Chapter 188

Chapter 188: An Angel’s Name

The scene shook violently again. Chaotic shouts and piercing noise crashed over Yu Sheng as the cultist relived a surge of intense emotion—and with that upheaval, the dream didn’t collapse right away.

Instead, it began to reveal something else.

Something unimaginable.

Something deeply wrong.

The abandoned warehouse caved in on itself. Earth and sky cracked along with it. The black figures around the ritual site melted into the air, then swelled into massive clouds. Things the cultist had buried in his subconscious leaked out as the dream destabilized, stretching freely in front of Yu Sheng, the “parasite.”

Above the rubble fragments, Yu Sheng saw a vast projection, like a giant egg, hanging in midair. Its surface shimmered with a metallic texture. Countless tiny glowing structures—like eyes—blinked along ridges and grooves. A deep buzz filled the air, as if enormous machinery ran inside it.

Then the egg burst open.

Masses of flesh grew wildly from within. Strange tentacles poured from its torn openings, dangling from the sky and swaying blindly.

And then Yu Sheng heard a new sound—

A baby crying.

Shaking. Trembling. Shrill.

Yu Sheng felt his consciousness drop away, as if the floor had vanished beneath him. In that instant of falling, Irene’s voice snapped through the haze, sharp with alarm: “Holy shit, he’s waking up!”

The real world slammed back into him.

Yu Sheng’s eyes flew open. He sucked in air like someone surfacing from drowning. Almost at the same time, he saw the angel cultist jolt awake, panting violently.

Fear and rage twisted across the bald man’s face. The lofty calm was gone. Now he looked like an animal ready to bite.

Yu Sheng sat up and faced him, expression steady. After a beat, he spoke quietly. “An-Ka-Ai-La. What does that mean?”

The cultist exploded.

He forced himself through the electric bite of the restraints and lunged forward, face contorted. “Your filthy mouth isn’t worthy of speaking Her—”

He barely made it halfway.

A silvery tail cracked through the air like a whip and slammed him into the wall. Yu Sheng didn’t even catch the motion; Foxy had already blurred forward. She grabbed the cultist by the leg and smashed him against the floor again and again in a rapid, brutal series of blows, then flung him aside.

When she realized he was breathing more out than in, panic hit her like a switch. She immediately began flinging healing spells in a frantic rush.

The demon fox girl didn’t say a word the whole time—cold and ruthless in the first half, then completely flustered in the second, like she didn’t know what to do with her own strength.

Irene stared, dumbfounded. “…You move fast.”

“Just keep him alive. The rest is for the Special Operations Bureau,” Yu Sheng said, finally reacting. He walked over and patted Foxy’s hair, then turned and nodded at the camera in the corner. “I’m done here.”

A moment later, mechanical locks clacked inside the heavy gate. Song Cheng and Bai Li Qing appeared outside, along with several fully armed guards.

Yu Sheng gathered Foxy and Irene. Before Song Cheng could speak, Yu Sheng’s face hardened and he spoke quickly. “Find a place that’s quiet and secure. This is a big problem.”

Bai Li Qing met his eyes and nodded without hesitation. “My office.”

Another journey through the building followed—passageways, elevators, empty rooms, corridors that bent like a moving maze. At last, they reached the most mysterious place in the entire Special Operations Bureau.

Bai Li Qing’s office.

To Yu Sheng’s surprise, it wasn’t lavish. It was large, but nearly empty: file cabinets and a few screens against the wall, an oval table in the center. The only thing that truly drew the eye was the floor-to-ceiling window behind the desk.

Beyond it hung an eternal fog. The scenery shifted constantly—city skyline, distant mountains, open fields, an endless ocean—changing like the world couldn’t decide what it wanted to be.

Guards and staff withdrew quickly. Soon the room held only Yu Sheng’s group, Bai Li Qing, and Song Cheng, who had tried to leave and been ordered to stay.

“You can speak now,” Bai Li Qing said, calm as ever.

Yu Sheng nodded. “All right. I’ll be direct. I suspect the cultist group worships a dark angel that’s sleeping or trapped. And if I’m right, that ‘angel’ is likely trapped inside ‘fairy tale.'”

Song Cheng froze. A few seconds later, his mouth twitched. “…That’s one hell of a mountain to drop on us all at once.”

Yu Sheng continued as if he hadn’t heard him. “I infiltrated the cultist’s dream. Because of a loophole in his will, he had almost no defenses there. I witnessed one of their gatherings and a typical prayer ritual.”

He ticked the points off steadily.

“They aren’t limited to the two you captured. There are several members still hidden. When they talked about the messenger they follow, they said it’s asleep and needs to be rescued from suffering. They also mentioned breaking free of a shell, which is why I suspect their Lord is trapped in ‘fairy tale.'”

He took a breath.

“I also heard them mention a container. It seems critical to their Lord’s descent—or escape. The requirements are strict. The curiosities association member they lured had already been influenced and would have gradually become a devout believer, but because he didn’t meet the container standard, they disposed of him. Their reasoning was that once an unqualified person truly converts, he’ll interfere with the Lord’s descent process.”

As Yu Sheng spoke, Song Cheng’s expression tightened, and even Bai Li Qing’s eyes grew heavier.

When dark angels were involved, no one in this building could afford to be casual.

“Did you figure out which dark angel they’re following?” Bai Li Qing asked. “A name, features—anything.”

“In the prayer ritual, they kept repeating a word,” Yu Sheng said. “The pronunciation was roughly like this.” He cleared his throat, then reproduced the strange sounds as best he could. “An-Ka-Ai-La. Something like ‘Anka Aila,’ but there were short tremors and echoes in the middle. I can’t reproduce it perfectly. And I don’t know if that’s the true sound or if they were adding drama for ritual vibes—because the ritual failed in the end. It might’ve been because they used knockoff aromatherapy candles.”

Song Cheng stared. “…What?”

Bai Li Qing ignored him, focused on the name. She frowned and repeated under her breath, “An-Ka-Ai-La… Anka Aila…”

“You recognize it?” Yu Sheng asked.

“No,” Bai Li Qing said. “But this is the first time we’ve heard something like a dark angel’s name. Before today, every dark angel we knew was labeled with a code name—’Beauty God,’ ‘Heka Star,’ ‘Tree Angel.’ Early recorders gave them those titles based on what they saw when they descended. But ‘Anka Aila’ doesn’t sound like a code name at all.”

Yu Sheng’s brow furrowed.

“Then how do other angel cultists refer to the messenger they follow?” he asked. “Beauty God and Heka Star should have believers too.”

“They use the code name directly,” Song Cheng said. “They just call it ‘Beauty God.’ The first believers were mad ordinary people. They claim they can hear the messenger’s voice, but as far as we know, no dark angel has ever communicated rationally with believers, let alone revealed a ‘name’ to mortals. Honestly, we never even considered that dark angels might have names.”

Yu Sheng stared at the table for a moment, thinking hard. Then he looked up. “So the cultists in Boundary City might have actually made contact with a dark angel that can communicate—and even learned its real name?”

“Or it’s just another delusion from those lunatics,” Song Cheng said, waving a hand. “Maybe they heard one whisper, then processed the noise into a fake transliteration and decided it was the messenger’s name.”

Yu Sheng didn’t argue. He just looked grim.

“Interrogate the bald one again later,” he said slowly. “His will has already cracked once, and secrets leaked out in the dream. Once someone breaks, it’s easier to break again. Maybe you’ll get something—accomplices, a location, where ‘An-Ka-Ai-La’ actually came from.”

“The Special Operations Bureau will handle that,” Bai Li Qing said with a nod. “We’re more professional with standard procedures.”

Her gaze settled on Yu Sheng. “As for what you’ll do next…”

“The orphanage,” Yu Sheng said, exhaling quietly. “Those cultists won’t settle down. If their Lord really is trapped in ‘fairy tale,’ they’ll strike again. The trap Little Red Riding Hood ran into may have only been an early test.”