Chapter 190

Chapter 190: Serious Illness, Stable Performance

In the reception room of the east building, Little Red Riding Hood fell into long thought after hearing the intel Yu Sheng brought.

A few minutes later, she let out a long sigh: “There might be a Dark Angel hidden deep inside Fairy Tale. This is the worst news I’ve heard in days, which means the trap set for me in the white Exhibition Hall was those cultists trying to help their master break free?”

“It was a probe, but it’s hard to say what form the next attempt will take,” Yu Sheng said, nodding slowly. “Thinking back, their method in the Museum was crude. There were too many unknowns in using a sacrifice ritual to push you into losing control. What if you had backed out before even reaching the white Exhibition Hall? What if you changed your mind that night? And those ‘security guards’ they activated that started wandering around blocking you, I doubt that was what the cultists wanted.”

“So they were probably gathering data, testing whether nudging a subset into losing control could pry at the structure of Fairy Tale,” Little Red Riding Hood said, frowning hard. “If it worked, great. If it failed, the trail would have broken off at Old Zheng. If not for your bizarre ‘talking with the dead’ ability, the Special Affairs Bureau would have had a hard time tracing it to the Angel Cultists.”

Yu Sheng nodded: “In fact, the Special Affairs Bureau has run into new trouble. They only caught the two Angel Cultists who got exposed. I heard the arrest team tailed people in the south part of the city for a long time and found no other members. Looks like the day after you walked out of the Museum alive, the cultists knew their plan had gone off the rails and everyone cut their lines and hid. Those two who got caught probably never imagined their info would leak so cleanly, so they didn’t run.”

“…You went into that cultist’s head and still didn’t find clues about his partners?”

“No. The guy protected his mind very well. Even after Irene punched through his subconscious defenses, he could still blur out his partners in the dream,” Yu Sheng said, curling his lip, clearly a bit annoyed. “Honestly, if the ritual in his dream hadn’t gone wrong, I might have found something by staying a bit longer, but he woke up. Seems the failed ritual because of fake, low quality materials really left a mark on his brain.”

As soon as he finished, Irene, who had been sitting quietly on the sofa, shot to her feet: “I remember that very well too, okay! You bought ‘materials’ from a five yuan store to cobble together a body for me. I even suspect you and they bought the same brand…”

Yu Sheng’s face went stiff and he shut his mouth. [If I admit it, Irene will fly over here and bite me.] [The body she brought out of The Door today is rebar. One bite would have the clamping force of about one and a half bench vises.]

Little Red Riding Hood spoke again: “The Angel Cultists will act again for sure, but now that the Special Affairs Bureau is alert, the cultists will be more hidden. They probably won’t attack our members with something as obvious as a fake commission like last time. I’m also worried their minds aren’t normal to begin with, so they’ll use even more extreme methods.”

“So you all need to raise your guard for a while,” Yu Sheng said in a low voice. “Members who go out and those who stay in the Orphanage both need to be careful. Watch for any suspicious people or objects nearby. Check the identity of everyone going in and out of the Orphanage, even familiar faces. For commissions our Organization members take, share more notes if you can and look for anything suspicious. If it’s tough, call me to help. We don’t have many jobs anyway…” He trailed off, because the girl across from him was watching with a half smile. He scratched his nose, embarrassed: “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Nagging lord,” Little Red Riding Hood laughed. “You used to say I was the one who nagged.”

Before Yu Sheng could talk back, she waved her hand: “Don’t worry. Fairy Tale is made up of ‘kids,’ but we’re also an old Organization that’s worked in the Borderland for many years. We know how to deal with bad actors.

“Also, since you mentioned ‘suspicious’ things, I did run into something odd today.”

Yu Sheng perked up: “What did you find?”

“A strange shadow, like a thicket of thorns, on the outside wall of the building by the outdoor activity area. It flashed and then vanished, but I’m sure I saw it.”

She spoke very seriously, not ignoring it just because it was small or the clues were thin. In this line of work, allies share any off notes without missing a thing. That’s an unwritten rule among Spirit Realm Detectives and Investigators.

Too many people died because they missed just a little piece of intel when dealing with the Otherworld or an Entity.

Yu Sheng felt puzzled about that shadow Little Red Riding Hood described.

As a newbie, of course he had no idea what it was.

Irene broke the silence: “Have you seen anything like that inside the Orphanage before?”

“If you mean things like ‘hallucinations,’ they’re not rare. There are countless nightmares active here, things that try to interfere with reality. At night, a classroom might suddenly have voices, or a locked room might light up and someone dances inside. All that has happened. But something exactly like that thorny shadow is a first, and it’s happening at such a sensitive time,” Little Red Riding Hood said, thinking it through.

Yu Sheng kept quiet, head down in thought. After a long time, he broke the silence: “That fits. Let’s talk about another thing I wanted to bring up.”

Little Red Riding Hood looked at him, curious.

“I have a plan that might protect all the kids in the Orphanage for now,” Yu Sheng said, lifting his head with a solemn face. “But I’ll need your cooperation, and the process might be a little strange.”

She widened her eyes: “Really? There’s a method like that?”

“Remember that ‘wasteland’ you and Xiao Xiao both went into?” Yu Sheng did not beat around the bush. “You both dodged an attack from the Black Forest by using it.”

Little Red Riding Hood blinked: “…You’re saying we can copy that process in batches?”

“It should be possible. We just repeat what happened to you and Xiao Xiao for everyone else,” Yu Sheng said, raising one finger. “In short, take a sip.”

Her excited face froze: “…”

She realized what he meant.

“Let me confirm,” she said, torn. “There are more than seventy people in the Orphanage. You plan to give each of us one ‘sip’?”

“Yes.”

“…Do you have enough blood?”

“The dose should be small,” Yu Sheng said with a serious face. “Back then Foxy just scratched a small cut on my hand with her teeth and it worked. If needed, I can split it into two sessions.”

Little Red Riding Hood still felt this whole topic was odd: “How exactly are you going to do it? It’s not a good idea to have the Cursed Children hold some ‘receive blood’ ritual. We’re a proper Organization first and foremost…”

“I have a few options so far. Spicy blood stew. Cold tossed blood sausage. Blood tofu. My blood vermicelli soup. Or mix it into water and let them use squirt guns for a blood fight… but I vetoed the last one right before we walked out the door, mainly because it’s winter.”

She listened in a daze as he listed plans. Her reason seemed to evaporate. It took her two full minutes to react. Her eyes almost popped onto Yu Sheng’s face: “You owe me for hearing those ‘options.’ I’ll need at least two shots of Sanity Blocking Agent to sleep tonight!”

Hearing that she could still joke, Yu Sheng knew the plans, shocking as they were, had sunk in. He smiled.

His smile froze halfway when the Fox, who had been quiet, suddenly spoke: “Benefactor, I’ve always wanted to ask. If the blood is cooked, does it still work?”

Yu Sheng’s smile froze along with Little Red Riding Hood’s stunned face.

Then Yu Sheng thought about it and discussed it with Foxy: “Raw tastes bloody. Younger kids won’t accept it. Spreading it on the skin works too slowly and is unstable.”

“What if we add cilantro? I love cilantro.”

“That won’t work. Many kids don’t like cilantro.”

Little Red Riding Hood stared at Yu Sheng and Foxy, looking back and forth more than ten times. Finally she could not help saying: “Wait, you can talk this casually about a problem this evil?”

“You’ll get used to it,” Irene said with a fake, seasoned sigh. “They’re always like this. Yu Sheng dares to think about anything. Foxy dares to accept anything.”

Luckily, that strange discussion did not last.

“I think we should test in batches,” Yu Sheng said, turning to Little Red Riding Hood with a serious face. He did not wait to see if she was mentally ready. “Have ‘parents’ like you try first. You’re very unstable right now and high risk. Setting up your ‘protection’ first gives the biggest return. As for the Cursed Children, most are in the early stages of nightmares. We can wait. What do you think?”

Little Red Riding Hood sat there in a daze, spacing out for quite a while. Her eyes suddenly widened and she asked, hesitant: “…How do I tell them? What reason do I give to call everyone over?”

“…Tell them you ordered takeout.”

Little Red Riding Hood said: “…?”