As soon as Baili Qing landed on the broken terrain above the fault, several figures immediately ran over from nearby—they had all hidden at the first sight of the white dragon approaching from afar.Yu Sheng had just gotten up from the ground, not even having time to brush off the dust from rolling around, when he heard Red's voice beside him: "How's the situation? You all suddenly vanished from my perception. What happened down there?"
Baili Qing had already transformed back into her human form. Possibly due to the harsh landing, her expression was even more serious than usual: "We might have been transferred by the rift into some kind of special time fragment..."
"...What?!" Red was shocked on the spot, "Didn't I say not to get too close..."
Baili Qing: "We maintained a safe distance, but it seems the effective range of that rift exceeded our expectations—drones lack spirituality, and their test results can only be taken as a reference."
At this moment, Kant, the Director, and Fault came over. They had heard what Baili Qing said, and Kant was the first to speak: "What do you mean by the time fragment you just mentioned?"
Yu Sheng and Baili Qing exchanged a glance, then sighed lightly: "This might take a bit to explain..."
Forty minutes later, in the council hall at the top of the Council Tower, Kant and the other three directors had serious expressions on their faces. Yu Sheng and Baili Qing sat opposite them, with Baili Xue clinging to Baili Qing's pair of crystalline dragon horns.
—The latter's horns were stuck on her head and couldn't be retracted.
Yu Sheng looked up at this place, at the cloud sea and glow outside the council hall that looked like an eternal dusk, guessing that this was probably some abnormal space-time isolated from the real world—but having lived in a place as extraordinary as the Boundary Land for so long, he was used to it.
"You're saying there's another Boundary City below..." Kant frowned deeply, his voice low and serious, "A Boundary City even more distorted than Mist City...And in that Boundary City, the area originally corresponding to the Council Tower is a Great Void? And in the center of the void stands No. 66 Wutong Road?"
"It didn't stop there," Baili Xue, for once, took the initiative to join the directors' conversation, "Later, that building even collapsed, and a triangular black gate rose from it—only when Yu Sheng went to push the door were we ejected."
"A triangular black gate..." Kant looked around at the others, and finally focused on the Director, "Have you heard of anything like it?"
"I don't recall," the Director shook his head slowly, "But it stands in the depths of the fault, either closely related to 'history' or intricately tied to the recent string of anomalies."
As he spoke, several glances inevitably landed on Yu Sheng (including the light from Fault), from which Yu Sheng could sense curiosity, confusion, and hesitation, but he could only shrug in response.
"Don't look at me like that, I also have no idea what's going on. Honestly, I'm still wondering why there's a No. 66 Wutong Road there."
"The door's name...is called 'End,' right?" Red asked seemingly casually.
Yu Sheng nodded: "Yeah, it suddenly popped into my head."
"It has strong symbolic meaning..." Red murmured with a sort of self-reflection.
"During our time missing, did the rift exhibit any changes?" Baili Qing suddenly asked.
"A new branch appeared at its edge," Fault's slightly hoarse voice came from within, "That branch still exists now."
Baili Qing blinked, but before she could speak, Red interrupted her: "No matter what, I strongly suggest you go rest first—we will definitely arrange another exploration of that rift, but it won't be today."
Baili Qing opened her mouth: "I... alright, I understand."
Afterwards, everyone exchanged more details, with Yu Sheng telling the directors more about the situation at the bottom of the fault, until he couldn't recall any more.
"That's it for today," the Director cleared his throat, "Everyone go get some rest. Kant and I will personally guard the rift—if anything changes, I'll notify you immediately."
Baili Qing exhaled gently, standing up from the table: "Okay, then I'll take Yu Sheng and leave first."
Yu Sheng instinctively stood up as well, but before he could bid farewell to the other directors, he heard Red speak to Baili Qing: "Ah Qing, you head back first, I have a few detailed questions to confirm with Yu Sheng."
Baili Qing slightly frowned, looking at Yu Sheng and Red with some suspicion.
She was clearly puzzled about what Red had to discuss with Yu Sheng alone, but after a few seconds, she nodded: "Alright, I'm leaving then."
Baili Qing left with Baili Xue, and then Fault and Kant also exited the hall one after another.
Yu Sheng was left with only Red and the Director, who looked as if he could pass away at any moment.
Just as Yu Sheng was wondering what Red wanted to ask, he heard Red speak, and nearly couldn't keep his cool at the first sentence: "So, wasn't Ah Qing adorable when she was little?"
Yu Sheng: "…Uh, ah?"
"Really envy you, I should have gone too," the black-haired girl with closed eyes kept talking to herself, as if she hadn't noticed Yu Sheng's strange expression at all, "In the blink of an eye, all grown up... now not cute at all."
Yu Sheng: "..."
He had a bellyful of things to say but was afraid that if Baili Qing found out, she might silence him (though that itself wasn't a big deal), so in the end, he didn't utter a word.
At this moment, the chairman coughed twice: "Ahem, let's talk business."
Only then did Hong immediately adjust her expression, curbing the smile on her face, "looking" at Yu Sheng: "You already know about Baili Qing and her 'sister's' situation, right?"
"I know part of it. Little Xue told me most," Yu Sheng replied, "I think she's still hiding some details, but I can infer quite a bit."
"... Back then, Baili Xue was completely unlike what she looks like now," Hong sighed softly, with an expression of reminiscence and gravity, "In fact, even now, we are very cautious about her current changes."
"So what's the situation exactly?" Yu Sheng frowned tightly, "Baili Xue said she's actually imagined by Baili Qing. She also said Baili Qing originally had a real sister... What's the true sister about? And what's with Baili Qing's dormancy chamber?"
"There's too much, let's go through it one thing at a time," Hong sighed lightly, "Firstly, Ah Qing is indeed someone we salvaged from the Fault, and if we guessed correctly, she should be the survivor left behind from some 'historical remnant' in Boundary Land."
Yu Sheng couldn't help but raise an eyebrow.
"When we first found her, she was encased in a crystal about the height of two people," the chairman spoke slowly, "The crystal had distinct artificial features, and there were several broken connection points on its surface. Inside the crystal, before it shattered, some sort of... stasis force field was maintained.
"So we speculate that it should have been some kind of escape device—maybe in a historical fragment in Boundary Land that was annihilated, her compatriots anticipated the approaching disaster and built that kind of escape chamber, also known as a dormancy chamber...
"We don't know how long that thing drifted in the time wells below the Fault, but it was evidently lucky. Not many things can withstand corrosion and mutation in such long and chaotic ages."
"Besides that dormancy chamber, there were also some other fragments that emerged from the Fault," Hong continued, "Some scattered remnants, some collapsed and stacked building ruins, and some ash heaps that couldn't be restored at all.
"We tried our best to restore the useful things within them—some of which are now housed in the Special Service Bureau Headquarters Building, and the rest could only be discarded back into the Fault after being rendered harmless."
"What about Baili Xue?" Yu Sheng couldn't help but ask, "this so-called 'sister'..."
"There was indeed only Ah Qing in the dormancy chamber at the time," Hong shook her head, "But near her head in the dormancy chamber casing, there was a small dent—as if during the final forming and locking of the crystal, something was pressed there. We speculate... It was the trace left by the real Baili Xue."
Hong paused here, then continued softly:
"Because the moment Ah Qing first woke up, her immediate reaction was to look straight ahead and joyfully shout to someone—sister, we're out."
Yu Sheng's expression was somewhat complicated: "Then… what happened next?"
"At that time, she quickly lost consciousness again," Hong continued, "Then followed a long period of slumber, and when she woke up again, her memory had experienced severe loss and confusion—she couldn't tell where she came from or even her own name. The name Baili Qing was given to her by a few of us together.
"As for the 'sister,' she still remembered but said she could no longer recall her sister's exact appearance, just a pair of eyes—she resisted talking about these things for a long time, and after that... you know the situation."
"So that's what happened…" Yu Sheng slightly frowned and murmured softly after hearing the story, "So in some sense, Baili Xue should be an uncontrolled product of obsession, or similar to those spiritual summonings created by Zheng Zhi? Was she really that dangerous before?"
Hong and the chairman exchanged a glance, for some reason, when they turned back, their expressions were a bit subtle.
"Very dangerous," Hong said solemnly, "No sense of good and evil, relying purely on instinct, possessing powerful illusionary abilities, cannot be completely killed, and had the tendency to gradually replace Ah Qing from the mental level—more dangerous was, for quite some time, Ah Qing didn't resist it much. She even naively considered whether this might be a good way to 'resurrect' her sister. If it weren't for our psychologists noticing and intervening in time, the replacement might have already happened."
Yu Sheng rubbed his chin, full of contemplation: "...So how did she become such an 'obedient child' now?"
In fairness, the current Baili Xue doesn't seem like an obedient child at all; it's just that she doesn't wreck houses every day because she doesn't have long arms. But the key is with whom she's compared. Yu Sheng had stayed too long with Erin and those little devils from Fairy Tales. To him, someone like Baili Xue was literally an angel child, even surpassing angel children...
After all, there really was an angel at No. 66 Wutong Road, and that girl would tear doors apart with light cannons...
Hearing Yu Sheng's words, the expressions on Hong and the chairman's faces were inexplicably hard to maintain.
Then the two "looked" at Yu Sheng simultaneously, speaking in unison: "You don't know the reason?"
Yu Sheng was utterly baffled: "...What does this have to do with me?"