Chapter 234

Chapter 234: Shutdown

Yu Sheng’s vision swayed before he made out Squirrel’s shadowspawn. The little thing was squatting on his cheek, licking his nose with its tiny tongue.

Irene’s frantic voice came from nearby. “Yu Sheng! Yu Sheng, are you awake? Holy shit, you scared me to death. I thought you were done for. Falling from that height, we wouldn’t even be able to scrape you up—”

“Could you say something nice for once?” Yu Sheng finally came fully awake. Rolling his eyes, he saw Irene by his head and Foxy crouched at his side.

Foxy stared fixedly at what Squirrel was doing, licking her lips without thinking. Yu Sheng’s mouth twitched as an unpleasant memory surfaced.

“…You’re not planning to lick me too, are you?”

Foxy jerked, wiping at the corner of her mouth like she’d been caught stealing. She grinned sheepishly. “Hehe… I’m just relieved Benefactor is okay…”

“I-I was scared too,” Squirrel said, hopping off Yu Sheng’s face. It rubbed its paws together and mumbled, “I jumped down after you, and Foxy caught me with her tail—she’s amazing. She can fly. The three of us flew down, and then we saw you lying here like you were asleep. Irene was even guessing whether you’d just died or just come back to life…”

Yu Sheng ignored that last part. He pushed himself up, then stood, scanning the surroundings.

“Where are we?” he asked, frowning. “How long have you been down here?”

“Only a few minutes,” Irene said quickly. She pointed overhead. “But when we came down, we noticed there’s a thick shell over this place. It should’ve been sealed, but there are several big holes in it. You fell through the biggest one.”

Yu Sheng hummed, eyes still moving.

It was dim, but not pitch-black. A faint glow—like emergency lighting—seeped down from the dome above and from scattered pinpoints around them, giving him enough to see.

This space was enormous, but unlike the inner structures they’d seen earlier, it wasn’t full of cold metallic shine.

The ground here was soil.

Farther away, withered remains lay half-buried in the earth, and suspicious substances spread like corruption through the dirt. When Yu Sheng looked up again, he could make out the heavy dome Irene had mentioned—damaged long ago, scarred by time.

Gradually, understanding settled in.

“…This is the biosphere carried by Anka Aila,” Yu Sheng said.

Irene stared at him with her crimson eyes. “What?”

Yu Sheng bent down, scooped Squirrel into his arms, and started walking as he explained. “A scaled-down homeworld ecosystem. It’s the blueprint and the seed an ark uses to rebuild an ecology on a new planet. If I’m not mistaken, there should also be a gene bank here—cryosleep, stasis tech, something along those lines… But like this biosphere, it must have died a long time ago.”

Irene listened in a daze, clearly not sure what to do with that information.

Foxy, though, nodded along, thoughtful. “Back in my hometown, people build things like this too. To develop ecological planets. Big developers, mostly.”

Irene gaped. “Your hometown has everything!”

Foxy didn’t answer. She just narrowed her eyes and swished her tail, looking smug.

Yu Sheng kept moving through the lifeless ruin, gaze sweeping over dried riverbeds, withered vegetation, and exposed pipes half-buried in dirt. He tried to imagine what this place had once looked like—green and living, full of purpose.

He knew this was Anka Aila’s “child.”

That angel thing had been growing here, fed by an ark that no longer remembered what it had truly lost.

Yu Sheng didn’t know what would have happened if that shadowspawn had truly been born into the borderland.

He only knew it would have been disaster.

For everyone.

Even for Anka Aila itself. That thing wasn’t the homeworld in its memories. It wouldn’t bring back its creators. All it would do was crawl out of Anka Aila’s corpse and become another nightmare.

And by then… the dark angels would probably lose what little control they had left.

A tremor ran through the ground.

A low rumble followed.

Yu Sheng stopped. Foxy’s ears snapped upright.

“Did you hear that?” Irene whispered, suddenly tense. “Something’s moving… deeper down.”

Yu Sheng’s expression shifted—then turned heavy, as if he were listening to something Irene couldn’t hear.

Calm, gentle whispers trembled in a dimension ordinary people couldn’t perceive.

A few seconds later, Yu Sheng sucked in a sharp breath, eyes widening.

“Irene,” he said, fast and hard. “Wake everyone on the Sanctuary Wasteland. Pull back to the real world for now.”

“Huh—okay! Got it!” Irene looked confused, but Yu Sheng’s face made her move instantly. Even as she started, she blurted, “What’s going on? Why all of a sudden—”

Yu Sheng whipped around, his expression grim. “Anka Aila is shutting down.”

Irene froze, then snapped, “What the hell?!”

“We have to get out. Now. This place is finished.” Yu Sheng grabbed Irene and tossed her onto his shoulder, already turning as if to open a door back to the real world—then he stopped short.

“…No. Hunter is still here.” His jaw tightened. “Hurry back. We still have time.”

“No!” Irene shouted from his shoulder, thinking faster now that she didn’t have to walk. “Anka Aila is shutting down—what about the black forest? What about fairy tale? What about Squirrel? If fairy tale collapses, Hunter has nowhere to go!”

Yu Sheng went still.

The rumble sharpened into a shrill, rising noise. The tremors underfoot grew stronger and stronger. The ancient, mutated ark was collapsing from the inside out.

And then Yu Sheng thought of something.

“…Connect it to the valley.”

Irene stared up at him, shock written all over her face.

“They’re both otherworld,” Yu Sheng said slowly, forcing the words out one at a time. “They’ve both been parasitized by the dark angels. I’ve spilled blood and sweat in there more than once. If it worked once, there’s no reason it can’t work a second time.”

He drew a breath.

“I’m going to fuse fairy tale and the valley into one.”

“What do you need us to do?” Irene asked immediately.

“I have to do this part myself, and it may take time,” Yu Sheng said as he reached out, shaping the phantom door. “You and Foxy go out first and explain the situation to the people outside. Anka Aila has been sunk in the borderland all these years. Once it shuts down, it’ll detach and break apart. You need to report all of this to the Special Operations Bureau.

“As for me, I’ll send Squirrel and Hunter back to the black forest first, then start the fusion.

“Irene—split off a body and go warn the children in the valley. There might be… big movement next. Tell them to stay calm and remain in camp. Above all, don’t let them get close to any areas where changes appear. Got it?”

“Got it, got it,” Irene said, nodding hard. “So it’s me splitting into two again, right?” She climbed onto Foxy and waved a hand. “Go ahead. Don’t worry about us.”

Foxy still looked worried. Standing at the door, she glanced back at Yu Sheng. “Benefactor, are you going to…?”

Yu Sheng gave her a thumbs-up and grinned. “Relax. I’m guaranteed to die.”

Foxy sighed, then smacked his arm with her big tail. Before the next violent quake could knock them off balance, she hugged Irene close and leapt through the door back to the real world.

…

The moment every monitoring device started throwing errors and alarms blared, Li Lin heard something like a barrier shattering.

It was as if there had been a mirror inside that dark wall—a divider between reality and nightmare—and it had shattered into crisp fragments under an impact beyond its limit.

Then everyone present heard the rumble coming from deep underground.

It grew from faint to thunderous. A staggering, unmeasurable energy reaction erupted in the signals from distant sensors.

In the blink of an eye, Li Lin saw the wall around the orphanage crack and crumble without a sound. Half of the sixteen temporary protective barriers vanished outright, and the remaining half wavered on the verge of collapse.

Then a beam of light rose into the night sky.

It burst from the center of the orphanage. In its glow, the two umbilical cord strands that had been intertwined and floating upward toward the sky were silently dissolving.

A glowing object rose slowly within the ruins of the wall.

Bai Li Qing watched with a cold expression and lifted her phone. “Prepare to execute ‘dome fracture.’ Our signal may disappear shortly. Before that—”

She didn’t finish.

A door appeared less than three meters away.

A moment later, Foxy and Irene jumped out.

The instant Irene crossed the threshold, she shouted, “Don’t panic! Whatever that fracture thing you’re talking about, stop it first!”

Bai Li Qing stared at the two people who had appeared out of nowhere.

…

A moment later, still stunned, Li Lin received new orders.

He turned and looked past the ruins of the orphanage wall at the ball of light rising into the night sky. Slowly, he raised the radio and drew a careful breath.

“All units, listen up. Stay alert and keep observing. Check all recording devices. We may be witnessing the first… angel fall in history.”