Chapter 200

Chapter 200: Files

After Bai Li Qing sent out the orders, Yu Sheng began to tell the Director everything he had found.

He laid out how Old Zheng might have gotten the “Angel’s Umbilical Cord,” the failed “Descent” from long ago, the Fairy Tale book that was given away, and what state Anka Aila might be in now.

Even Bai Li Qing’s steel-cold face could not stay tight through all this. She frowned hard, and when Yu Sheng reached Squirrel’s memories, she finally cut in: “You mean a child living in an orphanage, with no training for any spiritual gifts, heard the voices of Dark Angels and even talked with one, while staying sane the whole time?”

“At least Squirrel thinks so,” said Yu Sheng, nodding. “Maybe it was hearing things under an Angel’s influence, but the Fairy Tale book it passed on is clearly tied to today’s Fairy Tale Otherworld. That book really did affect Anka Aila.”

“A single Fairy Tale book affecting the process of an Angel’s Descent. Even hearing it from you, I still find it hard to believe,” said Bai Li Qing, speaking slowly. “But if it’s true, it might mean the Dark Angels aren’t as ‘untouchable’ as we thought. Or at least, in the early stage of a first Descent, their ‘operation’ is fragile and can be influenced by certain methods.”

She paused, then added in a thoughtful whisper: “Something else is even more shocking. If what Squirrel gave us is true, that Anka Aila even shows reason. That overturns what we know about the Dark Angels.”

In this world, no one had ever seen a rational, talkable Dark Angel. Many scholars even treated them like a kind of natural disaster. Yu Sheng didn’t need the reminder to know his report would shake everyone who studied Angel Descent. [This will rattle the field.]

After a while, the talk circled back to the Fairy Tale Otherworld itself.

“According to Squirrel, the Black Forest ‘stage’ keeps growing and changing. Every generation of Little Red Riding Hood brings new ‘things’ and even new ‘rules.’ It feels like watching a story go from a rough outline to a complete build,” said Yu Sheng as he thought it through. “First the base world view and the world map, then the introduction of characters and items, then links between the story’s elements. I think this shows the ‘dynamic’ nature of Fairy Tale.

“On the other hand, Snow White and the seven, uh, Thunder Titan cases, and earlier Xiao Xiao’s ‘Wolf Granny’ case, let us confirm another kind of dynamic. Each ‘main role’ causes the ‘subset’ to generate a matching ‘warped copy.’ When two Little Red Riding Hoods with very different power levels show up together, the Black Forest can even spawn two different ‘versions’ of Wolf Granny.

“All this is just like the first Little Red Riding Hood said in her last words: ‘This forest is alive.’ In fact, not only the Black Forest, but the entire ‘Fairy Tale’ is alive, and it shows very high ‘interaction’ with the individual ‘roles’ trapped inside.

“This may help us understand Anka Aila’s state.”

Listening, Bai Li Qing murmured as if to herself: “It’s still reading that book.”

“Yes. It’s still ‘reading’ and trying to ‘understand’ it. But clearly, a Dark Angel’s way of understanding is totally different from human reason and how we think,” said Yu Sheng with a small nod. “Also, as an Otherworld, Fairy Tale’s form of existence, the way it was born, and its ‘linked state’ with Anka Aila are not what we thought at all.

“As a ‘prison,’ it was woven by Anka Aila itself. The whole Fairy Tale might actually be built on that Dark Angel’s ‘body,’ like a kind of…”

Yu Sheng frowned, searching for the right word. After a moment, he said: “Like a kind of ‘outer shell.’”

“So the Deep Dive Squad that had that accident most likely bored through Fairy Tale’s shell and brushed against Anka Aila’s real body by mistake,” said Bai Li Qing at once. “Then the action log that mentioned the ‘corpses’ that suddenly staggered to their feet after the facility lockdown…”

“Could have been Anka Aila ‘leaking’ into the real world,” said Yu Sheng with a crooked smile. “Be glad. It looks like that ‘leak’ back then was not on purpose. Anka Aila didn’t truly wake up.”

Bai Li Qing did not speak for a moment. Her faded eyes flickered, and outside the wide floor to ceiling window behind her, a pair of hazy, blurry eyes quietly appeared.

A mechanical, indifferent voice sounded in her mind: “Didn’t expect this. After seventy years, the old action log can still be updated.”

Yu Sheng had seen those eyes earlier, but he already knew they were Bai Li Qing’s sister, so he only smiled and waved a greeting.

The eyes blinked, looking a little flustered, like they still weren’t used to being noticed by an “outsider,” and forgot they weren’t invisible to Yu Sheng.

Just then, the phone on the oval desk rang.

Bai Li Qing answered, listened for a bit, then said: “Good. Send it over.”

Putting the phone down, her face finally relaxed a little. She looked up at Yu Sheng and said: “They found the orphanage’s files.” Yu Sheng was surprised and asked, “So fast?”

“It went better than expected. The records are almost a century old, but they’re in the Council’s archive. The Special Affairs Bureau and the Council have a coordinated access system,” she said with a faint smile.

A moment later, the duty secretary knocked on the office door and brought several freshly printed files to Bai Li Qing’s desk.

Yu Sheng leaned in at once and read with her.

A photo soon caught his eye.

It showed a child of seven or eight in a slightly ill-fitting dress, standing nervously in front of a blackboard.

She was thin, a bit dark-skinned, with plain braids. Everything about her looked ordinary. She wasn’t very cute, and in the photo she seemed stiff, like a teacher had suddenly told her to stand on the platform for a picture and she hadn’t understood what was happening. Deep in her eyes there was confusion and fear.

“Missing right before the first Fairy Tale outbreak. She was old enough to read a Fairy Tale book on her own. She’s the only one who fits,” said Bai Li Qing beside him. “It was eighty-six years ago.”

Yu Sheng’s face darkened. He stared at the photo for a long time, then saw her name: Zhao Le Le.

Even the name was ordinary.

So ordinary that it felt wrong for a twisted story. But on one night eighty-six years ago, like the start of every story, “that moment” found her.

“She went missing at night. The orphanage called the police, but of course there was no follow-up. There aren’t many records. What’s left are the photo, her age when she vanished, and her name. Why she became an orphan, where she came from, we don’t know,” said Bai Li Qing slowly. “If the Council didn’t require that every missing child case must be reported and never closed until the person is found, this photo might not have survived.”

Silently, Yu Sheng slipped the file into his own things. Bai Li Qing didn’t stop him.

“We’re also checking on that ‘Fairy Tale book’ from back then,” she added. “We have a general range now. If we get lucky, we might find a surviving copy of the same edition.”

“Can you really find it?” asked Yu Sheng. “It’s almost a hundred years ago. Would there even be a record of a lost book?”

“Maybe not a loss record, but we might be able to see what books that orphanage had,” she said, giving a small nod, then pausing. “How many books do you think the Cursed Children in that orphanage could have had in total?”

Yu Sheng said nothing.

“In theory, even if that orphanage’s management was loose, the basic asset log and donation records should exist. When the Special Affairs Bureau briefly took it over, we took all that material and archived it. The problem is, back then those files usually didn’t have deeper indexes. So now the detailed ledger is hard to search. We have to dig by hand,” she said.

Yu Sheng nodded lightly. “Thanks for your hard work.”

“It’s our duty,” said Bai Li Qing. She pointed at a stack on the desk. “These are the Special Affairs Bureau’s records of surveillance around the orphanage and nearby areas in those years. There’s no sign of any burst of abnormal energy, and no report of a ‘glowing thing falling without a sound,’ like you mentioned.”

“Yeah,” sighed Yu Sheng. “That’s about what I expected.”

“From a hopeful angle, recording no ‘phenomenon’ was the Borderland’s great luck on that night eighty-six years ago,” said Bai Li Qing with feeling. “A Dark Angel had silently drilled into our world. If the Descent had really happened, then every ‘data point’ we would record would be paid for with tens of thousands of lives.”