Chapter 154

Chapter 154: Yu Sheng’s Plan

The small room went quiet.

Yu Sheng and Bai Li Qing both sank into thought. Foxy and Irene didn’t fully understand what was happening, but they could tell it was complicated from the way Yu Sheng looked, so neither of them dared to break the silence.

After a long while, Yu Sheng looked up again. His gaze returned to the Deep Diver ID on the screen, then back to the operation record on the table.

“Can you tell which one of them it was?”

“The name and key ID number were scratched out,” Bai Li Qing said. “We can’t restore them. We also can’t tell whether it was intentional.”

She paused, then added, “We can only conclude it was one of the twelve team members who performed the deep dive mission seventy years ago. Perhaps we can exclude the two who successfully returned to the real world.”

Then she frowned and shook her head slightly. “No. According to the archives, those two likely only had their bodies return. Their souls should still be trapped in the Fairy Tale otherworld… the same as the other ten.”

Yu Sheng didn’t speak. His thoughts churned into a snarl. Guesses and facts linked together, then broke apart again, one after another, collapsing under contradictions he couldn’t resolve.

At last, he broke the silence, hesitant. “Do you remember what we were just talking about?”

Bai Li Qing nodded.

“The twelve Deep Divers back then,” Yu Sheng said, choosing each word carefully, “the place they reached probably wasn’t the Black Forest. But I picked up that scrap of paper in the Black Forest. And Hunter is an entity that wanders deep in the Black Forest.”

“That’s what puzzles me too,” Bai Li Qing admitted. “The Bureau’s conclusion has long been that the deep dive team did not enter any known subset of the Fairy Tale otherworld. In theory, even if they left relics behind, those items shouldn’t appear in the Black Forest unless…”

Yu Sheng looked up. “Unless what?”

“Unless, after the accident, those Deep Divers were still active deep within Fairy Tale,” Bai Li Qing said quietly, “and eventually found a path leading to the Black Forest.”

Yu Sheng’s eyes sharpened. He spoke slowly. “And then they—or one of them—became the Hunter in the Black Forest.”

At that moment, Irene finally spoke, tugging at his sleeve. She hesitated, then said, “Um. Don’t blame me for being a buzzkill, but Hunter might not be one of them. It could be that those team members were killed, and that ID was Hunter’s trophy. I mean… Hunter is an entity in the Black Forest, right?”

Yu Sheng and Bai Li Qing both turned to look at her at the same time.

Irene shrank back instinctively. “I said don’t blame me. It’s just a guess.”

Bai Li Qing was silent for a beat, then nodded. “We can’t rule that out.”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer. His mind dragged him back into the Black Forest—to that dim wooden cabin hung with a red cloak, to the empty figure in hunter’s garb.

Hunter had no face. No speech. Its movements were stiff, unnatural, like a puppet pulled by rules instead of intention. However you looked at it, it seemed more like a bizarre entity generated by an otherworld than a living person with anything like humanity.

And yet… when Yu Sheng told it the child swallowed by Wolf Granny had been safely returned to reality, that empty hood had nodded—just once.

Was that faint nod its last shred of humanity?

“Do you have more detailed material?” Yu Sheng asked suddenly. He pointed to the list in the archive. “About the twelve-person group.”

“Yes,” Bai Li Qing said immediately. “I’ll have someone send it over.”

She picked up the phone and gave a few instructions.

For a short while, Yu Sheng waited, watching the work beyond the window.

The lab staff remained busy. Even with the scrap of paper restored and its origin confirmed, there were still countless details worth analyzing: chemical changes, stain composition, soil particles carried on it—tiny clues that could become leverage for ordinary people trying to fight an otherworld.

On the other side of the window, the second operating room was still scanning the mysterious metal device that had appeared in the room at Wu Tong Road 66. Compared to the rapid results from the paper, this analysis was clearly running into trouble. The technicians hadn’t produced anything useful yet.

Maybe that kind of difficulty was normal when it came to otherworld samples.

But Yu Sheng’s attention had drifted away from the iron lump entirely. Everything in his mind was now pinned to Fairy Tale.

Less than ten minutes later, someone delivered the materials he’d requested.

It was a stack of personnel files printed from the database—about a dozen pages of basic information on the Deep Dive team: names, ages, photos, service records.

Yu Sheng flipped through them one by one, matching names to the list in the operation archive and studying the black-and-white portraits.

Twelve people. Men and women. Some looked like hardened veterans in middle age. Others looked like young adults around his age.

At the end was a group photo. The twelve wore heavy protective armor with an old-school sci-fi feel. They stood in front of a building in a neat line. No arms slung over shoulders. No victory signs. No forced smiles. They’d removed their helmets and posed with rigid formality, like an at-attention portrait.

“This was taken before departure,” Bai Li Qing said. “It’s Bureau policy. Before each deep dive mission, all participants take a group photo.”

Yu Sheng nodded, staring at the image for a long time. Then he spoke, voice low. “Can I take this with me?”

“Just this. I won’t take any other documents.”

“What do you want to do with it?” Bai Li Qing asked.

“Show it to Hunter,” Yu Sheng said. “If I get the chance.”

Bai Li Qing considered him for a moment. “In principle, none of this material can leave this room. Not a single sheet.”

Yu Sheng’s shoulders sank. “…Okay.”

“But the principles are in my hands,” Bai Li Qing said evenly. She pushed the photo toward him. “Take it. Don’t spread it. When this incident ends, destroy it at an appropriate time.”

Yu Sheng froze. “…Huh?”

Bai Li Qing looked at him. “Is there a problem?”

Yu Sheng snapped out of it. He took the page, folded it carefully, and tucked it away. Under his breath, he muttered, “I didn’t think you had a sense of humor.”

“I’m not an iron poker face,” Bai Li Qing said, expression unchanged.

Yu Sheng stared. “I didn’t even say that out loud.”

“I’m just used to being serious.” She moved on without missing a beat. “Tell me your plan. How do you intend to deal with Fairy Tale?”

“Besides this intelligence, what else do you need us to do? We’ll do our best.”

Yu Sheng suddenly felt embarrassed. “You’ve already helped a lot…”

“In the matter of Fairy Tale, the Special Operations Bureau has an old debt,” Bai Li Qing said, cutting him off with calm eyes and an even calmer voice. “And you are, so far, the only adult who can enter subsets like those children and remain unaffected. You also successfully rescued a child from deep within the Black Forest. We have more than enough reason to continue helping.”

Yu Sheng held her gaze for a long moment, then let out a slow breath.

“I’m trying to drag out the ‘storyteller’ behind the Black Forest,” he said. “From what I’ve observed—and what I can sense from those wolf packs—I’m basically sure each subset of Fairy Tale is controlled and driven by a story source. That source is probably the thing the deep dive squad ran into back then.”

He paused, then leaned forward slightly, eyes serious. “But my problem is that I can enter the Black Forest, and I still can’t find a path to the back side of the stage. That might be the exact opposite of what the squad encountered.”

“They most likely landed directly on the back side of the stage.”

Bai Li Qing understood immediately. “So if Hunter really is one of the Deep Divers from back then…”

“Then it will know how to reach the back side of the stage,” Yu Sheng said. He tapped his pocket where the folded group photo rested against his body. “That squad may have drilled through the deeper barrier of Fairy Tale. It’s just that by the time they did, they’d already lost all contact with the real world.”

“But Hunter can’t communicate,” Bai Li Qing said. “And it has no reason.”

“So I need this,” Yu Sheng said. “This might work.”

Bai Li Qing’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Using a group photo to stir a soul that’s already become an entity… to bargain for its last shred of humanity?”

She sounded almost skeptical, almost irritated. “You really think something that sounds like a trope will work?”

“If it doesn’t,” Yu Sheng said, and somehow managed to smile, “I’ll think of something else. Either way, I’ll try.”