Chapter 36: A Sleepless Night (And It Is Not Yu Sheng)

Regardless of whether they were well-suited to working together, Li Lin had to admit that Xu Jiali was truly the most exceptional deep-diver he had ever met. The fact that someone so capable had been sent to assist him suggested that the Bureau still cared quite a bit about him, the newcomer.

That was, of course, provided he could tolerate the brawny man’s big mouth and penchant for bragging, especially every time he returned from a mission.

"Let me tell you, I ran into something truly bizarre on this mission," the burly man on the sofa said, helping himself to a bottle of water from the side table and cracking it open. "I caught that Angel Cultist who snuck into Aemein. I finally cornered him in the dead zone, and just as we were fighting, I looked up—and you won't believe what I saw!"

Li Lin rolled his eyes. "You loudmouth, is that even something you're allowed to talk about out here?"

"Sure it is. I already filed my report at the Bureau, and this intel was cleared for disclosure to you," Xu Jiali said, waving a hand and continuing whether Li Lin wanted to hear it or not. "I looked up, and holy hell! Someone was just standing there! You know what he looked like? He was wearing a shirt and trousers, standing in the toxic, scorching winds of Aemein-IX. Oh, and he had a door frame propped up right next to him. I was absolutely stunned—I was a second away from killing that cultist, but the shock gave the guy a chance to catch his breath. Luckily, my skills were superior in the end..."

Li Lin waved a hand impatiently, walking over to the monitoring equipment by the window. "Alright, alright. Every story ends with your skills being superior. Can’t you come up with a more novel plot twist?"

"But my skills *were* superior," the burly man insisted, staring at Li Lin’s back. "Hey, wait—aren't you surprised? I saw a person in the toxic heat of Aemein-IX! Not even wearing power armor! Even our captain isn't that hardcore!"

"Last time, in the acid rain of Tata-V, you also saw someone who popped up without protective gear—that turned out to be a professor from the 'Academy' collecting samples," Li Lin replied without turning around. "The world is full of strange people, not to mention the various hallucinations you get from diving too often. I've heard these horror stories of yours eight hundred times; I don't believe a single word of them now. Come tell me again when you see someone standing outside your shuttle's porthole while you're taking off from the starport orbit; at least that would sound a bit more innovative."

"I have seen that," the burly man grinned, flopping onto Li Lin’s bed. "It was a Daoist master from the Thousand Peaks Spirit Mountain. Damn it, just as I was about to accelerate, he started shaking a mirror at my monitor, claiming he was going to overtake me... Overtake, my foot! If he's so good, let him enter the jump drive with his physical body..."

Li Lin’s hands finally paused. He turned his head to look at Xu Jiali, the burly man sitting nearby, and after a long silence, he sighed, "Your life on special field duty is truly colorful."

"Why don't you get a deep-diver’s license? Maybe next time you can run special field duty with me," the burly man suggested. "What’s so good about the Boundary Area? It’s dangerous, troublesome, and everything you do carries heavy responsibility."

Li Lin thought for a moment, then shook his head. "The Boundary Area is always short-handed. Someone has to guard this massive 'hub.' Besides, honestly, I don't think wearing power armor to fight Angel Cultists on some wasteland planet is any safer than staying here to deal with the 'Foreign Realms.' And besides... don't you have to deal with the 'Foreign Realms' on special field duty anyway?"

"That's different. The density of Foreign Realms out there isn't as high. It's not like the Boundary Area, where, damn it, seven out of twenty stops on a bus route are Foreign Realms..."

Li Lin glanced back at Xu Jiali. He wanted to say that 99.99% of people would only see those thirteen normal stations, but recalling the file on this burly man—which stated he had stumbled into a Foreign Realm "platform" at age twelve and survived there alone for six years before needing psychological correction to become a deep-diver—he swallowed his words.

There are two types of frontline combat personnel in the Special Security Bureau: those who go through normal training and assessment, and those who are fished out of the Foreign Realms.

One should not show off one’s own erudition in front of those with traumatic experiences—even if they don't care about it at all.

Li Lin lowered his head, focusing on checking the parameters recorded by the equipment.

The burly man beside him looked bored. He was a pure combat operative, brought here mainly as a reinforcement, and had little interest in "staking out" duty.

"The Bureau is a mess right now," he said after a while. "The captains of several strike teams have been called in for overtime. I heard even the Director went."

"I know," Li Lin said without looking up. "This is the Boundary Area, after all."

"Is this kind of thing common here?" the burly man scratched his head. "Have there been similar 'anomalous phenomena' before? I'm always out on special duty, so I'm not really familiar with..."

"If you're talking about the spatial displacement tonight, that hasn't happened before. But if you're talking about 'anomalous phenomena' themselves, the Boundary Area is never short of them. This is... the Boundary Area, after all."

"Fine, the charming Boundary Area. I love this place to death," the burly man stretched his arms and shoulders, lying back on Li Lin’s bed. His heavy frame made the poor single bed creak. "Both the people who want to destroy this world and those who want to protect it love this place to death. Thank goodness I don't have to be on duty at the Bureau; I hear the captains are pulling overtime every single day."

Li Lin didn't answer, focusing intently on his monitoring and recording tasks.

Just then, a sudden ringtone broke the silence in the room.

Li Lin glanced at his phone screen and immediately picked up. "This is Li Lin... Hmm, hmm? Ah, right, I understand."

The burly man sat up, watching Li Lin with curiosity. "What's going on?"

Li Lin’s expression was odd as he looked out at the calm night sky.

"The Bureau just called. The rift phenomenon... has stopped."

The burly man was stunned.

"Stopped?" He widened his eyes. "Just like that? No follow-up attacks, no Angel Cultists, nothing? Not even a single Foreign Realm appeared?"

"None. It just stopped. All monitoring nodes across the entire Boundary Area have gone quiet."

"So I worked an overtime shift for nothing?"

"Not for nothing—and you still have to stay on shift. The people at the Bureau aren't resting either," Li Lin shook his phone. "Everyone is to remain on alert to see if the force that created the rift has any follow-up moves. Go sleep in the next room for now; I'll wake you up in six hours to relieve me."

"Right," the burly man stood up immediately, wasting no more breath. "Wake me up if anything happens."

Li Lin nodded, his gaze returning to the night outside.

"Another sleepless night," he muttered softly.

...

Yu Sheng slept very soundly in the second half of the night.

After successfully replicating a "door" to a distant spacetime, he had locked that feeling in his mind. He now knew how to control the so-called "spiritual guidance" and how to imbue the opening of a door with a specific "frequency" to stabilize the path to a designated location.

He felt that most things in this world could be chalked up to "the first time is strange, the second time is familiar."

After that, he continued to practice and reinforce the process of opening doors, successfully replicating all sorts of channels until he was completely exhausted.

Sleep after total exhaustion was always exceptionally deep; he felt he hadn't slept this well in years.

Yet he felt a hint of regret: in this good night's sleep, he hadn't dreamed of the fox—he hadn't dreamed at all.

It seemed the dream containing the fox wasn't a stable occurrence.

This left a trace of unease in Yu Sheng's heart, along with a sense of urgency.

After waking up in the morning, he told Ailin about the situation.

"It's fine, don't overthink it. That fox has survived in the Foreign Realms for so many years; she won't just meet with an accident in a day or two," Ailin didn't spout any snarky comments this time, but instead earnestly comforted him. "Dreams are inherently unstable. Maybe you'll see her again next time you dream?"

"I hope so," Yu Sheng said casually, picking up a slice of meat from the table with his chopsticks and putting it into his bowl.

This was meat cut from the "local specialty." He had eaten it for three meals in a row and still hadn't finished it, nor was he tired of it.

However, he could no longer feel any physical enhancement from this "eating," suggesting he had reached the limit of what this substance could provide him.

Regardless, it still tasted good.

"Do you have any plans after eating?" Ailin’s voice came from the side. "Continue practicing 'door-opening'? Or try to replicate the channel to the 'valley'?"

"I need to go out and buy some things first. After I get back, I'll start trying to construct the path to the valley. It might take a long time; I can't quite remember the 'feeling' I had at the time," Yu Sheng said, suddenly noticing the hesitant expression on Ailin’s face. "Hmm? Do you have an idea?"

Ailin stared straight at him. The doll-lady seemed to be hesitating, and it took several seconds before she spoke. "...Set aside half a day for me."

Yu Sheng was stunned. He rarely saw such a solemn look on the doll's face.

"Set aside half a day for you... to do what?"

"Make me a body," Ailin said, calm and resolute.