Dimensional Hotel-Chapter 239: Something Feels Off

To be honest, that first bite was tough for Yu Sheng. It wasn’t because he wasn’t hungry—he was actually starving after not eating for so long—nor was it because he was afraid to try this so-called “food.” After all, he had already tasted Foxy’s cooking once before and discovered that, despite its strange appearance, it was surprisingly okay. Plus, the Fox Girl herself was sitting right next to him now, eyes wide and hopeful, waiting for him to dig in. There was no way he could refuse.

The real challenge was that the stew in the bowl kept dodging his spoon.

Yes, the jumbled stew—imbued with who-knew-what kind of Cyber Immortal Arts—was actively avoiding the spoon. It writhed and squirmed, and sometimes it bulged in the middle as though giving him the middle finger. [This is way beyond my idea of what’s edible,] Yu Sheng thought.

He stared at the bowl on the table for quite a while, battling his own thoughts. Finally, he glanced up, looking conflicted. “Is it supposed to do that?”

“Oh! My mistake. I forgot one last step!” Foxy smacked her forehead and started tracing several glowing symbols in the air. Then she muttered something at the table—a bunch of motions that didn’t look even remotely like ordinary cooking. Afterward, she let out a long sigh and smiled. “All done, Benefactor. Now it understands.”

Yu Sheng was confused. [Understands? Understands what? Who understands? Wait, we’re cooking here—why is the final step to ‘talk to the food’ so it ‘understands’?] He pictured the “Machine Spirit” from the Borderland’s machinery and wondered if Foxy’s pot could somehow forge a “food spirit.”

He looked back into the bowl. Sure enough, that ever-shifting stew had settled down. After several seconds of hesitation, he turned to confirm with Foxy, “Let me just be totally sure—this stew isn’t sentient, right?”

“Of course not,” Foxy said, waving her hand. “It’s just that the world naturally has spiritual energy. ‘Soulful Stew’ means temporarily cooking that energy into the dish. But if there’s too much of it, the stew acts up. That’s what Mother told me.”

Yu Sheng was pretty sure that phrase alone would make any normal person do a sanity check. [Language is truly something magical,] he thought.

Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to imagine the shimmering stew as just some Entity’s tentacle or Wolf Granny’s heart—basic ingredients, no big deal. Closing his eyes, he took a bite.

A gentle warmth spread through him, accompanied by a decent flavor. There was nothing weird about the taste, and nothing squirmed around in his mouth. It didn’t resemble any food texture he knew, but it was definitely edible.

It even tasted better than the last stew Foxy had made.

“This is…not bad at all,” he said, opening his eyes. He seemed pleasantly surprised by the swirling colors in the bowl. “It’s actually an improvement over last time.”

Foxy, who had been sitting there eagerly awaiting his verdict, lit up with a smile. She rocked back and forth, her many tails swaying. “As long as Benefactor likes it,” she said, eyes gleaming.

Yu Sheng took a second spoonful.

He felt his exhaustion melt away within a few short breaths. The drowsiness clouding his mind cleared up, not in a jittery rush, but as though he had received proper rest and nourishment. His body felt fully recharged, and the warmth of that “food” continued to spread through his limbs, gently restoring him.

Frowning in mild confusion, he watched as Foxy pulled two small chicks from behind her tails and prepared a tiny bowl of stew for them, too. “Plain Boiled, Salt Baked—dinnertime!” she cooed. “You get to share in the Benefactor’s fortune again today~”

The two chicks scampered over happily.

They looked a bit larger than before, clearly well cared for. Plain Boiled now had a tuft of pale-golden fluff on its head, while Salt Baked had a faint, half-transparent glow around its tail feathers.

Yu Sheng paused. [Something feels off here. Let’s check again.]

He rubbed his eyes and looked at Foxy.

“What’s wrong, Benefactor?”

“I just want to confirm,” Yu Sheng said, pointing at the stew on the table. “Are you saying this is really just the ‘homestyle dish’ you used to eat back home?”

“Not exactly every day,” Foxy answered honestly. “Only on special occasions—like if I got a perfect score on a test, or on holidays. Making this is hard work, and it’s especially draining to do the Spirit Infusion part, so I only do it once in a while.”

Yu Sheng’s lips twitched. [This silly Fox definitely mixed up ‘cooking’ with something else. And what on earth is her home like, anyway?]

Seeing Foxy’s clueless expression, Yu Sheng didn’t bother asking more. He simply finished his bowl of shimmering stew. Then he gazed at the chicks, who seemed satisfied and were now strutting around on the table, their feathers looking shinier than before. Deep in thought, he watched Foxy humming happily as she cleaned up the dishes.

He found himself in a staring contest with those two wandering chicks.

Plain Boiled and Salt Baked stopped and tilted their little heads, showing no fear at all. Their bright eyes gleamed with a strange light.

Yu Sheng even suspected that they might be on the verge of developing real intelligence.

But he had no proof.

…

Meanwhile, outside the city:

Borderland isn’t an endless stretch of space. Although Boundary City is so vast that it seems like an infinite urban sprawl, it does have limits. At the city’s edge, massive factories and Three Dimensional Farmland form a Ring Belt. Beyond that Ring Belt lies a set of City District Walls established by the Council. Past the walls sprawls the Wilderness—an area that’s no longer part of the safest, most stable region known as the “Prosperous Urban Area,” and therefore often called the “Outskirts.”

In these Outskirts, only a few steady Settlements stand on the barren plains. A handful of Council-run observatories and Outposts guard important spots or circle around those Settlements. Normally, the Special Affairs Bureau doesn’t bother venturing too far out here.

But today was different.

Several “shooting stars” had fallen from the sky above Boundary City, crashing somewhere in the Outskirts. They had to be tracked, secured, and retrieved as soon as possible.

Song Cheng leapt from the vehicle and tugged his coat tighter against the cold wind sweeping over the plains. He started walking forward.

The terrain was flat, and the wild grass stretched out in every direction. The far-off city looked like a ragged silhouette on the horizon. If he turned another way, he could see tall columns of light shooting up into the hazy sky. Those pillars came from “Boundary Stones” placed by the Council at the far edges of Borderland. In theory, that was as far as any ordinary Borderland resident would ever go in a lifetime.

“This landing spot is out in the middle of nowhere,” muttered a Special Affairs Bureau Operative wearing heavy protective gear. “If it were any farther, it’d be outside the Frontier.”

“Better this than closer to the city,” another operative replied. “If it landed near the urban area, that’d be a huge headache. Though in that case, Third Squad would be the unlucky ones working overtime…”

Song Cheng cleared his throat. “What do the instruments read now?”

“Depth is at zero, leaning slightly toward L-1 but within the safe range,” a subordinate reported. “No sign of contamination.”

Song Cheng nodded.

A moment later, someone up ahead shouted, “Found it! The impact site is over here!”

It was a crater about ten meters across, burned and blackened like a scar upon the wild grassy plain.

A small drone hovered above the crater with a buzzing hum, collecting data on the surrounding environment. Next came a spider-like robot that moved in to deploy basic monitoring and safety gear around the crater’s edges. Only after these checks did the heavily suited Special Affairs Bureau Operatives approach for a closer look.

A faint glow caught Song Cheng’s eye.

With his years of field experience as a Special Services Bureau Commander, he looked intently at the object in the bottom of that impact crater—a chunk of translucent white crystal with an irregular shape, fused and re-formed at the edges. The soil around it was still warm, wisps of steam rising softly. Smaller, glimmering crystal fragments dotted the area like scattered stars, blinking in tandem with the main crystal.

He heard someone behind him murmuring nervously, “So this is part of a Dark Angel’s ‘corpse’…”

“It’s just a few small pieces,” Song Cheng said. “Its main structure probably ‘evaporated’ during the fall.” He motioned for the staff to come forward. “Proceed with the recovery protocol—start with a drone for contact testing.”

A while later, Song Cheng stepped away from the crater and returned to the command vehicle.

“How are the other recovery teams doing?” he asked.

“Teams Two and Three are still searching in the general area Director specified, but they haven’t found any fragments yet,” an Operative wearing a headset reported. “Team Four just sent word they’ve discovered a small chunk. They’re doing first-stage contact tests now. Oddly enough, that fragment landed near a Settlement—barely two or three hundred meters from the perimeter wall. The Settlement itself isn’t damaged, but the people there saw the Angel’s Descent flash up close, which could lead to complications. Headquarters has dispatched an assessment squad.”

“Got it,” Song Cheng said, glancing at the sky. “It’s about to get windy out here. The forecast shows some Temporal Turbulence. Once the container’s loaded, let’s pull out. I’d rather not blink and skip straight to Monday.”

“Understood!”

Song Cheng gave a slight grunt of acknowledgment. He was about to head back to oversee the recovery himself when the communications officer’s face suddenly changed. The officer spoke quickly into a channel, then turned around with obvious concern.

“Leader, we might have a problem,” the communications officer said, sounding tense. “Team Three just checked in—they found a crater, but the inside is empty.”

“…Empty?!” Song Cheng exclaimed.

This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation