Chapter 152

Chapter 152: Operation Record

The moment Yu Sheng heard Bai Li Qing’s account, he knew the operation’s failure had been inevitable. The mistake they’d made was enormous—so wrong it almost felt absurd.

And yet it was the kind of misjudgment that was nearly impossible to avoid.

Fairy Tale’s early behavior was misleading by nature: slow, weak, targeting only children. Worse, it had a unique core-and-subset structure. The true core of Fairy Tale was hidden behind the dream-stage it wove, and seventy years ago, the Special Operations Bureau had no way to know that.

Yu Sheng flipped through the archive, eyes moving steadily over the operation record labeled “Adulthood.” Attached at the beginning was a set of materials describing Fairy Tale’s first appearance and its early influence events. Most of it matched what Little Red Riding Hood had told him at the orphanage.

The initial outbreak point was an orphanage called Warm Sun Orphanage. It fell under a public welfare unit subordinate to the Councilor Council. In the half month before the first outbreak, several strange incidents occurred: children waking up in terror and wandering in a daze, or fainting in the middle of the day. At night, the watch reported hearing sounds from the dorm area—wolves howling, wind, soldiers marching in formation.

According to the record, none of it was ignored. The day after the report, a Special Operations Bureau investigation team entered the orphanage for a detailed inspection. A so-called “anomaly doctor” went with them and examined the children who’d been having nightmares and fainting spells. By standard procedure, the Bureau and the Councilor Council had responded quickly, with no major oversights.

But the investigation found no trace of Fairy Tale.

Maybe the technical means of the time were insufficient. Maybe Fairy Tale was truly weak then, still dormant. Even the anomaly doctor—someone with extraordinary techniques—could find no clues in the children’s nightmares.

Not long after that early investigation ended, Fairy Tale finally bared its fangs in the real world for the first time.

Overnight, a wildly overgrown rose thicket erupted across the orphanage grounds, centered on the dormitory area. At dawn, the rose thicket retreated. But from that point on, one little girl and two night security guards were missing.

“We later confirmed the first story to lose control was Sleeping Beauty,” Bai Li Qing said from beside him. “But at the beginning, the Bureau judged the incident as leakage from an unknown otherworld. We believed that otherworld was parasitic in the orphanage.”

“The Councilor Council organized an evacuation and temporarily housed the children elsewhere. Then an action team of elite investigators entered the orphanage and performed an extremely thorough search.”

Yu Sheng didn’t need to read the next sentence to know how it went.

They found nothing.

“And just as the investigation hit a dead end,” Bai Li Qing continued, “a second loss of control occurred. A relocated child suddenly fainted and transformed into an out-of-control giant wolf.”

“Fortunately, when we relocated the children, we considered the possibility that they’d already been contaminated. The temporary containment facility had a higher security level, and the out-of-control giant wolf was subdued quickly. We ultimately couldn’t save that child, but the damage didn’t expand.”

Her voice steadied, precise. “And because we intervened in time, we captured our first real clue about Fairy Tale. We confirmed the existence of the Black Forest. That was the first subset to be confirmed and named.”

She pointed to the archive in front of him. “Only after that came Operation ‘Adulthood.’”

Yu Sheng kept flipping through the later pages. “At first, you thought the Black Forest was the entire otherworld?”

“Yes,” Bai Li Qing said, nodding. “At the time, we hadn’t confirmed the existence of other subsets. Understanding Fairy Tale’s structure came much later.”

Yu Sheng murmured acknowledgment and kept reading.

The Bureau used technical means to lock onto an “intervention window” into the Black Forest and carry out a deep dive. The core of Operation Adulthood was that deep dive.

When Yu Sheng saw the term, the first person he thought of was Xu Jiali. He was a Senior Deep Diver. From what Yu Sheng had learned from him and Li Lin, a Deep Diver was an elite special-warfare operative—stronger, more versatile, more refined than ordinary agents. They specialized in extreme missions in dangerous zones, and they could use specialized equipment and techniques to enter “battlefields” most people couldn’t even imagine, fighting things beyond reason and common sense.

“The deep dive mentioned here,” Yu Sheng asked, “what exactly does the process look like?”

“You can think of it as a controlled technique for sinking toward a specific otherworld,” Bai Li Qing said without hesitation, as if none of this was confidential. “By injecting an inducer and overlaying neural signals, we pull operatives’ awareness to the edge of the rational world. Then, through specialized equipment, those hypnotized personnel are sent into an otherworld and awakened on the other side.”

“It doesn’t always work,” she added. “But it works for most otherworlds.”

Irene muttered, “Sounds like a hassle. And dangerous.”

“It is,” Bai Li Qing said. Her gaze shifted to Yu Sheng. “Especially compared to your doors. But the advantage is that it’s controllable, reproducible, and scalable. It can be used on more people.”

Her voice didn’t change, but the meaning carried weight. “To fight the enormous number of otherworlds and entities, we need manpower in similarly enormous numbers.”

Yu Sheng didn’t respond. He turned to the next page.

A long list of names filled the sheet.

His expression tightened the instant he saw it.

Bai Li Qing spoke, still calm, but with a strange gravity. “In Operation ‘Adulthood,’ twelve Deep Divers, thirteen Special Operations Bureau agents, and seven logistics and support staff were killed or went missing. In addition, four children died on site due to otherworld loss of control. Six perimeter monitors were impacted, went insane over the following years, and ultimately died early.”

Even Irene, usually all laughter, fell silent. She stared at the material with a complicated look and didn’t speak.

Yu Sheng continued reading, skipping overly technical sections and anything he already understood. His eyes skimmed action logs, line after line:

The Deep Divers conducted three dives.

The first attempt failed. The inducer put the participants into a sleep state, but on the hazy border of consciousness, they found only a chaotic barrier and couldn’t enter any otherworld.

In the second attempt, some of them briefly entered a space described as empty and dim, tangled with large quantities of web-like structures. The space was filled with crying-like noise. It didn’t match any known subset within Fairy Tale.

In the third attempt, casualties erupted.

The Deep Dive team members who entered that alien space were almost all lost instantly. Only two returned—but they survived only a few dozen minutes before rapidly weakening and dying for unknown reasons.

Then the contamination broke out.

Some unknown thing entered the real world and began rapidly killing every adult on site.

At the critical moment, safety procedures worked. The facility was sealed, and the contamination was contained inside the lab. But the price was horrific: agents and staff who couldn’t evacuate, and four children.

Yu Sheng’s brow furrowed deeper with every paragraph. Reading the second dive observations and the third dive collapse, something didn’t fit.

Soon, he realized what it was.

“…Did they enter the Black Forest?” He looked up into Bai Li Qing’s eyes. “I’ve been into the Black Forest. It’s dangerous—wolves, shadows, lethal rules—but if you’re careful, it isn’t immediately deadly. Even if adults are targeted in there, it shouldn’t match what this report describes.”

He shook his head, unable to finish the thought.

Those Deep Divers were professionals. Trained. Experienced. Even if they died, it shouldn’t have happened that fast.

Because the Black Forest didn’t have a mechanism that instantly swallowed intruders. And it certainly wasn’t an empty, dim space full of web-like structures and crying noise.

“Exactly,” Bai Li Qing said, as if she’d expected him to arrive there. “That’s the key issue. Based on the direct observation materials left at the time, the place they entered… was not the Black Forest.”

Yu Sheng’s eyes widened. “Then where was it?”

“Possibly a subset that only opens to adults,” Bai Li Qing said, a quiet weariness in her voice. “Or a null zone between subsets. Or something deeper—the core of Fairy Tale itself. There are too many possibilities.”

She let out a soft sigh. “Look at the two records attached later. One is a recollection from an external monitor. The other was recorded by someone inside the lab, just before they died.”