Chapter 591 Cats are Good
Yu Sheng's eyes widened as he looked in the direction the sound came from, only to see a strange, dim light floating in front of a shop next to the old bookstore. In that light, which was like some kind of sticky gel, floated almost transparent figures. In the blink of an eye, those figures disappeared.
The others around him didn't react, but Hu Li suddenly twitched her ears and looked at him with a puzzled expression: "My benefactor, what's wrong with you?"
"Didn't you hear anything just now?" Yu Sheng asked, somewhat surprised. "There were people talking nearby."
“No,” Hu Li’s ears twitched again, “there was only a slight gust of wind.”
Yu Sheng frowned deeply.
Hu Li has the best ears; usually, when he opens a bag of instant noodles in the attic, this girl can just jump out from the basement. If she says she didn't hear anything, then it can only mean that those whispers just now... weren't really "sounds".
After a moment's hesitation, Yu Sheng's gaze fell on Luna.
The latter immediately turned his head, his face covered in biomimetic alloy revealing a hint of doubt.
“I just heard people talking nearby,” Yu Sheng said, “and they mentioned Luna’s name in their voices…”
He decided to tell them everything he had just heard—even though it was just a few words that sounded like a hallucination. But countless classic cases had taught him a lesson: never keep this kind of information from your teammates. After all, sometimes you might think that the time isn't right to say something, but that thing might never get the chance to come out...
The scene fell silent for a moment.
The two sentences Yu Sheng overheard contained a lot of information. Even Eileen could glean some insights from them, and Little Red Riding Hood had also heard the story of the "artificial saintess." As soon as she finished listening, she frowned and her gaze fell on Luna.
Luna stood rooted to the spot, her steel body maintaining an almost cold stability under precise program control. However, the almost eternal perfect smile faded from her face—for the first time, such a vivid shock and unease appeared on the pale face of the mechanical girl.
She stared blankly up at the street-facing shop windows emitting eerie lights, her gaze sweeping over the almost transparent phantoms in the windows, as if trying to discern something from those illusory shadows.
After a long while, she stiffly turned her gaze to Yu Sheng and stammered, "Did we... talk?"
“No, I can only hear sounds occasionally,” Yu Sheng said, “but we can check around and maybe we can hear something else.”
"Mm." Luna nodded slowly.
So the group temporarily left the dark, old bookstore, leaving Little Red Riding Hood with two shadow wolves guarding the entrance, while Yu Sheng led the group forward along the alley.
The group deliberately approached the shop windows along the street that were illuminated by eerie lights.
Occasionally, they would see swaying figures in the shop windows, their images appearing as phantoms projected from afar onto the glass.
Most of the shop windows were silent, and even if there were sounds, they were just mumbled murmurs to Yu Sheng, making it impossible for him to understand what they were saying.
Luna's footsteps were very light—even her metal high heels made almost no sound when they landed on the stone floor, as if she were afraid of disturbing Yu Sheng's hearing.
Just as he was about to reach the crossroads, Yu Sheng suddenly stopped.
“Someone’s talking about the harvest,” he whispered to the others, listening intently. Then, after a moment of careful listening, he looked at Luna uncertainly. “I also heard a word that sounded like a place name, something like Tasico or Tusico… I couldn’t hear the rest.”
“Tasico,” Luna began, her voice more fluent than ever before, “Yes, a big city. I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never been.”
Luna's response confirmed the most unbelievable conclusion—
The "whispers" that Yu Sheng heard in the dark alley... were actually sounds from her homeland!?
Is this a conversation taking place right now? Is it a "record" of the past left here through some inexplicable supernatural mechanism? Or is it some kind of omen for the future?
Regardless of the possibility, the biggest question is... why would you hear these sounds in a "dark alley"?
The group looked at each other, at a loss for words, unable to come up with an answer.
“I… have never encountered anything like this before, or even heard of such a case,” Little Red Riding Hood frowned. “It’s already unbelievable enough that different realms would ‘collude’ with each other, let alone Luna’s homeland, which might be on a planet deep within some lawless star sector controlled by the Order of the Holy Sacred. How could they connect from so far away? The boundary bridge is gone…”
“This is a bit outrageous even in a border area,” Yu Sheng said, scratching his head. He then looked up at the crossroads ahead. “This is the end of the road. If we go any further, we might enter the next level of the dark alley or return directly to the real world. Let’s not go out yet. Let’s go back and see what’s going on with that old bookstore.”
The group quickly returned the way they came and came back to the entrance of the used bookstore.
The bookstore's doors remained open, but the interior was still silent; the dark doors and windows seemed to hold a silent invitation.
A shadow wolf cautiously peeked half its body into the bookstore entrance, and only came out after a while.
“The wolf says there’s no danger,” Little Red Riding Hood said in a low voice, riding on the back of another wolf, “but the atmosphere inside is strange.”
"The atmosphere is strange?" Yu Sheng glanced at the dark room with suspicion, but since the wolf had already scouted the way and confirmed that there was no danger, he still boldly stepped inside.
Several clusters of eerie blue foxfire illuminated the surroundings. Hu Li held a ball of fire in his hand, and several fireballs floated on the tip of his tail as he followed closely behind Yu Sheng.
The bookstore was as always, with mottled and old walls, and the counters piled with messy items that seemed to come from the last century. The towering and heavy bookshelves stood in the store like silent giants, filled with old books whose names were unreadable.
There were no lights—the doors were wide open and the place was open for business, but the lights weren't turned on as is the "rule" for dark alleyways.
Yu Sheng glanced around, but he didn't sense the "strange atmosphere" Little Red Riding Hood had described. Perhaps the bookstore was just naturally eerie, so he was a little slow to notice.
However, he still noticed some unusual phenomena.
In a corner of the used bookstore, where two tall bookshelves meet, a triangular area appears exceptionally dark, as if a large, stubborn shadow is lurking there.
The fox-like creature saw it too. She frowned, held the foxfire in her hand in mid-air, then turned her head and rubbed the tip of her tail, creating several brighter flames to try and illuminate the area.
The thick darkness shrank slightly, but continued to linger in the firelight.
The fox-fly threw a cluster of foxfire into the darkness.
A sudden breathy sound came from the darkness: "Ha—"
"Wow!" The fox girl was startled and quickly withdrew the flame. At almost the same time, Yu Sheng saw two empty white lights appear in the darkness.
The outline of a cat's head faintly appeared around the white light.
More white spots of light appeared, jostling and crowding together in the shadows.
Those are the eyes of a "cat"—a unique entity found only in dark alleys, whose eyes emit a pale light like this.
Immediately afterwards, the dark shadow that had been lurking in the corner of the bookstore began to wriggle, and a large number of outlines that were previously indistinguishable due to being piled up together emerged from the shadow. Eileen, who had been standing on the ground, suddenly darted onto Yu Sheng's shoulder—it was a mystery how she could climb so fast while carrying a frying pan that was almost as big as her.
Yu Sheng finally realized why he hadn't seen a single "cat" along the way, even though he was deep in a dark alley—they were all hiding in this old bookstore, piled up in a heap!
At this moment, Hu Li's tail was already unsheathed, Luna's blade gleamed with cold light, and two shadow wolves growled as they protected Little Red Riding Hood. Yu Sheng casually opened a door, took the "blood needle launcher" that Mo Ran had given him from the basement, put it on his arm, pointed it at the group of cats, and also took out a blood grenade and held it in his hand.
As a result, the group of cats just shoved and wriggled around in place a few times, and made no other move except to hiss at the foxfire-like creature Hu Li.
Little Red Riding Hood was on high alert for a few seconds, but then realized that the group of cats didn't seem to intend to attack at all, and she was a little confused: "...What's wrong with them?"
Eileen sat on Yu Sheng's shoulders, holding up a frying pan with both hands and gesturing: "But, maybe the tail got tangled up?"
Yu Sheng was afraid that the little thing would hit him on the head first, so he subconsciously turned his head to the side and observed for a moment before speaking uncertainly: "It looks like they are hiding from something... Wait a moment, I think these 'cats' seem a little different from before."
As he spoke, he took another half step forward.
Eileen screamed on his shoulder, "Hey, what are you doing—"
A few hissing sounds came from the pile of cats, but then a few blurry shadows squeezed out of the pile, waving their front paws at the creature.
Yu Sheng sensed a vague connection.
He suddenly remembered—he had bled in this dark alley.
He remembers that he made a point of leaving some "marks" at the used bookstore.
...Did these cats lose their aggressiveness because of this?
Yu Sheng wasn't quite sure, but he still boldly reached out to one of the shadows—actually, he wasn't sure if the shadow was a cat's head, since the whole thing was piled up together, looking like a big ball of cat slimes. But after a moment's hesitation, the shadow moved forward a little and rubbed against his palm.
Under normal circumstances, if an outsider comes into contact with the "cat," a wound that keeps bleeding will immediately form on their body. This is the characteristic of the alley cat: "it will scratch wherever it can."
But Yu Sheng only felt a cold, slightly furry head being touched.
There are also simple "thoughts" that suddenly enter one's mind.
"There is an intruder. Hide in the darkness."
Intruder?
(End of this chapter)
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