Chapter 19 Returning Home
Li Lin stared at the empty corner in a daze, with a scraper for sampling in his hand. He was so confused that he seemed to have forgotten what he was doing.
The middle-aged man known as "Captain Song" - Captain Song Cheng of the Special Service Bureau's Second Team, frowned tightly the moment he saw the bloodstain disappear.
Something disappeared from his memory and thinking, but the residual impressions were still there. These impressions stimulated his "spirituality" and made him realize that something was wrong.
Song Cheng's eyes showed a chaotic glow. He immediately controlled his mind and tried to "solidify" the last remaining impression in his heart to prevent it from disappearing along with some memories. Years of professional training came into play at this moment. Li Lin, holding the scraper, raised his head after hesitation: "Leader, I feel like I suddenly forgot what I was going to do. Was there something here just now?"
"There's mental interference!" Song Cheng reacted instantly and quickly reminded, "Check the depth here immediately!"
Upon hearing this, Li Lin put down the sampling tools in his hand without saying a word. He quickly took out a palm-sized black box from his belt, pressed the surface of the box a few times, and then pulled out a thin "hose" from its side and directly connected the needle-like tip of the hose to his eyeball. After doing all this, he raised his head and slowly looked around with the eye connected to the hose.
There was a slight buzzing sound coming from the black iron box, and there seemed to be liquid flowing slowly in the thin tube. Li Lin's eyes gradually turned dark, and in his spiritual vision, everything in this old street began to be stained with black and white.
"At depth L-0, there is no foreign reaction," Li Lin reported as he observed, "and no objects or residues from the 'foreign realm' were seen."
Song Cheng frowned and glanced at the box in Li Lin's hand - this was a portable depth sounder. Its sensing range and sensitivity were not as good as the standard equipment the size of a suitcase, but even as a portable device, it should be able to detect changes in "depth" within the range.
He was certain that his memory and thinking had been affected by something just now. The residual "impression" was still forcibly solidified in his heart. There must be something evil here that was influencing him, but... the equipment could not sense it.
Just when he was about to ask Li Lin to adjust the sensing mode of the depth sounder, the latter seemed to suddenly discover something.
Li Lin stared at a place at the end of the street.
The eye connected to the hose was as black as ink, and another vision was reflected in the deep black. He saw that between the streets and buildings covered in black and white, there was a faint hint of color - the color was very vague and light, and he couldn't tell what it was, but it was very large. He tried to distinguish it for a long time before he roughly determined the range of the outline that was so light that it was almost transparent, and judged that its size was about equal to that of a house.
"Captain Song, there's something in front of us, but it's blurry and looks like a house," he said as he walked forward cautiously. "The depth indicator is still 0, and there's no contamination response... I'm almost in front of it, can you feel anything?"
Song Cheng followed behind Li Lin, holding a badge in his pocket with his right hand, ready to intervene at any time if something went wrong. At the same time, he frowned and shook his head: "The spirit did not give any warning."
Li Lin stopped at a certain place. He felt that he had come to the hazy color. Then he hesitated for a moment and slowly stretched out his hand.
Suddenly, a sharp buzzing sound came from the black iron box, followed by a few crackling sounds and a puff of green smoke, and the depth sounder stopped working.
The hose connected to the eyeball fell off instantly, and a dark, muddy substance flowed out of it, quickly evaporating and dissipating after coming into contact with the air.
Li Lin couldn't help but exclaimed "Fuck..." because of the soreness and stinging in his eyes. He threw away the black box that had already started to burn his hand, and subconsciously wanted to rub the eye that had just been connected. Seeing this, Song Cheng next to him immediately stepped forward and raised his hand to press near Li Lin's temple: "Don't rub it! It will be fine in a while!"
Li Lin suddenly froze in place. He felt a burning sensation near his temple, and the discomfort in his eyeballs quickly subsided. After a moment, he recovered and saw the depth gauge on the ground still emitting smoke.
"… Report it to the bureau?"
"Give me the newspaper."
"It's okay, you just scared me," Li Lin breathed a sigh of relief, then turned his head and looked in the direction where he had just stretched out his hand in doubt.
However, there is only a small open space here, and at the end of the open space is a wall - the wall is graffitied by someone unknown, using colorful spray paint to outline pictures of doors, windows, houses, trees, and stones.
He stretched out his hand and waved it forward, but touched nothing.
"There must be something here. The instrument has just observed it, but the equipment broke down before I could confirm it," Li Lin muttered. "Before the equipment broke down, the depth indicated was still L-0."
"... Let's go back to the bureau first," Song Cheng pondered for two seconds and made a decision. "I'll report to the board of directors when I get back. This place really needs to be monitored for a while. It's possible that it's some kind of unregistered 'foreign land'. I estimate that it will require large equipment and specialized 'deep divers' to deal with it. Also, are your eyes okay?"
"...If I need help, can you give me half a day off?"
"No, the bureau is short of people."
"That's fine. I'll just put some eye drops in when I get home."
Song Cheng nodded, and Li Lin bent down and carefully picked up the wreckage of the depth sounder that was no longer smoking. The two of them returned to the place where they had parked the electric car, one after the other.
Li Lin turned the car key, and the LCD screen of the electric car flashed and then went out.
He was stunned for a moment, then raised his head and met Captain Song's gaze, which was the same as his own.
"My car broke down...yours too?"
Song Cheng nodded silently.
"…Do you think it's a coincidence?"
Song Cheng shook his head slightly and said in a deep voice: "People in the 'Academy' have a special way to explain this phenomenon."
Li Lin was slightly startled, and then he recalled some information he had read before -
"The Machine Soul is unhappy." / "The Machine Soul is scared."
The two of them spoke in unison.
Then they were silent for a moment, and this time they said in unison: "You remembered it wrong."
"We'll talk about it later," Song Cheng waved his hand, pushed the electric bike and walked back slowly, "Let's leave this place first."
Li Lin pushed the electric bike behind Song Cheng: "...Leader, are we just going to push it all the way back?"
"What else? You don't want the car anymore?"
"Don't you have a small truck or something in the bureau? If not, you can just call the electric tricycle from the logistics department downstairs... Pushing this back will cost you your life..."
The latest novel is published first on Liu9shuba!
"Stop talking nonsense. You are so young but your physical strength is not as good as mine?"
Two senior Secret Service agents pushed their electric bikes farther and farther away, and their figures gradually disappeared at the intersection of Wutong Road.
…
Yu Sheng was already very familiar with the boundless and deep darkness around him. It had been coming here more frequently recently, and when he was floating in this dark chaos, he even felt like he was going home.
Irene's screams were still ringing in my ears.
He thought that the scene of himself, covered in blood with a hole in his stomach, pushing the door open and dying inside might have scared the doll in the painting - it seemed that even Irene, who was a "cursed object", could only endure that psychologically.
This made Yu Sheng start to look forward to what would happen after his "return".
When I return to the world and appear in front of Irene again... how will Miss Doll react? Will she... still remember that I pushed the door and died in the house?
Yu Sheng was floating in the darkness, and the figure of Hu Li appeared "in front of his eyes". He recalled the experience in the valley at night. He remembered that when Hu Li saw him in the ruined temple, he had completely forgotten about her having hit someone to death with a headbutt - although she suddenly remembered it later for some reason, but at the beginning, Hu Li did completely forget his "death".
Yu Sheng didn’t know what this “forgetfulness” was, nor was he sure whether it was his own problem or Hu Li’s problem - after all, the fox girl’s thinking seemed to be quite confused, so it was normal for her to suddenly forget something.
But if Irene doesn't remember the scene of him pushing the door and dying in the house, then Yu Sheng can basically be sure...the problem lies with himself.
There was no way to tell how long he would be floating in the darkness, so after sorting out his experiences so far, Yu Sheng emptied his mind, let his tense nerves rest for a while, and patiently waited for the moment when the darkness would end.
Then he felt that familiar feeling of falling, and felt that he was rapidly "returning" to the earthly world.
Yu Sheng, who had been prepared, immediately focused his mind and tried to capture the feeling of crossing the "boundary" at that moment.
Familiar scenes appeared "before his eyes", and a vague sense of guidance was driving him to "fall" in a specific direction. He struggled to distinguish the complex images that emerged in an instant, but before he could grasp anything, he "saw" one of the images quickly enlarged in front of his eyes -
No. 66 Wutong Road, the living room after entering the door.
Yu Sheng suddenly opened his eyes.
The familiar home furnishings came into view. In the dining room next to the living room, the quaint and exquisite oil painting was quietly placed on the dining table.
Irene in the painting broke the silence.
"Yusheng! You're finally back!"
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com