Hidden Dead Ends

“I remember reading about that, but I didn’t delve deeply into it,” Li Chengyi nodded.

“Perhaps what you encountered was an intersecting Dead End,” Sindra suggested. “The older a Dead End is, the more likely it is to contain mysterious remnants and unknown structures, which might overlap with those of newer Dead Ends. We’ve encountered something similar before. As for depth, every Dead End has layers. An expert once said that if you could reach the very core of a Dead End, you might uncover the secret behind its formation.”

“Secrets are a bit far-fetched right now, but since that chubby kid was stealing from the Zhou Family Bakery, maybe he and that store are from the same era? Following that lead might reveal something,” Li Chengyi proposed.

“I’ve already arranged for that, but there’s a vast amount of old data involved, and it’ll take time to go through it all,” Sindra replied, adjusting his AR glasses, evidently communicating with his company’s employees through the device.

“Oh, and that chubby kid was wearing a school uniform with a badge on it—it read Dongliu Experimental Elementary School!” Li Chengyi added, recalling the detail.

“With a school name, this search just got a lot easier!” Sindra’s spirits lifted.

To outsiders, Li Chengyi’s state might seem like the onset of a mental illness, but to Sindra, this was likely a memory flash.

Still, it remained unclear whether a memory flash was a full immersion into a Dead End or only a partial one; even Li Chengyi wasn’t sure.@@novelbin@@

As he sat in the car, he remembered how his initial encounters with memory flashes had been mild, just fragments, like a hand appearing here or a vague human figure appearing there. But this time, with Mist Street, he’d fully entered a Dead End.

Before long, Sima Gui returned to the car.

His expression was grave, his face pale, and there was a faint bloodstain on his arm.

“There’s been a change!” he said as he climbed in, immediately retrieving a first-aid kit to tend to his right arm.