Chapter 188

Chapter 188: The Angel’s Name

The scene before Yu Sheng bucked again, shaking with a burst of panicked shouts and shrill noise. It felt like the cultist sunk in the dream had been hit by a flood of emotion in his memory. As that surge rose, the dream didn’t collapse at once. Instead, it started to show things that were terrifying and hard to imagine.

He watched the abandoned warehouse cave in. The ground and even the sky began to crack. The black figures around the ritual site melted into the air one by one, then swelled up into huge clouds. Things the cultist had kept buried in his subconscious leaked out as the dream lost balance and, before Yu Sheng the “parasite,” sprawled out in full.

He saw a vast projection hanging in the air, like a giant egg floating above the shattered ruins where the warehouse had torn open. The egg’s surface took on a metallic sheen. Along its ridges and grooves, countless eye-like shapes flickered with dim light. It hummed, as if some giant machine was running inside it.

The next second, the egg burst. Masses of flesh sprouted madly from its depths. Strange tendrils pushed out of the cracks, drooping from the sky and waving blindly in the air. Then Yu Sheng heard a new sound: a baby’s cry.

The world reeled, shook, and screamed. Yu Sheng felt his awareness plunge. At the very moment that falling feeling hit, he heard Irene gasp: “Holy crap, he woke up!”

The feel of the real world snapped back. Yu Sheng’s eyes flew open. He sucked in a deep breath like a drowning man breaking the surface. Almost at the same time, he turned his head and saw, not far away, the bald Angel Cultist also jerking awake and panting hard.

Terror and rage twisted the man’s face. Gone was the lofty, above-it-all look, the gaze that seemed to stand over life and death. He glared at Yu Sheng like he was about to lunge at him.

Yu Sheng stood, gave him a calm look, and after a beat asked in a low voice: “An-Ka-Ai-La, what does that word mean?”

He didn’t expect his question to set the cultist off. The man exploded with fury, forced his way through the shock from the restraints, and sprang forward: “Your filthy mouth is not worthy to speak His-”

He got only halfway. A silver-white tail cut the air and cracked him midleap, slamming him into the wall. Before Yu Sheng even saw it happen, Foxy was already a blur, pouncing, grabbing the cultist by the leg, and wham-wham-wham slamming him into the floor a few times. She tossed him aside, then, seeing he was exhaling more than inhaling, flustered and threw out a healing spell.

The Fox Maiden didn’t say a word the whole time: cool and silent up front, then panicked and at a loss in the back half.

Irene stared, dumbfounded, and said to Foxy: “You sure are quick to act.”

“Patch him up to half a life. The rest, hand over to the Special Affairs Bureau,” Yu Sheng said as he finally caught up, patted Foxy’s hair, then turned and nodded at a camera in the corner. “I’m done on my end.”

A few moments later, heavy mechanisms clanked inside The Door’s thick shutter. Song Cheng and Bai Li Qing appeared outside the Door, with several fully armed guards at their sides.

Yu Sheng led Foxy and Irene over quickly. Before Song Cheng spoke, Yu Sheng’s face had already gone serious as he said fast: “Find somewhere quiet. This is a big problem.”

Bai Li Qing gave Yu Sheng a deep look and nodded at once: “My office.”

They set off again on a “trip” like crossing a moving maze. Through passages, elevators, and empty rooms inside this strange “building,” they walked for quite a while before they reached their destination.

It was the most “mysterious” place in the Special Affairs Bureau: Bai Li Qing’s office.

It wasn’t what Yu Sheng expected. It wasn’t grand or fancy. Though the floor area was large, the room was almost bare. Filing cabinets and a few displays stood along the walls. An oval table sat in the center. There were few other furnishings. Only the huge floor-to-ceiling window behind the desk caught the eye. Outside that window, a layer of eternal fog seemed to hang. The view in the mist kept changing: sometimes a city skyline, sometimes distant mountains and The Field, even a boundless ocean.

The guards, plus the secretary and assistants receiving them, stepped out quickly. Soon, the big room held only Yu Sheng’s group, Bai Li Qing, and Song Cheng, who had tried to leave but had been told by the Director to stay.

“You can speak now,” Bai Li Qing said, looking at Yu Sheng with a calm face.

Yu Sheng nodded: “Alright, I’ll get straight to the point. Those cultists worship what looks like a Dark Angel that’s asleep or trapped. If I’m not wrong, that Angel is stuck inside the Fairy Tale.”

Song Cheng visibly froze. After a few seconds, the corner of his mouth twitched: “That was, uh, a very sudden point.”

Yu Sheng acted like he hadn’t heard him and went on: “I slipped into the Angel Cultist’s dream. I found a crack in his will, so he barely had any defenses in the dream.

“I witnessed one of their gatherings and a standard prayer rite. They have more than the two you caught. There are other members hiding in the dark. When they spoke about their ‘messenger,’ they said it was sleeping and needed to be ‘rescued from suffering.’ They also mentioned ‘breaking the shell.’ That’s why I think their lord is trapped in the Fairy Tale.

“Also, I heard them talk about a ‘vessel.’ It seems key to their lord’s Descent or escape. The standards for a vessel are high. That Curiosities Association member they lured in was already influenced by the Dark Angels and would have become a devout believer, but since he didn’t meet the vessel standard, they ‘took care of him.’ They said if an unqualified person converts, it will interfere with their lord’s Descent.”

Yu Sheng spoke quickly, item by item. Song Cheng’s brow tightened bit by bit. Even Bai Li Qing, whose expression rarely changed, now had a graver look in her eyes.

When “Dark Angels” was involved, even the Director of the Special Affairs Bureau couldn’t stay relaxed.

“Did you figure out which Dark Angel they follow?” Bai Li Qing asked suddenly. “Any name or feature to go on?”

“In their prayer they kept repeating a word. It sounds like this,” Yu Sheng cleared his throat, recalling as he voiced the strange syllables: “An-Ka-Ai-La, something like ‘Anka Aila.’ There were brief trills and echoes between the parts that I can’t reproduce. I’m not sure if that’s the real pronunciation or just them adding flair for ritual effect. Their rite failed in the end anyway, though that may have been because they used knockoff scented candles.”

Song Cheng blinked, confused: “…?”

He had no idea what that last sentence meant.

Bai Li Qing focused on the odd word. She frowned, repeating under her breath: “An-Ka-Ai-La, Anka Aila.”

“You recognize it?” Yu Sheng asked, curious.

“No. But this is the first time we’ve heard a Dark Angel’s ‘name’,” Bai Li Qing said, her tone firm. “Before today, every Dark Angel we knew had only a codename, like ‘Beauty Goddess,’ or ‘Youth Form,’ or ‘Tree Angel.’ Those came from the first people to record their Descent, naming them by their traits. But ‘Anka Aila’ doesn’t sound like a codename.”

Yu Sheng understood at once.

He frowned, thinking, then looked up: “Then how do other Angel Cultists refer to the ‘messenger’ they serve? You mentioned Beauty Goddess and Youth Form. Those Dark Angels should have their own believers, right?”

“They just use the codename,” Song Cheng said. “Like calling it ‘Beauty Goddess’ outright. Angel believers were originally ordinary people who went mad. They claim they can hear the messenger’s voice, but as far as we know, no Dark Angel actually holds a sane conversation with believers, and certainly not to share its ‘name.’ We never even considered that Dark Angels might have ‘names.’”

Yu Sheng knit his brows: “So this cell of Angel Cultists hiding in Boundary City might have actually made contact with a Dark Angel that can communicate, and even learned its true name?”

“Or it’s just another round of delusions,” Song Cheng waved a hand. “Maybe they were high, heard a whisper once in a dream, then turned that ‘noise’ into a name.”

Yu Sheng’s face stayed grave. He didn’t argue with that.

“Try interrogating the bald one again,” he said slowly. “His will has already been broken once. His dream’s secrets are exposed. When a wall has cracked once, it’s easier to crack it again. You might get something new, like his accomplices, and where ‘An-Ka-Ai-La’ came from.”

“We’ll handle the formal interrogation. That’s our specialty,” Bai Li Qing nodded, then looked at Yu Sheng. “What about you?”

“The Orphanage,” Yu Sheng drew a quiet breath. “Those Angel Cultists won’t lie low. If their ‘lord’ is really trapped in the Fairy Tale, they’ll make another move. The trap Little Red Riding Hood ran into may have been only an early test.”