Chapter 246

Chapter 246: Bonfires and Fireworks—Long Time No See

It caught.

That pile of firewood stacked like a small mountain finally caught.

Little Match Girl struck her match, gave the world a cheerful middle finger, and the whole thing went up in an instant.

Dense, light-blocking clouds sealed shut overhead, and the artificial night Yu Sheng had made drew its curtain. Lamps lit up in front of the temporary barracks, dotting the Valley with its first scattered sparks.

Everyone had been invited to the Plaza: all the kids from the Orphanage, the council employees who had been taking care of them, and the Special Operations Bureau engineering crew that would withdraw tomorrow. Over a hundred people gathered by the bonfire, and beyond the flames, Thunder Titans sat in silence like enormous shadows.

A Phantom Door appeared at the edge of the Plaza.

Yu Sheng pushed it open and stepped out, calling with a grin, “Look who’s here!”

Li Lin and Xu Jiali came out first. Both of them stopped short, staring at the scene in shock. Yu Sheng nudged them along, and they hurried forward to greet Little Red Riding Hood.

The person in charge of the engineering crew, Engineer Sun, seemed to know Xu Jiali. He led a few people over to greet them warmly. Teacher Su and the other “employees” dispatched by the council also came over, welcoming the newcomers.

Two or three seconds later, a cool, distant-looking figure finally stepped out with visible hesitation.

Gray-white ponytail. White outfit. Calm eyes that took in everything at once.

The Plaza fell silent.

Engineer Sun stared as if his brain had stopped working. “B-Bureau… Director?”

Yu Sheng glanced over and saw that even Princess Rapunzel—usually the loudest person in any radius—had gone rigid. She stood there with the determined stare of someone preparing to die in battle, like breathing too loudly might count as treason.

Yu Sheng couldn’t help it. He broke the silence. “Do you all really have to act like this? Director Bai Li doesn’t eat people.”

“I knew this would happen,” Bai Li Qing said. Even she looked a bit helpless. “Relax. I’m just here to join the celebration. Pretend I’m not here.”

“Director, we’re just surprised,” Engineer Sun said, finally finding his voice. He coughed twice to ease the awkwardness. “It’s great that you came. We just… didn’t prepare anything…”

“It was a last-minute decision. I didn’t notify anyone.” Bai Li Qing’s gaze landed on Little Red Riding Hood and the nearby guardians. Something in her expression softened. “Congratulations.”

“Mm. Thank you,” Little Red Riding Hood said with a faint smile. “You’ve always looked after us.”

“No need for polite words,” Bai Li Qing said, nodding. “Today, everyone should relax.”

She looked up at the cloud ceiling. After a brief silence, she turned to Yu Sheng. “A very creative night curtain. So what’s next? What’s the first program?”

“Rapunzel,” Little Red Riding Hood said immediately, turning to her roommate, “where’s your pile of fireworks? You’ve been yelling all afternoon about setting them off. Now you really can.”

“Oh! Right—fireworks!” Princess Rapunzel snapped back to life like someone had flipped a switch. She sprinted toward the Portal Platform in the center of the Valley. “I stacked them all over there! Just wait and watch—Little Match Girl! Little Match Girl, come here! We’re setting off fireworks!”

The two young ladies bolted off.

A short while later, the night sky rang with a sharp whistle. A brilliant flare shot up from the direction of the Portal Platform. After a heartbeat of suspense, it burst into a bloom that lit the cloud ceiling like a painted dome.

At the instant it exploded, Yu Sheng vaguely heard a familiar voice in his head: “Hey… it blew up right in my eyes…”

No one seemed to notice the brief flash of a pair of eyes in the sky, and fireworks kept rising—one after another—until the night felt alive with color.

The kids cheered and screamed.

Irene cheered and screamed too—every one of the three Irenes was here.

And then there was Foxy.

While cheering, she fired a burst from a fox-carrot machine gun into the sky. Under her deliberate control, eerie fox fire rose alongside the fireworks and burst with them overhead. Blue flames spread across the cloud ceiling, then rained down like meteors.

They called it a celebration party, but there were no rules, no program list, and no schedule. The kids just wanted to be loud for once—to use one unrestrained carnival as both an ending and a beginning, a marker that childhood had turned a page.

With this many kids around, no one needed help “warming up” the atmosphere.

Barbecue racks went up beside the Great Bonfire. The engineers worked with a bunch of half-grown kids, while the little ones darted back and forth between the Plaza and the Portal Platform, begging Sister Rapunzel for smaller fireworks or ferrying snacks from one side to the other. The Plaza and the platform were only one or two hundred meters apart, but King still flicked a paw and summoned a patrol of night knights and lantern-carrying watchmen to pace back and forth along the short “carnival path.”

A Pumpkin Carriage swooped out from the roof of the “castle” at the edge of the little town. It sailed through the night between the bonfire and the fireworks, scattering colorful paper scraps down onto the Plaza like confetti.

Yu Sheng caught one without thinking. Big watercolor letters sprawled across it:

“wo xiang grow up and become a su teacher!”

Yu Sheng laughed and showed it to Little Red Riding Hood. For a moment, her expression shifted into something quiet and complicated—something he couldn’t name. Then she smiled and pointed toward the bonfire.

“Look,” she said softly. “King summoned its court jester.”

The court jester wore gaudy, ridiculous clothes and a clown mask topped with a pointed hat. He performed with all his heart beside the bonfire. Even though he was only a summoned thing with little mind, he still seemed to understand that tonight was different. The exaggerated, upturned smile under the mask looked oddly sincere.

Then traveling musicians and bards stepped out of the air and began playing an unfamiliar tune.

Among the older kids, a girl with smooth Rapunzel-like hair and a pale blue dress stepped forward. To the cheerful melody, she hummed and sang as if it were as natural as breathing.

Her voice wasn’t loud, yet it carried evenly across nearly half the Valley.

No special effects. No magic showmanship. Just beautiful.

Yu Sheng quietly backed away.

In the mermaid’s singing, he slipped out of the liveliest part of the Plaza without drawing attention and headed for an open patch of ground near the barracks.

Bai Li Qing stood there with her arms crossed, watching the Plaza from a distance. There was a faint smile on her face.

“…Hiding all the way out here?” Yu Sheng said as he walked over. Then, unable to resist, he added, “…You can smile too, huh?”

“I’ve said it many times. I’m not expressionless,” Bai Li Qing said, sounding genuinely tired of having to clarify it. “I just need to stay serious at work. After a long time, it became a habit.”

She glanced toward the noise in the distance. “And I’m not hiding. I’m just not used to a place this loud. Everyone else isn’t used to joking around with the Director of the Special Operations Bureau watching from the side, so I found a place with… clear tranquility.”

“Fine. Clear tranquility is nice.” Yu Sheng waved a hand. “Where’s your sister? Is she okay?”

Bai Li Qing pointed up into the night. “She’s here.”

Yu Sheng followed her finger and saw a pair of huge phantom eyes floating in the cloud-dark sky. They blinked hard, as if crying—but the tears vanished the instant they left the eyes, like everything about “her” except those eyes had been erased.

Yu Sheng: “…”

“That thing was huge,” Bai Li Xue said, her voice still mechanical and flat, yet somehow thick with resentment. “It blew up right in my eyes.”

“…I warned you,” Bai Li Qing sighed. “Don’t lean in to look at everything. Recover slowly. I can’t find a barrel of eye drops that big anytime soon.”

The eyes slowly faded from the air.

A rustling sound came from the nearby grass.

Yu Sheng wasn’t surprised. It was like he’d been expecting it. As the sound came, he was already crouching.

A tiny reddish-brown figure sprang out of the bushes. With nimble hops, it scrambled onto Yu Sheng’s shoulder.

“Squirrel is here!” the tiny voice shouted, delighted. “The fireworks are so pretty!”

Yu Sheng gently pressed a finger to Squirrel’s head. Then he lifted his gaze toward another direction in the night.

A hollow figure in hunter’s garb stood there, keeping a respectful distance from Yu Sheng and Bai Li Qing.

“Good evening,” Yu Sheng said, smiling as he nodded lightly at Hunter. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

“I wanted to come ages ago! But Hunter kept dragging his feet,” Squirrel muttered into Yu Sheng’s ear. “First it was ‘my clothes aren’t sorted yet,’ then it was ‘my shotgun’s acting up’—why do you need a shotgun to come to a bonfire party?”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer. He only turned his head to look at Bai Li Qing.

Bai Li Qing stepped forward and stopped in front of Hunter, calmly staring at the empty hood and battered clothes as if she could still see the faces and eyes that had long since turned into nothingness.

“Long time no see,” she said.

Hunter’s hood shifted slightly. A hoarse, distant voice came from beneath it. “Yeah. Long time no see, Director.”

Yu Sheng’s amusement drained away in an instant.

Director?

This Hunter—formed from the fusion of a deep dive squad that had vanished seventy years ago—also called Bai Li Qing “Director.”

And he said long time no see.