Chapter 153: Two Notes and a Scrap of Paper
Yu Sheng quickly located the two records.
The first he came upon was a hastily scribbled journal from a field operative trapped inside the High Risk Laboratory during the incident. The chaos had already unfolded when the note was written—the facility was sealed, alarms blaring, and the content of the note reflected the panic. Portions of it were smeared or deliberately left blank, either by the writer’s hand or later redactions:
“The Isolation Door has descended. Alarms ring from every direction. Hallucinations and noise are overwhelming my mind. I don’t know how much longer I can remain lucid. I leave this final note, striving to capture everything I see and feel… though my senses are compromised. Some of what follows may be distorted or altered. Investigators, tread carefully.
“The two Deep Divers who returned from the Deep Dive apparatus are dying. No medical support nor the apparatus can discern the cause. It seems their consciousnesses—or should I say ‘souls’—were shattered before returning to reality. What lies here are merely corpses still undergoing biochemical reactions, moving through inertia, attempting to transmit their final intel…
“The more stable of the two kept repeating strange words before speech became impossible. He mentioned ‘a baby’s crying,’ ‘Umbilical Cord,’ ‘slumber,’ and ‘twisting’—and something like ‘vessel’ or ‘ship,’ but that was screamed too loudly to be clear…
“I can’t imagine what they saw on ‘the other side.’ It clearly surpassed human understanding. The monitoring system connected to the Deep Dive Pool transmitted only static and noise…
“The ambient temperature is dropping. I can’t confirm if it’s a hallucination. XX (name redacted) suddenly collapsed, then awoke screaming—then collapsed again.
“Figures unfamiliar to me are moving in my vision. They speak to the others… to us… but I can neither hear nor see their faces clearly.
“…I suspect they are fellow laboratory staff, but I am rapidly losing my memory of everyone. Everyone looks unfamiliar. My memory and judgment are breaking down.
“The noise—it’s a mixture of screaming and crying—comes from nowhere. A voice urges me to continue writing, but I can barely hold the pen. Darkness creeps into my vision, and the air smells sickly sweet. The final rescue attempt may have failed. The ‘Mercy’ system is releasing anesthetic toxins across the area…
(From here, the handwriting becomes wildly erratic and nearly illegible. Many sections are heavily crossed out. Exercise caution—Internal Security Division)
“The crying is getting louder. I feel both body and mind sinking… a lullaby plays… XX is trying to calm us again… it’s not yet time…
“…Swaying, sinking, losing control. XX once said we would awaken in a peaceful, stable New World. But… we were abandoned. It’s fake. I don’t know…
“Breathe… breathe… crying… we are connected… we hold each other… breathe… breathe… we are one… breathe…”
The first note ended there.
Yu Sheng stared in a daze at the bizarre, chaotic scrawl that closed the document. Even though this was merely a transcript based on the original note, he could still feel the chill embedded in the words, transmitted through paper and across seventy years. He imagined that day—the failed operation, the sealed High Risk Laboratory, the final hours within, or perhaps the last fleeting moments. Unknowingly, his breathing grew heavy.
“This isn’t the only material left from inside the lab,” Bai Li Qing’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Other survivors left behind fragments—traces of madness more than records. If you’re interested, turn to the final page.”
Yu Sheng immediately flipped to the last page, revealing a series of black-and-white images and imprints collected at the site.
Strange scratch marks etched into desks and walls. Sheets scribbled over and over until only dark inkblots remained. Clothes marked with bizarre lines—symbols that might be language or pure abstraction.
As Bai Li Qing had said, utterly indecipherable.
Even the Special Affairs Bureau’s experts couldn’t make sense of these after decades. Yu Sheng, a layman, could only gaze at them, just as bewildered.
Yu Sheng flipped back to the spot he’d marked earlier, his gaze falling once more on the second report. Unlike the tangled chaos of the previous document, this was a brisk, clearly-written entry—a work note hastily penned by a Special Affairs Bureau Operative stationed outside the High Risk Laboratory.
“The lockdown sequence has been initiated. Operation ‘Coming of Age’ has failed. My colleagues are currently gathering and relocating critical materials according to emergency protocols. I am leaving behind this final record of the interior status of the lab.
“At forty minutes into lockdown, life signs within the lab began to drop rapidly. Communication with the inner team was lost. They may already be beyond rational contact.
“At fifty minutes, the surveillance system picked up strange noises—infant wailing echoed throughout the lab, mixed with other sharp, chaotic sounds. It sounded like… roaring. Life signs in the monitored sectors approached zero. Yet, horrifyingly, several individuals who had shown no vital signs abruptly moved. Their reanimation was brief, but chilling to behold.
“It was as if something had crawled inside their corpses, puppeteering them to rise and stagger about. They wandered through the lab, stiff and unnatural… as though curiously examining the place.
“Then, just as suddenly, the bodies collapsed again.
“By sixty-five minutes into lockdown, all sounds had faded. The unnatural cries and howls ceased entirely. All remaining life signs disappeared.
“At seventy-two minutes, the facility remains sealed under standard protocol. The surveillance sector is deathly silent. All anomalies have ceased. The Internal Security Department Door has now taken control of the zone and plans to open the Grand Door in twenty-four hours to retrieve my colleagues…”
The record ended there.
Yu Sheng remained hunched over, eyes still on the page. After several long seconds, he exhaled deeply.
This was his first time reading such an “operation log.” It was far more disturbing than he’d expected.
Lifting his head, he saw Bai Li Qing watching him silently, her gaze steady—as if she’d been observing him for a while.
“This isn’t what I expected,” Yu Sheng murmured after a moment of silence, frowning. “I thought I’d be reading about some exploration into the Black Forest or another Fairy Tale subset…”
Even as he spoke, he began to understand what Teacher Su had meant when she so specifically urged him to review the Special Affairs Bureau’s records.
This report—recorded by personnel from seventy years ago—presented a completely different perspective from the intelligence sketched out by the Cursed Children of the Orphanage through their encounters with the Fairy Tale Organization.
Bai Li Qing, unsurprised by his realization, responded quietly:
“The Fairy Tale Organization reveals one face to the Cursed Children, and a very different one to adults. What we’ve documented here is the far more dangerous truth beneath its surface.”
“Behind the stage…” Yu Sheng murmured.
Bai Li Qing’s eyes narrowed, clearly connecting his words to a broader understanding.
But before she could respond, a sudden shrill chime broke the stillness of the room.
Yu Sheng looked up, startled. He followed Bai Li Qing’s line of sight toward the enormous observation window.
Across the glass, a lab technician clad in a full hazmat suit was waving toward them.
Bai Li Qing immediately snatched the receiver from the phone on the desk. Her normally unreadable expression shifted the moment she heard the first few words.
“Are you certain?” she asked sharply.
The technician nodded vigorously on the other end of the line, still gripping his own handset.
Yu Sheng moved closer, trying to catch a clue. “What is it?”
“…They’ve finished analyzing that ‘paper slip’. They managed to restore its original form,” Bai Li Qing replied, her tone complex. She quickly tapped several commands into the control panel.
The large window screen flickered to life, revealing an image of the restored object.
Yu Sheng’s jaw fell open.
A familiar symbol adorned the paper, along with a few lines of text.
“That’s…”
“An old identification badge of a Deep Diver from the Special Affairs Bureau,” Bai Li Qing confirmed softly. “The name was erased.”
She flipped through Yu Sheng’s document, landing on the page with the list of personnel.
“…It belonged to them.”
Yu Sheng inhaled sharply.
His voice trembled with disbelief: “So the Hunter in the Black Forest… was one of the Deep Divers from Operation ‘Coming of Age’?”