At the Special Service Bureau, deep divers are combat elites who stand out from the rank-and-file through a rigorous selection process and harsh training, after having passed numerous tests.

They are always dispatched to the most dangerous places, facing extremely difficult challenges that are beyond human reason, even verging on the incomprehensible. They know how to survive in the lethal environments of alien planets, how to chase down insane followers of the Angel Sect in lawless zones, and even how to penetrate the Exotic Realm to confront the most dangerous entities or delve into nightmares, rescuing ensnared souls woven into the complex labyrinth of spirit and consciousness—submerging from the peaceful calm of the present world, down into the dark dimensions beneath sanity, this is their job.

But in this world, there are always things beyond human comprehension and resistance, even for the most elite deep divers, and failures are common.

However, the current situation still exceeded Song Cheng's work experience—even, it seemed, the Director's expectations.

Six deep divers were immediately transferred from the Water tank to the outside, their Power Armor had automatically executed emergency medical procedures the moment they returned to the material dimension, the built-in injection system in their armor dispensing large doses of Sanity Blockers and protective drugs into their bodies, quickly inducing a calm state. Then, the support staff stepped forward to check each person's contamination status, while confirming whether their consciousness had returned to the material world with their bodies—and whether anything else had "come back" along with their consciousness.

Song Cheng and Baili Qing stood by, their brows tightly knitted as they witnessed this scene.

"Maths problems?" After a long period of grave silence, Song Cheng finally couldn't help breaking it, "...Can a maths problem wreak such havoc when it enters the brain?"

Baili Qing lightly shook her head.

"It's true that professors from Terra 'Academy' can attack their opponents by instantly infusing an overload of knowledge into the brains of ordinary people, but it wouldn't create this effect. Moreover, our deep divers are professionally trained and inherently adaptive to 'knowledge'-based attacks. Besides having considerable learning abilities, their brains can actively enter a dormant state when faced with a 'knowledge infusion' that exceeds their processing capacity."

Song Cheng frowned: "What you mean is..."

"The 'maths problem' that the deep diver mentioned before falling unconscious was probably just some kind of concrete impression they encountered during the dive. The real source of contamination... should be something else," said Baili Qing gravely, "At the end of the passage... there was no Nightfall Valley... but why would it be a maths problem?"

Song Cheng also didn't dare speak, afraid of interrupting the Director's train of thought.

After a moment of silence, Baili Qing suddenly turned her head: "Xiao Song, you haven't dealt with 'Yu Sheng' yet, have you?"

"Um, I was planning to contact him today, but I didn't expect to encounter all these unexpected events..."

"You don't need to go anymore," Baili Qing spoke indifferently.

...

Yu Sheng heard some noise and lifted his head to look around, but he couldn't find the source of the noise.

Business was slow, and the coffee shop was sparsely populated, with only a few scattered customers sitting at tables in the distance, as two employees idly scrolled through their phones nearby, lending the shop an air of tranquility.

Occasionally someone would curiously glance this way—probably wondering why a twenty-something-year-old young man was hunched over copying a thick stack of high school assignments in the coffee shop at this hour.

Yu Sheng sighed, looking at the half stack of papers left and feeling a faint soreness in his hand.

He had been writing as carelessly as he could, and beneath many of the major questions, his markings resembled scribbles more than anything. But it had been years since his hands, now so accustomed to typing, had written so many words, and this task was proving to be more exhausting than he had anticipated.

But it was hard to say whether copying assignments for high school students here was more tiresome or whether it was more tiring to take Hu Li, a clueless fox spirit, shopping for clothes at the mall.

Yu Sheng pondered for a moment and felt that copying assignments here was preferable—he truly did not have the courage to walk into a lingerie store with Hu Li, as it would make him feel like a pervert.

Especially when Hu Li exhibited such transparent ignorance that he could easily be mistaken for a pervert and arrested by the store staff.

At that moment, Erin's voice suddenly came into his mind: "Hey hey~ Yu Sheng, how much have you done?"

Without stopping his hand, Yu Sheng replied: "Halfway there, high school students really have it rough nowadays, so much homework!"

"You keep it up, I was just hearing Little Red Riding Hood complaining, she actually has another physics assignment, but she forgot to bring it..."

"Let her go home and write it herself, I'm not dealing with that," Yu Sheng replied with annoyance, "How about you guys? Is it going smoothly?"

"Not bad, Hu Li isn't very good with zippers. Little Red Riding Hood has been teaching her for half an hour. They've gone to the dressing room together now... I've been left on a bench outside the dressing room," Erin sounded cheerful, "Little Red Riding Hood even bought me a hair clip! From a toy store, it's red..."

Yu Sheng thought for a moment and realized: "That's my money being spent!"

"I know, I know," Erin hastily said, "Consider it a gift from you... I didn't ask for anything else, just a hair clip, it wasn't expensive..."

"All right, I never said you couldn't buy things," Yu Sheng said with a mix of laughter and helplessness, "just a reminder not to get too carried away shopping. And don't forget to pick up some toiletries for Hu Li, as well as bedsheets and duvet covers. You didn't forget the size, did you?"

"Ah, I've got it, I've got it, don't worry, my brain..." Erin suddenly paused mid-sentence, her tone shifting, "Hu Li's brain..."

Yu Sheng's mind descended into a bizarre and awkward silence.

This is what it's like when you can't get the team up to speed.

"How big was her bed again?" Erin's voice sounded particularly weak.

"One and a half by two meters," Yu Sheng sighed, "tell this to Little Red Riding Hood and have her remember it for you both. Also, anything else you need to buy, tell her. She's a high school student; her memory is better than yours."

"Yes, right..."

Yu Sheng helplessly ended the conversation in his mind and lowered his head to continue grading papers.

However, just at that moment, he suddenly felt something odd about his surroundings.

It was quiet, so eerily quiet around him that not even the soft conversations of the few customers in the cafe could be heard.

Yu Sheng jerked his head up and swiftly scanned his surroundings.

He was still in the coffee shop.

Countless tables and chairs were neatly arranged, extending infinitely in front of him and behind him.

The coffee shop appeared boundless and devoid of people, with just an endless array of tables and chairs reaching all the way to the edge of his vision.

To his left were the street-facing windows—windows that now also stretched infinitely forward and back, but instead of a street view, there was only a white expanse of fog outside.

Some large shapes, shadowy figures, were slowly moving through the fog, occasionally approaching nearby windows as if to gaze into the coffee shop. However, no matter how hard he looked, those shadows were nothing but indistinct, hazy outlines.

Yu Sheng watched all this with shock, slowly rising from his chair.

But just as he was about to just walk out the door and leave this place, a voice suddenly came from opposite him: "Hello."

It was a slightly hoarse female voice, sounding very young.

Yu Sheng was surprised to see that someone had appeared opposite him at the table without him noticing. A woman who looked to be under thirty—dressed in a fitted white dress suit, with ashy long hair pulled into a ponytail, quite beautiful, but with an indescribable sense of detachment and chilliness in her demeanor.

Yet Yu Sheng's attention was drawn more to her eyes. She had a pair of pale gray irises, as if devoid of color, with even the boundary between the iris and the white of the eye appearing rather blurred, making her look somewhat... unnatural, unlike what normal humans should have.

Then, Yu Sheng noticed something incredible—the area around the woman rapidly lost its color, from the closest coffee table and chair to the floor and other tables around, everything was being tinted with a light layer of gray-white. The desaturation continued to extend outwards for more than ten meters before it finally started to fade.

In the end, only the woman herself and the colors on Yu Sheng remained untouched.

Yu Sheng composed himself; he remembered what Erin had told him—that entities with consciousness might appear in the Exotic Realm, but even those that resembled humans had clear, strikingly bizarre, non-human characteristics. Although this woman looked a bit odd, she clearly wasn't at that "bizarrely non-human" level, which meant she should be human.

Since she was human, and had even initiated a greeting, it clearly meant they could probably have a proper conversation.

Yu Sheng temporarily abandoned the idea of leaving and sat down again, looking curiously across the table: "You are...?"

"Baili Qing, Director of the Special Service Bureau under the Boundary Council," the woman opposite him nodded lightly, "I apologize for meeting you in this manner—it's for maximum confidentiality and some safety considerations."

Yu Sheng was suddenly taken aback.

The Special Service Bureau really did come looking for him—but at such a high level? The Director in person?!

While Yu Sheng was still in shock, Baili Qing's gaze seemed to casually sweep over the table in front of her.

She noticed the stack of papers that Yu Sheng had placed on the table, and her expression momentarily froze.

Math problems, all of them math problems, questions from previous years' college entrance exams.

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