Chapter 208

Chapter 208: Someone Always Talks

To be honest, Song Cheng did not care what Yu Sheng had ordered. They had “worked together” many times, and he already knew exactly how the Director treated Yu Sheng. His only worry was that the order was too big and might be hard to finish, but after he saw Foxy strip a whole drumstick to the bone in three bites, even that last worry was gone.

Yu Sheng felt a little embarrassed. When the skewers arrived, he glanced at Song Cheng and asked with a cough: “You really gave me all this? You didn’t even ask?”

Captain Song kept a straight face and said, trying hard to ignore the sounds of Foxy chewing beside him: “As long as you don’t roast me, we’re fine. The Special Affairs Bureau always does what is useful.”

Yu Sheng chuckled, then swept the extra alchemy materials he wanted into Foxy’s tail and walked over to the bodies of the Angel Cultists.

These cultists had not been dead long. The crazed Self Sacrifice ritual had likely taken place the night before. Yu Sheng judged that his Conversation with the Dead would work well on such “fresh” corpses.

He cut open one cultist’s palm. The blood had not fully clotted and seeped out of the wound.

He took a quiet breath, reached to touch the cooled blood, and murmured like he was chatting to himself: “Come on, let’s talk.”

In an instant, the world of the dead descended.

Everything turned to dull black, white, and gray. The room fell silent. The cold blood formed a temporary channel. Yu Sheng swayed for a second, and when his sight cleared, he saw the Angel Cultist on the slab open his eyes, blank and stiff, and stare right at him.

That alien gaze made his skin crawl.

The cultist’s throat scraped out a hoarse mutter, the sound like an echo inside an empty shell: “I should return to the Lord’s arms.”

Yu Sheng smiled and said, looking at the talking body: “I don’t know where the dead are supposed to go, but I’ve stopped you for now. You offered yourself to Anka Aila. Why?”

The name Anka Aila seemed to trigger something. The dazed shell jerked, eyes going wide. He stared hard at Yu Sheng, as if trying to figure out who stood before him, or what had happened to himself. But the chaos of death pressed in. After a few seconds of struggle, the cultist’s strongest last thoughts and memories finally opened a Door to Yu Sheng:

“We heard the Lord’s voice. The Lord’s child will soon awaken. We offered guidance. The time to fulfill our promise has come.”

The dead man strained and sat up. In this colorless, silent afterworld, he looked Yu Sheng in the eyes, then suddenly grinned.

The corpse burst into a creepy, twisted laugh, like he had just figured something out. His grin stretched wider and wider, tearing his cheeks, then his head. A harsh, rasping noise burst from his chest: “Ah, I know who you are. You touched the Sacred Umbilical Cord. You appeared in the Lord’s dream. His whispers have traced out your fate. Hahaha, it was all foretold! You are one step late! Poor soul, poor soul! You are late! Hahaha… we are not here. We… are no longer here…”

The laughing corpse convulsed and fell back. Before Yu Sheng could ask anything else, the body flared into pale fire. In the blink of an eye, the flames swallowed the shell. Then, one after another, the other bodies on the slabs also burst into fierce, pale flames.

In the flat gray world of the dead, every Angel Cultist burned. Yu Sheng stared in shock as the bodies twitched, screaming and cackling in the fire, shouting Anka Aila’s name, shouting about the Umbilical Cord and signs of awakening, and many other sentences no human could understand, like pure noise. Then, all at once, every sound vanished.

The pale flames melted from sight as if they had never been.

Color returned. Yu Sheng blinked and found himself back in the normal world. The Angel Cultists still lay quietly on the slabs, as if nothing at all had changed.

He tried cutting another corpse’s palm and starting a second Conversation with the Dead, but heard only a short, empty hiss.

It was as if something inside these shells had already gone. When the pale flames had blazed up, whatever “souls” were left in the Angel Cultists slipped away.

Song Cheng came over with a tense look: “What happened? Did the ritual fail?”

Yu Sheng steadied himself, pushed down the messy thoughts in his head, and said quickly: “No, the ritual worked. But they said a lot of crazy things, and it didn’t sit right with me.”

He told the Special Affairs Bureau captain everything he had heard during the Conversation with the Dead, and that he could no longer build any “connection” with the other corpses.

Song Cheng’s brows knotted tight, his face growing grim: “‘The Lord’s child will awaken’? And they ‘offered guidance’? And we’re late?”

He muttered to himself. After a moment, Irene spoke up: “We should check that Angel Cultist who broke through our line before. Maybe we can pull more from him.”

Yu Sheng and Song Cheng traded a quick look, then nodded at the same time.

The group, including the now full fox, left the morgue and headed for the holding cells. When they went through the gate and the light screen drew back, Yu Sheng saw the bald man he had lectured with reason several times.

The man looked thinner and a bit drained, but he still sat straight, as if even now he was trying to keep the last bit of pride of a “servant of the Messenger.”

When Yu Sheng stepped into the room, the bald cultist clearly showed surprise, even fear.

Yu Sheng did not bother with small talk and sat on the bed across from him, saying: “I’m back. So, will you cooperate, or do we follow the process?”

The bald man glanced away for a second, then turned back and met Yu Sheng’s eyes as he asked: “What process?”

Yu Sheng waved a hand and said: “You keep acting wild, I beat you up, you keep acting wild, I beat you again. After a few rounds, you claim you won’t bend, and then this Doll will go into your head and dig out whatever is left of your secrets. You know your proud mental wall is full of cracks. Irene can get in once, so she can get in a hundred times. The only difference is how many extra beatings you take. I don’t care either way. If you prefer the process, you can start adjusting your face now.”

The cultist had not expected Yu Sheng to be so blunt this time. His face shifted a few times, but in the end he only shook his head.

He said calmly: “Do as you like. I have no more secrets. Your cursed Doll can turn my mind inside out and sift through it. I am ready for death or torture.”

Yu Sheng locked eyes with him and saw that the calm was real.

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

The Angel Cultist’s face finally changed.

But there was no sorrow or doubt in it. If anything, there was a strange piece of joy and peace.

After minutes of staring at each other, the cultist muttered: “Ah, looks like the vessel is finally ready.”

Yu Sheng’s heart jumped. He grabbed the man by the collar and snapped: “What did you say? What does ‘the vessel is finally ready’ mean?”

This time the cultist showed no fear at all. He was truly calm. Under Yu Sheng’s stare, a thin hint of mockery rose in his eyes. He shaped the words silently with his mouth: “Goodbye.”

In the next second, Yu Sheng felt the body in his grip drop, and the man’s breath vanished in an instant. It was like switching straight from “alive” to “dead.” The Angel Cultist, trapped under layers of restraints and monitors, had just died before his eyes.

From the ceiling camera, Song Cheng’s startled shout burst out: “Huh?! What just happened?!”

Yu Sheng frowned, did not answer, flicked out his small knife, and cut the dead cultist’s arm to start chatting at once.

The world of the dead descended in a blink. The newly dead cultist opened his eyes in a daze and looked at Yu Sheng, still a little lost.

The newly dead were much livelier during the Conversation with the Dead than those who had been gone a while. At least their faces still looked human.

Yu Sheng stared at him, kept his grip on the man’s collar, and asked: “You didn’t finish. What does ‘the vessel is finally ready’ mean?”

The Angel Cultist blinked and seemed to finally understand what had happened.

He said: “… crap.”