Chapter 490: Information about the "Dark Alley"

Yu Sheng looked at the old post that Little Red Riding Hood found very carefully, with a slightly frown on his face.

After a while, he suddenly raised his head and asked: "What is this 'dark alley' mentioned here?"

"It's an alien realm. The entrance is on an old street in Qinghe District in the east of the city. Under stable conditions, the depth is around L2, and the danger level is level 2," Little Red Riding Hood replied immediately. "It's a relatively risky place for ordinary spirit world detectives."

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

Little Red Riding Hood reminisced and began to explain to Yu Sheng, "From the outside, 'Dark Alley' looks like an ordinary old street. Inside, it's always cloudy and dusky, and the temperature is the same as in the real world. The total length of the dark alley is about two hundred meters, and there are many old shops lined on both sides. Most of them are inaccessible, but there is always at least one shop open. It is unattended and sells some 'slightly strange' goods, sometimes very valuable goods - but there may also be dangerous traps.

"The alley is one-way, blocked off at one end by a concrete wall, and at the other end is an intersection. Each fork in the intersection leads to an almost identical 'alley,' but only one of them is relatively safe. Although many people on the border communications have summarized various identification methods and rules, those identification features often fail, so the only choice is basically based on luck and intuition.

"After entering a safe alley, continue forward. As long as you don't fall into a trap or die voluntarily, you will gradually return to the old streets of the real world. However, if you take the wrong path, you will enter a more eerie and gloomy version of the 'Dark Alley'. From this point on, entities will gradually spawn in the Dark Alley - cats."

Yu Sheng immediately raised his eyebrows: "Cat?"

"Yes, it's a dangerous entity," Little Red Riding Hood nodded. "It looks like a pitch-black cat. Its size, shape, and movements are similar to those of a domestic cat, but its fur feels like plastic or rubber. Furthermore, its movements are noticeably jerky, giving the same visual experience as frame skipping in video playback.

"Once the 'cats' spawn, they will begin to move towards anyone who enters the alley. Their 'contact' will cause wounds similar to knife cuts, and even the slightest touch on their fur will cause injury.

"The first spawned 'cat' isn't very fast, roughly the same speed as an adult walking. This gives the explorer ample time and opportunity to cross the alley and reach the next intersection. However, if you choose the wrong fork and re-enter the alley, the number of 'cats' will increase by one, and their movement speed and attack power will also increase. If you choose the wrong path again, the number and speed of the 'cats' will increase further, and their attack power will also increase accordingly. And so on."

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

"At least in terms of numbers, there's currently no upper limit," Little Red Riding Hood shook her head. "The Secret Service has conducted tests, using fully armed deep divers and psykers with powerful clairvoyance to forcefully 'clear' a dark alley. Relying on the psykers' judgment, they kept choosing the wrong paths. Eventually, the alley was crammed with thousands of supersonic charging cats, yet more continued to spawn. By then, even the deep divers' force field shields and charged armor were barely able to withstand them.

"However, although there's no upper limit to their number yet, their speed should still be limited. Current speculation is that they shouldn't exceed the speed of light..."

Yu Sheng subconsciously twitched his lips: "Then the added danger level of this thing is more than just level 2..."

"Under normal circumstances, explorers wouldn't be so unlucky as to take the wrong path hundreds or thousands of times in a row—and a few 'cats' aren't fatal to trained professionals," Little Red Riding Hood shook her head. "The danger rating is based on a combination of factors like normal conditions and whether the danger source is avoidable. The Secret Service's extreme testing is completely different."

"Okay, that makes sense," Yu Sheng scratched his head and then asked curiously, "Then how do we deal with these 'cats'? Just beat them?"

"When they're few in number, everything's easy. They're very resilient and hard to completely destroy, but if there are only three or four of them, you can still fight them head-on. Alternatively, if you're lucky enough to come across a 'pet shop' open when you enter the alley, you can pay a small price to buy a can of cat food—that bribe will allow the 'cats' that spawn in the alley to lead you directly to the safe exit."

Yu Sheng: “…Is this even possible?!”

"Yes, this is also part of the inherent mechanism of the Dark Alley," Little Red Riding Hood said as a matter of course. "Many foreign lands have some strange mechanisms. This is already relatively normal."

She paused, then shook her head. "But on the other hand, if you're unlucky, you're in big trouble... Every year, there are exceptionally unlucky spirit detectives whose spiritual intuition repeatedly fails them at forks in the road. They're killed by the 'cat' in the alleys, or they fall into a trap disguised as a shop and become part of the alley. There are even rumors that many of the goods sold in the shops in the alleys are transformed from victims swallowed by the alleys..."

Yu Sheng touched his chin thoughtfully, and formed a preliminary understanding of the "dark alley" from the information provided by Little Red Riding Hood, but soon his attention returned to the "tower" at the beginning.

"Does the intersection at the end of the dark alley only lead to the alley on the next level or the emergency exit?"

"That's right," Little Red Riding Hood said, her expression becoming serious. "No one has ever mentioned that the end of the alley leads to a strange space with a tall tower, nor have there been any investigation reports of other forks in the road."

Yu Sheng frowned, his eyes fell on the phone screen again, and he expanded the content below the post.

There were a lot of replies to the post. In such a serious and exotic help-seeking exchange, there was almost no one who would deliberately cause trouble. Most of the replies were asking for more details about the tower and the current situation of the person involved. The poster responded to almost all the questions seriously, and the most recent speech record lasted to sometime last year.

What people asked most was how the person left the tower - even though the poster emphasized at the beginning that he could no longer remember the experience, it was obvious that everyone was still paying close attention to it.

After many exchanges, the poster finally mentioned a detail - "gloomy and cold".

After returning from the tower, he had been haunted by nightmares, trapped in the dark tower in his dreams. Every time he woke up, he would feel a chill seeping from his bones, as if... waking up from a grave.

"The chill that seeps into the bone marrow..."

Yu Sheng subconsciously raised his head and looked towards the small square, looking for Irene.

The children were having lunch break, so there was no one to play with her. She found a big rock on the side of the road and was now grinding the ominous planet. She had been grinding the stone ball for several days, but it still hadn't changed at all. However, the little doll seemed to believe that as long as she persisted, she could grind it into a smooth surface, so she was still very motivated.

As for what to do after polishing the Ominous Star, she obviously hadn't thought about it at all.

I don’t know how long this new weird interest of the little doll will last.

"I think we need to find the person who posted this," Yu Sheng suddenly said. "From the replies below, it seems no one else has seen the 'tower' besides him, and his condition is getting worse due to nightmares. The last time he replied, he was even considering seeking out a strange doctor to have his brain removed."

"This guy hasn't posted anything on Border Communications since his last reply a few months ago," Little Red Riding Hood said, frowning as she retrieved her phone. "This isn't looking good... I'll try to contact him first. If there's no response, I'll have to ask Captain Song for help."

Yu Sheng nodded slightly.

Little Red Riding Hood put away her phone, stood up and stretched hard, then waved to Yu Sheng: "Then I'll continue practicing driving--"

"Come on," Yu Sheng responded with a smile, and after a moment's thought, he added, "Stop carrying the car into the parking space. It's no use trying to fool yourself..."

Little Red Riding Hood made a face at him, then jumped down from the castle roof. She transformed into a shadow and darted straight into the driving range. She expertly got into the car, started the engine, released the clutch, turned it off, started the engine, released the clutch, turned it off, got out of the car to sulk, and then got back in the car to start the engine...

Yu Sheng felt that she would not be able to pass the second subject.

How come this girl, who is usually quite reliable in everything she does, is stuck in getting her driver's license?

Yu Sheng stood up from a pile of soft fox tails, then turned his head slightly and saw that Hu Li had woken up at some point - a pair of big golden-red eyes were staring at him, with the corners of his eyes slightly curved.

"Are you awake?"

"Yeah." The fox girl nodded, then turned over and lay on all fours on the roof, stretching her body hard. Her nine tails stretched out comfortably in the air, swaying like a fox spreading its tail. After stretching, she hummed with satisfaction, then slowly returned to Yu Sheng and continued to lie down.

Then, after a while, she suddenly said, "My benefactor, do you think Irene would want to know about the 'Goddess of Omen'? If one day, we really find out something..."

Yu Sheng turned his head and saw the big ears on Hu Li's head shaking.

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

"Then I guess I can't say bad things about you while you're asleep anymore," Yu Sheng smiled and shook his head, then turned serious. "Actually, sometimes I hesitate and wonder if the 'truth' is really that important to Irene. After all, in a sense, it's good for her to be carefree like this. And with her... personality, she really could live a carefree life like this forever."

Hu Li raised his head, his expression serious: "My benefactor, did you mean to say with her 'brain'?"

Yu Sheng's expression froze for a moment, then he pretended not to hear and continued, "But do you feel that in the matter of the 'Omen Goddess', it's not actually what we've been investigating, but the matter itself... that has been chasing us."

Hu Li listened and slowly opened his eyes wide.

(End of this chapter)