Chapter 172

Chapter 172: Information

A Door that glimmered with faint light opened out of nowhere, and Yu Sheng stepped out. He saw Foxy standing in the living room and turning to look his way, while three Irenes sat in a neat row on the opposite sofa.

Yes, there were three Irenes now.

Foxy was the first to rush over and grab his hand, shaking it hard as she said: “Benefactor, you’re alive again! Are you all better? Does it still hurt?”

The Fox Maiden’s grip was fierce, and Yu Sheng felt his shoulder creak. He waved quickly and said, “All better, all better, just stop shaking me; you’re about to pull my arm off…”

Only then did the three Irenes speak in unison: “Did you see the Hunter?”

Yu Sheng rubbed the fur behind Foxy’s ear, walked over to the other sofa, and sat down looking tired, then sighed at the Irenes’ question and said, “Yeah, I saw them.”

One Irene looked puzzled and asked: “Then why the sigh? Did the talk go badly? How did it go between you two?”

Yu Sheng pulled a long face and waved his hand as he said, “One shot took me out. What was there to talk about?”

Irene blinked, then finally caught his meaning and frowned as she said: “The Hunter shot you? That makes no sense… you showed them the group photo, right? They saw it and still shot you? Did they think it was a scam? Or did the sight make them so upset they snapped?”

“Don’t pile up so many words,” Yu Sheng sighed. He reached out and poked the speaking Irene on the forehead, but his finger didn’t budge her and only his fingertip hurt instead. It was the one with rebar-and-stone for a skull. He rubbed his finger and said, “I think they mistook me for a wolf. I was polluted by Wolf Granny’s blood, and maybe I got stained a bit too much.”

Irene listened, then her face stiffened as she said: “…Huh? Is that even possible?!”

“Otherwise I have no other explanation,” Yu Sheng sighed and leaned back on the sofa. His body had fully healed after his “resurrection,” but the mental fatigue from cross-polluting with Wolf Granny and “intervening” in the Black Forest’s loop wasn’t so easy to shake. He added, “I didn’t do anything extra. I only showed them the photo, and no matter how I think about it, that photo shouldn’t be the reason they pulled the trigger.”

He stopped, frowning as he thought. The image of that hollow, formless figure raising the hunting gun at him replayed in his mind: the empty hood, the unseen gaze that still felt like a stare, the barrel of the gun…

[It didn’t feel simple.] He kept thinking the Hunter hadn’t just “shot.” [It felt like they were trying to communicate. Maybe… that shot was their message.]

But he could not understand it.

He frowned deeply, and just then his phone buzzed.

He reached for his pocket on reflex, and a split second later remembered what he had forgotten. One look at the screen showed a stack of texts and missed calls from Little Red Riding Hood-over a dozen messages, plus seven or eight missed calls.

Cold sweat broke out on his back. Irene craned her neck to peek, let out a little “oh no,” and started chattering as she said: “You kicked her out so clean back then, and now the bill collector is here. I’m telling you, humans at sixteen or seventeen are the hardest to handle, especially a proud girl who never wants to lose face. When you booted her from the team, you should’ve known-”

Yu Sheng shoved the nonstop beeper away, and the three Irenes toppled like dominoes, bursting into a chorus of colorful, razor-sharp insults. Grandpa Yu drowned at once in three times the usual cussing.

Ignoring the Doll’s triple-volume swearing, Yu Sheng answered the call with a troubled face. He hadn’t spoken yet when Little Red Riding Hood’s voice came through, angry and breathless but still full of worry as she said: “Why are you only picking up now! Where did you die off to!”

Yu Sheng felt awkward and said, “…Died in my room.”

Little Red Riding Hood said: “…?”

She had clearly prepared a bellyful of questions and a mountain of complaints after not reaching him, but his one line shut her down completely.

After several seconds, her voice came back much softer, hesitant, and lowered as if she feared someone nearby might hear as she asked: “You… died again?”

“It’s no big deal, you’ll get used to it later,” Yu Sheng tried to comfort her, then said, “That’s not the point. The point is we managed to kill ‘Wolf Granny’ once-after you left.”

Little Red Riding Hood went silent for a while.

At last her voice came through, low and flat, as she said: “It’s useless. It will show up again.”

“Yes, it will, but we’re wearing it down. Next time you face it, it might be less dangerous,” Yu Sheng said calmly. In his mind, scenes he had seen when the wolf poison was at its worst flickered by: those “Illusion Arts,” and on the “other side” of the Black Forest the web of branching forms like veins and nerves. He said, “More important, I’ve found some clues behind the Black Forest. I already planted a Back Door inside the Black Forest’s loop. We gained a lot today.”

A quiet inhale came through the phone.

Yu Sheng went on: “Now I have a question.”

“Ask.”

He hesitated, then said: “When you dealt with the Hunter… did they ever shoot at you?”

She blurted out: “The Hunter shot you?!”

“How do you think I died in the end?” Yu Sheng sighed and said, “They popped me with one shot.”

“The Hunter only shoots ‘wolves,’ usually Wolf Granny,” Little Red Riding Hood said after a pause. “In theory, if Wolf Granny was killed, the Hunter would disarm. Normally they aren’t that aggressive.”

“What if I was polluted by Wolf Granny’s blood at the time?” Yu Sheng asked at once. “Would the Hunter misjudge and treat me as a wolf because of that?”

Her answer was crisp and sure as she said: “Of course not.”

“So certain?”

“The Hunter can identify wolves accurately and won’t misjudge because of a bit of blood. I don’t know the exact principle, but the accuracy is certain,” Little Red Riding Hood said, firm and clear. “I’ve had their gun pointed at me many times. I’ve been swallowed by Wolf Granny, swallowed by the Evil Wolf, and polluted by their blood. If anyone has more ‘wolf’ in them than you, it’s me. And yet the Hunter’s bullet has never been wrong.”

Yu Sheng listened in silence for a long time, then nodded lightly and said: “Got it. Then I need to think this through.”

They talked a little more, confirmed each other’s safety, and after he endured a few of her complaints, they hung up.

By then, the three Irenes had climbed back on the sofa like nothing happened. One leaned in and asked: “So what does that shot from the Hunter even mean?”

Yu Sheng shook his head, opened his mouth to answer, and then felt an itch in his throat.

He coughed twice, but the itch only worsened.

He coughed hard, so hard it felt like his heart would be forced out and his lungs and windpipe dragged up. The coughs racked him without mercy.

Irene and Foxy jumped in shock and rushed to thump his back. Foxy’s tail puffed up as she said, panicked: “Benefactor, are you okay! Benefactor, are you allergic to my tail…”

Irene was just as frantic, pounding his back and shouting as she said: “Whoa, you sound like you’re about to cough yourself to death! What’s going on… don’t tell me you’re dying again? You just came back!”

The fit went on until Yu Sheng dry-heaved a few times, then at last he stopped with effort. He waved Foxy off, pried Irene’s arm away, and rasped: “Don’t hit me, you almost killed me… Next time do not use that body to pat my back. Who smacks people with rebar?”

Irene stared, about to protest, when Yu Sheng, still breathing hard, straightened up and opened his right hand.

It was what he had spat out during the coughing fit.

Foxy peered at the little metal lump and asked: “What is this?”

Irene’s eyes went blank as she said: “…A bullet?”

Yu Sheng said nothing. He calmed his breathing and stared at the thing in his palm.

It was a bullet head, smeared with thin lines of fresh blood, but its shape was odd. Short and thick, with spiral ridges on the nose, it wasn’t like a standard rifle round, not like a shotgun pellet, and larger than a handgun round. Fine ringed patterns layered the tail and waist, stamped by a machine. They didn’t feel like simple decoration, but carried a kind of mystery, like a symbol of supernatural power.

The pressure in his chest faded, and his breathing smoothed out.

Irene hooked a finger under his palm and tipped her face up as she asked: “So this is…?”

“The Hunter’s message,” Yu Sheng murmured.

Irene frowned and started to say: “Then how do we handle-”

Before the Doll could finish, Yu Sheng had already picked up his phone.

He took a photo, typed a quick note, and sent it to Bai Li Qing in one go. [Let’s see where you came from.]