Chapter 180

Chapter 180: Traces Left

Irene released the secret letter. The unfolded paper instantly billowed into layers of phantom flame, then shrank in a blink, folding itself into a perfectly ordinary sheet.

Yu Sheng stared at it without moving, brows drawn tight.

After a long moment, Little Red Riding Hood’s voice came from beside him. “…Old Zheng. It really was him.”

There was hesitation in her tone—resistance, too. She had come here to confirm something, but the truth was the last thing she wanted.

That sacrifice in the museum’s White Exhibition Hall really had been a trap aimed at her. And the person who led her into it really was the contact she had trusted.

Worse, the letter made it obvious that “Old Zheng” was likely being played as well.

“It’s signed ‘the servant of the angel.’ That tells us enough,” Yu Sheng said calmly, flicking the paper between his fingers. “This came from one of the cultists who follow the dark angels—the same group that ran the sacrifice ritual in the White Exhibition Hall. They used old-fashioned mail to communicate, probably so they could erase their tracks with this kind of ‘spell.’”

“Whoever received it swallowed the bait whole,” Irene added. “Blessings, escaping curses, kindness, being misunderstood by the world… it’s classic cult bait. And sometimes, it works.”

Yu Sheng glanced at Little Red Riding Hood’s face, thought for a moment, then said, “From what’s written here, ‘Old Zheng’ probably didn’t realize it was a trap. He may have genuinely believed he was helping you. And if he’d wanted to help for a long time, that’s exactly the kind of weakness those people would exploit.”

Little Red Riding Hood didn’t answer. After a while, she muttered, as if to herself, “Someone who deals with curios and otherworldly things all day… how could he fall for something like this? How long have they been stringing him along?”

“Probably not a short time,” Yu Sheng said, replaying the wording in his head. “It mentions ‘seeing it with his own eyes.’ That means he wasn’t just listening to promises. They may have pulled him into rituals. At the very least, he’d already touched something connected to the dark angels before he lured you into the White Exhibition Hall.”

He paused, then added softly, “And there’s another key point. They probably weren’t targeting you personally. They were targeting what stands behind you—Fairy Tale.”

Little Red Riding Hood still didn’t speak. She only turned her gaze to the other letters and sticky notes scattered on the table.

“Irene,” Yu Sheng said at once, “see if there’s anything else like this hidden in here.”

“I’ll look.”

Irene sat down amid the pile of clutter and began rummaging through it with quick, impatient hands.

She searched for a long time. Nothing.

“That’s it,” the doll said, perched on the table with her legs swinging. “Everything else is ordinary. Even these letters—looks like traditional mail was just his hobby. I scanned the room too. Nothing worth panicking over.”

Yu Sheng wasn’t surprised.

Anything directly tied to the cultists had likely been moved ahead of time or destroyed. Only this last letter had slipped through.

Still, he didn’t feel discouraged. He simply shifted his focus and began combing the room with more care, checking corners and cracks, looking for the kind of clues people leave without realizing it.

If Old Zheng had sunk deep enough to actively reach toward the dark angels, it would have seeped into daily life—changed habits, small slips, stray notes. People leave marks just by living. You can’t scrub all of them away.

Little Red Riding Hood noticed what he was doing and joined in. She even summoned her wolf and sent shadowspawn to search for details human eyes might miss.

Irene returned to the table, flipping through papers and books page by page. Even “mundane” objects could hide a trail in plain sight.

Then one of the shadow wolves stopped near the bed. It whined low in its throat and began pawing insistently at a rug.

Little Red Riding Hood frowned, stepped forward, and yanked the rug aside.

There was nothing hidden underneath—but faint markings stained the floor. Strange symbols and lines formed a circle about a meter wide, tinted a dull, dark red. Someone had scrubbed it hard, more than once, leaving only a ghost of the original pattern.

“It looks like it was drawn in blood,” Little Red Riding Hood said, crouching. “Basic spirit-communion runes. But that’s all that’s left. No offering. No matching prayer. Without the rest, it’s hard to tell what it was meant to call.”

“Could it have been used to contact the dark angels?” Yu Sheng asked.

“Hard to say.” She shook her head. “You know I don’t specialize in this stuff. I’ve only heard that those cultists claim they can ‘speak with the messenger,’ but most of the time it’s just drugs and hallucinations. Dark angels don’t respond to humans—at least not in any way you’d call communication. If they respond at all, it’s by driving you insane.”

Her expression dimmed. “A rookie like Old Zheng, who was obviously being tricked, using a crude summoning method like this… I doubt he actually reached anything. More likely it was another layer of the scam, meant to make him believe he could hear ‘divine will.’”

Yu Sheng didn’t argue. He crouched and brushed his fingertips over the faded, sticky-dark traces.

Then, without warning, he drew a small knife and cut a shallow line across his palm.

Fresh blood dripped onto the floor.

Little Red Riding Hood jolted and reached for him. “Hey—what are you doing? You can’t just mess with this when you don’t even know what it’s pointing at—”

The blood soaked into the faint ring like water into a sponge.

Her shout suddenly seemed to stretch and distort, pulling away into a drawn-out, broken echo.

Yu Sheng lifted his head.

A thin veil seemed to fall over the room. Everything blurred, as if the world were slowly sliding sideways out of reality. Little Red Riding Hood and Irene froze a short distance away, their movements dragging like film slowed to a crawl.

Yu Sheng blinked, stood, and steadied himself. After everything he’d seen lately, “the world suddenly changing” didn’t even spike his pulse the way it probably should have.

And then the veil began to fade.

The room was still the room, but the color had been washed out to gray. Sunlight through the window turned pale and dull—bright, but useless, as if it couldn’t illuminate anything beyond the glass.

Yu Sheng’s eyes widened.

Writing was appearing on the walls and floor—spreading in places the “sunlight” couldn’t reach, as if someone’s thoughts were being forced into the space.

He watched the words bloom across his vision, line after line:

“I want to help them…

“I went back to the orphanage. After a few months… another familiar face was gone…

“The tree the last Little Red Riding Hood planted has grown tall. Today a new child came to see me. She said she’s the new Little Red Riding Hood…

“Only fourteen. She said she wanted a job…

“No one can do anything. The Special Operations Bureau can’t. The Association can’t. I’ve gathered and studied so many things to lift curses and fight dreams, but I can’t either…

“Someone came to my door on his own. He said they could help…

“They seem suspicious. I suspect an illegal cult, but they showed me something…”

The words filled the room, then faded away without a sound.

Something moved above him.

A wet, shifting scrape, like flesh sliding against a surface.

Yu Sheng slowly raised his head.

The ceiling had split open into a round hole—perfectly aligned with the dark-red circle on the floor. From that opening came a low, chaotic murmur, and then a long, slender limb pushed out, covered in strange bumps and tight, patterned ridges.

A tentacle.

It pulsed soundlessly in the gray air, wandering blind as it drifted toward Yu Sheng.