Dimensional Hotel

Yu Sheng looked intently at the old post Little Red Riding Hood found, his brow slightly furrowed.

After a while, he suddenly raised his head: "What kind of place is this 'Dark Alley' mentioned here?"

"It's an Exotic Realm, with an entrance on an old street in the eastern Qinghe District of the city, generally at a depth of about L2 in stable conditions, with a danger level of 2," Little Red Riding Hood answered immediately, "It's considered a place with certain risks for an ordinary Spirit Realm detective."

"What is it exactly like, tell me in detail?" Yu Sheng asked curiously.

Little Red Riding Hood recalled for a moment and began to explain to Yu Sheng: "'Dark Alley' from the outside looks like any normal old street alley, but inside it permanently maintains an overcast, evening state, with a temperature consistent with the real world. The total length of the Dark Alley is about two hundred meters, with numerous old shops lining both sides, most of which cannot be entered. However, there will always be at least one shop with its door open, unsupervised, selling some 'rather peculiar' items, and sometimes something of significant value might appear—but dangerous traps might appear as well.

"The Dark Alley is one-way, sealed off by a cement wall at one end, the other end being a crossroads. Each fork at the crossroads leads to another 'Dark Alley' nearly identical, but only one is relatively safe—though many have summarized various distinguishing methods and patterns in Border Communication, those distinguishing features often fail, so basically, you can only make a choice based on luck and intuition.

"After entering the safe alley and continuing forward, as long as one doesn't fall into traps or act recklessly, they will gradually return to the old street of the real world. But if one goes wrong, they will enter a more eerie, sinister version of 'Dark Alley,' and from this entry point, entities in the form of a cat will begin to form in the alley."

Yu Sheng raised his eyebrow: "A cat?"

"Yes, a dangerous entity," Little Red Riding Hood nodded, "Externally, it looks like a pitch-black cat, similar in size, shape, and movement to a house cat, but its fur feels like plastic or rubber, and its movement has a noticeable 'stutter,' giving a visual impression similar to 'frame skipping' in video playback.

"Once a 'cat' forms, it begins to close in on the person in the alley. Their 'contact' results in cuts similar to knife wounds, and even a slight touch of their fur can cause injury.

"The first 'cat' formed is not fast, moving at about the pace of an adult walking, so the explorer has plenty of time and opportunity to pass through the Dark Alley to reach the next crossroads. But if they make the wrong choice again and re-enter a dark alley, another 'cat's number will add up, and its speed and attack power will increase—if they make another wrong choice, the number and speed of 'cats' will continue to increase, and the attack strength will intensify in turn."

Yu Sheng stroked his chin: "No upper limit?"

"At least in terms of numbers, there's been no upper limit found," Little Red Riding Hood shook her head, "The Special Service Bureau has conducted tests with fully armed deep divers and spiritual ability users with strong Spiritual Vision, cycling through wrong forks based on the spiritual ability user's judgment, until the entire alley was crowded with over a thousand supersonic charging cats, and yet more 'cats' kept forming—even at that point, the deep divers' force field shields and charging armor were nearly overwhelmed.

"However, although a numerical upper limit has not been found, their speed should still be limited—the current guess is they should not exceed the speed of light..."

Yu Sheng subconsciously twitched his mouth: "Then this thing should be more than danger level 2, no?"

"Under normal circumstances, explorers shouldn't be unlucky enough to take hundreds or thousands of wrong paths in a row—and a few 'cats' are not fatal to well-trained professionals," Little Red Riding Hood shook her head, "The danger level rating is based on regular conditions and features such as 'whether the danger source can be avoided,' among other characteristics and the extreme tests by the Special Service Bureau aren't along the same lines."

"Alright, that makes sense," Yu Sheng scratched his head and then curiously asked, "So how do you deal with these 'cats'? Do you just fight them directly?"

"When there are few in number, any method could work. Although they're very resilient and hard to completely destroy, you can take them head-on if there are only three or four. Additionally, if you're lucky enough to enter the Dark Alley when the 'pet store' is open, you can make some sacrifices to buy a can of cat food—that can be used to bribe the 'cats' formed in the alley, and they'll directly lead you to the safe exit."

Yu Sheng: "...Is that possible!?"

"Yes, it's part of the inherent mechanism of the Dark Alley," Little Red Riding Hood nodded as if it were obvious, "There are a lot of strange mechanisms in many Exotic Realms, and this is already relatively normal."

She paused and shook her head: "But if you're unlucky, it gets troublesome... every year, there are extraordinarily unlucky Spirit Realm detectives who fail repeatedly at choosing forks with severe Spiritual Intuition failures, and get killed by 'cats' in the Dark Alley, or fall into traps disguised as shops, becoming part of the alley. There are even rumors that many products sold in those stores are victims swallowed by the alley transformed into items..."

Yu Sheng thoughtfully stroked his chin, constructing a preliminary understanding of 'Dark Alley' from the information provided by Little Red Riding Hood, but soon his attention returned to that 'Tower' mentioned at the beginning.

"Does the crossroads at the end of the Dark Alley only lead to the next layer of the alley or the safe exit?"

"It's supposed to be like that," Little Red Riding Hood's expression turned serious, "No one ever mentioned the alley end leading to some mysterious space with a tower, and there have been no investigative reports showing other crossroads appearing."

Yu Sheng frowned, his gaze fell back onto the phone screen, and he scrolled through the rest of the post.

There were many replies under the post, and in this formal, Exotic Realm-related information exchange, almost no one would deliberately cause a fuss. Most replies were inquiries about more details on that tower and the current situation of those involved—the original poster almost diligently responded to all the questions, with the most recent post continuing to some time last year.

The question people ask the most is how the person involved actually left that Tower—although the poster had emphasized from the start that they couldn't remember this experience, clearly, everyone was still highly concerned.

After several exchanges, the poster finally mentioned a detail—"chilling cold."

Since returning from that Tower, he has been plagued by nightmares, trapped in that dark tower in the Dream Realm, and every time he wakes up, he feels a coldness seeping from his bones, as if... awaking from a grave.

"Bone-chilling coldness..."

Yu Sheng subconsciously lifted his head, looking towards the direction of the small plaza, searching for Erin's figure.

It was already time for the children to take their nap, so no one was playing with her now. She found a large stone by the roadside, diligently polishing that Omen Wandering Star—she had been working on the stone ball for several days, yet it hadn't changed a bit, but the little Puppet seemed convinced that if she persisted, this thing could be polished smooth, so she remained full of motivation.

As for what she would do once the Omen Wandering Star was polished smooth, she apparently hadn't thought about it at all.

No one knew how long this newly-developed peculiar interest of the little Puppet would last.

"I think we need to find the person who posted this," Yu Sheng suddenly said, "From the replies below, besides him, no one else has seen that 'Tower', and his condition due to being plagued by nightmares is getting worse. In his last reply, he was even considering seeking the Exotic Doctor to 'cut into his brain'.

"Since his last reply a few months ago, this person hasn't posted anything on Border Communication," Little Red Riding Hood said as she took back her phone, scrolling through the screen with a frown, "This isn't looking good... I'll try to contact him first, if there's no response, I'll have to get Captain Song to help."

Yu Sheng nodded lightly.

Little Red Riding Hood put away her phone, got up, stretched thoroughly, and waved at Yu Sheng: "Then I'll continue practicing driving—

"Keep it up," Yu Sheng smiled in response, thought for a moment, and added, "No more trying to lift the car into the parking space by hand, you're just fooling yourself with that..."

Little Red Riding Hood made a face at him, jumped directly off the castle roof, transformed into a shadow darting to the practice lot, skillfully slipping into the car, starting the engine, releasing the clutch, stalling, starting, releasing the clutch, stalling, getting out frustrated, back in to start up again...

Yu Sheng thought she probably wouldn't pass her driving tests.

A pretty reliable girl in most things, but stuck on getting a driver's license...

Yu Sheng rose from a pile of soft fox tails, then slightly turned his head, seeing that Hu Li had woken up at some point—a pair of large, golden-red eyes were staring intently over from the side, corners slightly curved.

"Awake?"

"Mm." The demon fox girl nodded, then flipped over to lie on the roof on all fours, stretching her body with a big lazy stretch. Her nine tails comfortably spread out in mid-air, swaying like an opening fan, and after the stretch, she hummed contentedly before slowly returning to Yu Sheng's side to continue lying down.

A little while later, she suddenly said, "Savior, do you think Erin would want to know about the 'Omen Goddess'? If one day, we really uncover something..."

Yu Sheng turned his head, seeing Hu Li's big ears trembling slightly on her head.

"I stay alert even when I'm asleep," the fox girl said proudly, "I can hear what you're saying."

"Seems like in the future, I can't talk bad about you while you're sleeping," Yu Sheng laughed and shook his head, then his expression became serious, "Actually, at times, I also have moments of hesitation, wondering if for Erin, the 'truth' is really that important. After all, in some sense, her being so carefree is quite nice, and with her... temperament, she could truly live such a carefree life indefinitely."

Hu Li lifted her head with a serious expression: "Savior, did you just want to say because of her 'brain'?"

Yu Sheng's expression stiffened for a moment, then, acting as if he didn't hear, continued, "But haven't you felt, in the matter of the 'Omen Goddess', it isn't actually us who have been investigating something, rather it's this matter itself... that has been relentlessly pursuing us."

Hu Li listened, slowly widening her eyes.