.


    The door of the small supermarket mmed shut behind Yu Sheng, cutting off the scorching heat from that charred world and the sudden menace of the two ck-armored soldiers. He stood there, rooted to the spot, a bit dazed.


    For several moments, he simply stared ahead before drawing a sharp breath. Turning his head, he nced around.


    The street was nearly empty. The few passersby seemed entirely oblivious to the strange urrence that had just unfolded. Only Yu Sheng had confronted that bizarre scene head-on, and now he stood in the evening breeze, his thoughts swirling.


    After a moment, he slowly turned back to gaze at the storefront of the small supermarket.


    Over the past two months, he had visited this ce more than once. Nestled in the old part of town, the little shop didn’t stock much, but it had all the basics—daily necessities, rice, flour, cooking oil. The owners were a young couple, and Yu Sheng was somewhat familiar with them by now.


    The supermarket’s facade was nothing special—just an ordinary ground-floor shop. Large ss windows faced the street, almost entirely covered with various promotional signs and shelves crammed with small items pressed against the ss. One side of the ss door didn’t work properly; an A4 paper with “Door Broken” was taped to that half. Through the door, he could see the slightly cramped shelves inside and the owner moving goods beside them.


    Everything looked perfectly normal—nothing could be more ordinary.


    But Yu Sheng couldn’t dismiss what he’d just witnessed as some kind of hallucination. He could still feel that scorching, faintly sulfurous air lingering in his nostrils.He had almost stepped forward, but fortunately, the lingering effects of his previous misadventures made him cautious—not just with his own front door, but with any door. Whenever he opened one, he’d hesitate subconsciously. Another reason he’d paused at the entrance was the shiver he’d felt deep inside the moment he pushed the door open.


    Standing at the supermarket’s entrance, Yu Sheng steadied himself. After thinking for a moment, he reached out again to grasp the door handle. Applying a bit of force, he pushed the door open slightly and leaned in to peek inside.


    It was just an ordinary supermarket. At this hour, there were no customers. The owner was still busy behind the shelves, seemingly unaware of any movement at the door.


    Yu Sheng stepped back, closed the door carefully, then firmly gripped the handle once more. Taking a deep breath as if wrestling with his own nerves, he gritted his teeth and suddenly flung the door open.


    Opposite him stood a tall woman with flowing blonde hair dressed in a silver-white robe. She stood on a tform, turning in surprise to look at him.


    She was strikingly beautiful, but beneath her golden hair, her ears were not human—they were elegantly elongated and pointed. Several softly glowing tubes and wires extended from behind her ears, connecting to something out of sight behind her.


    But what caught Yu Sheng’s attention even more was the wheel-like structure extending from beneath her robe and the mechanical limbs behind her that manipted various tools in mid-air.


    A voice called out from somewhere beyond the door: “Boss! The client wants to know if the superluminal core we sentst week is fixed yet.”


    The blonde woman didn’t respond. She stared unblinkingly at Yu Sheng standing in the doorway, and after a long moment, she finally burst out, “How on earth did you get in here?!”


    Yu Sheng mmed the door shut.


    But the next second, he flung it open again—because he hadn’t seen clearly just now. Was that an elf? It was the first time in his life he’d seen an elf! Was it really an elf? But something about her didn’t quite fit!


    As the door swung open, he found himself face-to-face with a small boy wearing a coarse brown Taoist robe. They stared at each other in surprise. The doorframe was surrounded by smoke and scorch marks. The boy was holding a fan, mid-swing, his eyes bulging as if they might pop out.


    Before Yu Sheng could say anything, the boy dropped his fan as if he’d seen a ghost. He hopped and ran away, shouting at the top of his lungs, “Master! Master! Senior Brother did it! Senior Brother’s alchemy furnace produced a human head! It has eyes and a nose and it can breathe!”


    “What the—”


    Yu Sheng eximed, mming the door shut once more. He stumbled back several steps beforeing to a halt.


    He nced back at the street and noticed a few passersby looking his way with puzzled expressions—but they seemed only to have noticed his odd behavior. Since he’d closed the door quickly, no one had seen whaty beyond it.


    He hurriedly adjusted his expression, trying to appear nonchnt, and stepped aside. Once he was sure no one was watching, he took several deep breaths, standing at the street corner, his mind racing.


    Everything was too chaotic, too bizarre. He didn’t even know whether to feel shaken, have his worldview upended, or consider himself lucky to be alive. All he knew was that his thoughts were swirling as if twelve storms had whipped through his mind—or like two hundred Ailins chattering at once. A jumble of wild ideas crashed around in his head, and it took him a good seven or eight minutes to regain hisposure.


    But one thing he quickly realized.


    Those ces beyond the door… they weren’t the Otherworld.


    At least, that mechanical, elf-like woman and the fan-wielding Taoist boy weren’t in some Otherworld. As for the two imposing soldiers in powered armor who seemed to be in the middle of a battle—their surroundings had been harsh, so it was hard to say whether that was an Otherworld or not.


    After a long while, Yu Sheng’s chaotic thoughts began to settle. He forced himself to sort through the wild spections, suppressing them for the moment. Then he lowered his head and looked at his hands.


    Hesitating, he slowly reached out to the side.


    He was standing at a corner of the street, with only a bare cement wall beside him.


    He ran his fingers over the rough surface, slowly curling them as if grasping something—imagining there was a door.


    Just like when he’d discovered the hidden doorknob outside the room where he’d found Irene at the end of his hallway. Just like when he’d been flung into the air by that monster in the night valley and had instinctively grabbed at the air, pulling open a door back to the real world.


    He felt it—a door.


    He couldn’t see it, but it was there. He grasped the handle, and the door began to materialize, slowly anchoring itself. His expression stiffened as he turned his head—the door shimmered faintly in his vision as if it could be opened with the slightest effort.


    “What on earth?!”


    He gasped, and as tension shot through him, his hand released instinctively. The “door” vanished silently into the wall.


    His heart was pounding wildly as if it might leap out of his chest at any moment.


    He took several deep breaths to calm himself, recalling the sensation of grasping the doorknob just moments ago. A wry smile tugged at his lips.


    “Irene,” he called out inwardly, with an emotion he couldn’t quite name—a mix of confusion and hesitation.


    “Yes?” Irene’s voice sounded immediately, as cheerful as ever. “I was just about to contact you! You’ve been out for a while. Didn’t you say the supermarket was just around the corner? Did you buy too much stuff?”


    “…I haven’t gone into the supermarket yet,” Yu Sheng replied.


    “Did you get lost?”


    “I just wanted to tell you that I probably won’t be considering moving anymore,” he said, not bothering with her off-base guesses.


    “Huh?! Really?” Irene sounded both pleased and curious. “Why? Didn’t you say the house felt strange? Especially with the door—you might get ‘thrown’ somewhere when you open it…”


    “It’s nothing. I just suddenly realized that, regarding the biggest problem, maybe the weird one isn’t the house,” Yu Sheng sighed. “Maybe… the weird one is me.”


    “…What?” Irene fell silent, but Yu Sheng could easily imagine her expression—eyes wide, full of question marks.


    “It’s a bitplicated to exin. Anyway, you don’t need to worry about moving anymore,” he said, leaning against the wall and rubbing his forehead. “If there’s a chanceter… I’ll tell you.”


    Irene’s curiosity was practically bursting, but she sensed that he didn’t want to delve into it right now. So she simply said, “Oh.”


    With that, Yu Sheng ended the conversation.


    He hadn’t shared the specifics of his “door-opening” experience with her—not because he was hiding anything, but because his own thoughts were still a jumbled mess. There were many details he hadn’t had time to ponder—the situation had been too chaotic, and he’d overlooked a lot that he’d need to recall and sort outter.


    He decided to wait until he got back and had a chance to rest before discussing it with Irene.


    Of course, he also knew that even if he told her, she’d probably be just as confused as he was, and they’d be muddled together. But still, having someone to talk it over with was better than mulling it over alone.


    After all, the puppet did have some knowledge about the supernatural—albeit not much.


    A few minutester, Yu Sheng stepped out from the street corner. The evening breeze was growing cooler, and he straightened up, trying to shake off the lingering unease. He looked toward the small supermarket not far away.


    After a moment’s hesitation, he decided to continue on to the store.


    He resolved toplete his shopping n for the day. As unsettling as the “door” incident was, he couldn’t very well start avoiding every door from now on.


    This time, however, he was more cautious than ever as he approached the supermarket’s entrance.


    He concentrated intently, attuned to every detail as he reached for the door handle—from the texture under his fingers to the thoughts in his mind, the subtle instincts warning him, even the sound of the wind and the reflection in the ss door.


    If anyone had been watching, they might have thought his movements were in slow motion.


    Then, the supermarket door swung open.


    Amid the somewhat crowded shelves, the young shop owner looked up. Seeing Yu Sheng, he broke into a smile. “Oh, here to buy something?”


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