Chapter 225

Chapter 225: Growth

“The orphanage is standing up…”

Li Lin’s voice came through the phone, tight and urgent. As an elite agent—maybe not fully seasoned yet—he usually kept his cool. But whatever he was facing now had blown past every bit of training and field experience he’d ever had.

“Strictly speaking, it’s those two buildings. They’re… growing. Like they’ve turned into some kind of plant. They’re making this huge noise as they twist around each other. We already requested support from the higher-ups. We’re pulling back outside the wall now. The nearby blocks are being evacuated, emergency procedures and all. And just now, from underground, we also heard…”

The call suddenly crackled with interference. The signal chopped and stuttered, as if something heavy had slammed into it. Then Yu Sheng heard a baby’s wail—followed by a shriek like an alarm being dragged across metal.

At first he thought it was still inside his head.

Then he realized it was coming from the receiver.

The crying from the other end overlapped with the noise in his mind, and the two sounds merged into something that made his vision tilt. His skull felt packed with cotton and needles at the same time.

He didn’t fully snap back until Irene’s frantic yelling hit him like a slap.

“Hey! Yu Sheng! Yu Sheng! What the hell is going on?! What happened?! What is it?!”

“Anka Aila…” Yu Sheng sucked in a sharp breath. “The orphanage is the damn container for the dark angels.”

He reached out and went straight for a far-reaching door, intent on opening it immediately. “Foxy, Irene—come with me.”

Then he remembered something, and his hand froze mid-motion.

He lifted his head and scanned the small house in the camp. Through the blood-forged connection, he could feel it: almost every child had already fallen asleep. Some had even entered the sanctuary wasteland.

“Irene,” Yu Sheng said, turning to the doll. “Split yourself in two.”

“Is that even human language?!” Irene shrieked.

“Don’t interrupt.” Yu Sheng’s tone sharpened. “Split yourself. Leave a part of your mind behind and send the rest to the sanctuary wasteland. Remember how we opened the teleportation gate to the black forest back then?”

He paused, eyes narrowing as something clicked into place.

“I just thought of something that might help me break through that wolf pack in the black forest. I’ll need your ability.”

A strange light rose slowly in his eyes.

Irene knew that look. It was the look that meant Yu Sheng had an idea—usually the kind that made the world regret being within splash range.

“I’m going to hit Anka Aila with something big.”

…

In the dark night sky, eerie roars and shrill creaking rang out, raising goosebumps like the air itself was recoiling. A massive structure—reinforced concrete laced with some weird black substance—stretched upward like a limb growing too fast and without control. As it rose, it twisted and reshaped, forming a spiral.

It looked like a warped umbilical cord linking sky and earth.

And yet, as long as you backed away beyond the orphanage wall, the whole nightmare seemed to vanish. From the nearby blocks, looking toward the orphanage, everything still appeared normal. The mutation and contamination felt like nothing more than a terrible illusion trapped behind the boundary.

But Li Lin knew it wasn’t contained. It was overflowing.

In the darkness, he could see the wall bulge now and then, like something inside was shifting its limbs—an unborn thing pressing against a womb right before birth. After retreating, he sometimes heard odd sounds drifting down from above. Every minute or two he’d glance up, and that tangled, growing “umbilical cord” would flash into view for an instant—long enough to prove it was still there, still getting bigger, and each time it looked more vicious and wrong.

The sensors they’d planted inside the wall before pulling back were now spewing endless chaotic data. The images on the monitors looked less and less like reality. Countless indescribable shadowspawn surfaced around the two buildings—swaying crowds, struggling limbs, and things even worse than that, things that weren’t human at all.

Then, out of the corner of Li Lin’s eye, a phantom door appeared in the air nearby.

It opened.

Three figures stepped out—the Hotel trio.

For reasons he couldn’t fully explain, Li Lin’s shoulders loosened. It was the same feeling as seeing reinforcements arrive: not relief exactly, but the sense that someone had finally shown up who belonged in this kind of disaster.

Yu Sheng strode out with that terrifying club of his. He walked straight up to Li Lin, then glanced past him toward the orphanage gate.

The gate warped and twisted in the night, as if something inside was slamming into it over and over, trying to break out of the restricted zone marked off by the wall.

“How is it now?” Yu Sheng asked, pulling his gaze away. “I saw those two buildings still…”

“The mutation is contained inside the wall for now,” Li Lin cut in quickly. His words came out fast, urgent. “You can only observe it once you go in, but it’s spilling outward. Before we retreated, we tried to rush into the two buildings and set up emergency monitoring equipment, but the structures changed almost instantly. Like they sensed what we were doing. They erased their own doors and released a huge amount of warped shadow to block us—so we had to pull back here first.”

Yu Sheng nodded once. “Got it. You stay here. The three of us will go in and take a look.”

Li Lin blinked. “Wait. Just you three? You’re going to charge straight in?”

Yu Sheng was already walking. He glanced back as if the question itself was strange. “Yeah. What else?”

“No—” Li Lin stammered. “I thought you’d have a more detailed plan. Or at least coordinate once the follow-up support from the bureau gets here. A combat plan, or something…”

“Oh.” Yu Sheng scratched his chin, thinking for half a second. Then he shook his head. “Yeah, I didn’t think that far. Our club isn’t professional.”

And with that, he walked straight through the swollen, warping gate in the night, right in front of Li Lin and his stunned colleagues.

Inside the wall, Yu Sheng saw the truth.

The upper halves of the east and west main buildings had become a pile of grotesque fragments. A strange black substance, fibrous like tar-soaked threads, propped those broken shards in place. The lower halves were barely holding their shape, but they were completely drowned in thick shadow.

Beyond the two buildings, the entire orphanage grounds were flooded with overflowing darkness and rippling, writhing matter. Swing sets and slides—places where the children used to play—were wrapped up and swallowed. Ink-textured liquid rippled in the sandpit and flowerbeds.

And the sound of a baby crying was coming from both Yu Sheng’s mind and the real world at the same time.

“Ugh…” Irene clutched Yu Sheng’s hair, her whole tiny body tensing. “I’m suddenly feeling like charging in isn’t such a good idea…”

Foxy’s fur bristled. Her nine tails spread like a peacock’s fan. “Benefactor… it feels like we can’t get through.”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer. He only stared at the two main buildings, twisted together like a gigantic umbilical cord—

—and realized he could see something Li Lin, Irene, and Foxy couldn’t.

Between those warped, rising buildings, and between the black matter surging across the grounds, there was a path.

Faint glowing traces spread across the shattered, deformed earth, leading straight into the spiral structure that used to be the east building.

A warmth rose near Yu Sheng’s chest, growing stronger, carrying a subtle burn and tremble. He reached into his clothes and found the source.

A bullet with a spiral tip.

It was heating up like it had just been fired, as if it still carried the mission of flying toward its target.

Out of the corner of his eye, Yu Sheng watched the black shadows rolling through the outdoor activity area slowly become a forest. On the swing sets and slides being swallowed by sticky matter, flowers began to bloom—bright, dense, and wrong in the way a dream could be wrong.

Little Red Riding Hood was going to walk down the country path.

The Big Bad Wolf was going to attack the girl who wandered alone.

Wolf Granny was waiting in the final little house.

And the Hunter—the Hunter would cross the forest and reach that house.

“Follow me…” Yu Sheng said softly.

He tightened his grip on the bullet and stepped forward as if guided by instinct, walking toward the two main buildings that were still growing into the night sky.

Foxy followed without hesitation, even with her tails still bristling like a graveyard of swords.

Irene held Yu Sheng’s head with one hand, eyes wide, then flailed the other. “Ah… fine! Whatever! I’m the doll of Alice’s little house!”

Dark silk threads unfurled from her hands, floating and winding around the three of them, weaving into a barrier that was half real and half illusion.

Yu Sheng seemed not to hear her. He kept moving, drawn along that invisible route. Gradually, it was as if he could no longer see the surging shadows and sticky, uncanny matter. He no longer saw crooked walls or sealed doors and windows.

He advanced through dim light, stepping onto a path only he could see. Amid Irene’s sharp little gasps, he passed through shadowspawn and walls that looked solid, through doors that seemed sealed shut.

In Yu Sheng’s eyes, it was only patches of light and shadow between trees.

On the first floor, the lobby was overgrown with dense forest. Bushes crowded the entrance to the reception desk. A dead, dry trunk lay across the stairs to the second floor. Vines hung from the ceiling. The nearby walls had split open, and the classrooms inside were filled with a dusk-like glow.

Yu Sheng climbed a vine-covered slope. He passed through a hollow in a dry trunk where a window used to be, then used his club to push aside the grass blocking his way. At the end of the path, he stopped.

A sign lay half-buried among soil and rotten leaves.

It read: “Reading Room.”

“Right,” Yu Sheng murmured. “The reading room. For kids who grew up in the orphanage… no ‘story’ can ever leave this place behind.”