Chapter 101: Curtain Falls Amid Applause
Yu Sheng, racing against the fading clarity of memory, spat out the entire torrent of intelligence he’d just absorbed—fast, messy, and dangerously close to biting his own tongue. It was instinct and short-term memory alone that carried him through. But when he finally stopped, Little Red Riding Hood blinked, dumbfounded, and released a flat “Huh?” that made him want to drop dead on the spot.
Luckily, Little Red Riding Hood then fished a voice recorder from her coat pocket.
“My habit,” she said while fiddling with the device. “You’d better develop it too—always keep a recorder running 24/7. Don’t use the Special Affairs Bureau-issued phones. Their batteries suck. This’ll do just fine. Out in the Otherworld, unexpected stuff happens all the time, and your attention span isn’t always reliable. Having a log helps you review everything.”
A faint static crackled before Yu Sheng’s hurried monologue replayed from the recorder.
Little Red Riding Hood, Irene, and Foxy all turned to look at Yu Sheng simultaneously, their gazes a strange medley of confusion, shock, and intrigue.
Foxy was the first to speak. “Benefactor, that was…?”
“He said it,” Yu Sheng pointed to the corpse beside him. “Opened his mouth so suddenly, I almost didn’t react. Good thing my short-term memory isn’t terrible.”
Irene and Little Red Riding Hood stared at him like he’d sprouted extra limbs. Only Foxy maintained her carefree grin, looking at Yu Sheng with adoration. “Benefactor, your Spirit Summoning Technique is amazing!”
“What is wrong with you?!” Irene gaped at her. “How are you okay with all this Door nonsense? Anything weird that happens to Yu Sheng, you just accept it like it’s normal?”
She turned to Yu Sheng, crimson eyes wide. “You were just standing there zoning out. When did the corpse start talking?!”
“Maybe… because I touched this?” Yu Sheng looked at the dried blood on his fingertip thoughtfully. “The moment I did, the whole hall seemed to freeze…”
Without holding back, he recounted his brief experience—the halted scene in the White Exhibition Hall, the strange conditions of Foxy, Irene, and Little Red Riding Hood. He even tried brushing the blood on the display case again, but this time, the “Conversation With The Dead” didn’t reoccur.
“Looks like a one-time thing,” he muttered, rubbing his fingers. “Little Red Riding Hood, does this make any sense?”
Little Red Riding Hood said nothing, still reeling from the chaos of it all. Yu Sheng didn’t need a response—her silence said enough.
Just another absurdity in the collection of absurd things that happened to him. Just another inexplicable turn in a world that stopped making sense long ago.
The little doll finally spoke up after a moment’s pause, voice cautious. “I don’t think… this was a hallucination.”
“Hallucination or not, we’ll know soon enough,” Yu Sheng said, pointing toward the exit on the far side of the White Exhibition Hall. “The dead man said the killer dumped the Weeping One Statue in the corridor.”
Foxy didn’t wait—she darted toward the corridor.
“Careful!” Irene called out. “Don’t walk into a trap or something!”
“Good point!” Foxy nodded and made a bizarre hand gesture. Eight of her nine fox tails detached, gliding ahead through the air in a swirl of Fox Fire, like a squadron of enchanted recon drones.
She even turned her head to explain, “Benefactor, this technique is called ‘Tail Commanding Technique’…”
Yu Sheng’s face twitched. He forced himself to stay serious and reached out with his senses in advance—no hidden “security” lay in ambush.
Little Red Riding Hood, however, still couldn’t quite stomach the sight of a Demon Fox Maiden using her tails like UAVs. Her eye twitched, lips parting several times in hesitation, before she finally gave up on saying anything.
Moments later, one fox tail returned from deep within the corridor, the tip coiled tightly around an object.
It was a small, pale sculpture—a woman with her face buried in her hands, her body twisted in the posture of weeping.
The Weeping One Statue.
The original target of this “commission.”
Fox Girl brought it back with pride, clutching the statue like a prized trophy as she presented it to Yu Sheng. “Benefactor, it’s real!”
Yu Sheng took the petite sculpture, barely more than twenty centimeters tall. But instead of the triumphant satisfaction of a job well done, a cold emptiness settled over him.
What was supposed to be a straightforward commission—a veteran guiding a rookie through a quick artifact retrieval—had spiraled into something far messier and far more dangerous.
“The statue really was in the corridor… which means the intel you ‘heard’ from the dead is probably true.” Little Red Riding Hood’s expression was complicated as she gazed at the “Weeping One Statue” in Yu Sheng’s hand. “I thought about it earlier, and the ‘Wu Dao River’ you mentioned is likely a mistake. But in the southern part of Boundary City, there’s a district called Wu Song River. It’s far from here… Boundary City is vast, and some districts have accents that differ from the main city.”
“And what about ‘Aid Its Arrival’ and ‘Deliver the Savior from Suffering’? Do those make sense to you?” Yu Sheng asked curiously.
“I’ve never dealt directly with Angel Cultists—it’s far too dangerous for an ordinary Spirit Realm Detective. When we stumble upon such clues, our first move is to report them, then get as far away as possible.” Little Red Riding Hood shook her head. “The Special Affairs Bureau certainly knows more. But… I really don’t recommend poking into this kind of thing.”
Yu Sheng frowned. “Why not?”
“Because the ‘Angels’ revered by Angel Cultists are, bluntly put, ‘Dark Angels’ — like that thing you saw in the Valley last time. Anyone who worships that thing as a god can’t possibly be sane.”
Her expression darkened.
“Even among the most deranged cults and extremist groups, Angel Cultists are the most irrational. Even the widely-wanted extremist faction ‘Black Spot Syndicate’ issues bounties against Angel Cultists in their controlled territories. That should give you an idea of how twisted they are.”
Fearing Yu Sheng still underestimated the danger, she added, “They’re not just insane. What’s more frightening is that they seem to have some real connection to the Dark Angels. Prolonged contact with them spreads madness. Sometimes, even the Dark Angels themselves start to take notice. That’s why even the ‘regular troops’ tasked with purging Angel Cultists must undergo rigorous psychological evaluations and are granted administrative leave after every encounter. Seriously, don’t mess with these people.”
Yu Sheng felt the gravity in her words. Recalling that eerie, terrifying eye he had once seen in the Valley, his expression grew solemn. “Alright. I understand.”
Little Red Riding Hood let out a breath of relief and looked around the eerie and ravaged White Exhibition Hall.
“We should go.”
“How do we leave again?” Yu Sheng asked. “Uh, I mean the proper way.”
Before she could answer, Irene tilted her head in confusion. “Huh? We’re not just opening a Door and heading home?”
“Better not.” Yu Sheng scratched his face awkwardly. “It’s late, and we can’t call the Special Affairs Bureau from the Otherworld to notify them. If alarms go off over there, it’ll be a mess. Plus, I want to experience the proper withdrawal process from the Otherworld.”
“Ahem, normally there’s two ways to leave the Museum,” Little Red Riding Hood coughed softly. “One, survive until the end of the ‘Night Performance,’ which is dawn in the real world. Two, bring ‘Night at the Museum’ to a grand ‘Curtain Call’ that triggers roaring applause in the theater — that applause ends the show early.”
“Waiting for dawn takes too long,” Yu Sheng shook his head. “So what’s this ‘Curtain Call’ thing? What do we have to do?”
“There’s no clear standard. Think of our actions in the Museum as a performance on stage. We have to impress or astonish the unseen audience watching us from the theater seats. There are many ways to achieve it. Sometimes, it just happens randomly — someone once painted a picture in the Exhibition Hall, another just hummed a tune. One got applause during a team argument. The most absurd case? An Investigator, injured and desperate, cursed the Museum in a rage—and suddenly, thunderous applause erupted…”
Yu Sheng: “…”
[So it really is that arbitrary?!]
He glanced toward the little doll now perched once more on his shoulder.
Irene immediately glared, puffing up with (not very) intimidating anger. “What are you staring at me for?! It’s rude to treat a lady this way, you know! I speak from the heart, okay? Do you have a stereotype of me or something…”
Yu Sheng thought about it and decided it was a bit unreliable to depend on Irene ranting her way into a standing ovation. He turned to Little Red Riding Hood. “That chase with the ‘Security’ earlier was pretty thrilling. Doesn’t that count as enough for the Curtain Call?”
“Fighting is actually one of the least effective ways to trigger a Curtain Call,” she explained seriously. “Security is part of the Museum’s normal mechanics. Any fight with them is considered part of the script and doesn’t count as impressive or unexpected.”
Yu Sheng immediately started thinking.
Little Red Riding Hood sensed it too—Yu Sheng had an idea again.
Sure enough, he said, “You just said fighting Security is part of the Night at the Museum script, right?”
She nodded, not understanding where this was going. “Right.”
“Then what if we created a huge ‘artistic display’ without ever encountering Security?”
“…Huh?”
Without further explanation, Yu Sheng turned to Foxy. “Do you have enough tails in reserve?”
Foxy nodded excitedly. “Plenty. And I still have Fox Fire—that one’s unlimited.”
“Perfect.” Yu Sheng beamed.
Little Red Riding Hood found his smile unsettling. She finally couldn’t help asking, “What are you planning?”
Yu Sheng chuckled, pointing toward a Door nearby. “See that? We came from there. There’s a massive Exhibition Hall beyond it, filled with statues and antiques. Have Foxy pile all her reserve tails there. While the Security’s not around, we blow the whole place sky-high. If that’s not enough, we burn every Exhibition Hall along the way and collapse every corridor here…”
Little Red Riding Hood stared, dumbfounded. Even more so when Foxy nodded without hesitation.
But before she could voice her protest, and before Yu Sheng could take action—
Thunderous applause erupted throughout the Museum.