Chapter 516 Suspicious Clues
几分钟后，国王悠然自得地坐在流浪法师大姐姐的肩膀上舔着自己的爪子，而冒险者小队里的青年剑客、村姑牧师和神秘静步男（潜行者）则在不远处围了个圈，一边喊着什么“为了村子里的大家”、“不要小瞧了我们的羁绊”、“这就是我们互相信赖的力量”之类让人听不懂的句子，一边在那叮咣哐当地揍猫。
If you don't know, just by listening to the sound, you would think that the three are attacking the Demon King's Castle.
"Cats are like this, and the 'Entity' is no exception," the king lazily raised his head and glanced at Zheng Zhi, who was hesitant to speak next to him. "If you save it, it will hiss at you. If you are polite to it, it will also hiss at you. If you ignore it, it may still hiss at you. So sometimes it's better to beat it up - but it only works at the beginning. It will hiss at you again the next time you see it..."
Zheng Zhi held it in for a long time, but finally couldn't help saying, "But you are also a cat."
"I'd say the same thing if I were a cat—because the differences between cats are sometimes greater than between you and me," the king said, stretching himself and yawning. He then nimbly jumped off the wandering wizard and walked forward with graceful steps. "Alright, alright, you can stop now. We should be able to communicate honestly at this point."
The village priest who was swinging her short staff with an excited look on her face was the first to stop, then quickly grabbed the young swordsman and the stealth man. The three of them turned around respectfully, bowed to the king, and quickly walked aside.
The black cat, who had just been in Spinosaurus form and breathing out breath at everyone, now lay obediently on the ground, showing a submissive attitude towards the tabby cat walking towards him.
The king then engaged in a meowing exchange with the local cat, asking what was going on in the alley – a conversation still punctuated by gestures, blushing faces, waving claws, and the king's frantic growling at his fellow idiot's poor language skills and limited vocabulary.
Yu Sheng took this opportunity to ask Irene to quickly deal with the remaining spider webs covering the dark alley.
"...It's not working, Yusheng," the little puppet fiddled with a handful of silk thread for a while, then paused with a gloomy look on his face. "It seems I've reached my limit. Even with the Ominous Planet's 'amplification,' I can only control the threads nearby. The further I go, the more I feel a kind of... 'resistance'. It's like something is constantly pushing the threads I'm extending back."
"Resistance?" Yu Sheng frowned upon hearing this, subconsciously looking up into the dark alley—but of course, he saw nothing. "Can you find the source of that 'resistance'?"
"I can't find it," Irene felt carefully and shook her head. "It just feels like... it's everywhere."
While the two were talking, Luna suddenly jumped out from the team. She stepped lightly onto the nearby roof, passed through the crisscrossing black spider webs, and soon reached the tallest building next to the dark alley. She observed from there for a few seconds before gracefully returning to Yu Sheng.
"The spider web stretches infinitely," Miss Saint said of her discovery. "The structure is like a cocoon."
Hu Li also came to a spider silk hanging from the air. She held a big tail and rubbed the tip of the tail, producing a blue-white flame that was so bright that it was almost dazzling. She used argon fox welding to burn the seemingly thin and fragile silk thread.
The fox fire spread along the spider silk, and the black silk thread disappeared into the air for a while, but the moment Hu Li took away the fox fire, the burnt spider silk returned to its original state.
The fox girl raised her head and said, "It can't be burned, benefactor. This thing regenerates instantly."
Yu Sheng always felt that there seemed to be something wrong with the punctuation of the fox girl's words...
But before he could say anything, the king had finished communicating with the local cat. Seeing the cat's serious expression as he approached, he quickly stopped his wandering thoughts and asked, "What's going on?"
"According to the Cat, these threads first suddenly appeared at the intersection, then began to emerge from every building in the alley," King Cat said with a serious expression. "They've actually stabilized now, or at least haven't increased in number."
Irene immediately poked Yu Sheng's head and said, "Hey, it seems that the pot wasn't made by you guys in the second-hand bookstore. It appeared from the intersection."
Little Red Riding Hood raised her head and glanced at the black cats that were trapped in spider webs and were still struggling and squirming above the dark alley.
"Then why do these spider silks 'catch' the 'cats' in the dark alleys?" She frowned in confusion. "We've been testing it here for quite some time, and it doesn't seem to react much to external stimuli."
The king licked his paw and said, "Pure bitch."
little Red Riding Hood:"……?"
"They saw something they didn't recognize in the alley and pounced on it," the king said lazily, "and then they all ended up hanging here."
Everyone: “…”
While he was speechless, Yu Sheng seemed to have suddenly thought of something, and a trace of thought flashed across his face.
The little doll quickly noticed the change in his expression: "What are you thinking about?"
"According to the rules of the Dark Alley, cats normally won't spawn on the first level," Yu Sheng said, breaking his silence. He looked up at the dimly lit shops with blurry signs in the alley. "Only when someone activates a deeper Dark Alley at an intersection will entities begin to spawn here. That includes the last time we saw a large number of cats in the alley. It was because the old bookstore collapsed, sending everyone directly into the deeper Dark Alley."
After hearing Yu Sheng's reminder, Little Red Riding Hood suddenly reacted and looked up into the depths of the alley.
When they came in just now, everyone only noticed the strange scene of the spider web covering the place at first glance, so much so that even Little Red Riding Hood, a veteran spirit detective, did not notice some environmental details under the spider web. But now, she finally realized what was going on with that lingering sense of incongruity.
The signs of the shops along the street were blurry, and the words on the signs seemed to be unreadable and chaotic from the beginning; the light strings entangled in spider webs emitted a strange luster, and the wandering light was not the result of interference from the spider silk; the edges of the puddles everywhere on the road were covered with dirty moss, and the moss spread all the way to the nearby walls, presenting all kinds of strange outlines.
The light in the alley was dim, and a hint of blood was mixed in with the dusk-like sky.
All of the above are typical characteristics of a “dark alley” that has entered a deep level!
"No wonder there are so many cats!" Little Red Riding Hood took a deep breath. "When we first came in, this place was already in a deep state!"
Zheng Zhi thought for a moment and then hesitated before speaking, "Could it be the influence of these spider silks? This place has become so strange, maybe the operating rules have also changed..."
"While we can't rule out this possibility, it's best not to easily attribute unexpected situations in the foreign realm to 'rules failing,'" Little Red Riding Hood said immediately, reminding Zheng Zhi, the purest rookie, "Rules are the most stable 'underlying structure' of the foreign realm. Of all the possible causes of accidents, 'rules failing' should definitely be ranked last."
Zheng Zhi opened his mouth: "Then, the current situation is..."
"Someone must have entered the alley and triggered the conditions for the entity to appear here," Little Red Riding Hood said, her eyes gleaming with a wolf-like alert in the dusk. "And I don't know what that person did, but the alley is clearly being 'maintained' in a deeper state."
The king seemed to understand immediately and spoke quickly, "Perhaps this is why these spider silks can spread over such a large area. Normally, the alien world will reset itself periodically, but now that the dark alley has just opened, the situation here seems to be stuck..."
A slight chill permeated the air, and Zheng Zhi rubbed his arms subconsciously. However, when he looked up into the depths of the alley, he could only see crisscrossing spider webs, the silent and deserted streets, and shops with closed doors and windows on both sides. There were no "other visitors" in sight.
"That person... must have left, right?" he said hesitantly. "Could it be another spirit world detective or investigator? Are you traveling with me..."
But before he could finish, Little Red Riding Hood interrupted him. "Impossible! The last time we returned from the Dark Alley, we reported the situation here to the Secret Service, and the Secret Service suspended access to the Dark Alley. Currently, only the 'Inn' and 'Fairy Tale' have access here. Other investigators and spirit world detectives will trigger an alarm if they approach the node device here."
Zheng Zhi fell silent for a moment. Yu Sheng couldn't help but recall the information about the Black Spot Group that Baili Qing had mentioned when she contacted him earlier. After a brief pause, he broke the silence: "Let's go to the intersection. If the spider silk started spreading from there, there might be some traces at the intersection."
"But the road to the crossroads seems to be completely blocked by spider webs." Little Red Riding Hood looked up at the end of the alley, her eyes glowing slightly in the dim light. "The further you go, the more spider webs there are."
Yu Sheng didn't say anything, but just turned his head slightly and glanced at the little doll on his shoulder.
"I, I'll try my best," Irene nodded immediately. However, the usually fearless and arrogant puppet was now clearly a little lacking in confidence. "It might not work. These silks don't really listen to me."
Yu Sheng was quite open-minded: "We'll go as far as we can. If we really reach a place where we can't go any further, we'll have Hu Li bombard us with a saturation bomb. It'll be good to be able to take a look at the situation at the intersection."
When Little Red Riding Hood heard this, she opened her mouth immediately, as if she had a lot of nagging in her heart, but she looked at Yu Sheng who looked as if it was a matter of course, and then looked at the nine-tailed fox whose eyes were shining next to her, and finally swallowed the nagging back.
Forget it, every organization has its own corporate culture...
(End of this chapter)
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