Chapter 30: The Gatekeeper

The small supermarket door slammed shut with a bang, cutting off the scorching heat from that scorched planet and the sudden, murderous intent erupting from the two black-armored soldiers. Yu Sheng stood silently at the entrance, somewhat dazed.

It took him several seconds of staring before he took a sharp breath and turned to look at his surroundings.

There were few pedestrians on the street; those who occasionally passed by seemed completely oblivious to the anomaly. Only Yu Sheng, who had just faced that surreal, overwhelming scene seconds ago, stood there lost in a daze amidst the wind.

After a moment of confusion, Yu Sheng slowly turned back to look at the storefront of the small supermarket.

He had been here more than once in the past two months. This small supermarket in the old district didn't have much, but it carried all the basic daily necessities, rice, flour, and oil. The owners were a young couple, and Yu Sheng had become somewhat familiar with them.

The storefront was nothing special—just an ordinary, low-end shop. The street-facing side featured a large glass window, almost entirely crowded with various promotional flyers and small commodity shelves stacked behind the glass. One side of the door hinge was faulty, so an A4 piece of paper reading "Door Broken" was taped to the corresponding half of the door. Through the glass, one could see the somewhat cramped shelves and the owner busy moving items nearby.

It looked perfectly normal; there was nothing more normal than this scene.

But Yu Sheng would never dismiss what he had just seen as a "hallucination"—even now, he felt that scorching, faintly sulfurous scent lingering in his nostrils.

He had almost stepped through, but fortunately, the aftereffects of his previous descent into the Otherworld remained. It had made him hypersensitive to doors—not just his front door at home, but any door. He always found himself hesitating for a step before opening one. The other reason for his hesitation at the entrance was that "jolt" he felt deep in his heart the moment he reached for the handle.

Yu Sheng stood at the supermarket entrance to steady himself. After a moment of deep thought, he reached out and gripped the handle again. Applying a bit of force, he pushed the door open slightly and peeked inside.

It was a perfectly normal supermarket. It wasn't busy at this hour, and the owner was still busy behind the shelves, seemingly unaware of the movement at the door.

Yu Sheng stepped back and closed the door properly. Then, he gripped the handle firmly once more, took a deep breath, and as if fighting a battle with himself, gritted his teeth and shoved the door open hard.

A tall woman with flowing blonde hair, wearing a silver-white robe-dress, stood on a platform on the other side of the door. She turned her head in surprise to look at Yu Sheng.

She was beautiful, but the ears beneath her blonde hair were not human; they were elegant, slender, pointed ears. Several shimmering tubes and data cables extended from behind her ears, connecting to something behind her.

However, Yu Sheng was more focused on the ring-like structures extending from the hem of her silver-white robe, and the mechanical limbs behind her that were waving various tools through the air.

A voice drifted from somewhere across the door: "...Boss! The client is asking if the super-light core delivered last week is fixed yet."

The blonde woman didn't respond. She simply stared straight at Yu Sheng, who was standing in the doorway. After a long silence, she finally let out a loud scream—

"How the hell did you get in?!"

Yu Sheng slammed the door shut with a bang.

But a second later, he shoved it open again—because he hadn't seen clearly just now. Was that an elf on the other side? This was the first time in his life he had seen an elf! Was that actually an elf?! Why the hell was the art style so wrong?!

As the door opened, a young boy dressed in a brown, coarse cloth Taoist robe stared at Yu Sheng. The area around the doorframe was scorched and smoky. The boy was mid-swing with a fan in his hand, his eyes bulging as if they were about to pop out of his head.

In the next second, before Yu Sheng could even speak, the boy dropped his fan as if he had seen a ghost. He began running out, jumping and shouting at the top of his lungs: "Master! Master! Eldest Senior Brother did it! A human head was refined in his alchemy furnace! It has a nose and eyes! It's even breathing!"

"What the..."

Yu Sheng let out a startled cry, slammed the door shut, and stumbled back several steps before finding his footing.

He looked back at the street and saw a few pedestrians looking toward him in confusion—but they seemed to have only noticed his strange behavior. Because he had closed the door so quickly, no one had noticed the state of the door itself.

Yu Sheng could only quickly adjust his expression, pretending to be nonchalant as he stepped aside. Only after he felt no one was watching him did he take several heavy breaths, standing at the street corner in a daze, contemplating life.

The situation was so chaotic and bizarre that he didn't even know if he should feel shaken, if his worldview had been shattered, or if he was experiencing survivor's guilt. He only knew that his mind felt like it was being hit by twelve simultaneous storms—or as if two hundred Ailins were chattering at once. A chaotic swarm of thoughts crashed through his mind, and it took him a full seven or eight minutes to recover.

But one thing he determined very quickly.

Those things across the door... were not the Otherworld.

At the very least, the place where that elf beauty who looked like a mechanical freak and the Taoist boy with the fan stood was definitely not the Otherworld. As for those two powerful soldiers in power armor who were clearly in a firefight... their environment was harsh, so it was hard to say whether that was the Otherworld or not...

After a long time, Yu Sheng's cluttered mind finally calmed down. He forcibly organized and suppressed the surging waves of speculation. Then, he lowered his head and looked at his hands.

After much hesitation, he slowly reached out toward the side—

He was currently standing in a corner of the street, with nothing beside him but a wall—a bare, concrete brick wall.

He rubbed the rough, coarse surface of the wall and slowly closed his hand, imagining... that there was a door there.

Just like at the end of his hallway at home, where he had discovered a hidden handle outside the room where he found Ailin; just like in that valley shrouded in night, where he had instinctively grabbed at the air when thrown by a monster, pulling open a door to return to the real world—

He felt it. A door.

He couldn't see it, but the door appeared. He gripped the handle, and the door began to gradually manifest and localize. With a stiff expression, he slowly turned his head—the door was shimmering in his field of vision, looking as if it could be easily opened in the next second.

"Holy shit!"

Yu Sheng let out a low gasp. As his nerves spiked, his hand instinctively loosened, and the "door" instantly and silently vanished from the wall.

Yu Sheng's heart hammered against his ribs, as if it might leap out of his mouth at any moment.

He took several deep breaths before calming down. Recalling the sensation of grabbing the door handle just now, the corners of his mouth twitched.

"Ailin," he called out in his mind, with a... complex emotion and hesitation that even he couldn't quite explain.

"Eh?" Ailin's voice rang out immediately, as lighthearted as ever. "I was just about to contact you. You've been out for a while. Didn't you say the supermarket was right at the intersection? Did you buy too much stuff?"

Yu Sheng: "...I haven't gone into the supermarket yet."

Ailin: "Are you lost?"

"I'm just telling you, I don't think I'll be considering moving anymore," Yu Sheng said, ignoring Ailin's nonsensical guess.

"Ah?! Really?" Ailin sounded a bit happy, but also curious. "Why? Didn't you say you felt something was wrong with this house? Especially since you never know where you'll be 'thrown' when you open a door..."

"It's nothing. I just suddenly realized... regarding the biggest problem, the thing that's wrong might not be the house," Yu Sheng sighed. "The thing that's wrong seems to be me."

Ailin: "...?"

She didn't speak, but Yu Sheng could easily imagine the doll's face covered in question marks.

"It's a bit complicated to explain. Anyway, you don't have to worry about moving anymore," Yu Sheng leaned against the wall and rubbed his forehead. "I'll tell you more when I have the chance..."

Ailin's curiosity was exploding, but sensing that Yu Sheng didn't want to elaborate, she simply gave an "Oh."

Afterward, Yu Sheng ended the conversation with Ailin.

He didn't reveal the specific details of his "opening the door" experience. It wasn't out of caution for other reasons, but primarily because his own thoughts were a mess, and he hadn't had time to carefully process many of the details of the "opening"—the situation had been too chaotic, and he had overlooked much of it, requiring slow recollection and organization later.

Yu Sheng decided to wait until he returned and settled down before discussing this with Ailin.

Of course, he knew that even if he told her, she would likely be just as bewildered as he was, and they would both be confused together. But regardless, having another person to consult was better than mulling it over alone.

That doll did have some knowledge of the supernatural—even if it wasn't much.

A few minutes later, Yu Sheng walked out from the street corner. He braced himself in the gradually cooling night wind and looked toward the supermarket in the distance.

After a moment's hesitation, he set off toward the store.

He decided to complete today's shopping plan first—while the matter of the "door" was unsettling, he couldn't simply stop opening any doors starting today.

However, this time, he was exceptionally cautious as he approached the supermarket door.

He concentrated intensely, perceiving every single detail of the opening process—from the tactile sensation in his hand to the thoughts in his heart, the intuitive warnings, even the sound of the wind and the shadows reflected in the glass...

If anyone had been watching, they would have felt as though Yu Sheng's process of opening the door was happening in slow motion.

Then, the supermarket door opened.

Between the somewhat cramped shelves, the young shop owner looked up. Seeing it was Yu Sheng, he smiled. "Oh, buying something?"

(End of Chapter)