Bubbles

“Where the hell did I end up?”

Yue Shi looked around with curiosity. Just moments ago, when the invitation appeared, he had followed the trail and tracked it all the way here.

He had expected to encounter a scene of great peril, but he hadn't expected to stumble into a place like this.

Is this the Supernatural Game Show?

He had never come into contact with a forbidden zone before, so he was honestly a bit lost.

The landscape before him wasn't any known terrain; it was more like deep space—pitch black, silent, and boundless.

There was no sense of up, down, left, or right, nor was there any physical support. Yue Shi found that he wasn't standing on anything at all; he seemed to have lost the influence of gravity and was quietly suspended in the void.

This void was not absolute darkness.

Countless points of light, varying in brightness, were scattered all around, too many to count.

Yue Shi looked closely and realized that those points of light weren't stars.

They were bubbles.

They were massive in size and varied in color, floating quietly in the darkness with a faint luster flowing across their surfaces.

He approached a dark red bubble.

Through the seemingly fragile bubble membrane, the scene inside was clearly visible. It was a campus that looked a bit old.

There were people moving about on the campus; it seemed to be a normal school. However, in a corner of the teaching building's rooftop, several people who didn't look like students were peering around warily, as if they were hiding from something.

The scene inside the campus was clear, but everything outside the school was extremely blurry, making it impossible to see anything at all.

Yue Shi turned his head and looked at another bubble.

Inside that bubble, it was nighttime. There was a solitary three-story building. Aside from the interior of the building and a small area in front of the door, the surroundings were filled with a darkness so thick it couldn't be dispersed.

He could also see two men and two women resting in a room on the first floor. A short, twisted ghostly figure was pacing the corridor outside their room.

“Are these bubbles different supernatural game instances?”

Yue Shi’s gaze swept across the thousands of light points in this endless void.

After observing for a long time, he chose the brightest milky-white bubble.

The bubble membrane was ethereal. When he reached out a finger to touch it, there was no physical sensation. Taking a step forward, he entered the bubble.

The scene before him shifted abruptly.

The bright light caused him to squint slightly.

The background noises of a modern city reached his ears—cars driving, muffled conversations from pedestrians, and the distant sound of horns.

Yue Shi was standing by the side of the road, next to a hospital.

It was daytime, and the sun was shining brightly.

The street wasn't very wide, but it was clean. Vehicles moved in an orderly fashion, and pedestrians hurried along the sidewalk.

Everything looked so ordinary.

Like any other passerby, Yue Shi strolled slowly along the sidewalk, his eyes carefully observing the surroundings.

Pedestrians passing by would occasionally turn their heads to look at him.

They appeared to be living humans of flesh and blood.

The leaves of the plants in the green belts were fully extended, there was no trash in the corners of the streets, and the vehicles were makes and models he had never seen before.

Every blade of grass and every tree here was so realistic it was impeccable. Yet, it felt slightly different from the actual real world.

Something felt off.

Soon, Yue Shi discovered where the anomaly lay.

His gaze fell upon a convenience store next to the hospital.

Through the glass window, he could see a young man at the counter paying with cash to buy a bottle of mineral water.

The currency the young man was using was significantly different from the universal currency of the real world!

Looking at the young man's carefree face, Yue Shi finally grasped the source of that sense of incongruity.

It was the people here!

Their mental states were too healthy!

They lacked that sense of dejection that came from frequently encountering supernatural incidents. They were busy and industrious, exuding a relaxed air of being well-protected.

“Strange.”

Yue Shi didn't stop. He continued walking in one direction along the road.

At first, everything was normal. But as he walked, he noticed that the surrounding light was gradually dimming.

It wasn't a change in the time of day; rather, the further forward he went, the thinner the sunlight became.

Only the area where the hospital was located behind him remained bright and sunny.

After walking for about a thousand meters, the road ahead ended. It wasn't that the road was cut off, but rather that it was swallowed by a thick, grayish-white fog.

The boundary of the fog was distinct, completely separating the street from the unknown beyond. From deep within the dense fog, strange sounds that resembled both crying and laughing could be heard faintly, so indistinct they were hard to discern.

However, the pedestrians and vehicles on the street showed absolutely no reaction to the dense fog right in front of them, as if they couldn't see it at all.

Yue Shi began to walk backward.

As he retreated, the dense fog rapidly thinned and dissipated in his vision, turning back into a normal city streetscape extending forward.

“Hey, handsome, are you doing performance art? Why are you walking backward?”

A crisp female voice sounded nearby.

Yue Shi stopped and looked toward the source of the voice. It was a young woman wearing light makeup, looking at him with a slight blush.

Yue Shi reached out and pointed ahead. “You can't see that?”

“What? See what?” The woman looked bewildered.

“I seem to be walking in circles; I can't get out.”

“Could I ask you to help me? If two people walk together, maybe we can get out.”

Yue Shi wore a harmless smile.

The woman laughed so hard she trembled, thinking he was joking.

“Walking in circles? How could you encounter that in broad daylight?”

“But I don't mind walking with you. I'm familiar with this area.”

She enthusiastically walked to Yue Shi’s side and began walking forward with him. She didn't forget to ask about Yue Shi’s identity and what he was doing here.

The two of them chatted and laughed, getting along quite well.

Soon, that layer of grayish-white fog appeared in Yue Shi’s vision again, getting closer and closer.

The woman, however, was completely oblivious. She continued to chat, frequently glancing at Yue Shi’s profile.

The next moment, the two of them stepped into the fog together.

The woman's voice stopped abruptly.

Along with her figure, she vanished the instant she stepped into the dense fog.