Chapter 208

Chapter 208: Someone Always Talks

To be honest, Song Cheng didn’t care what Yu Sheng asked for. They’d worked together enough times that he fully understood the director’s attitude toward Yu Sheng. His only worry was that there was too much food and someone might overeat—but after he watched Foxy devour a drumstick in three bites until only the bone remained, even that worry died.

Yu Sheng was the one who felt awkward.

When the skewers arrived, he glanced at Song Cheng and asked sheepishly, “You actually got all of it? You didn’t even ask why?”

“As long as you don’t roast me, we’re good,” Captain Song said seriously, struggling to ignore the sound of Foxy annihilating skewers beside him. “The bureau always works from a practical standpoint.”

Yu Sheng chuckled, casually swept the other ritual materials toward Foxy—who promptly packed them away with her tail—and stepped up to the bodies.

These cultists hadn’t been dead for long. By estimate, their mad self-sacrifice ritual had happened last night. Yu Sheng believed his “conversation with the dead” would work well on corpses this fresh.

He cut open the palm of one cultist. Blood that hadn’t fully coagulated seeped slowly from the wound.

Yu Sheng drew a soft breath, reached out to touch the cooled blood, and murmured, “Come on. Let’s have a chat.”

In an instant, the stagnant, faded world of the dead descended.

Everything around him bleached into dull shades of black, white, and gray. The entire room fell silent. Cold blood formed a temporary channel. Yu Sheng’s vision wavered for a moment—and when it stabilized, the cultist on the table had opened his eyes.

Empty. Stiff. Fixed on Yu Sheng like dead glass.

That alien stare made Yu Sheng’s skin crawl.

“I…” A hoarse gurgle seeped from the cultist’s throat, like sound echoing in an empty shell. “I should return to my lord’s embrace…”

“I don’t know where the dead are supposed to go,” Yu Sheng said lightly, “but I’m stopping you right now.”

He leaned in, smiling faintly at the speaking husk. “You sacrificed yourself to Anka Aila. Why?”

The words Anka Aila seemed to shock the dead man awake. His eyes widened. He stared at Yu Sheng, as if trying to understand who he was—or what had happened.

But the chaos of death surged in. The cultist struggled for a few seconds, and the strongest thoughts and memories from before his death finally opened a door.

“Ah… we heard the lord’s voice… the lord’s child is finally about to awaken, and we offer guidance… the time to fulfill the vow has come.”

The dead man forced himself upright. In that faded, silent afterworld, he stared into Yu Sheng’s eyes—and then his mouth split into a grin.

A horrible, uncanny laugh bubbled out of him, like he’d suddenly understood something. His mouth stretched wider and wider, until it tore his cheeks, tore his skull. A raspy, piercing noise burst out of his chest.

“Ah, I know who you are now! You touched that holy umbilical cord. You appeared in the lord’s dream. The lord’s whispers have already traced your fate… Hahahaha! It was all foretold!

“You were one step too late!

“Poor thing, poor thing! You’re too late!

“Hahaha… we are not here. We… are no longer here…”

The laughing corpse convulsed, then collapsed back onto the table in the middle of its own mad noise. The laughter and screaming echoed beside Yu Sheng’s ears like a poisonous curse.

Yu Sheng listened in shock. Before he could force out another question, the fallen corpse ignited. Pale flames swallowed it in the blink of an eye.

Then, one after another, the other bodies on the mortuary tables began to burn as well.

In the gray world of the dead, every angel cultist body burned. Yu Sheng looked around in disbelief as the ignited corpses twitched. They screamed in the flames, laughed wildly, shouted Anka Aila’s name, shouted about the umbilical cord and signs of awakening, and countless other phrases no human could understand—pure noise.

Then, suddenly, all sound vanished.

The pale flames dispersed from Yu Sheng’s sight as if they’d never existed.

Color snapped back. Yu Sheng blinked, and he was back in the living world.

The bodies still lay quietly on the tables. They looked unchanged.

But when Yu Sheng tried to cut open another palm and start a second conversation, he heard only a short, hollow whoosh.

It was as if something inside those bodies had already been emptied out. When the pale flames flared, whatever “souls” remained had left.

Song Cheng stepped closer, tense. “What happened? Did the ritual fail?”

“No.” Yu Sheng steadied himself, shoving the mess of thoughts down. “It worked. But they said a lot of insane things. Something feels wrong…”

He told Song Cheng everything he’d heard during the conversation, including the fact that he could no longer communicate with the other corpses.

Song Cheng’s brows drew tight, his expression grim. “The lord’s child is about to awaken. They offered guidance. And they said we were one step too late…”

He muttered to himself. After a moment, Irene spoke up from the side. “Go see the angel cultist we captured before—the one whose defenses we broke. See if we can squeeze anything else out of him.”

Yu Sheng and Song Cheng exchanged a quick look. Then they nodded at the same time.

The group—now including a fox who’d already eaten her fill—left the morgue and went to the holding area.

After they passed through the gate and the light curtain withdrew, Yu Sheng saw the bald man again: the one he’d lectured about reason more than once.

He looked thinner than before, spirit worn down, but he still sat up straight, as if clinging to the last shred of pride as a servant of the messenger.

But when Yu Sheng appeared, the bald cultist’s eyes flickered with surprise—and fear.

“I’m back,” Yu Sheng said bluntly. He walked over and sat on the bed opposite him. “So. Cooperate, or do we do the routine?”

“What routine?” The bald man’s gaze slid away for an instant, then snapped back, calm and steady.

“You act arrogant. I beat you up. You act arrogant again. I beat you up again,” Yu Sheng said casually. “After a few rounds, you declare you’re unbending and unyielding. Then the doll beside me crawls into your head and digs out whatever secrets you’ve got left.

“You should know your precious mental fortress is already full of holes. If Irene can get in once, she can get in a thousand times. The only question is how many beatings you want to take. I don’t care either way. If you like the routine, you can start fixing your expression now.”

The cultist clearly hadn’t expected Yu Sheng to be that direct. His face shifted several times, but in the end, he shook his head.

“Whatever. I have no more secrets. Use any method you can think of. That cursed doll can rummage through every layer of my mind. Death or torture—I’m prepared for all of it.”

Yu Sheng stared into his eyes. The calm there didn’t look fake.

“Do you know your accomplices are all dead?” Yu Sheng said suddenly. “We found their hideout. All dead. Not one left.”

The cultist’s expression finally changed.

But it wasn’t grief. It wasn’t wavering.

It was… a strange joy. A strange calm.

They stared at each other for a long time before Yu Sheng heard the cultist mutter thickly, “Ah… looks like the container has finally matured…”

Yu Sheng’s heart jumped. He lunged forward and grabbed the man by the collar. “What did you say? What does ‘the container has finally matured’ mean?”

But this time, the cultist showed no fear.

He calmed completely. Under Yu Sheng’s glare, there was even a faint mockery deep in his eyes. He parted his lips and silently mouthed, “Goodbye—”

The next second, Yu Sheng felt the body in his hands go heavy.

The man’s breath vanished in an instant, like someone flipping a switch from alive to dead. Under layers of restraints and surveillance, the cultist died right in front of him.

From the ceiling monitor, Song Cheng’s shocked shout crackled through the speaker. “Huh?! What the hell?! What happened?!”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer.

He pulled out a small knife, cut a wound on the newly dead cultist’s arm, grabbed him, and instantly started the chat.

The black-white-gray world descended.

The cultist opened his eyes in confusion. When he saw Yu Sheng, he looked utterly stunned.

Someone newly dead always looked more alive in a conversation with the dead than a corpse that had been sitting for hours. At the very least, his expressions still resembled a human’s.

Yu Sheng stared at him, still gripping his collar. “You weren’t finished. What does ‘the container has finally matured’ mean?”

The cultist blinked. Slowly, he seemed to grasp what had happened.

“…Fuck,” he said.