Chapter 100: Dimension 07

Chapter 100: Dimension 07

"...Yes, the original only depicted the radicals being aggressive, pushing the prince to his limits, and the last scene I remember is him angrily flipping the table. That's about it."

In the bun shop, Yu Bai finally finished recounting all his memories of the animation. Amidst the rustling sound of writing, he held his water cup in relief, taking a sip to soothe his throat.

As he narrated, the middle-aged man in police uniform beside him recorded diligently with a serious expression, occasionally asking questions as the pages of his notebook flipped.

It felt so familiar.

Just like the countless times he had taken statements before.

To think that he was the man who had taken the most statements in all of Star City.

Of course, none of those previous times were because he himself was in trouble.

...Hopefully, it will remain so in the future.

Yu Bai, now adept at this, said subconsciously, "There might be some details I've missed, but I can't recall them right now. If I suddenly remember something, I'll contact you."

Li Nanxiao, checking the written records, instinctively replied, "Alright, if there's any new information, contact me anytime. Thank you for your cooperation today."

Neither of them realized anything was amiss until Qiao Jinmei, who had been silently observing, froze first.

"What are you two doing?" She burst out laughing. "Why do you look like police interrogating a suspect?"

"..." Li Nanxiao finally realized what was happening, clearing his throat awkwardly. "Ahem, it's a professional habit."

"..." Yu Bai also came back to his senses, mirroring his actions and words. "Ahem, I'm used to it too."

Qiao Jinmei laughed even harder, her curious gaze darting between the two.

"You two really do resemble each other, like father and son." She gossiped, "Are you real uncle and nephew? Then why are your surnames different? Xiao Bai, did you take your mother's surname?"

The boss lady hadn't had enough time to check Captain Li's household registration when she did her investigation, so she didn't get to the family relations part.

Hearing this, Li Nanxiao was taken aback and looked at Yu Bai instinctively.

Yu Bai shook his head with a smile, denying it. "No, I took my father's surname."

He didn't elaborate further. Seeing that Qiao Jinmei seemed intent on pressing for more details, Li Nanxiao closed the notebook in front of him, tapping it lightly on the table, and said, "Alright, I've recorded everything. Let me first sort and summarize these pieces of information."

Qiao Jinmei was indeed drawn by his words, turning to look at him. "What should we do next, Captain Li?"

"I haven't figured that out yet," Li Nanxiao said, sighing. "That alien has done far too many things and often changes his appearance. Moreover, the cities and locations in the animation are fictional. If we want to find him through investigation, it's almost impossible."

He now understood why Yu Bai had previously said that knowing the plot wouldn't be much help.

After learning the animation's plot, finding the alien was akin to looking for a needle in a river instead of a sea.

Qiao Jinmei sighed along with him. "True, forget about the whole world, just our country alone is so vast, where do we even start looking?"

"Let's start from Star City," Yu Bai suggested. "In a certain sense, those dimensions were born with me as the origin point, and in both of those dimensions, I've always been in Star City."

"The entire animation has merged directly into this world. The city in the animation was originally fictional, but the real world hasn't seen those fictional place names appear. It must have merged with a real city, and I believe the probability of it merging with Star City is the highest."

It was as if the paper-thin characters living in a fictional world had truly stepped into reality.

"That makes sense, let's start from our city then," Li Nanxiao mused. "I'll ask my colleagues to pay more attention to any strange incidents that have happened recently or anyone who keeps getting caught up in various events."

Although it was a slice-of-life series, the life of the alien prince was still full of excitement and far from ordinary.

Moreover, this description had a sense of familiarity to it.

Yu Bai couldn't help but laugh, saying casually, "Who knows, maybe I'll suddenly run into these aliens one day."

Li Nanxiao, thinking of Yu Bai's dramatic life experiences, also chuckled. "Very likely. You should walk around more during this time; perhaps you really will bump into them."

"We may have already met them but didn't recognize them."

Yu Bai made a joke, but there was also a hint of genuine confusion. "They don't have any obvious flaws when they impersonate humans. I'm not sure how to identify them."

If only these aliens could be as flawed as a certain non-human.

Speaking of a certain non-human...

Yu Bai belatedly noticed that Xie Wufang wasn't in the room.

He looked around and saw Qiao Jinmei, who had been idling earlier, and was about to ask where the other person had gone when the familiar figure appeared at the door.

Sunlight illuminated his slightly curled black hair, which was blown across his forehead by the wind, and his heterochromatic eyes shimmered.

Qiao Jinmei was the first to call out to him. "Finished your call? It took quite a while."

The man's expression was calm. "Yes."

Yu Bai was taken aback.

Xie Wufang had gone out to make a call just now?

Throughout all the looped timelines and the real world, Yu Bai had never seen him contact anyone else.

For Xie Wufang, the mobile phone was merely a tool to understand human society.

Yu Bai was the only one who would send him messages or call him.

Yet Qiao Jinmei said he had been on the phone for quite a while just now.

...Could it be a scam call this time?

At this thought, Yu Bai couldn't help but feel a bit worried. Just as he was about to take the initiative to ask, he heard Xie Wufang's voice first.

"What are we going to do next?" he asked.

"I haven't fully figured it out yet," Yu Bai answered truthfully. "We might just wander around the city?"

In the real world, a deity could probably just flick their thoughts across the entire planet and discover the hidden alien race among humans.

But this time, the crossover was triggered after everything went awry and fell into chaos. They couldn't use any special powers within the space-time continuum, lest they cause even greater chaos, which would truly be disastrous.

Xie Wufang in this space-time had to rein in and suppress his own power.

So now, they could only rely on ordinary human methods to find the alien prince who had stepped out of an everyday anime.

...This sentence sounded strangely recursive.

A hint of amusement flickered in Yu Bai's eyes. Standing at the door and looking at him, Xie Wufang seemed to be in a good mood as well, with his dark hair shimmering with golden light.

"Alright," the man nodded. "I want to go somewhere."

Yu Bai looked surprised, his eyes widening slightly. "Where?"

Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, the air where the split-screen scene had just dissipated.

After finishing his call, Xiao Ming felt parched from talking so much, but his face was flushed with excitement. He paced around for several circles before barely managing to calm down.

Spinning in circles, he couldn't help but shout "Awesome!" to himself again in his heart!

His friend, holding a lunch box, lamented, "Stop spinning, Brother Ming, I'm getting dizzy."

Xiao Ming waved his hand smugly. "Okay, okay, I won't spin anymore."

He glanced at the time on his phone; it was already past three in the afternoon. Suddenly, he didn't bother to finish his cold meal, muttering, "I need to hurry back to the city and prepare. He said he'd contact me once the time was confirmed. What if he has time today?"

With that, Xiao Ming grabbed his bag and was about to leave. "I'm out of here! I'll treat you to dinner later!"

"Hey, hey, hey!" His friend, still sitting on the steps, hurriedly said, "Didn't you come here with the artist today? Aren't you going to take care of them?"

"It's fine, he's been acting strange today, unusually obedient." Xiao Ming didn't want to waste another moment. "If you have time later, keep an eye on things for me. Your location is near the city gate, right? My scene was shot in the old alley earlier, and the afternoon scenes are nearby too, pretty close to the city gate."

"I really have to go back now. Call me if anything comes up, remember to think about what you want to eat, you can choose anything!"

His friend paused for a moment, then shouted back teasingly, "Then it's definitely going to be something expensive!"

The tall, thin, energetic figure strode away, accompanied by a faint echo: "Eat—!"

The friend left behind chuckled and shook his head, disposing of the lunch box and rising to walk in a certain direction within the film city.

Three hours ago, somewhere in the film city.

Above the dimly lit alley, the lens captured a modern-dressed youth leaping off a wall, instantly gliding away with extraordinary grace, stunning passersby who gaped in amazement as they looked up.

Behind the lens, a group of people remained silent. The camera advanced steadily on its track, the boom microphone following smoothly outside the frame, and the director, seated before the monitor, let out a sigh of relief after the youth flew out of the shot, shouting, "Cut! That's a wrap for this scene!"

With that shout, the surroundings immediately became noisy, and staff members from various departments bustled about.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry, help him get out of the harness—"

"You check if the food has arrived. This break coincides with lunchtime, let's eat while it's hot!"

Amidst the chatter, the youth, bound in a harness, was gently lowered to the ground. As those around him came to help unclip him, he looked reluctant. "Did we get that take?"

"We got it, we got it, it was awesome! Hey, don't hold onto it..."

"I think it was still lacking." The youth muttered to himself, calling out loudly to the old man sipping tea in his chair, "Director, should we do another take?"

The director nearly spat out his tea. "Huh? Another one?"

"I think that leap wasn't powerful enough—"

"Powerful, powerful! Very powerful!" The director spoke sincerely. "You've been hanging there for half the day, it's too hard on you. Let's call it a wrap for this scene!"

"It's not hard, it's quite fun." The youth furrowed his brows. "How can we just leave it like this? We can't settle, every take has to be perfect!"

The director looked constipated. "Ancestor, you've already done over twenty perfect takes. The guy operating the harness is sweating buckets."

"Let's take a break, have lunch. This location will be used by another production team soon, they're already waiting nearby. We can't delay any longer. We still have flying fight scenes to shoot this afternoon. We'll move to another location and hang again, alright?"

"...Alright."

The youth reluctantly released his grip on the harness straps around his body. Just as he was about to say something else, his expression suddenly changed, a wave of impatience washing over his features.

Immediately, he looked around, as if searching for something.

The sunlight illuminated the alley and the people around, with no reflective surfaces or mirrors in the vicinity.

The assistant who rushed over to offer him water quickly said, "Are you looking for Brother Ming? He had something to attend to and went out. Is there something you need? I can get it for you!"

"Not looking for him, give me the phone."

"Here, here—"

After he took the phone, he held it in his palm but did not turn it on.

On the pitch-black screen, the youth's face was clearly reflected, rosy-lipped, white-toothed, and youthful.

Just like the most standard prince from a fairy tale.

But in the next second, ripples seemed to spread across the black screen, and the face reflected in it underwent a change. It was still the same face, but the expression was completely different from the one on the body separated by the air.

The face in the reflection wore an expression of respectful deference, tinged with a hint of anxiety. His lips moved rapidly, but no sound escaped them.

The face before the phone screen was one of impatience. After listening for a moment, he muttered unhappily, "I've already said it—I'm looking for an opportunity!"

In that instant, as if the world had been refreshed,

Whoosh—

Ordinary people noticed nothing.

Only several hundred meters away, beside an ancient building, a young man with brown hair rubbed his eyes and looked around at the unchanged scenery, somewhat dazed.

Beside him, the man with black hair and blue eyes suddenly wore a look of confusion.

"What's that?"

It was a black blob, gently swaying...

#La.

At the same moment, the assistant watched as his boss stared blankly at his phone, then suddenly spoke.

What did he say?

Amidst the surrounding clamor, he couldn't hear clearly, so a question mark appeared above his head. He leaned in closer and asked, "What did you say?"

The teenager put away his phone. "Oh, I was wondering what to have for lunch."

"I've ordered from your favorite restaurant; the delivery is here. How about eating in the car?"

The crew, having finished their scene, quickly packed up and left. The two walked out together, passing by another crew waiting outside the alley.

The teenager, who hadn't had enough fun with the wirework in the alley, glared at them resentfully.

In the crowd, several burly men in floral shirts were particularly sensitive to such gazes. They immediately turned around in unison, watching warily.

Ah Qiang deftly rolled up his sleeves. "Was that kid glaring at us? What's the meaning of this, trying to provoke us, huh!"

The other bodyguards immediately tried to calm him down. "No, no, no, Brother Qiang, cool off. Don't take it seriously with a kid."

Thus, Ah Qiang, his mind filled with hashtags, held back his anger and glared back resentfully. Halfway rolled up on his shirt sleeve, solid arm muscles were revealed.

Forget it, hitting someone would land him in jail. Better to vent it out in the play.

Give the wall a hard punch!

Thinking this, Ah Qiang couldn't help but clench his fists excitedly, his back igniting with crackling flames of passion.

It was fortunate that Young Master Yu had a sudden whim to spend a day playing in the film city.

Acting in a film, it turns out, is quite enjoyable indeed!