Chapter 8: Don't Open the Door Randomly

Walking into the kitchen and closing the door, Yu Sheng turned on the range hood. As the noisy hum of the machine filled the room, he felt his heart slowly begin to calm down.

It was as if the thin wooden door of the kitchen and the clatter of the range hood helped him temporarily isolate the chaotic and bizarre world outside. He had finally returned to a place that belonged entirely to him, where he could even pretend, for a moment, that he wasn't in that massive, eerie "Boundary City," but back in his familiar, true "home."

This large house was different from his original home in every way, but this small kitchen was the only part that closely resembled the layout of his memories. So, after settling down in this world, he had done his best to arrange it to look just like the one he knew.

Every day while cooking here, he would pretend he was still in his real home, pretend that he had never pushed open his front door that morning, and never stepped into a strange city filled with eerie shadows. Sometimes, while busy here, he would even feel that if he just looked up, he would see the familiar streetscape through the window, see the old street outside the kitchen bathed in orange-red clouds, and watch the reddish sunlight flowing over the exterior walls of the residential buildings in his memory...

But the scenery outside the window always shattered these fleeting fantasies. Looking out now, he could only see a patch of barren, empty land and low, dilapidated bungalows not far away. There were no residential buildings here, only a mess of utility poles, and the warm, cozy sky of his memories was something he hadn't seen in a long time.

The daylight in this city was always either blindingly white or oppressively dim.

Yu Sheng sighed and pulled down the blinds over the glass, choosing not to look at the night sky that always seemed to be shrouded in shadows.

He chopped and washed the vegetables, heated the pan with oil, and skillfully tossed the ingredients in after the scallions had sizzled. Listening to the crackling sounds from the pan, Yu Sheng heard the noise of a television program coming from outside. This strange city did have a series of information channels, including television and mobile phones. During the initial period, most of his understanding of this "Boundary City" had come from watching TV programs and scrolling through news on his phone, and even now, it remained one of his important ways of understanding this "world."

"Yu Sheng! The TV volume is too low! Help me turn it up! Please!"

A boisterous girl's voice suddenly came from outside. Yu Sheng was startled, his hand shaking so hard he nearly flipped the food out of the pan.

He had almost forgotten that Erin was out there.

Back when he used to cook in the kitchen, there was never anyone talking outside!

"Wait a second!" Yu Sheng replied loudly and rather bluntly, unable to help but mutter to himself, "...She sure makes herself at home..."

But soon, the corners of his mouth twitched, revealing a somewhat helpless smile.

Fine, whatever. It was good, too; it added a bit of "life" to this house. At least it was some movement.

A while later, Yu Sheng walked out carrying the steaming hot meal. He set the bowls and plates on the dining table, reached over to turn the TV volume up two notches, and then sat down with his back to the TV, facing Erin’s picture frame. He didn't have the habit of watching TV while eating, but he would leave it on as background noise. At least this way, he wouldn't be fighting for position with Erin, who could only watch the TV from a fixed angle.

In the oil painting, Erin hugged a toy bear and stretched her neck to look at the food on the table. Her eyes darted between the program and the dining table, and she muttered, "Looks pretty hearty..."

"Just some home-cooked meals," Yu Sheng said casually. "I quite like cooking."

"Oh." Erin let out an "oh" and went back to watching TV obediently. But after Yu Sheng started eating, she leaned forward to peek at the table again. After holding it in for a long while, she finally couldn't help but speak: "So you're just going to eat while I watch?"

Yu Sheng raised his eyelids and waved his chopsticks in front of Erin's frame: "Want a bite?"

Erin glared at him, but then lowered her head, starting to sulk.

"...Fine, fine, let's just go through the motions." Seeing her like this, Yu Sheng felt helpless. He sighed, grabbed an empty bowl from the kitchen, divided some of his food into it, and placed it in front of Erin's frame. "I've left you a bowl and chopsticks—just pretend you're smelling the aroma. I'm the one eating it in the end anyway."

Erin frowned at the bowl in front of the frame. After thinking about it, she decided that was fine. She jumped off her chair, leaned toward the edge of the frame, and pressed her face so close it occupied half the area. She looked at Yu Sheng very seriously: "Alright, that works—thanks. You're actually quite thoughtful..."

Yu Sheng lowered his head to shovel in a mouthful of rice, responding vaguely. Then, when he looked up and saw Erin’s head peeking out from the frame, followed by his gaze landing on the bowl of food in front of it, he suddenly felt like something was wrong...

Erin didn't notice anything amiss, but she found Yu Sheng's sudden daze strange: "What are you spacing out for?"

Yu Sheng quickly lowered his head to shovel in a few more mouthfuls of rice, then looked up at Erin again—

The dark, gloomy frame, the dark, gloomy background, the head of the doll-like girl, and a bowl of food in front of the portrait.

It was the spitting image of a funeral portrait.

The muscles on his face twitched instantly, but after holding it in for a long time, he didn't dare say what he was thinking—not for any other reason, but mostly because Erin’s insults were incredibly nasty.

Since things had come to this, he could only focus on eating. He pretended nothing was wrong, burying his head and eating frantically under Erin's puzzled gaze, trying his best not to look at the "funeral portrait" across the table...

The meal felt like a wake.

When the meal was finally over, Yu Sheng wiped his mouth and quickly cleared away all the cups, plates, and bowls from in front of Erin's frame. He tossed them into the kitchen sink, planning to soak them until morning—mostly because his lower back still hurt, and bending over the sink to wash dishes was a bit of a burden for him right now.

But while the dishes could wait, the trash couldn't. In this season, you couldn't leave kitchen trash in the house overnight. Enduring the pain in his back, he tidied up the garbage, grabbed the bag, and walked toward the door.

Erin, who was watching TV, looked up and asked curiously: "Hey, it's so late, where are you going?"

"Do I have to report to you every time I leave my own house?" Yu Sheng retorted sharply to the overly familiar doll in the painting, but he still lifted the trash bag to show her. "I'm going out to take out the trash."

"Oh, then come back early," Erin's gaze had already returned to the TV. "This house is so big, I'm scared when I'm alone. What if a thief breaks in..."

Yu Sheng rolled his eyes, thinking to himself that in such a gloomy, creepy house, if someone really broke in and the first thing they saw was a ghost-like figure flickering in and out of a painting, the one who would be scared to death definitely wouldn't be the one in the painting. With Erin's current state, a thief would probably call the police first...

But he didn't have the heart to say that to Erin's face.

Yu Sheng shook his head, muttered a few words to himself, reached the door, put on his shoes, and gripped the doorknob.

He applied a little force, turned it, and pushed.

For some reason, he suddenly recalled that ordinary morning two months ago, which felt like every other ordinary day in his ordinary life.

Back then, just like now, he had pushed open his front door, stepped outside, and walked into a bizarre city so massive it was suffocating—and he hadn't been able to return since.

The strange association flashed through his mind. Yu Sheng shook his head with a self-deprecating smile and pushed the door open to step out.

The crisp sound of dry branches snapping broke the silence of the valley. The cold night wind carried a disturbing, decaying, fishy stench. The chill in the air made Yu Sheng, who was only wearing a thin shirt, shiver involuntarily. It took him several seconds to restart his brain, which had momentarily stopped functioning.

He saw himself standing amidst a patch of barren, crumbling rubble. In the distance, the night seemed to be a dense, eerie, and grotesque forest, with high mountains towering on both sides against the night sky, like silent, hideous giants looking down at the valley floor, bringing an unbearable sense of heavy oppression.

Yu Sheng stood frozen in the cold night, then slowly turned his head to look at where he had come from.

A pile of collapsed, dilapidated bricks and tiles came into view. It looked like a ruined temple that had been abandoned and collapsed a hundred years ago. A tattered door—or perhaps it could only be called a crooked door frame with half a door panel hanging on it—stood alone in the ruins. As the night wind blew, a hollow wail drifted from the gap between the broken door panel and the rubble.

Yu Sheng stared, eyes wide: "Where the hell did this bring me..."

He finally began to understand.

With the action of "opening the door," what happened two months ago had repeated itself.

He had been thrown into a strange place once again.

And this was even worse than two months ago—that massive, eerie "Boundary City," while different from the one he had grown up in, was at least a modern metropolis where one could survive. But this time, the situation was not looking good.

He had been thrown into the wilderness.

With a wild forest in front, dangerous mountains on both sides, and only a ruined temple that had been collapsed for who knows how many years behind him—Yu Sheng took one look and felt that if this place didn't spawn thirty or fifty bandits or a few wolf demons or fox spirits, it would be a disservice to the terrain...

And the only thing he had in his hand was a bag of kitchen trash he had just brought out from home...

Yu Sheng thought about it, and the curses in his heart were incredibly foul.

And just in the next second, as the fragrant, elegant words were about to erupt from his heart, an abrupt voice suddenly came from his mind—

"Yu Sheng! The TV has no signal! When are you coming back?"