door shut with all his strength, and staggered several steps backward before finally coming to a stop.

He turned to look at the street again and saw several pedestrians staring over suspiciously. But they seemed to have noticed only his strange behavior. Since he had shut the door so quickly, no one had seen what was on the other side.

Yusheng hurriedly adjusted his expression, pretended nothing had happened, and stepped aside. Only after no one was paying attention to him did he take several deep breaths. Then he stood dazed at the street corner and began to question his life.

The whole affair had been so chaotic and bizarre that he did not even know whether he should call himself shaken to the core, undergoing a complete restructuring of his worldview, or simply lucky to have survived a disaster. All he knew was that his mind felt as though twelve storms had risen inside it—or as if two hundred Eileens were babbling at once. Countless muddled thoughts collided and raged through his mind, and he remained unable to recover for a full seven or eight minutes.

But there was one thing he soon established with certainty.

Those things on the other side of the doors... were not otherworlds.

At least, the beautiful elf who looked like some kind of mechanical monster and the little Taoist boy with the fan were certainly not in an otherworld. As for the two imposing soldiers in power armor who had clearly been engaged in a firefight at the beginning... their surroundings had been harsh enough that he could not say for certain whether they had been in one.

A long time passed before Yusheng’s chaotic mind finally settled. He forcibly organized and suppressed the torrent of wild conjectures, then lowered his head and looked at his hands.

After hesitating again and again, he slowly reached out to the side.

He was standing in a corner of the street, with nothing beside him but a wall—a bare wall of cement blocks.

He rubbed the smooth, rough surface. Slowly, he closed his hand, imagining that... there was a door there.

Just as he had discovered a concealed doorknob outside the room where he had found Eileen, at the end of the hallway in his home; just as, in that valley beneath the night sky, when a monster had flung him into the air, he had instinctively reached out and grabbed at empty space, pulling open a door that led back to the real world—

He touched something.

A door.

He could not see it, but the door had appeared. He closed his hand around the knob, and it gradually began to take shape, gradually locking into place. His expression stiffened as he slowly turned his head.

The door shimmered faintly within his field of vision, as if it could be opened with ease at any moment.

“Holy shit!”

Yusheng let out a low cry. As he tensed, his hand instinctively relaxed, and the “door” instantly vanished from the wall without a sound.

His heart pounded wildly, as though it might leap straight out of his mouth the next second.

It took several deep breaths for him to calm down. Then he recalled the sensation of grasping the doorknob and tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“Eileen,” he called inwardly, his voice carrying a complicated hesitation and emotion he could not even explain to himself.

“Yes?” Eileen’s voice rang out at once, as bright and lively as ever. “I was just about to contact you. You’ve been out for quite a while. Didn’t you say the store was right at the corner...? Did you buy too much?”

Yusheng said, “...I haven’t even gone into the store yet.”

“Did you get lost?”

“I’m just telling you that I probably won’t consider moving anymore,” Yusheng said, ignoring her ridiculous guess.

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“Really?” Eileen sounded somewhat pleased, but also curious. “Why? Didn’t you say there was something wrong with the house? Especially since opening the door could send you somewhere...”

“It’s nothing. I just suddenly realized that when it comes to the biggest problem, the thing that may be wrong isn’t the house.” Yusheng sighed. “It seems to be me.”

Eileen: “...?”

She said nothing, but Yusheng could easily imagine the expression on the doll’s face now: a head full of question marks.

“It’s complicated to explain. Anyway, you don’t need to worry about me moving anymore.” Yusheng leaned against the wall and rubbed his forehead. “If I get the chance... I’ll tell you later.”

Eileen’s curiosity was practically overflowing, but she sensed that Yusheng did not want to continue explaining in detail. She merely gave a quiet, “Oh.”

Afterward, Yusheng ended the conversation.

He had not told her the specifics of what had happened when he “opened the door.” It was not because he had any other concerns. His own thoughts were simply too muddled at the moment, and he had not yet had time to carefully consider the many details surrounding the act of opening it. The situation had been too chaotic. He had overlooked far too much, and he would need to recall and sort through it all slowly afterward.

Yusheng decided to wait until he had gone home and calmed down before discussing the matter with Eileen.

Of course, he also knew that even if he told her everything, she would probably be just as bewildered as he was, and the two of them would only become confused together. Still, having one more person to discuss it with was better than trying to puzzle it out alone.

At least the doll possessed some knowledge of the supernatural realm—though not much.

A few minutes later, Yusheng stepped out from the street corner. He rallied his spirits in the gradually cooling night breeze, then looked once more toward the small convenience store in the distance.

After hesitating for a moment, he set off toward it.

He decided to finish today’s shopping first. The matter of the “door” was unsettling, but he could hardly stop opening every door from this day onward.

This time, however, he was more cautious than ever as he pushed open the store’s door.

He concentrated as hard as he could, sensing every detail of the process: the touch transmitted through his hand, the thoughts in his heart, the warnings of his instincts, even the sound of the wind around him and the reflection of his shadow in the glass door.

Had anyone been there to watch, they might have felt that Yusheng was opening the door in slow motion.

Then the convenience store door opened.

Between the somewhat cramped shelves, the young shopkeeper looked up. When he saw Yusheng, he smiled.

“Oh, what can I get you?”

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