Chapter 096

Chapter 96: Proactive Test

Looking at the quiet hallway ahead, Little Red Riding Hood said to Yu Sheng: “The ‘guards’ generated in the Museum do not move across zones. We can rest here for a bit, then be extra careful when we move to another area. We still do not know how many ‘guards’ the Museum made. If they happen to block the white Exhibition Hall, that would be bad.”

Irene jumped down from Yu Sheng’s shoulder and frowned as she thought out loud: “The real question is how these ‘guards’ got ‘activated.’ We did not break any rules, but they attacked us the second they showed up.”

Little Red Riding Hood opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, then hesitated.

Irene asked her straight out: “What do you want to say?”

Little Red Riding Hood finally spoke: “The most likely answer is that someone else besides us also entered the Museum. They triggered the Museum’s ‘purge’ system. But that should not happen. I checked before we came. No other investigators were scheduled to come tonight.”

Irene thought for a moment, then said: “Maybe someone sneaked in with a shady goal.”

“Not likely,” Little Red Riding Hood shook her head and said, “The Special Affairs Bureau has rules. In the Borderland, anyone who opens an Otherworld must report it in advance. Every Node has monitoring, and they form a huge sensor net. If an Otherworld gate or a time-space Rift opens by mistake, it will trigger an alert.”

“Yeah, that part we know,” Irene said with zero shame, then rolled her eyes and focused on Yu Sheng.

Yu Sheng was squatting on the floor, picking up a plastic arm that was bent and warped.

It came from the ‘guard’ that leaped at him in the last instant before they crossed The Door. The Door sliced off the arm. Because it was too far from its body, the arm had gone completely inert. It lay there like a part fallen off a real mannequin, not moving at all.

Yu Sheng studied the severed ‘limb’ taken from the Entity, then tapped it on the floor. It made a hollow clack.

It looked like plastic and felt like plastic. [I wonder if it would taste like plastic if I took a bite.]

Before the weird thought finished spinning in his head, the little Doll shrieked: “Hey! Yu Sheng, what are you doing? That thing is plastic! You can’t eat it!”

“Please. I know I can’t eat that. I’m not that crazy,” Yu Sheng said, giving the Doll a helpless look. “Even if it weren’t plastic, I wouldn’t eat it. Those ‘guards’ are human-shaped. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’m just curious how these Entities move.”

Irene patted her chest and sighed with relief: “Good. You scared me. With you, I wouldn’t be surprised if you pulled a pot out of nowhere and stewed it on the spot.”

Yu Sheng looked speechless: “Is that really how you see me?”

Little Red Riding Hood watched them with a startled face.

She was not startled by Irene yelling, “You can’t eat that.” She was remembering the plate of stir-fried meat she had seen at Wutong Road 66. She even suspected Yu Sheng had just now considered whether the arm could be eaten, or at least thought about its texture.

Then she saw Yu Sheng pull out a small knife, cut a shallow line on his own arm, let the blood flow, and smear it on the plastic arm.

A different kind of eerie horror rose in her chest. Little Red Riding Hood cried: “What are you doing?”

“Seeing if I can get a bit of intel and build an edge,” Yu Sheng said as he carefully rubbed in the blood. “My blood can establish a link with many things, including Entities. I just don’t know if it will still work on a ‘limb’ that’s already been cut off.”

This time Irene stayed calm. She was already used to Yu Sheng’s level of creepy tricks. She even explained to Little Red Riding Hood: “Yu Sheng’s blood is weird. Foxy and I have both come in contact with it.”

“So seriously, you really don’t want a sip?” Yu Sheng turned to Little Red Riding Hood and held out his arm: “While the cut hasn’t closed yet. My wounds heal fast. If you wait, you’ll miss your chance.”

Little Red Riding Hood jumped off the wolf and backed away several steps: “No!”

She turned to the only silent one, Foxy. Her gut said this big Demon Fox might be the most normal one of the Hotel trio: “Do you not feel like anything is wrong here?”

Foxy just stared at Yu Sheng with open worship: “The Benefactor’s arts are profound. This is blood sorcery.”

Little Red Riding Hood blinked, confused. She had no idea what “blood sorcery” meant. She was a high schooler, and she had not dealt much with cultivation.

Meanwhile, Yu Sheng noticed his blood on the plastic arm was being sucked in at a speed he could see with the naked eye.

“Looks like it worked,” he muttered.

“Really?” Irene leaned in at once, eyes shining. “What do you see? Did you figure out why the ‘guards’ went crazy all of a sudden?”

“It’s just a fuzzy link. I can’t read anything that complex yet,” Yu Sheng said, waving for the Doll to quiet down. He focused his senses on the faint thread that his blood had made between himself and this Museum.

He slowly narrowed his eyes and pictured his senses stretching through the void, his gaze passing down the long hallway, through The Doors and across Exhibition Halls, moving between rows of displays. He searched for the arm’s source and for other auras like it.

All at once, he sensed them.

He even felt as if he stood among them.

He wore a security uniform. His body was tilted and stiff. All around him stood other mannequins in the same dark blue uniform.

But it was only a brief illusion. Like when he once sensed the movements of Hunger, Yu Sheng knew he had mistaken the “information” carried by his blood for an extension of his own limbs.

His link to the Museum was not that deep yet. If it kept getting stronger, the feeling might stop being an illusion. Like the “feast” in that Valley, he might truly “become” the guards standing in the Exhibition Halls and corridors for a short time.

“Most of the ‘guards’ are clustered that way, two intersections from us,” Yu Sheng said, opening his eyes and pointing toward one side hall. “Right now they’re all still. It looks like they haven’t received new orders. There are a few scattered ones far away in other Exhibition Halls. They don’t seem eager to move either.”

Little Red Riding Hood’s eyes widened in disbelief.

This was the first time she had seen Yu Sheng’s power so clearly. Their “fighting together” in Night Valley had been chaotic, and the intel she sensed then was limited.

She understood at once how useful this was.

With a single contact, as long as he found a chance to plant his blood inside a target, he could build a steady “sense” of it. He could learn in advance where Entities were inside an Otherworld and what state they were in. For a Spirit Realm Detective and for Investigators, this meant everything.

Right after that, a second thought hit her: did this power also work on Humans? She remembered Yu Sheng’s “want a sip” invite.

A chill ran up her back. She shook off the wild thought and asked quickly: “Then we can avoid direct contact with those Entities. Can you sense anything besides the ‘guards’ positions? Like the layout of the Exhibition Halls, or where the white Exhibition Hall is?”

“No,” Yu Sheng shook his head. “The link is shallow and built mostly on the ‘guards.’ I can barely sense the Museum’s structure.”

As he spoke, he cut another shallow line on his arm. Since the first cut had already healed, he used this fresh blood to smear the nearby wall and floor as a test.

The blood sank into the tiles and paint at once, but he felt almost no change.

“Maybe there isn’t enough of it,” he said seriously. “I think I would need to coat this whole place with my blood three or four times.”

The look on Little Red Riding Hood’s face went past startled into pure horror.

Luckily, Yu Sheng noticed her expression in time and, using basic common sense, figured out why she looked like she had seen a ghost. He waved his hand in a hurry: “I’m joking. I’m joking. I just have a strong explorer spirit.”

Little Red Riding Hood stared: “…”

[Is that how you use explorer spirit?!]