Chapter 099

Chapter 99: Evil Wolf

Little Red Riding Hood did not react to the Giant Wolf rising from her shadow. It was like something had nailed her mind to the spot. She stood there, blank.

Yu Sheng snapped into motion. He kicked off the ground with the fastest burst of his life, stomping a deep pit into the marble. He shot forward like a cannonball and shoved the red-clad girl aside.

A heartbeat later, pain ripped across his shoulder as fangs tore into him.

Before the Giant Wolf could bite again, countless pitch-black threads laced the air behind Yu Sheng, sealing every opening. The threads pierced through the shadow wolves and layered bonds around the monster. A hot wave of Fox Fire roared up. Foxy, wrapped in ghostly blue fire, streaked past above Yu Sheng with afterimages and a thunderclap, and slammed headfirst into the huge wolf-shaped figure.

The crash shook the Exhibition Hall. This was Foxy after a full meal, angry and all-in. It was nothing like the headbutt that once killed Yu Sheng. A blast of force almost blew him off his feet. The Giant Wolf shattered into a wide splash of black ink-like shadow.

Two or three seconds later, the shadow drew itself together again. Purely physical damage seemed useless. A headbutt strong enough to punch through a main battle tank’s armor had only scattered it for a moment. It stood upright again. Its twisted head opened blood-red eyes and fixed on Yu Sheng.

Its fangs were still wet with Yu Sheng’s blood, making it look even more savage and eerie.

“What is that?!” Irene sucked in a breath. She threw up both hands, weaving Black Threads into a Spiderweb to drag at the unkillable shadow, and shouted to Foxy: “Silly Fox! Stop ramming it! You probably cannot kill it!”

The moment Irene finished, the huge human-shaped wolf froze, stuck in midair in a pounce aimed at Yu Sheng.

Wolf howls rose everywhere. The Wolf Pack that had gone still when Little Red Riding Hood went blank suddenly came back to life. Howling, they swarmed the frozen Giant Shadow Wolf. Under the stunned gazes of Yu Sheng, Irene, and Foxy, these pups, tiny beside the Giant Wolf, tore and bit, ripping the monster into pieces almost at once.

The black fragments drifted down, pooling and thickening into inky shadow that flowed back to the space behind Little Red Riding Hood.

Yu Sheng saw the red fade from her eyes. A trace of reason returned. She blinked and fully woke up.

“Are you okay?” they both blurted at the same time: “Are you okay?”

They fell silent. A heavy mood hung in the white Exhibition Hall.

“What just happened?” Yu Sheng was the first to speak, his face serious. “That half-human, half-wolf thing crawled out of your shadow.”

Irene came to stand beside him, her little Doll face holding a faint hint of caution. Foxy looked much the same.

“That was the wolf hunting me. It is a curse from Fairy Tale,” Little Red Riding Hood kept her head down, forcing herself not to look at the altar in the center. “The person put here in place of The Weeper carried strong mental pollution. I saw something I should not, and the Evil Wolf came into the real world for a moment. Sorry. You got hurt because of me.”

Yu Sheng glanced at his shoulder. He had bled a lot, but he could feel the wound already healing.

“The wound is not serious, but your loss of control was. You said this curse comes from Fairy Tale, but Fairy Tale is your Organization’s name, right?”

Little Red Riding Hood went quiet for two seconds and said softly: “Fairy Tale is an Otherworld.”

She reached into her bag and took something out.

It was a needleless injector, its glass tube filled with a faintly glowing liquid.

Yu Sheng could tell it was expensive. She hesitated and looked heartbroken before she pushed it into her arm.

“Relax. I will not lose control again, at least not during this operation,” she exhaled after the dose, then looked up at Yu Sheng and said: “The pay for this job, if there is still any pay after this mess, will all go to you.”

Yu Sheng frowned and asked: “Why?”

“I held the team back,” she sighed. “Rules are rules.”

“Oh, that is not needed. We split it like we agreed,” Yu Sheng waved it off. “What happened was an accident. In a team, someone always runs into accidents. That does not count as dragging the team.” A small, odd smile tugged at his mouth. “I care more about something else than pay and blame.”

Little Red Riding Hood stared, not understanding.

“Curiosity. I am interested in that Fairy Tale Otherworld you mentioned, and the curse on you. If I am not wrong, the curses on all of you,” Yu Sheng said earnestly, eyes bright. “I want to know what is going on with your group. Why an Otherworld cursed you, and why you took that Otherworld’s name as your Organization’s name.”

His gaze was very sincere. Yet staring into it, Little Red Riding Hood suddenly felt fear and a chill.

It was not that she sensed malice. It was not fear of Yu Sheng. She could not say what it was. It felt like facing something blazing and pure, with no malice, but far beyond Human understanding. [Is that really only curiosity?]

She hesitated. She normally would never speak of her Organization’s secrets, but other feelings tangled in her hesitation now.

Under Yu Sheng’s gaze, she gave way.

She nodded slowly and said: “If you really want to know, I can tell you. But it is a long story.”

“Great. Then we save it for later when we have time,” Yu Sheng said cheerfully. “Right now is the wrong time for a story. We still have this mess to clean up.”

He raised his head and looked at the sacrificed man.

The short, dangerous chaos had done plenty of damage in the Exhibition Hall. Pits and blast scars pocked the floor and walls, but they had solved it quickly, so the platform at the center stayed intact.

Only two “guards” had been knocked over by the shockwave from Foxy’s headbutt, and silver tails still covered their heads. These Entities that followed rules to the letter lay flat on the floor without moving. The sight was eerie and a little funny.

“Would the ‘guards’ do this?” Yu Sheng asked, looking at the dead victim.

“No,” Little Red Riding Hood shook her head at once. With the extra Sanity Blocking Agent, she could now look at the ritual, though a soft hiss of noise filled her head each time her eyes went that way. “The ‘guards’ only kill rule breakers inside the Museum. They would not do something this complex and clearly symbolic. This feels more like a human did it.”

“So someone got into the Museum before us, stole The Weeper from here early, and put a living person here as an offering,” Yu Sheng said, his frown digging deeper. “And that whole chain triggered the Museum’s ‘guards’, which led to the attack on us?”

“That is a reasonable chain of logic,” Little Red Riding Hood nodded. But seeing Yu Sheng stand beside the ‘altar’ so calm, she could not help asking: “You feel nothing looking at this sacrifice? You did not take a Sanity Blocking Agent ahead of time?”

“Nope,” Yu Sheng spread his hands. “I do not even know where to buy this Sanity Blocking Agent you are talking about. I suspect I still have not finished my newbie tutorial. You said you got polluted when you looked at the person on the platform. I do not feel anything.”

Little Red Riding Hood blinked and looked to Irene.

“Doll is not afraid of a little mental pollution,” Irene said, hands on hips.

Little Red Riding Hood looked to Foxy.

“She held off Hunger alone for decades in Night Valley,” Yu Sheng reminded her. “She drove Hunger so crazy it almost grew a brain.”

Little Red Riding Hood: “…”

[What kind of people are these!]