Chapter 181

Chapter 181: Temptation

In the gray-washed room where sunlight couldn’t quite reach, the last of the text dissolved into nothing. But the tentacle remained—ugly, thick with wrongness—swaying closer, pulse by pulse, as if it could smell him.

Yu Sheng’s heart tightened. He backed up two steps.

He’d seen plenty of bizarre things lately—some grotesque, some just unsettling—but this one made his scalp crawl. Mostly because the shape was so offensively hideous that his brain couldn’t even find a way to “mentally edit” it into something less nauseating.

The tentacle swayed a few times, as if it had lost its target, then began wobbling in place, directionless.

Sleepwalking. Blind. Aimless.

Yu Sheng forced his breathing steady. Keeping his distance, he slid along the wall and eased around to the other side of it.

With each step, faint ripples spread through the gray air, as if his movement disturbed a warped dream. The ripples drifted outward and stirred a few dimly glowing patterns along the tentacle’s surface.

Was this what Old Zheng had touched?

Had the cultists taught him a crude summoning trick, and this was the “higher-dimensional projection” it dragged into being?

Was this… the thing they called “the messenger”?

Yu Sheng hesitated, then edged half a step closer. When the tentacle didn’t react, he studied the strange hole in the ceiling and the textures along the limb.

If the letter was true—if what the cultists taught Old Zheng actually worked—then this should be part of a dark angel. Even if it was only a fragment. A phantom. A limb pulled through a crack in the world.

Little Red Riding Hood had said dark angels didn’t respond to humans calling them, but Bai Li Qing had also told him cultists could sometimes “touch” an angel under certain conditions—maybe a shard, a projection, a hallucinated piece of flesh, and a voice that wasn’t really a voice at all.

The darkness inside the ceiling-hole was dense and absolute. Whatever body the tentacle was attached to was hidden completely, deep in the void. Yu Sheng could only see the edge—and he was sure the limb belonged to something far larger, something perfectly still, lurking where reason and perception died.

The tentacle drifted past him again, still blind.

Should he try?

Touch it?

The thought was bold enough to startle him. Reason screamed that anything this dangerous-looking should be avoided on sight. Little Red Riding Hood had warned him more than once. Bai Li Qing had said dark angels were madness made real.

But touching it might reveal something. At minimum, he might see what Old Zheng had seen.

Touch it once. Maybe it wasn’t as dangerous as it looked. It wasn’t attacking—just writhing.

Touch it once. Even if there were consequences, maybe they wouldn’t be too severe. This was a distorted dreamspace. What he saw might only be a phantom.

Touch it once. An ordinary person had touched it before and come away believing it was kind and honest. If it felt wrong, he could let go immediately—

Touch it once.

Just once.

Yu Sheng frowned and glanced around. “What is this thing that won’t shut up?”

The nagging, coaxing voice in his head vanished instantly—like the ridiculous “ads” he’d seen in the Black Forest: Xmodel 090 graphics cards, branded controllers, toolboxes, premium fishing spots along the path. Loud promises. Zero substance.

Yu Sheng blinked, then made his decision on the spot.

He was not touching the creepy tentacle.

Honestly, if his head hadn’t been filled with nonstop yapping, he might have grabbed it already. That realization alone was enough to make him keep his hands to himself.

He started to turn, intending to search the room for something else—

And a cold presence slid into his senses.

In the next second, that familiar chill wrapped around his limbs and dug into his flesh, threading deeper as if something were trying to drag him backward. Yu Sheng reflexively stepped away and saw thin black silk threads blooming through the air from every direction. Some were already coiling around his wrists and ankles.

Irene’s voice cut into his mind like a blade. “Yu Sheng! Why are you spacing out?!”

Pain flared behind his eyes.

The gray tint peeled away like wet paper. In a few breaths, the normal world snapped back into place—color returning, sunlight warming the room, the cold retreating from his nerves.

Yu Sheng blinked hard.

He was still beside the dark-red circle. Little Red Riding Hood stood where she had been. Irene had one hand outstretched toward him, black threads spilling from her fingertips and connecting to his body.

He froze for a beat.

Then Irene lunged at him, furious. “Yu Sheng, you uncle!”

He caught her on instinct as her tiny body launched itself at his chest.

“Can you stop ‘trying it’ every single time?” she shouted, words firing like bullets. “What if trying turns into dying? If you absolutely have to try, can you at least say something first!”

“Are you okay?” Little Red Riding Hood came closer, face tense. “You suddenly stopped moving, and your outline started going transparent. Irene said your consciousness was getting… pulled away.”

Yu Sheng held Irene back as she tried to climb up and grab his hair again. “I’m fine. I’m fine—wait. Just now I almost got ‘pulled away’?”

“Of course you did,” Irene snapped, snatching at his hair anyway. “If I hadn’t yanked you back in time, you would’ve vanished completely. And don’t start with ‘dying and coming back’ or ‘coming back by opening a door.’ If you get lost somewhere stupid like that, then what?”

Little Red Riding Hood stared at him. “What did you see?”

Yu Sheng’s expression sobered. “A tentacle. And another version of this room.” He glanced at the faded circle. “Your contact… he really did get scammed badly.”

He told them what he’d seen in that gray illusion—every step, every detail, including the moment the tentacle tried to “tempt” him.

When he finished, the room fell quiet.

Irene stared at him, stunned. “…And you weren’t affected at all?”

Yu Sheng frowned. “What kind of question is that? Isn’t it good I wasn’t affected?”

“But in normal stories,” Irene said, dead serious, “this is where you blank out, almost get eaten by an ancient god monster, and then my power—the divine armament peak—descends from the heavens, yanks you out, and when you wake up you kneel and swear eternal loyalty to me…”

Yu Sheng stopped listening halfway through.

He looked at Little Red Riding Hood.

She stood there with a complicated expression, silent for a long time.

Yu Sheng didn’t press. Irene eventually shut up too, for once.

After who knew how long, Little Red Riding Hood sighed.

“…Old Zheng has known us for a long time.”

Yu Sheng nodded. “You mentioned that.”

“He was close to the orphanage. Long ago, he even worked as a councilor’s employee and volunteered there for a while,” she said, sounding like she was sorting through old dust in her own head. “Back then he wasn’t in the Curiosities Association. He wasn’t an expert in anomalies or otherworldly items. He helped us connect a lot of commissions. And in many Fairy Tale jobs, the terms he offered were always the best.”

She swallowed. “But I never really understood him. About his past… I only heard bits and pieces from the seniors sometimes.”

Yu Sheng didn’t know what to say. Silence settled again.

Then the front door opened in the living room.

Old Zheng’s nephew was back.

Yu Sheng looked at Irene. She waved like she’d been waiting for it. “Open a door. I’m out.”

Yu Sheng nodded. He sent Little Red Riding Hood to greet the nephew first, finished the report procedure quickly, then opened a small door leading back to Wu Tong Road 66.

Irene stepped through the doorway, then paused and glanced over her shoulder.

“Those cultists are so annoying.”

“I feel the same,” Yu Sheng said.