The four people (because adding a squirrel this time reduced the human count even more) stood dumbfounded in the silver-white corridor, momentarily dazed.

After a long time, Hu Li was the first to break the silence: "Savior, is this the 'backstage'?"

"Not what I imagined," Erin muttered, "I thought there would be tentacles, flesh, eyeballs, and creepy noises everywhere... Wasn't that the style before?"

"Don't ask me, I don't know what's going on either. This isn't what I imagined," Yu Sheng waved his hand but quickly pointed to the sign on the corridor wall, "But this is indeed Anka Aela... uh, its 'interior'. The sign says Anka Aela - Maintenance Passage."

Hu Li's eyes widened in surprise, "Savior can understand the writing on this?"

"I can understand the meaning, but I don't recognize these characters," Yu Sheng frowned, glancing down at his current set of hunter's clothes, "Maybe... it has to do with the 'Hunter's' vision?"

Erin quickly reacted after a moment of confusion: "Maintenance Passage?! What's that? The maintenance passage inside Anka Aela, is that what it means?"

Yu Sheng couldn't provide an answer. He could only lead the team, staying highly vigilant, and walk deeper along this mysterious "maintenance passage".

What is this place? Is it inside Anka Aela? Or a road leading to Anka Aela? Why would the "backstage" of Fairy Tales be such an obviously artificial corridor? Ultimately... "Anka Aela," this being known as the "Dark Angel," what exactly is it?

Countless questions swirled in his mind, but in the empty corridor, only the footsteps of Yu Sheng and Hu Li echoed monotonously. Yu Sheng didn't know where to go; he just followed some sort of "intuition" deep within, moving further into the corridor, choosing the "most correct" direction whenever he encountered a fork in the path.

The hunter's bullet was still slightly warm, guiding him within a vague range. He could only roughly gauge his current direction based on the bullet's condition.

A slight buzzing sound occasionally came from beneath or above, sounding like some equipment running but always feeling somewhat unreal, as if it were merely a distant memory being reenacted in a dream.

A slight dizziness hit him, and Yu Sheng instinctively looked ahead.

In his vision, the brightly lit white corridor flickered and suddenly transformed into a scene of ripped and twisted wreckage. Terrifying dark red shadows pierced through the walls and floor, and mud-like proliferative substances spurted from the broken pipes around, polluting and covering everything. The ceiling ahead had a large hole, and outside the hole was a chaotic frenzy of light and seemingly infinitely stretched stellar illusions—

The squirrel immediately let out a small scream, and even Erin exclaimed loudly, "Holy crap," while Yu Sheng and Hu Li stopped in their tracks, their muscles tensed.

However, just as Hu Li was about to lift her two tails and prepare to fire a round of Fox Radish Machine Gun shots at the front, the horrifying scene vanished, and the corridor returned to its bright and clean state.

Yu Sheng and Erin, who was on his shoulder, looked at each other in silence for a moment before the small puppet spoke first: "Do you think that was the past or the future?"

Yu Sheng's voice was heavy, "It could also be the present, the real form."

"...You're a real Spirit Realm detective already," Erin smirked, "Knowing how to hypothesize from the most eerie and frightening angles."

"Savior," Hu Li walked over, holding her two big tails, and said nervously, "I suspect there's a Barrier Technique here... When I was young, I watched a horror film with a scene just like this."

Yu Sheng instinctively asked, "Horror film? What horror film?"

"I forgot the name, but it's about a person who goes out on a boat. In reality, everyone on the boat died halfway due to an accident, but the person had observer effect displacement syndrome and didn't realize it, continuing to sail with the already disintegrated boat. As the journey continued, he kept sinking into 'another world,' finally waking up in a timeline where all life was extinct, driving him mad..."

Erin's hair stood on end as she listened, "Do you really have to tell such stories in this environment?"

The fox girl protested aggrievedly, "The Savior asked me to tell it..."

Just then, Yu Sheng suddenly raised a hand, cutting off the puppet and fox's conversation: "Shh."

The corridor fell silent instantly.

Then they heard footsteps.

Intensive footsteps, sounding like a team running quickly from behind, very close.

Yu Sheng's eyes narrowed, immediately turning to look in the direction of the sound.

But he saw nothing; the corridor was still empty.

Only the footsteps echoed, and it sounded like they were running right past him.

The sound, like the buzzing around them, carried a sense of unreality.

In the footsteps, Yu Sheng could also hear what seemed like the hissing of pressurized gas from a power device and the sound of equipped gear colliding and rubbing.

"Sounds like over ten people ran past," Erin, clutching Yu Sheng's hair, said nervously, "Invisible people."

"Can you, a cursed puppet, stop being more nervous than I am in this environment?" Yu Sheng had to push Erin's hand away, "And stop pulling, I'm already starting to lose hair these days."

"It seems to have gone in that direction," Hu Li's ears twitched sensitively in the air, pointing towards an intersection ahead, "But the sound disappeared after it turned right at the junction."

Yu Sheng frowned, quickly made a decision: "...Chase it."

They hurried down the hallway, turning at the junction based on Hu Li's direction. After walking a bit further, a damaged silver-white metal gate abruptly appeared before them.

Yu Sheng hesitated, was about to walk towards the door when the footsteps reappeared beside his ear.

Those invisible people seemed to have arrived at the door, followed by low murmurs—fast-paced yet mixed with a lot of noise, making it hard to distinguish the content, only hearing vague words like "breakthrough", "lost contact", "mission continues".

Then he heard an explosion, the piercing sound of tearing, a few low gasps, and distant, indistinct alarms.

Yu Sheng's brow furrowed tightly, at that moment, it seemed like he understood something.

"...It's them."

Erin gave a puzzled look: "Huh? Them? Who?"

"The deep dive team from seventy years ago," Yu Sheng slowly approached the door, his fingers brushing over the damage marks, "it's the sound they left behind."

As he spoke, he gently placed Erin on the ground, then bent down and cautiously squeezed through the gap between the two gates.

Erin and Hu Li followed through.

They all stared blankly at the space behind the gate.

Inside was a hall, the center sunken, with a huge, pillar-like structure supporting the center. The pillar was wrapped with countless pipes and cables, many already extinguished display devices hanging around it, and numerous cables hanging from the ceiling, resembling long dead veins and nerves. Around the hall were many unknown devices, looking like neatly arranged square cabinets or cylinders, their surfaces having some openings and display structures—yet all the lights and display devices had long extinguished.

"...It looks like a control center," Erin muttered softly.

Yu Sheng remained silent, carefully confirming the surroundings before stepping towards the hall's center.

But the next second, that familiar slight dizziness hit again, he stopped abruptly, seeing the hall turned into a dark, decaying ruin in a flash. Horrifying dark red substances covered all walls and floors, the cables hanging from the ceiling turned into twitching nerves and veins, the devices around the hall began to swell, wriggle like hearts, and the large pillar in the center turned into a giant tentacle-like shadow, the numerous display devices around it became countless indifferent eyes, covering the shadow's surface...

The shadow bent down towards Yu Sheng and the others, its end growing tentacle-like structures.

But in a blink, all this vanished like an illusion, the hall returning to its previous state.

Yu Sheng steadied himself and continued forward.

Hu Li followed closely behind, her tails quietly floating in the air, alert to the surroundings.

Footsteps sounded again, sounding somewhat chaotic.

The deep divers who arrived here seventy years ago seemed to have encountered trouble, Yu Sheng heard the sound of weapons firing, people shouting, and unsettling noises and murmurs mixed in among the voices.

He caught sight of a heavily armored figure stumbling, materializing in the air, then disappearing in an instant.

This place seemed like a twisted time-space node. Events from different times superimposed on each other, even different layers of "reality" overlapping together.

At that moment, Yu Sheng suddenly felt a wave of heat.

He raised his hand, seeing the bullet from the "Hunter" trembling slightly in his palm, the increasingly intense heat emanating from the bullet, and in a blink, the heat turned into unbearable burning, as if the bullet had just been fired from a gun!

Instinctively, Yu Sheng's hand shook, and the bullet fell from his palm.

He quickly bent to pick it up.

But just as he reached out, he saw in the corner of his eye that everything around him abruptly lost its color.

An unfamiliar, indistinct voice entered his ear at the same time:

"...Last report, this is the deep dive team, action code 'Adulthood'..."

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