Chapter 569 Scenery Beyond the City

A black luxury car drove out of the Secret Service's underground parking lot and quickly took the "shortcut" from the nearest alien entrance.

The gray-white concrete tunnel receded past the car window, the monotonous and repetitive guide lights and the faint sense of "alienation" surrounding the vehicle. This shortcut was exceptionally quiet, except for the occasional Secret Service patrol robot gliding swiftly along the tunnel wall; there were almost no other moving objects on the road.

Yu Sheng sat in the passenger seat, Hu Li and Luna sat in the back, while Eileen crawled between the two rows of seats, never quiet for a moment.

This guy is clearly still excited.

As the clockwork maid named "Marilyn" drove, she glanced at Eileen, who was hanging on the headrest of the passenger seat, through the rearview mirror and said with a faint smile, "Miss Eileen seems very happy."

“That’s right, this guy has been waiting for this day for so long, he keeps talking about how tall she is, 1.67 meters,” Yu Sheng said with a smile and a sigh. “I’ve tried to massage her body several times but it wasn’t very successful. This time, this ‘original’ one shouldn’t have any problems.”

“The mistress is all set. We’ve found the blueprint for the old-generation doll’s body in the garden network. The nanoprinting pool can repair that body based on the blueprint—no matter how many pieces it’s broken into,” Mary said gently, her gaze suddenly falling on Yu Sheng, her beautiful artificial eyes gleaming. “I salute you, Mr. Yu Sheng. You not only resolved yet another angel crisis, but you also found a lost Alice doll. The mistress says this achievement is enough to make you a friend to all the Alice dolls.”

Yu Sheng smiled and nodded, and just then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the exit of the "shortcut".

The tunnel came to an abrupt end before a gate that shimmered with a faint light. The car drove out of the tunnel and began to pass through the outermost urban area of ​​the border city. Yu Sheng glanced back and saw that the tunnel exit was an arch-shaped stain on the exterior wall of an old Western-style house. On both sides of the car window, the buildings along the road all presented an old and desolate appearance, as if from a previous era.

The old villas that looked like they had been abandoned for decades, the deserted apartments, the construction site where demolition was underway, the dim streetlights in the cold night, the quiet road with hardly any cars in sight, and the occasional figure appearing nearby, which seemed to be a team of Secret Service agents.

It's like a region abandoned by time, frozen on the edge of people's forgetfulness.

"This is the first time I've been this close to the city's edge..." Yu Sheng stared wide-eyed at the scenery outside the car window, his voice filled with emotion. "So this is what the outermost area of ​​Boundary City looks like..."

“It’s said that the ‘fringe area’ of Boundary City is not for people to live in, but for those ‘invisible things’,” Mary said casually. “Some are ‘spirits’ that wander in the suburbs, some are ‘alien entities’ that are generated in the process of the city’s operation, and there seem to be some low-risk entities that have reached an agreement with the Secret Service—because the nature of the fringe area itself is almost otherworldly, those entities hide in these seemingly abandoned buildings.”

Marys paused, then continued like a tour guide, "Outside of human sight, these abandoned houses are brightly lit and bustling with activity. There is also a small 'alien society' hidden in this ring of abandoned neighborhoods, monitored by the Secret Service, and living peacefully with the human world."

Yu Sheng looked at the clockwork maid who was driving with some surprise: "...You know quite a bit about this. Aren't you from out of town?"

Mary: "That's what the travel brochure said."

Yu Sheng: "...A travel brochure?"

“Yes,” Maris nodded, “the Borderlands are a world-renowned tourist destination for visitors from the ‘outside’.”

Yu Sheng scratched his head: "Okay, I think I heard Baili Qing mention this before."

As he spoke, he glanced out the window again, frowning in confusion: "But I didn't see anything supernatural... I personally think my 'eyesight' is pretty good."

No sooner had he finished speaking than Marys said, "Because most of the content in the manual is actually a lie to outsiders."

Yu Sheng: "..."

“How could the council possibly open up a haunted, unusual area as a tourist attraction? A few private travel agencies can just pick a few old houses, set up some scenery and lights, and that’s it. Tourists can just imagine it themselves. Anyway, they’ve never seen a real alien world,” Maris said casually. “There are indeed ‘alien communities’ like I’m talking about in abandoned neighborhoods, but they’re all tightly sealed off by the Secret Service. It’s impossible to drive through them directly. Some of them are even invisible to the naked eye.”

Yu Sheng blinked, and before he could speak, he heard Eileen, who was hanging on the back of the seat, blurt out, "...Hey, aren't you guys from out of town?!"

"We're from out of town, and we do the same thing here. Alice House even runs a horror doll museum. Their biggest theme park covers an entire planet, and every year people fall for it, getting scared out of their wits by a bunch of sisters dressed as out-of-control machine servants and cursed dolls..."

Yu Sheng was completely shocked: "You can do it like this?!"

Mary nodded: "Sure, inside the Alice doll and our servo robots, 'scaring ignorant outsiders' is the most popular stress-relieving activity."

Listening to the mecha girl's story, Yu Sheng couldn't help but marvel at how rich the Alice dolls' leisure time was, despite their mysterious appearance to outsiders. Then he saw Eileen beside him staring with bright, sparkling eyes, clearly captivated by the story...

While they were talking, Mary had already driven the car across the last "urban area" on the edge of the city. After passing through a seemingly ordinary median strip, Yu Sheng noticed that the surrounding scenery and atmosphere had changed instantly.

For a brief moment, he felt as if he had passed through an invisible "wall".

Beyond the wall lay the so-called "suburbs"—an endless wilderness stretching out into the night, bathed in starlight refracted from some unknown dimension. The terrain of the wilderness was undulating, and in the distance, one could see some tall, unnamed trees. No matter which direction one looked, the ground at the end of the field of vision seemed to be "crooked," or even... as if the entire ground was "rolled up" near the horizon.

An old but wide road winds through the desolate area, stretching to the horizon. There are streetlights along the way, but some sections seem to be malfunctioning. Those areas are disturbed by floating shadows, and every now and then, sections of the road are completely plunged into darkness, with a texture as if soaked in thick ink.

On the way, Yu Sheng also saw the sentry posts set up by the Special Operations Bureau—these were towering, advanced sentry towers, completely different from the "contemporary urban style" of Jiecheng. The silver-gray towers were equipped with heavy railguns and complex antennas or radar arrays that were impossible to identify. The thick energy shields gleamed in the night. Heavy infantry combat robots guarded the intersections, and psionicists floating in mid-air were vigilant about the unstable spacetime structures outside the main road.

He also saw some settlements.

The "suburbs" were actually inhabited. The settlements looked like villages of varying sizes, the largest resembling a town, while the smallest was just a low wall shimmering with the glow of a shield, with a few households inside.

Marise said those were “peripheral settlements” set up by the Secret Service or the Council to monitor the outer edges of the border area and to collect certain special resources, but she didn’t know the specifics.

Yu Sheng suddenly realized that although he had lived in the border area for a long time, he still knew very little about this mysterious "cosmic hub"—he had been to the distant depths of the starry sky, to the Flying Feather Starfield, and even to the Lost Time and Space at the end of the boundary bridge, but this was the first time he had left that huge "boundary city" and that "landscape sandbox" carefully protected and artificially set up by the Council and the Special Operations Bureau, and come to this desolate and primitive "suburbs".

Although this "suburb" was actually right under his nose.

“It’s so desolate outside,” the little doll climbed onto the passenger seat, stepping on Yu Sheng’s arm, its face almost pressed against the car window. “Wow… there’s even lightning!”

“We’re heading that way,” Maris said, already driving onto a side road toward the direction of the lightning. “That’s the ‘time jump point’ leading to the border. Through specific coordinates at the jump point, we can get directly to the floating island where Alice’s embassy is located—hold on tight, it’s going to be a bit bumpy.”

As soon as the female robot finished speaking, Yu Sheng felt a sudden jolt beneath him—even though the car was still traveling on a smooth road, he felt the entire vehicle begin to shake!

Gravity is out of balance; the seemingly smooth road appears discontinuous, and the scenery outside the car window begins to appear fragmented and bizarre. Phantoms that seem to belong to a completely different time and space flash past the window from time to time.

Eileen started squeaking excitedly.

However, Marise seemed completely unaffected by all the bumps and noise around her. Her eyes were filled with a mechanical calm as she precisely controlled the vehicle, stepping on the gas and speeding towards a faint, bubble-like curtain of light at the end of the road.

Yu Sheng heard a "buzz" sound in his ear, and when the light and shadow outside the window returned to normal, a huge, magnificent mansion with a mysterious aura appeared in his field of vision.

The villa stands on a huge floating island that floats in mid-air. The island is surrounded by small, broken islands of all sizes, and aurora-like streams of light flow between the countless broken islands. Occasionally, distant starlight shines down through the cracks in space and time, reflecting in the sky.

The villa is surrounded by a large, lush garden, where many faceless, low-level dolls are busy at work.

The car stopped in front of the mansion. Yu Sheng and his party got out of the car and saw that the special envoy named "Marlene" was standing at the door with a smile on her face.

(End of this chapter)