Chapter 200

Chapter 200: Files

After Bai Li Qing finished issuing her orders, Yu Sheng finally laid out everything he’d uncovered for the director.

He explained how Old Zheng might have obtained that “angel umbilical cord,” the long-ago “failed descent,” the fairy tale book that had been sent out, and Anka Aila’s possible condition now.

Even Bai Li Qing’s usual iron composure wavered from start to finish in the face of that chain of intel.

Her brows knit tightly. When Yu Sheng got to Squirrel’s memories, she couldn’t help cutting in. “You’re saying a child in an orphanage—with zero signs of any spiritual talent—directly heard dark angels speaking, even established communication with them, and stayed completely sane the whole time?”

“At least Squirrel thinks so,” Yu Sheng said with a nod. “I can’t rule out the possibility that it was influenced by an angel and had auditory hallucinations back then. But the fairy tale book it handed over has to be connected to the current fairy tale otherworld. That book’s influence on Anka Aila definitely existed.”

“A single fairy tale book affected the angel descent process.” Bai Li Qing spoke slowly, as if weighing every word. “Even hearing it from you, I still find it hard to believe. But if it’s true, then maybe dark angels aren’t as ‘flawless’ as we imagined. Or at least, in the early stage of the first descent, their ‘operation’ was fragile—something could interfere with it.”

She paused, then continued, thoughtful. “Even more shocking is this: if what Squirrel provided is real, then that Anka Aila is rational. That overturns our understanding of dark angels.”

In this world, rational dark angels—dark angels you could talk to—simply did not exist. Scholars had treated them more like a kind of natural disaster than any form of life. Bai Li Qing didn’t need to spell it out; Yu Sheng understood exactly how much this would shake everyone who studied angel descent.

After a moment, the conversation circled back to the fairy tale otherworld itself.

“According to Squirrel, the black forest ‘stage’ has always been growing and changing,” Yu Sheng said, thinking as he spoke. “Every generation of Little Red Riding Hood brings new ‘things’ into the forest—sometimes even new ‘rules.’ Overall, it’s like a story being built up from an outline and refined over time.

“First you get the most basic worldview and the big map. Then you add characters and items, then connections between story elements. That shows how dynamic fairy tale is.

“And from Princess Snow White and the seven… uh, Thunder Titan, plus the ‘Wolf Granny’ Xiao Xiao faced before, we can confirm another trait: every ‘main character’ makes the subset generate a corresponding ‘distorted copy.’ When two Little Red Riding Hood existed at the same time with a clear gap in power, the black forest even generated two different ‘versions’ of Wolf Granny.”

Yu Sheng’s tone steadied. “It’s exactly like what the first Little Red Riding Hood said in her last words: ‘This forest is alive.’ And it’s not only the black forest. The entire fairy tale is alive. It reacts to the ‘characters’ trapped inside it with an extremely high level of interactivity.”

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

Bai Li Qing listened in silence. Then, as if speaking to herself, she murmured, “It’s still ‘reading’ that book.”

“Yes.” Yu Sheng nodded. “It’s still ‘reading’ it, still trying to ‘understand’ it. But obviously, the way dark angels ‘understand’ is completely different from human rationality and cognition. And fairy tale—as an otherworld—its form of existence, how it was born, and the way it’s ‘linked’ to Anka Aila… it’s all different from what we thought before.

“As a cage, it was actually woven by Anka Aila itself. The entire fairy tale was very likely built on that dark angel, like some kind of…”

He frowned, searching for the right word. “…Like a shell.”

“So the deep dive squad that got into trouble back then probably brushed against Anka Aila’s true body while drilling through the fairy tale shell,” Bai Li Qing said at once, connecting the dots. “Then the ‘corpses’ mentioned in the operation records—the ones that suddenly staggered to their feet after the facility was locked down…”

“Maybe that was Anka Aila ‘leaking’ into the real world,” Yu Sheng said, tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Be glad. It looks like that leak was unconscious. Anka Aila didn’t truly wake up.”

Bai Li Qing went quiet. Her pale eyes flickered, and beyond the wide floor-to-ceiling window behind her, a pair of hazy, indistinct eyes quietly appeared as well.

A cold, mechanical voice sounded in her mind: “Didn’t expect it. Seventy years later, and the operation record can still get updated.”

Yu Sheng had seen those eyes before. He also knew they belonged to Bai Li Qing’s sister, so he wasn’t startled. He simply smiled and lifted a hand in greeting.

The eyes blinked, looking oddly flustered—probably not used to being casually noticed by an outsider. And she’d forgotten again that she wasn’t actually invisible to Yu Sheng.

Just then, the phone on the oval desk rang.

Bai Li Qing picked it up, listened for a few seconds, then nodded. “Good. Bring it in.”

She set the receiver down. When she looked up again, her expression had finally eased. “They found the orphanage records from that year.”

Yu Sheng blinked. “That fast?”

“Smoother than expected.” A faint smile touched Bai Li Qing’s lips. “It’s nearly a century-old record, but it was included in the councilor archives. The Special Operations Bureau and the councilor archives have a coordinated retrieval mechanism.”

A moment later, the on-duty secretary knocked and placed several freshly printed, neatly organized documents on Bai Li Qing’s desk.

Yu Sheng leaned in immediately, and the two of them flipped through the files together.

A photo caught his eye at once.

A child of seven or eight stood stiffly in front of a blackboard, wearing a dress that looked a little too big. Thin, dark-skinned, with old-fashioned braids. Plain in every way—neither especially pretty nor especially cute. In the photo, the child looked like she’d been ordered up to the front without understanding why, and the shutter snapped before she’d even found her footing. Deep in her eyes was a hint of confusion and fear.

“She went missing before fairy tale’s first outbreak, at an age when she could read a fairy tale book on her own,” Bai Li Qing said beside him. “She’s the only one who fits. It’s been eighty-six years.”

Yu Sheng stared at the photo for a long time before his eyes drifted down to the name beneath it.

Zhao Le Le.

Even the name was ordinary. So ordinary it felt like it didn’t belong in any twisted story at all—and yet, eighty-six years ago, on a certain night, like the beginning of every story, that moment found her.

“She disappeared at night,” Bai Li Qing said, her voice steady. “The orphanage reported it to the police, and of course there was no follow-up. There isn’t much record of the case itself. All that remains is this photo, her age when she disappeared, and her name. As for why she became an orphan or where she came from, there’s nothing.”

She paused. “If not for the councilor rule that any missing-child case must be reported and never closed if the child isn’t found, this photo probably wouldn’t have survived either.”

Yu Sheng quietly slid the file back into its folder. Bai Li Qing didn’t stop him.

“We’re also still verifying the situation of that fairy tale book from back then,” she continued. “Right now we have a rough range. If we’re lucky, we might even find a surviving copy from the same edition.”

“Can you really track it down?” Yu Sheng asked, genuinely curious. “Nearly a hundred years ago, a book went missing. Would there really be a record?”

“There may not be a missing-item record,” Bai Li Qing said, “but it’s possible to trace what books that orphanage had at the time.”

Then she asked, quietly, “How many books do you think children in that orphanage could have had in total?”

Yu Sheng fell silent.

“In theory,” Bai Li Qing went on, “even if the orphanage’s management was loose, it should have had at least basic asset registers and donation records. During the short period the Special Operations Bureau temporarily took over the orphanage, we took over those files, organized them, and archived them. It’s just that back then, those kinds of documents didn’t have deeper indexing systems, so the detailed list is hard to search now. It has to be combed through manually, bit by bit.”

Yu Sheng gave a small nod.

“Then I’ll leave it to you.”

“It’s our duty,” Bai Li Qing said flatly. Then she tapped the stack of papers. “These are the surveillance records the Special Operations Bureau documented for that orphanage and the surrounding area. From the records alone, there was no abnormal energy surge, and there were no eyewitness reports of the ‘glowing object falling silently’ you mentioned.”

Yu Sheng let out a sigh. “Yeah. That’s about what I expected.”

“From an optimistic angle,” Bai Li Qing said, her own tone carrying a faint heaviness, “the fact that no ‘phenomenon’ was recorded was the Borderland’s greatest luck on that night eighty-six years ago. A dark angel silently drilled through our world—if a descent truly happened, then every single ‘data point’ we recorded would probably have been written in thousands upon thousands of lives.”