Chapter 175

Chapter 175: Old Matters Raise Doubts

Yu Sheng shook his head, forcing those tangled guesses aside.

Whether this place was some independent pocket of consciousness or truly his “dream,” there was only one question that mattered right now: why was Xiao Xiao here?

His mind jumped to the two people who had shown up before—Little Red Riding Hood and Foxy.

If he was being strict about it, Irene counted too. The little doll had managed to enter on her own with that strange “dream entry” ability.

…Was it because of the blood connection?

Xiao Xiao stood a few steps away, blinking up at him, her expression openly puzzled.

Yu Sheng reached out and ruffled her hair. Explaining any of this to a six-year-old felt impossible, so he chose the simplest answer. “You’re dreaming.”

“Then, Uncle… are you someone I dreamed up?” Curiosity lit her whole face.

Yu Sheng froze. After a beat, he forced the words out. “…Yeah. You dreamed me.”

Xiao Xiao’s eyes widened. “Then can you turn into XMasked Rider?”

Yu Sheng finally realized the conversation was veering somewhere else entirely. “…No.”

She considered that seriously. “Ultraman works too.”

He couldn’t take it anymore. Yu Sheng crouched until he was level with her and spoke like he was delivering a solemn truth. “Even in dreams, there are still things you can’t do.”

“Oh.” She sounded genuinely disappointed, like she’d finally let go of a grand plan.

A few seconds passed.

“Then Rainbow Little X—”

“No.”

“Fine. Then I won’t change.”

Xiao Xiao plopped down on the spot, plucked a few blades of grass from the side, and started carefully tying them into knots.

Yu Sheng couldn’t help thinking of Little Red Riding Hood’s complaints the last time she’d been here. He crouched beside Xiao Xiao. “Do you feel like it’s a little boring here?”

Xiao Xiao nodded, then immediately shook her head so hard her bangs bounced.

“There aren’t any wolves here,” she said quietly. “It’s better than other dreams.”

Yu Sheng paused, sinking into thought.

Before he could say more, he heard something—faint, far away. It took him a moment to realize it wasn’t coming from this “dream” at all. It was a sound from the real world, tugging at his awareness.

“Uncle has to go,” Yu Sheng said quickly, turning to Xiao Xiao. “You’ll probably stay here. When nap time ends, your teacher will wake you up.”

He forced his voice gentle. “Don’t be afraid. It’s safe here.”

Xiao Xiao blinked and gave him a polite little wave. “Goodbye, Uncle.”

Yu Sheng let go of his grip on his own consciousness. The wasteland fell away beneath him, and the sound in his head yanked him hard back to reality.

The next second, pressure slammed down across his body. His chest felt so heavy he could barely breathe.

He opened his eyes and, sure enough, saw three dolls on top of him—two Irenes pinning his arms and a leg, and a third sprawled asleep right across his chest.

They all looked exactly the same, but he could still tell. The one on his chest was Rebar Irene.

“Get off—get off! You’re going to crush me to death!”

Yu Sheng flailed, using both hands and feet to peel them off. It felt like wrestling a pile of koalas. By the time he wriggled free, half his body had gone numb. For a terrible second he honestly wondered if he’d been crushed once already and only barely resurrected.

His phone on the nightstand kept ringing. He grabbed it and saw the caller ID: Little Red Riding Hood.

Ignoring the dolls’ sleepy grumbling, he answered. “Hello?”

“Do you remember that operation we did at the museum last time?” Little Red Riding Hood didn’t waste a single word.

Yu Sheng blinked, caught off guard. He’d still been thinking about Xiao Xiao slipping into his “dream.” He’d assumed this call was about the orphanage. He hadn’t expected her to drag up the museum job from so long ago.

“…Yeah,” he said. “I remember.”

“Do you remember how the payment still hasn’t come through?”

“Ah—if you didn’t mention it, I’d almost forgotten!” Yu Sheng sat up straighter. “Yeah. The payment never came. Did something happen? Did you go collect? Are they refusing to pay?”

The topic shift felt jarring. Lately, every conversation with her circled the forest, fairy-tale trouble, the Big Bad Wolf. Now she was back on a job they should’ve already wrapped up.

Then her next sentence erased every other thought.

“My client is dead.”

Yu Sheng’s blood ran cold. “…What?”

“Since we never received payment from the Curiosities Association, I thought something was off, so I tried to reach him,” Little Red Riding Hood said, voice heavy. “But every contact method he left me failed. Today I asked a few other people I know in the association. They told me he had an accident a few days ago. He’s already dead.”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer right away. But he could feel the shape of the problem in her words, like a bruise you only notice when you press it.

Then it hit him. “Wait—then what about the commission for the ‘weeping one statue’?”

“Sounds like you got there too,” Little Red Riding Hood said quietly. “The Curiosities Association is big. Legit. If they post a public commission, even if the person in charge has an accident, there should be a process. Someone else should take over. It shouldn’t be ‘the person died, so the payment gets swallowed.’”

She exhaled. “So I checked the commission through their official process. Guess what I found?”

Yu Sheng let out a humorless laugh. “Do I even need to guess? If you’re saying it like that… the commission doesn’t exist.”

“Right. It doesn’t exist. In the association’s public listings, there was never a recovery commission for the ‘weeping one statue’.” She sounded exhausted. “I just don’t know if it was fake from the start, or if someone deleted the record recently.”

Yu Sheng’s brows drew together.

It had been days since the museum operation. Even with the cult sacrifice afterward, even with the angel cultists stirring up chaos, in his mind that job had ended—at least on his side and Little Red Riding Hood’s.

But now, something that should have been finished was rippling again, and he could smell it: the stench of a conspiracy.

If the commission had been fake from the beginning, it would almost be simpler. A rule-breaking member trying to dodge oversight, hoarding a museum piece for profit. They got the item, then died. A nasty mess, but still the kind of mess one person could make.

But if the commission had existed—and someone had recently scrubbed every trace of it—then this was a much deeper pit.

“I just… something feels wrong,” Little Red Riding Hood said, and there was real apology in her voice. “And the money we agreed to split with you never showed up, so I wanted to call and explain. Sorry. You did a lot of work. It’s been dragged out this long, and now it turned into this…”

“Forget the money,” Yu Sheng cut in. “What are you doing next? We keep digging, right?”

“…Yeah.” She hesitated. “At the very least, I need to find out how he died. I worked with him for years. He was the one who first connected me inside the Curiosities Association. He even… helped the previous ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’ too.”

Her voice tightened. “No matter what, I don’t believe he’d pull something like this for personal gain. And his death is suspicious. It feels too much like—”

“Like someone silenced him,” Yu Sheng said evenly.

“…Yeah.”

“Then let’s meet and talk,” Yu Sheng said. He let out a slow breath. “Do I come to you, or do you come to me?”

There was a pause, then a startled sound. “Huh? I wasn’t trying to trouble you. I just wanted to tell you about the payment. I was going to handle the investigation myself…”

“Come on.” Yu Sheng didn’t let her finish. “You’ve already said this much. Now you’ve got my curiosity. And this is disgusting. They’re even cheating the child laborer out of her money.”

Little Red Riding Hood went very, very quiet.

Yu Sheng grumbled on for another second, then remembered something. “Oh, right—does the Special Operations Bureau handle this?”

“Of course. This was a commissioned job filed on the Border Comms platform. If there’s breach of contract or illegal hiding and movement of curios, the authorities will investigate. And this time someone died.” Her tone sharpened. “But their direction and methods won’t match a spirit realm detective’s.”

“Good. Let them investigate their way. We’ll investigate ours.” Yu Sheng waved a hand like she could see it. “So? Am I coming to you, or are you coming to me?”

Two seconds of silence.

“…I’ll come to you,” she said at last. “I’m nearby right now. About half an hour.”

“Okay. I’ll wait at home.”

“Yeah, and… thanks.”

The call ended. Yu Sheng stared at the screen until it went dark, then let out a quiet breath.

When he looked up, three little dolls were sitting neatly on the bed, staring at him with identical red eyes.

“Some~thing~ hap~pened~ a~gain~,” they sang in unison, dragging the words out on purpose.

Yu Sheng glared and pointed at the one in the middle. “You. From now on, you are not allowed to sleep on the bed.”

Rebar Irene’s eyes went even redder. “…Why?!”

“Why?” Yu Sheng’s voice rose. “Because you almost crushed me to death! You’re rebar and solid stone. You went from about 1.67 meters down to barely over sixty centimeters, and I’m still more scared of you than before. One bounce and you’ll punch a hole straight through the mattress. Get down.”

He shouldn’t have said it.

The moment the words left his mouth, Irene let out a loud, offended “Awoo!” and pounced.