Chapter 182

Chapter 182: Old Zheng

After sending Irene back early, Yu Sheng returned to the living room and saw Little Red Riding Hood talking with a young man in his twenties on the couch. The man still looked worn out, as if handling his relative’s funeral had kept him from sleeping for many days.

When he saw Yu Sheng come out of the bedroom, the young man stood a little and greeted him, then pointed at the hot milk tea on the coffee table: “Thanks for your help. I just bought these.”

Yu Sheng didn’t stand on ceremony and sat beside Little Red Riding Hood, and the two of them drank milk tea together.

The young man broke the silence first and asked: “Did you find anything?”

Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood exchanged a look. After a short pause, she nodded and said: “We did find a trace of Spider Silk. But I want to confirm something first. Do you know what your uncle’s job was like, and how much do you know? I mean the ‘special’ nature of the things he collected and the matters he dealt with.”

The young man nodded and said: “I know some. He told me about the Curiosities Association, and he showed me a few safer items. I know he dealt with unusual things, and it could be dangerous. I was interested, too. I even almost joined the outer ranks of the Special Affairs Bureau. But my uncle stopped me. He said I was too curious and that I had some kind of spiritual talent that was high in sensitivity but low in stability, so doing this would be dangerous.”

Little Red Riding Hood sighed and said: “Your uncle was right. High sensitivity, low stability, and too curious means this line of work is a bad fit. You might not even pass the internship. Since you know this much, I’ll share a rough picture. Old Zheng was likely tainted by very dangerous pollution and came into contact with an illegal secret cult. From what we can tell, he should be a victim, not a culprit. That’s all I can say. The Special Affairs Bureau may tell you, as family, a bit more later.”

The young man sat there quietly, saying nothing, maybe because he didn’t know what to say.

Yu Sheng broke the silence and asked: “In the last stretch of his life, did your uncle meet any suspicious people or do anything odd? Like a sudden new ‘friend,’ or a new habit or taboo he never had before.”

“I’m not sure,” the young man said, shaking his head. “He had little contact with our family for over twenty years. Back then he volunteered at an orphanage. Then something happened. Some said it was about a relationship, others said he got scared by something. He moved here and lived alone. I was too young to remember. I only know what the folks at home said.”

He paused, thought hard, then went on: “But he did message me sometimes. If I have to say anything, he seemed pretty happy lately. About two months ago, he said a burden in his heart could finally be put down. He also said he planned to go home in a couple of days. He asked me to look for a notebook in our old house and see if it was still there. After that, the accident happened.”

“Notebook?” Yu Sheng felt a jolt and asked quickly: “Did you find it? Did you bring it?”

“I brought it,” said the young man. He walked to the TV cabinet, opened a black suitcase, searched the bottom layer, and took out a thick notebook with a dark blue cover. He put it in front of Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood and said: “This is it. I didn’t read it. I brought it as it was.”

Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood shared a look, then took the notebook that was more than twenty years old and flipped through it fast.

Most of it was ordinary: daily reminders, notes from his time volunteering at the Orphanage, little records from work. Some passages could help Yu Sheng understand what the Orphanage was like back then, but this part didn’t seem tied to their current case or to Old Zheng’s death.

[Maybe this time-spanning notebook is only a token for a man near fifty to remember his youth.] As that thought passed through Yu Sheng’s mind, something in the corner of his eye caught his attention from a page he had just turned. He quickly flipped back.

It was a drawing. The notebook’s owner had sketched it in pencil. The technique wasn’t great, but the work was careful.

On the yellowing page, a woman of about twenty six or twenty seven stood by the Orphanage’s swings. She wore a simple long dress and smiled gently.

Yu Sheng frowned. He wondered who this young woman was, how she was tied to the dead Old Zheng, and why she appeared at the Orphanage where Little Red Riding Hood had grown up. She was clearly an adult, but she wasn’t wearing a Council staff uniform.

Then Little Red Riding Hood let out a soft “huh.”

Before Yu Sheng could ask, Little Red Riding Hood pulled out her phone and dialed: “Rapunzel, can you take a picture for me? The one in the east wing display room, the center photo on the wall. Yes, the one of ‘Cinderella.’ Send it to me, quick.”

She hung up. A moment later her phone buzzed. Yu Sheng leaned over and saw a photo on the screen.

It showed a young woman in her twenties who looked almost exactly like the one in Old Zheng’s notebook.

“What is this?” Yu Sheng asked.

Little Red Riding Hood looked at the smiling figure in the notebook and said softly: “A Cinderella from years ago. She lived to twenty six. She was the longest-lived Cinderella in the Orphanage’s history. After she died, the ‘Cinderella’ role stayed vacant for ten years. A new Cinderella didn’t appear until more than ten years ago. We always said she used her life to suppress the workings of the ‘Eternal Ball’ subset for a while, though there’s no proof.”

She pressed her lips together and added: “They say she was even thinking about trying an ordinary life.”

Yu Sheng listened in silence, then looked toward the table not far away.

Old Zheng’s memorial photo stood there quietly. He was near fifty. The skin on his face had loosened. Wrinkles had crept to the corners of his eyes. The tiredness in his gaze looked like a record of a twenty year trek.

He searched for strange items for two decades to fight a looping curse, but in the end he lost to a scam.

He wasn’t the first to fight the Fairy Tale, and he wouldn’t be the last.

Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood stood up. She handed the notebook back to the young man with care.

“Thanks for the lead,” Yu Sheng said in a low voice. “We’ll get justice for Old Zheng.”

“Thank you,” the young man said, taking the notebook. He seemed like he wanted to ask something, but maybe he remembered his uncle’s old warning. He held it back and just waved to the two “detectives”: “I won’t see you off. I still have a lot to sort out here.”

“Right,” said Little Red Riding Hood. Then she remembered something and warned him: “There are some ‘things’ under the bedroom carpet. They should be powerless now, but don’t touch them. Wait for the professionals.”

“Got it.”

By the time they left the apartment building, it was fully dark.

Neon lights drenched the boundless city in color. The Wolf Pack carried Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood to the roof of the tallest building nearby. Yu Sheng stood there and looked down at Boundary City. Light flowed between the forest of towers. The giant city kept roaring under the night.

How many people lived in this strange city? Millions? Tens of millions? How many were ordinary, and how many were detectives and investigators who had touched “the other side”? How many were guardians who kept order, and how many hid in the shadows of those lights, like the tendrils of some frenzied, formless thing, watching for careless victims?

[For the first time, this foreign, odd, even eerie city felt alive, with flesh and blood.]

Little Red Riding Hood broke the silence and said: “I’ll keep investigating when I get back. I need to visit the Curiosities Association headquarters. I’ll also meet the other Spirit Realm Detectives and investigators Old Zheng knew.”

Yu Sheng asked: “Want me to come?”

She shook her head and said: “I want you to go to the Special Affairs Bureau.”

Yu Sheng frowned and asked: “To the Special Affairs Bureau?”

“Tell them about Old Zheng. News about Angel Cultists will already get their attention. But if you go in person, they’ll take it even more seriously.”

Yu Sheng thought about it and said, not too sure: “Will they?”

The girl looked at him, helpless, and said: “Do you really have no self awareness at all?”

Yu Sheng gave an awkward smile, then nodded seriously and said: “Alright. I’ll go tomorrow.”

They both fell quiet. After a few seconds, Yu Sheng said, thinking out loud: “Do you think there’s a link between the Dark Angels and the Fairy Tale Otherworld?”

Little Red Riding Hood thought hard for a long time, then shook her head and said: “I’ve got nothing. A lot of things happened at the same time by chance, but we’re missing the key ‘connection.’ Those Angel Cultists targeted Old Zheng, who wanted to resist the Fairy Tale curse, and used him to draw me into that white Exhibition Hall. But the key is this. What exactly were they after? Was it my identity as a member of the Fairy Tale, or were they just hunting for a sacrifice strong enough?

“In the end, there isn’t only one Dark Angel in the world. We don’t even know which ‘Angel’ those Angel Cultists worship. Without that, we can’t be sure of their goal.”