Chapter 499 The Poster's Message
Yu Sheng was awakened by a headbutt from the little doll at dawn in the early morning.
He suddenly opened his eyes and stood up, and saw Irene standing next to him with her head against his pillow. Although she had just been headbutted, the little thing still didn't open her eyes. After nodding her head a few times, she fell into a sound sleep again, snoring softly and evenly.
Yu Sheng himself couldn't sleep.
He sat on the bed, dazed for a while, leaning back on the pillow, but his mind still lingered on the faint impression of the dream before being awakened by Irene's headbutt. He felt that he had had a mess of strange dreams all night, all kinds of strange and bizarre scenes played in his mind like slides, and they had not yet completely dissipated -
It started with Hu Li walking along the riverbank, where a bunch of mermaids and snake queens were splashing around. Xuan Che was riding out a lightning tribulation on the riverbank, electrocuting the mermaids and snake queens in the river, making them jump up and down. Suddenly, he was helping the locals dig stones in Shuji. Mo Ran erected a statue of him over 80 meters tall in the city center, and Hu Li was eating tribute fruit beneath it, known as the Purifier of the Altar. Then it was back to an outing with the little kids in the valley. They went mushroom picking in the Black Forest, and halfway through, a squirrel ran over and said a giant spider was dismantling the king's cat climbing frame. The spider was huge, 666 meters tall...
Yu Sheng had a chaotic dream with one scene after another. The last scene in his memory was that he had somehow returned to that "dark alley" and to the old bookstore that was collapsing. The books and bookshelves in the bookstore seemed to be alive and were scrambling to flee out. There were also densely packed words running all over the walls and ceiling, making small and shrill screams.
Then, the old bookstore began to deform. The walls were stretched, the roof bulged, a spiral and broken staircase extended from behind the bookshelves, and cracks of various sizes quickly covered the entire room - a scarlet glow flashed from outside those horrible cracks, and between the red lights was the phantom of a spider.
Then comes the little doll's headbutt.
Yu Sheng rubbed the place on his forehead where Irene's head had hit him. He still felt a little dizzy. He blinked his eyes, and when his eyelids closed, he seemed to still see that scarlet gaze.
The little doll rolled off the pillow, grabbed a corner of the quilt and wrapped it around itself, muttering something, but no one knew what it was saying.
With the morning light filtering through the curtains, Yu Sheng quietly looked at the doll for a long time before his gaze passed over her and fell on the bedside table next to him.
The Ominous Wandering Star stayed there quietly, leaning against the frame of the painting next to him.
Yu Sheng thought about it, picked up the gray-white stone ball, slowly stroked its bumpy and rough surface, then calmed his mind and tried to establish contact with it again.
Since the day he got it from Taixu Lingshu, Yu Sheng has "donated blood" to this stone ball several times, and has tried to establish a "connection" with it more than once.
To this day, he still couldn't control the situation of the stone ball by directly donating blood like he did with other "conventional objects". Sometimes he would even inexplicably "disturb" Irene in the process of trying to contact it. But after all, he had been trying for so long, and he did not gain nothing.
As the spirit concentrates and the mind settles, the familiar feeling of "emptiness" and the faint whistling noise once again permeate from the edge of perception.
Yu Sheng narrowed his eyes slightly. In his perception, everything in the bedroom was gradually becoming distant and vague. Only the ominous star in his hand became more real. With further mental focus, this "little ball" seemed to become the only real object in the whole world, floating quietly in the depths of darkness.
Yu Sheng's perception wandered around this "only existence", but just like the previous attempts, he still could not penetrate the shell of the ominous planet and could not see what was inside it.
Only hollow noises continued to come from the sphere, like billions of overlapping chaotic whispers.
Yu Sheng "raised his head" again in the darkness and looked around at the ominous star.
After pondering for a long time, he suddenly tried to break the silence on the gray "lone star" -
“What does it mean when you say ‘quality is not enough’?”
All he got in response was still a hollow whistle.
Yu Sheng suddenly opened his eyes and saw Irene sitting cross-legged beside him. The little doll was staring at him with big eyes, motionlessly.
It was already bright outside the window.
"Wow!" The little thing made an exaggerated sound, then pointed at the ominous star in Yu Sheng's hand, "You dribbled my ball secretly!"
"I hit you with a hammer and woke you up, so I took the opportunity to study this thing," Yu Sheng said casually, placing the stone ball on the track next to the little doll's head, "although I still haven't figured out anything."
"Yes, really?" The little doll blinked, then raised its hand and pointed at the bedside table. "By the way, your phone was ringing just now. It seems like someone sent you a message!"
Yu Sheng raised his eyebrows, waved to Irene and let the little doll comb her hair and wash herself, then picked up her phone curiously. When he opened it, he found several unread messages - all from Little Red Riding Hood.
"Yu Sheng, is he awake?" "We've found the spirit world detective named 'Sun Chen,' but the situation is a bit complicated." "Message me when you wake up, and I'll come straight to you."
Yu Sheng looked at the news on the screen, then turned his head to look at the bright day outside. He was a little confused for a moment - he just tried to communicate with the Ominous Planet as usual, and so much time had passed?
He quickly suppressed his doubts and quickly replied to the message. Then he got up, washed, and cleaned up. He also wiped the faces of the little dolls lined up by the sink one by one. When he ran downstairs, he saw Hu Li crying for food in the restaurant...
"My benefactor, you got up so late today," the fox girl whined, lying on the table with her ears drooping, "I'm hungry."
Yu Sheng looked helpless: "Hey, you're hungry, go to the intersection and buy some buns and fried dough sticks or something."
Hu Li continued to lie on the table: "That won't work, we have to eat breakfast together..."
The fox girl seemed to have all sorts of strange obsessions with food, and Yu Sheng was used to it. He didn't say anything at this point, but quickly opened a door beside the dining table and peeked in, snapping out a list of dishes: "Five bowls of noodles with soybean paste and a braised egg, ten sesame cakes, twenty chicken legs, three steamed buns, a pot of seaweed and egg soup, two plates of fried tofu, and six grilled sausages, no chili, but with cumin."
Not long after he finished speaking, plates of food began to be pushed in from the other side of the door - that was the food window of the Secret Service canteen, specially provided by Hu Li.
The fox girl, who had been crying for food all morning, instantly became energetic and began to devour the food on the dining table. Almost at the same time, Yu Sheng heard footsteps coming from the direction of the stairs.
Turning his head, he saw the girl in red walking out of the basement.
"Have you eaten?" Yu Sheng raised his hand and beckoned, "If not, come over and have something to eat—and by the way, tell me what's going on with that spirit world detective who posted this."
Little Red Riding Hood was not polite either. An eighteen-year-old girl was at the age with a big appetite. As soon as she sat down at the dining table, she took a bun for herself. Hu Li just looked up at this. Although she usually had the habit of guarding her food, when she saw that it was her good friend the dog who came to eat, she just gurgled in her throat and took the initiative to push the plate of buns aside.
"To put it simply, the spirit world detective named 'Sun Chen' is now living in the 'Quiet Forest Sanatorium,'" Little Red Riding Hood said. "He moved in a few months ago, so there haven't been any updates on the border communications during this period."
As she said this, she took a bite of the bun and immediately burned her tongue. She blew on it and looked up to see Hu Li had already started eating from the second tray.
Yu Shengze frowned slightly: "Jinglin Sanatorium?"
Little Red Riding Hood: "...You can simply think of it as a mental hospital."
Yu Sheng was stunned for a moment, then he realized: "...He has gone crazy?!"
"I'm not sure. From what I've found, he took the initiative to check in—and he was conscious when he checked in," Little Red Riding Hood shook her head. "That's very rare. Most psychic detectives who end up in a mental hospital are usually mentally deranged. They're usually taken to a specialized detention and treatment facility by the Secret Service or specialized 'recoverers.'"
She paused for a moment and added, "Also, the 'Quiet Forest Sanatorium' is a rather special place."
Yu Sheng was a little curious: "Is it special?"
"You know, being a ghost detective or investigator is a 'high-risk profession,'" Little Red Riding Hood raised her eyelids. "People in this line of work are exposed to all sorts of weird things on a daily basis. So when a ghost detective or investigator develops mental problems, their 'mental issues' are likely the least of their problems. Do you think people like them would be sent to 'regular' mental hospitals?"
Yu Sheng looked thoughtful.
Little Red Riding Hood continued, "So, the Secret Service has established many specialized treatment and reception facilities for this purpose. As the name suggests, they are both treatment institutions and reception units. They use 'professional methods' to deal with patients' 'special mental problems,' and also have special measures to prevent patients' 'mental problems' from escaping the ward. The 'Quiet Forest Sanatorium' I just mentioned is one of the treatment and reception facilities established by the Secret Service, and it is also... the most special one.
"That place is a foreign land with an average depth of L-1."
Yu Sheng almost choked on his mouthful of noodles.
This time it was Little Red Riding Hood's turn to complain: "Why are you so surprised? Isn't the valley we live in now also a foreign land?"
"Let's put it this way—after all, my valley is beautiful, peaceful, and doesn't accept people with mental illnesses," Yu Sheng coughed twice, his expression odd. "Placing a group of 'special people' whose mental health has been damaged by contact with alien lands in a foreign land—there has to be a reason for that, right?"
The girl eating buns across the table smiled. "It's simple. One of the characteristics of the Quiet Forest Sanatorium is that patients who enter are subject to the sanatorium's rules, and only those rules."
(End of this chapter)
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