Chapter 190
Chapter 190: A Serious Illness, Progressing Steadily
In the reception room of the east building, Little Red Riding Hood fell into a long silence after hearing the intel Yu Sheng had brought back.
Several minutes later, she finally let out a slow breath. “So deep inside Fairy Tale, there might be dark angels. That’s the worst news I’ve heard in days. Which means that ‘trap’ aimed at me in the White Exhibition Hall back then… was those cultists trying to help their ‘lord’ break free?”
“More like a probe,” Yu Sheng said with a grim nod. “Hard to say what the next one will look like. Now that I think about it, what they pulled at the museum was pretty crude. That whole sacrifice ritual that pushed you out of control had too many variables.”
He counted them off on his fingers. “What if you never even made it to the White Exhibition Hall? What if you changed your mind at the last second and turned back? And those activated security guards wandering around—getting in your way. I’m sure that wasn’t what they wanted to see.”
“So maybe they were collecting data,” Little Red Riding Hood said, brows drawn tight. “Testing whether forcing a subset to lose control could pry open Fairy Tale’s structure. If it worked, great. If it failed, the trail would get cut off with Old Zheng—and if your ‘talk to the dead’ ability weren’t so bizarre, the Special Operations Bureau would’ve had to grind for ages just to trace anything back to the angel cultists.”
Yu Sheng nodded. “And now the Bureau has a new problem. They only caught the two exposed cultists. I heard the arrest team staked out South City for a long time and never found any others. Looks like the day after you walked out of the museum alive, they knew the plan had gone off the rails. Everyone cut contact and disappeared. The two who got exposed probably never expected their information to leak so cleanly, so they didn’t run in time.”
Little Red Riding Hood’s gaze sharpened. “You went digging in that cultist’s head and still didn’t get any leads on his partners?”
“No.” Yu Sheng clicked his tongue, annoyed. “He protected his mind like a fortress. Irene drilled through his subconscious defenses, and he still managed to blur his accomplices inside the dream. Honestly, if that ritual in his dream hadn’t gone wrong, I might’ve been able to stay hidden a little longer and find something. But he woke up…”
His expression soured. “Looks like that mess with counterfeit materials making the ritual fail left a deep impression.”
The moment he finished, Irene—who’d been sitting quietly on the couch—shot to her feet. “I remember that kind of thing very clearly, okay!”
She jabbed a finger at him. “You bought materials for my body from a five-yuan shop. I even suspect you and them bought the same brand…”
Yu Sheng went stiff and clamped his mouth shut.
There was one detail he absolutely could not say out loud: the “alchemy materials” he’d bought for Irene were even worse than the cheap knockoffs those cultists had used. Worse, their stuff had cost a few yuan more than his.
He was genuinely afraid that if he admitted it, Irene would launch herself at someone’s throat. The body she’d brought out today belonged to Rebar; one bite could hit like a bench vise.
Little Red Riding Hood ignored the detour and kept going, face serious. “Those angel cultists will strike again. But now that the Bureau’s been alerted, they’ll hide better too. They probably won’t use something easy to trace, like a fake commission, to target our members like last time. Still… I’m worried their brains aren’t normal. They might do something even more insane.”
“Then you have to stay on high alert for a while,” Yu Sheng said. “Whether it’s people going out on missions or those staying behind at the orphanage—be careful. Watch for suspicious people or objects nearby. Check the identity of everyone coming in and out, even people you think you know. And for any commissions your members take lately, talk more. Look for anything that doesn’t fit.”
He hesitated, then added, “If it comes down to it, call me. I’ll help. We don’t have any work anyway…”
His voice trailed off. Across from him, the girl was watching with a half-smile. Yu Sheng scratched the side of his nose, suddenly self-conscious. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“What a nagging lord,” Little Red Riding Hood said, laughing. “You’re the one who said I was always nagging.”
Before Yu Sheng could answer, she lifted a hand. “Don’t worry. Even if Fairy Tale is full of ‘children,’ we’re still an old-brand organization. We’ve been active in the borderland for years. We know how to deal with people who mean us harm.”
Then her expression shifted. “Also… you just said ‘suspicious.’ And I really did run into something suspicious today.”
Yu Sheng straightened. “What did you see?”
“A strange patch of shadow,” she said. “Like a bramble thicket. It flickered on the outer wall of a building in the outdoor activity area, then vanished. But I’m sure I saw it.”
She didn’t brush it off as trivial. When allies worked together, they shared every odd clue they noticed, no matter how small. That was an unwritten rule for spirit realm detectives and investigators.
Too many people had died because they’d missed one tiny detail while dealing with otherworld entities.
Yu Sheng frowned at the description. As a rookie, he couldn’t even begin to guess what it meant.
Irene broke the quiet. “Have you seen anything like that inside the orphanage before?”
“If you mean hallucination-type phenomena, that’s not rare,” Little Red Riding Hood said after a moment’s thought. “Countless nightmares and things that try to interfere with reality are active here. Voices coming from an empty classroom at night. Lights turning on in a locked room. People dancing in the hallway. All of that has happened. But a shadow that looks exactly like a bramble patch… that’s a first.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And it happened at a very sensitive time.”
Yu Sheng didn’t speak right away. He looked down, thinking. After a long moment, he lifted his head. “Good. Then let’s talk about the other thing I wanted to bring up.”
Little Red Riding Hood blinked at him, curious.
“I have a plan that might temporarily protect all the children in the orphanage,” Yu Sheng said, voice solemn. “But I need your cooperation, and… the process might be a little weird.”
Little Red Riding Hood’s eyes widened. “Huh? You’re serious? There’s really a way to do that?”
“Do you remember the Wasteland you and Xiao Xiao both went into?” Yu Sheng said. “You both dodged an attack from the Black Forest there.”
She stared. “You mean this can be copied in bulk?”
“It should be.” Yu Sheng raised a finger. “We just run what happened to you and Xiao Xiao on everyone else.”
He paused, then delivered it like a verdict. “In short… take a sip.”
Little Red Riding Hood’s excitement froze into a blank stare.
She’d understood perfectly.
“Let me make sure I have this right,” she said, face twisting with disbelief. “There are over seventy people in the orphanage. You’re planning to give each of us… ‘a sip’?”
“Yes.”
“…Do you have enough blood?”
“It shouldn’t take much,” Yu Sheng said earnestly. “Back then, Foxy just scraped a tiny cut on my hand with her teeth and it worked. And if it really comes to it, I can split it into two rounds.”
Little Red Riding Hood still looked like she’d stepped off a ledge and was waiting to hit the ground. “So how are you going to do it? If you have the children do some kind of blood-receiving ritual, that’s not a good idea. For starters, we’re a proper organization…”
“Right now I’ve got a few options,” Yu Sheng said, thinking out loud. “Spicy blood stew. Cold mixed blood sausage. Blood tofu. My blood vermicelli soup. Or we mix it with water and let them have a blood fight with squirt guns…”
He waved a hand. “But I vetoed that last one right before leaving, mainly because it’s winter.”
Little Red Riding Hood listened as if her sanity had evaporated. It took her nearly two minutes to process what she’d just heard, and when her eyes finally focused again, they were wide enough to swallow the room. “You owe me a fee for having to listen to these ‘plans.’ I’ll need at least two shots of sanity-blocking agent to sleep tonight!”
Yu Sheng heard her still joking and figured his ideas had at least landed. He couldn’t help smiling.
He barely had time to finish that smile before Foxy, who’d been quiet until now, spoke up in a thoughtful tone. “Benefactor… I’ve always wanted to ask. If you cook the blood, does it still work?”
Yu Sheng’s smile froze.
So did Little Red Riding Hood’s.
After a few seconds of heavy, stunned silence, Yu Sheng actually started considering it with Foxy like this was a serious research project. “Raw is too… bloody, and little kids can’t handle it. Smearing it on them works too slowly, and the effect isn’t stable.”
“What if we add cilantro?” Foxy said brightly. “I love cilantro!”
“Probably not,” Yu Sheng replied, equally serious. “A lot of kids hate cilantro.”
Little Red Riding Hood stared back and forth between them more than a dozen times before she finally snapped. “Wait—how can you two talk about something this twisted like it’s totally normal?”
“You get used to it,” Irene sighed, looking suddenly world-weary. “They’re always like this. Yu Sheng dares to think up anything, and Foxy dares to accept anything.”
Thankfully, the bizarre discussion didn’t last long.
“I think we can test the effect in batches first,” Yu Sheng said, turning back to Little Red Riding Hood with a sober expression, ignoring whether she was emotionally prepared. “Guardians like you go first. You’re already unstable, so you’re high-risk. If we build your protection mechanism first, that’s the best return. As for the children… most of them are still in the early stages of nightmares. We can take it slow.”
He held her gaze. “What do you think?”
Little Red Riding Hood sat there, dazed, her thoughts drifting for a long time. Then her eyes finally sharpened again. She spoke hesitantly. “…Then what do I tell them? What reason do I use to call everyone over?”
Yu Sheng didn’t miss a beat. “Just say you ordered takeout.”
Little Red Riding Hood stared at him.
“…?”