Chapter 494: Used Bookstore
It was dark and damp, as if it was always in the atmosphere of dusk when rain was about to fall. The dim lights with chaotic light sources illuminated the mottled and old signs of the shops on both sides, creating a particularly strange and eerie atmosphere in the alley.
The team of adventurers walked through the puddles on the roadside, checking for every possible aberration in the alleys, and demonstrated skilled teamwork and personal qualities as they moved forward.
The figures of stealth assassins disappeared from the sight of the people from time to time, as if melting into the shadows of those buildings, and sometimes suddenly emerged from the corner of a house, elusive like spirits. The wandering wizard summoned a dark blue eye floating in the air, constantly scanning the path behind the crowd. The swordsman walked at the front of the team to prevent entities from generating in the alley in advance - although the probability of this happening was not high, the foreign land would occasionally have depth fluctuations, and the probability of any danger happening in advance was not zero.
The priestess holding a short staff walked in the center of the team, muttering something like a prayer in a low voice. Each round of chanting would refresh a faint blessing with a refreshing and healing effect on everyone.
Yu Sheng curiously approached the priestess, who was technically the king's "summoned creature," and heard her mumbling the same few words over and over again: "...Holy light is like the wind, blessing the cat. Holy light is like a torch, shining on the cat. Only I, the cat, meow meow meow..."
It's a magical comparison.
Little Red Riding Hood was obviously very familiar with the various combat units summoned by the "King". She rode on a giant wolf and commanded several wolves to cooperate with the actions of the stalkers at the edge of the team. At the same time, she also noticed some subtle expressions on Yu Sheng's face.
"Impressive, huh? These 'summoned creatures' created by the king sometimes give the impression that they truly possess intelligence," she said to Sheng with a smile. "They can even engage in simple conversations with outsiders. The highest-level summons—like the sycophants and the 'prime ministers'—can even understand and remember the rules of the 'outside' world, making it difficult for them to be exposed when interacting with ordinary people. But in reality, these summons are essentially 'entities' generated from the 'Fairy Tale Alien Land'... and so is my wolf."
"Interesting." Yu Sheng muttered, and turned his head to look at the "priest" in the team. This "priest girl" who was dressed as if she had walked out of an RPG game or novel illustration of the previous generation smiled at him politely and continued to repeat stiffly: "Only me, cat, meow meow meow..."
Then he gave the whole team another layer of Holy Cat Blessing.
"...To be honest, if you don't interact much, there's actually a bit of an uncanny valley effect."
"We felt the same way at first, but after spending more time with the king, we got used to it," Little Red Riding Hood said with a smile. "Besides, compared to the high-level units the king summons, these rigid combat units are actually more reassuring. Anyway, I don't like 'flatterers'. Those old guys look like real people, a little too real. Luckily, the king rarely lets them out except when he wants to eat dried fish."
As they were talking, they had already walked halfway through the alley.
Yu Sheng looked up and saw that the intersection was right in front of him. There were crisscrossing electric wires between the shops on both sides. Dim light strings were hung on the wires, and faded colorful flags were swaying weakly in the wind. The flags were inscribed with words such as "Good luck in opening the business", "Good luck on your journey", "Promotion and fortune", "Happy family", etc. These auspicious words looked auspicious and festive, but when placed in the environment before him, they seemed a bit weird when combined.
And under those dim light strings are street shops with closed doors and windows.
Only the light at the door of one shop seemed particularly bright, and the door was open, as if issuing a silent invitation.
The king waved his claws, and the young swordsman holding the village sword and several shadow wolves approached the shop. The stalker followed them at some point and flashed into the shop like a phantom.
"Your Majesty, it's safe ahead."
The wandering wizard in the team said in a hoarse voice.
Yu Sheng and his group moved closer and saw that it was actually a second-hand bookstore.
Little Red Riding Hood frowned, with a look of obvious vigilance on her face.
"What does bookstore mean?" Yu Sheng asked curiously.
"The most common shops in 'Dark Alley' are grocery stores, pet food stores, and used bookstores," Little Red Riding Hood explained. "Grocery stores are the safest, but they only sell meaningless goods that are neither useful for finding a safe exit nor harmful. Pet food stores only sell pet food for cats, and you have to exchange it for a small piece of your skin. Used bookstores are the most dangerous of the three—they might contain useful information, traps, or even spiritually polluting books and magazines..."
She paused and shook her head. “Clues and risks coexist, so it’s troublesome and confusing.”
Yu Sheng thought about it and touched his chin: "Oh... indeed."
Then he casually opened a palm-sized door in the air next to him, put his hand towards the door, and called out, "Lu..."
A sharp blade quickly poked out from the small door, made a cut in his palm, and then quickly retracted.
Little Red Riding Hood watched this scene in astonishment. She then saw Yu Sheng, his blood-stained hand raised, striding to the door of the used bookstore. Without a word, he slapped seven or eight bloody handprints on the bookstore's exterior walls, doorframes, and windows. Finally, he wrote a line of large, blood-stained characters: "Yu Sheng was here, and so was Little Red Riding Hood, and the cat."
The added part at the end was obviously because the blood had not dried yet and they didn't want to waste it.
The red-dressed girl, who had been a well-behaved spirit world detective for years, was completely stunned. After a long pause, she managed to utter, "You're really just spreading fungus blankets wherever you go?"
Yu Sheng suddenly lost his composure and said, "You don't usually play with Irene..."
As he spoke, he opened another small door from the side, pulled out a fox tail from the door and wiped his hands with it. Amid the protest of the fox girl on the opposite side of the door, "My benefactor, if you don't want it anymore, lick it for me. It's such a waste," he stuffed the tail back in. After completing a series of familiar operations, he clapped his hands and walked into the bookstore.
Little Red Riding Hood stood by, staring blankly at him. She turned and poked the King's cat head. "What did I say just now? If no one tried to stop him, this door would open wherever he went. His DNA is all in the shape of a door."
The king said in a low voice, "It's not a big deal. After all, the door is opened on the same level, and it's at the shallowest part of the alley."
Yu Sheng ignored the murmurs behind him. He had already walked into this old bookstore with a particularly nostalgic style.
A warm yet stale yellow light illuminates the store. On the right hand side of the entrance is a wooden counter with a few account books and some dirty A4 papers piled up cluttered on it. Apart from that, the rest of the space in the store is almost entirely occupied by tall and wide bookshelves lined up against the wall.
Two-thirds of the space on the bookshelf was filled with various old books, but the remaining one-third was not empty either - a sticky substance with a strange texture, like some kind of gelatinous substance, accumulated in the empty space of the bookshelf, condensing into soft, collapsing piles that looked like "melted" books, and black liquid kept dripping from those piles and was quickly absorbed by the ground.
There was no one in the second-hand bookstore. Behind the empty counter was a wooden chair with peeling paint. A piece of paper was stuck on the chair with the words "Read, read, read, read, read, read, read..." written on it.
A bunch of words were piled up randomly, becoming increasingly blurry as they went on, as if something dark was desperately trying to squeeze out from the depths of the pile of words.
Yu Sheng frowned.
The blood connection was being established and strengthened, and he heard a strange and hollow whistling sound, but that sound... did not seem to come from this bookstore.
It didn't even seem to come from any corner of this "dark alley", but rather from some farther and deeper place.
Somewhere outside this "foreign land".
He raised his head and looked in the direction where the sound came from, but there were only tall bookshelves and the walls of the store itself, which were almost completely blocked by the bookshelves.
"Be careful with this black liquid," Little Red Riding Hood's voice came from behind. "This is 'rotten knowledge' and has a strong spiritual pollution effect. Even if you are not afraid of spiritual pollution, it is best not to touch it, unless you are willing to listen to ten thousand people whispering incorrect chemical and physical formulas in your head."
Yu Sheng turned around in surprise: "How do you know so much? The details behind this don't seem to be mentioned in the database..."
Little Red Riding Hood pursed her lips and said nothing. However, the "King" beside her had already hopped lightly onto the counter and was picking at the odds and ends on the counter with his claws while casually saying, "Because she accidentally touched it once before—and she got an 8 on the comprehensive science exam the next day, which shocked the entire Academic Affairs Office."
Little Red Riding Hood blushed: "Shut up!"
Yu Sheng was stunned when he heard this, and then he quickly turned his attention to the surrounding bookshelves before Little Red Riding Hood could show her teeth.
The hollow whistling sound that seemed to come from outside the alley was still lingering in his mind, and his eyes swept over the rows of old books on the bookshelf.
Most of the book covers were gray, with blurry handwriting on the spines, making it impossible to see the titles or guess the contents.
"The books on the shelves that are in good condition and intact can be read with caution, but be careful not to become obsessed with them," the king warned. "Sometimes they contain information about emergency exits, or some real events that seem to have occurred somewhere in the borderland—perhaps in the past, or perhaps currently happening. But they won't predict the future, unless it's a weather forecast."
"Maybe it will also record things about the 'Broken Tower' - in theory, the second-hand bookstore will give priority to recording the changes in the alley itself." Little Red Riding Hood muttered to the side.
Yu Sheng nodded slowly, and glanced at the piece of paper with the word "reading" written on it on the chair behind the counter. Although it felt weird, he carefully pulled a dusty old book from the bookshelf and opened it with some curiosity.
There were only a few large characters written on the yellowed paper:
“The quality is not good enough.”
(End of this chapter)
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