A Wandering Entity, one that ran out from that bizarre "Exotic Realm invasion," not only has clear rationality and can communicate with people, now he's even saying he wants to go back and find his own family—forget Yu Sheng, even Baili Qing says that in all her years as director she's never seen anything like this.Baili Xue quietly drifted over. She actively twisted the light around her so that people other than Yu Sheng and Baili Qing could see her, while still keeping Invisibility in front of the Knight. She swayed in midair, her voice unhurried: "The armor is empty. I've checked."
Hu Li looked at those eyes floating in midair, then at Baili Qing, and muttered curiously under her breath, "The Exotic Realm can really generate entities with family ties, even a 'Kingdom'? That 'Lodaxim High Wall'… I feel like it might not be an Exotic Realm at all."
"If it's not an Exotic Realm, then the trouble is even bigger," Baili Qing said softly. "Then there's a chance it's something like the Omen Divine Temple back then—a world shard that slipped into loss of control and started drifting all over the place…"
Erin: "…Holy shit."
The Knight across from them still just sat there quietly, showing no reaction to the muttering from Yu Sheng's side. Through that heavy, hollow armor, no one knew what this self-proclaimed "exiled one" searching for his family was thinking.
Yu Sheng suddenly thought of something.
"Have you seen this?"
As he spoke, he rummaged in his pocket and pulled out that scrap of paper Erin's mass-produced Puppets had muddled their way into bringing back.
On the paper, childish strokes sketched out the High Wall, Soldiers, and monsters.
Yu Sheng unfolded the scrap and held it up in front of the Knight.
With a clatter of armor knocking together, that Knight who had remained unusually calm sprang to his feet, lunging a step forward, his tone urgent: "Where did you get that?!"
Before the Knight had even finished, they heard tails unsheathing in the room with a metallic clang, Fox Fire roaring up with a rumble. Hu Li shot like an arrow to stand in front of Yu Sheng; several tails floated around her like Fox Travel Cannons, the tips pointed at the other side, a low threatening growl rumbling in her throat.
The Knight froze in place instantly, looking like he'd been deeply intimidated.
To be honest, every sapient creature that gets a Fox Travel Cannon pointed at them by the fox girl for the first time is pretty intimidated.
"Easy, easy," Yu Sheng hurriedly waved his hands. Seeing that the Knight wasn't making any further moves, he patted the fox girl's shoulder, then stepped forward half a pace. "Looks like you recognize this thing. You've seen it?"
"…My daughter drew it."
The Knight lowered his head, but quickly raised his gaze again.
"I'm begging you, can you give it to me?"
"…I can, but not right now," Yu Sheng said very cautiously. "Don't get the wrong idea, I'm not trying to use this to blackmail you. It's just that we still haven't figured out your situation or what you mean by curse spreading. And that scrap of paper itself was extracted from a highly polluted environment. Before we can confirm it's safe, I can't let you come into contact with it."
Back in the day, Yu Sheng wouldn't have thought this far—he might have just handed it over directly. But in the past two years he's at least dealt with all kinds of bizarre, dodgy stuff, and his "mysticism vigilance" has improved a bit.
The Knight stared fixedly at that scrap of paper for a long moment. In the end he seemed to finally understand and accept something, gave a slight nod, and sat back down.
"What else do you want to ask?" he said in a muffled voice.
Yu Sheng put away the paper, his expression serious: "How did you come here?"
Knight: "You lot dragged me over."
Yu Sheng: "…"
For a split second, Yu Sheng genuinely weighed the possibility that someone under the aim of seven or eight Fox Travel Cannons was still joking around with him.
The short-tempered little thing on his shoulder was different—Erin, as a doting mom, didn't even pause to think: "You fucking kidding me? Who asked you that? We're asking how you came to 'our side'… Damn, how do I put it, to our world? Our place? Anyway, how did you cross over here! Like the Amusement Park before, the subway station, whatever—why were you drifting around those places?"
This time the Knight seemed to get the question. After a brief moment of thought, he shook his head. "I'm not really sure. Too much time has passed since the exile. I began to become muddle-headed like the others, sometimes even forgot the past, wandering in darkness day after day without Consciousness…"
He paused there, apparently digging through his memories, then continued.
"In the darkness, the last thing I remember is a flash. That flash appeared at the end of the plains, shaped like a bolt of lightning, but eerily frozen in place. It struck the ground, and the whole world started to shake. I lost my footing in the dark and fell… When I woke again, everything around me was unfamiliar."
Hearing the Knight's words, even Baili Qing's face showed a visible change of expression. She immediately frowned: "Frozen lightning? Anything else? Did something come out of that lightning?"
The Knight slowly shook his head.
"I don't know. I said already, I was muddle-headed at the time. And when the lightning hit the ground, I was 'knocked' right out, and then I was already in your strange world."
Yu Sheng turned his head curiously, looking at Baili Qing with a questioning gaze.
Baili Xue's voice slipped into his ear: "The way he's describing that thing, it sounds a lot like a Rift under a Fault."
Baili Qing had already put her expression in order by now. She reined in the surprise in her eyes, nodded slightly to the Knight, and said, "We still don't know your name."
The Knight's helmet shifted a little. He seemed like he was about to answer, but then he just stopped, looking blank.
"I… I don't remember."
"You forgot your own name?"
"No… Exiles aren't allowed to have names," the Knight said in a low voice. "They erased my name when they threw me over the High Wall."
"Damn, you can even do that?" Erin blinked in surprise. "Your hometown's got some serious rules."
The Knight ignored Erin's rambling. His gaze fell on Yu Sheng again, his tone flat and weary. "Any other questions?"
"…Not for now." Yu Sheng exchanged a look with Baili Qing, then shook his head. "You'll have to put up with staying here for a while. We need to head back and figure out what to do about the current situation."
"…How long will I be confined?"
"Hard to say. That depends on when we can figure out what's going on with that Lodaxim High Wall. We've also got a pile of other messes to deal with right now," Yu Sheng said offhandedly, then paused and added, "…But if that High Wall shows up again, or if something else from your homeland wanders into our world, we might need your help—and when that happens, you might get a chance to go back."
"…I understand."
Yu Sheng and the others temporarily left the containment floor.
"Do you guys think that Knight was telling the truth?" Erin muttered while ruffling Yu Sheng's hair. "Stuff like that 'mountain called Time' and a Kingdom founded by Origin or whatever—put everything else aside, just those two lines sound way too mystical, don't they?"
"We have no way to verify it, but if it were a lie, making it this bizarre and abstract would actually be unnecessary," Baili Qing shook her head. "If this is a mythic story, then it's probably just the worldview of the Knight's homeland—he's only telling us all this according to how he understands it."
"Just now Baili Xue said that frozen lightning the Knight described is the same as the Rift in the Fault," Yu Sheng said, face serious. "So that 'Kingdom' he mentioned might be right under the Boundary Land? Did he really crawl out from the Fault Rift?"
Baili Qing's steps paused slightly.
"…That's actually something we're worried about too. But in theory, nothing with that level of rational intelligence and ability to communicate should be able to come crawling out of a Rift. Plus there was that 'Lodaxim High Wall' that appeared in the Amusement Park before—spatial fragments on that scale… How could something like that possibly get out of that Rift?"
As Yu Sheng listened to Baili Qing, his brows stayed furrowed. Then he suddenly thought of what Erin had learned from the Dark Angel in that special room on the second floor of No. 66 Wutong Road—
The world's underlayer had been damaged… a large number of already out-of-control remnants were trying to squeeze into this world… the Tree Angel was trying to intercept them…
"What if… this whole thing is an Angel invasion?" Yu Sheng suddenly said.
He told them what he'd just thought of.
Erin almost slipped off his shoulder on the spot. "You're saying that Rift in the Fault opens straight into the Dark Angel's nest?!"
Even Baili Qing visibly tensed up for a moment, but she quickly shook her head. "…That Knight doesn't show any additional signs of pollution. And while he has indeed been worried that mentioning his homeland would bring down some kind of 'disaster,' he just told us all that, and nothing unusual happened in the end."
Erin thought it over carefully, then folded her arms and rocked back and forth on Yu Sheng's shoulder. "Damn, the freaky stuff just keeps piling up…"
Baili Qing didn't say anything more. She just took out her phone and started messaging someone.
"What are we doing next?" Hu Li asked curiously.
Yu Sheng turned his gaze to Baili Qing—after all, they were in the headquarters building, so it was up to this Dragon Lady to make the arrangements.
"We're going to check on Zheng Zhi," Baili Qing said. "He's finished his first round of Spiritual Energy testing, and he had close contact with the Knight and that weird monster. He might be able to provide some intel."
Erin perked up. "Nice, nice, let's go see my dear nephew!"
The group got back into the elevator in the Special Service Bureau Building and spent a good while shuttling through those complex, overlapping, nested floors, until they finally arrived at a very quiet open area.
Yu Sheng saw a pure white hall. Several doors on either side were tightly shut, a few green plants and holographic projections dotted the hall, and a few staff members stood inside, all looking rather troubled.
Then Yu Sheng saw what these troubled staff members were staring at—
A big yellow dog was sitting on a chair in the lounge area, one leg crossed over the other. It held a French fry in its left paw and a bottle of cola in its right, eating and drinking away.
Yu Sheng: "…"
Hu Li: "…"
Erin: "…What the hell is this? Did my dear nephew turn into a dog?!"