The voice echoing in his mind snapped Yu Sheng out of his daze, which had been induced by the cold wind blowing through the valley, startling him even more than before. He froze, even more bewildered.

It wasn’t until Irene called out to him a second time in his head that he jolted back to his senses.

“…Irene?” Yu Sheng blinked. He was cautiously scanning the valley, edging closer to the dilapidated temple, hoping to find a temporary, sheltered corner. At the same time, he tried responding in his mind, “How… did you manage to reach me? I mean, you’re speaking directly into my head…”

“Is that supposed to be hard?” Irene replied, sounding incredibly self-assured. “I am one of Alice’s dolls, after all!”

Yu Sheng pondered for a moment but failed to connect the two things… Did this mean all of Alice’s dolls could do this? Speak inside other people’s minds?

“I’ve already entered your dreams once, haven’t I? Once you go through a path, it’s easy to remember the way,” Irene explained patiently when Yu Sheng didn’t respond. But then, her tone changed. “Hey, where exactly did you go? I can’t even sense where you are…”

Yu Sheng paused for two seconds, looking around at the eerie valley and dense forest, feeling as if a seven or eight-meter-tall monster might appear at any moment, accompanied by some dramatic background music. It sent chills down his spine. “…I might’ve gone on a bit of a trip, and I’m not sure how to get back…”

There was a momentary silence from Irene’s side, and it took a few seconds before her voice came through again, “Didn’t you say you were just going out to take out the trash? Did the garbage truck carry you away?!”

Yu Sheng had no idea where she got such an active imagination…

But he had to admit that hearing Irene’s voice made him feel a little less panicked about suddenly being dumped in such a remote, desolate place… just a little.

At the very least, her voice proved that he hadn’t completely lost his connection to the original world. Since Irene could still reach him, that meant there might be a way back—though he had no idea how, and there was no logical reason to believe it, but it was something he had to hold on to right now.

As for the immediate situation, his top priority was to ensure his safety.

The valley was quiet, with only the occasional hollow wind breaking the silence. Still, Yu Sheng couldn’t shake the uncomfortable, oppressive feeling that something was watching him. It was as if a cold, hungry, and intangible gaze was repeatedly sweeping over this place, lingering on him.

This made him increasingly uneasy, and he urgently wanted to find a place to hide. At the very least, he couldn’t keep standing out in the open like this.

The only apparent hiding place within his line of sight was the nearly collapsed temple—the forest in the distance was dense but even more eerie and sinister. Besides, “wandering into the woods at night” was a classic setup for horror stories, so he was absolutely unwilling to go in that direction.

Unfortunately, entering an abandoned temple at night was also a textbook way to get into trouble. The difference was that the forest was more likely to have wild animals, while the temple seemed more prone to harboring monsters…

Both options were equally likely to trigger dramatic background music.

Gritting his teeth, Yu Sheng headed toward the only intact corner of the dilapidated temple.

At the same time, he tried to communicate with Irene, explaining the situation on his end. There wasn’t much to explain, really—after all, even he didn’t know how it had happened. All he had done was open a door…

Irene, after listening, was silent for a long time before hesitantly saying, “It sounds like you’ve fallen into an ‘Otherworld.’”

Standing amidst the temple ruins, Yu Sheng froze at her words, suddenly realizing, “Otherworld? Is that what you call this place? Do you know where I am?”

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Irene’s voice sounded somewhat bewildered. “Huh? There are lots of Otherworlds. How would I know which one you ended up in…”

As Irene muttered to herself, Yu Sheng frowned. He realized he’d just gained another piece of knowledge about the “supernatural realm” and something else vitally important:

He might not have been thrown into a completely different “world” but rather had encountered something that Irene saw as just another “natural phenomenon.”

While Yu Sheng was mulling this over, Irene seemed to come to a realization herself. Her voice in his mind was tinged with disbelief as she asked, “…You mean you’ve never even heard of the ‘Otherworlds’?”

Yu Sheng’s expression turned odd. “Am I supposed to have heard of them? Is this something that’s common knowledge?”

“Well, it’s normal for ordinary people not to know about Otherworlds, since most of them never encounter anything like this in their entire lives,” Irene replied casually. But what she said next left Yu Sheng stunned: “But you shouldn’t be clueless about it.”

“Me? Why should I know?” Yu Sheng asked, bewildered. “I’m just an ordinary person…”

“…But you’ve been living in an Otherworld this whole time.”

......

Shadows weaved through the night, and the hunters took form within them. A menacing wolf leaped out of the darkness, swiftly and silently jumping across the uneven rooftops of the Old Town District before landing in the middle of an empty street, glancing left and right.

“Get back here!” A slightly annoyed female voice came from the shadows of a nearby building.

The wolf instantly hunched its shoulders, letting out a whimpering sound before quickly trotting back into the shadows beside the road.

In the narrow gap between two old houses stood a girl wearing a dark red jacket and a black skirt. She reached out to pat the head of the wolf that had just returned, then raised her gaze to the house at the end of the old street.

This was a short street, with only a few dozen households. The view was unobstructed from front to back, and the entire street was visible at a glance. Even without the wolf’s vision, she could easily assess the situation.

The girl furrowed her brows, and just then, her phone rang—the classic theme song from the 1986 version of *Journey to the West*. This time, she picked up just as the Monkey King flipped his second somersault. “It’s me. Yes, I’m here in the Old Town District, on Wutong Street.”

On the other end of the call was a middle-aged man who sounded exhausted from working overtime, rambling incoherently.

Little Red Riding Hood listened patiently for a while and then replied with a slight smirk, “I’m here, but there’s nothing to report—my wolves have searched this entire street three times already. There’s no sign of an Otherworld opening, and nothing seems to have escaped from one either.”

There was a two to three second silence before the voice on the other end replied, “The monitoring team is certain there was an Otherworld reaction on Wutong Street. There must have been a temporary passage leading there…”

“I believe it,” Little Red Riding Hood responded with a hint of helplessness. “I trust your Special Affairs Bureau’s monitoring personnel’s professionalism, but I also trust my wolves—perhaps there was a brief passage here, but it’s completely vanished now… Given that an Otherworld connection shouldn’t normally break this quickly, it’s possible that ‘someone else’ intervened.”

“Not many entities are capable of severing an Otherworld connection this quickly, and all known factions have records and communication channels with the Special Affairs Bureau,” the voice on the phone sounded weary, “but I haven’t received any such communication tonight…”

“Maybe it was someone from the Hermits' Society. They’re always so mysterious…” the girl replied offhandedly, but she wasn’t surprised when another stream of tired rambling poured from the phone. With a sigh, she conceded, “Alright, alright, I get it. They’re all esteemed scholars, fine… I’ve always respected scholars. Anyway, I’ll have my wolves search the shadows again. This ‘Wutong Street’ isn’t that big only sixty-five addresses so it’s not a problem to search it one more time…”

After hanging up, she finally found some peace. Little Red Riding Hood stared at the blank screen of her phone and sighed again, glancing at the wolf heads rising and falling in the shadows around her.

“I still haven’t finished my homework… Sigh, the life of a freelancer is so tough…”

......

Yu Sheng sat in the corner of the ruined temple, leaning against what seemed to be the sturdiest part of the wall. The cold wind blew through the gaping hole in the wall, and he gazed up at the dark, murky night sky beyond the broken ceiling, trying to empty his mind—but he couldn’t.

Just moments ago, he had learned a truth.

The only stable refuge he had found in Border Town—the place he considered the safest and most normal in the entire city was actually an anomaly, a so-called “Otherworld.”

According to Irene, an “Otherworld” is a realm outside normalcy, a dimension on the fringes of reason. She described the ordinary, orderly world in which most people lived as a seemingly solid and well-structured mountain. Yet, in reality, this mountain was full of subtle “holes” that led to irrational, chaotic spaces.

For the vast majority of people, they would go their entire lives without ever encountering these “holes,” never catching a glimpse of the strange, dazzling scenes on the other side.

But the faint light seeping through those holes would always catch the eyes of certain individuals and for them, once they caught sight of that scene, there was no going back.

However, even for a well-traveled doll like Irene, the idea of someone living long-term in an Otherworld was, to say the least, a bit far-fetched...