Chapter 93

Chapter 93: The Museum

The empty ticket window blazed with light. The ancient machine creaked as it spit out red entry tickets from thin air. It was undeniably eerie.

Little Red Riding Hood waited calmly, like she’d seen it a thousand times.

A few seconds later, the creaking stopped.

Three connected tickets slid into the booth.

Little Red Riding Hood froze. She didn’t reach in. Instead, she knocked again, sharper this time. “Wait. I need four tickets. Four people entering.”

No response.

Two seconds passed. Three.

Just as she lifted her hand to knock again, the light inside the booth flickered—and went out.

Only three red tickets remained, lying quietly in dust.

Yu Sheng stared, then counted. Then counted again. He looked at Little Red Riding Hood, completely lost. “What… what’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” She sounded genuinely unsettled. “This has never happened before.”

She took the tickets and looked across Yu Sheng, Foxy, and Irene. “The museum entrance has communication traits. After sunset, every hour and half-hour, it can accurately identify and respond to valid entry requests. There’s never been a case of it intentionally making a mistake.”

Yu Sheng frowned and looked the four of them over.

His gaze landed on Irene.

The little doll twisted uneasily. “…What?”

Yu Sheng hesitated, then said carefully, “Kids under one meter enter free?”

For a heartbeat, Irene just stared.

Then she realized what he meant and practically exploded. “You’re the kid! Your whole family are kids! You’ll be a kid your whole life! Do you know how much damage that does to a mature lady?!”

Yu Sheng used hands and feet to keep Irene from launching herself at his throat. He looked up at Little Red Riding Hood. “Is my guess reasonable?”

Little Red Riding Hood was still stunned. She stared at the three tickets like they’d personally offended her. Finally, she muttered, “It… kind of makes sense.”

Irene immediately redirected all her rage toward Little Red Riding Hood and lunged with a howl—

Only to be flipped onto her back in an instant by two wolves that burst out of the shadowspawn.

The little doll looked like she was about to cry.

Yu Sheng hauled Irene back, murmuring soothing nonsense until she stopped shaking with indignation. Then he asked, genuinely curious, “No one ever noticed this rule before?”

Little Red Riding Hood gave a bitter smile. “…Even the most unhinged people in this line of work wouldn’t send a baby under one meter tall on a mission.”

Irene promptly started crying for real.

“Did you have to say it like that?” Yu Sheng scrambled to comfort her, then looked helplessly at the girl in red. “So what now? We’re short one entry ticket. Can Irene still go in with us? Or is there really a free-entry rule, and she still qualifies?”

“Hard to say.” Little Red Riding Hood spoke carefully, as if worried the theater itself might be listening. “We’ll have to try and see.”

She handed the tickets to Yu Sheng and Foxy, then glanced at the pitch-black booth with suspicion. “An entrance like this… would it really have such human-friendly rules?”

The booth offered no answer.

In the vast, empty theater, the corridor leading to the auditorium lit up with faint light, as if urging the ticket-holding audience to hurry inside.

“Let’s go,” Little Red Riding Hood said at once, forcing her mind back on track. “The passage is open. Stay behind me. Don’t do anything unnecessary.”

Yu Sheng immediately sobered. Even Irene, teeth clenched, calmed down. Together with Foxy, they followed Little Red Riding Hood into the long, narrow corridor.

Light stretched along with their footsteps, illuminating the hallway inch by inch. As they walked, Yu Sheng thought he heard footsteps around them—more and more, as if invisible audience members were moving beside them toward a show that was about to begin.

Then, just as suddenly, the sounds faded away.

A door appeared ahead, half open. Bright light spilled through the gap. Inside, rows of seats waited in neat lines, and a stage sat at the far end.

Little Red Riding Hood raised her ticket. “Hold it up like this. If you hear a shout when you enter, stop immediately. We all go back to the entrance together. That means entry failed. If you force your way in, the museum will generate a security guard entity. It’s very dangerous.”

Yu Sheng’s nerves tightened. He and Foxy mimicked her, lifting their tickets as if showing them to an unseen usher, and stepped through the half-open door.

No one shouted.

Irene didn’t hear anything either.

They filed into the auditorium, walked down the aisles past dusty red seats, and sat near the front, close to the stage.

“We’re washing these clothes when we get back,” Yu Sheng muttered to Irene. “These seats are disgusting. If I’d known, I would’ve brought old newspapers.”

Little Red Riding Hood shot him a startled look. She still wasn’t used to Yu Sheng’s way of thinking—too practical, too grounded, and somehow even stranger because of it.

Then a sharp bell rang outside the auditorium.

The lights over the audience dimmed rapidly. Over the stage, spotlights snapped on with loud relay clicks, bright beams cutting through the stale air.

In the next second, applause erupted.

Dense applause. Whistles. Cheers. A wave of noise surged from the empty seats, crashing in from every direction as if the room were packed.

Yu Sheng’s breath hitched. The heat of the spotlights baked down from above—

And when he blinked, he wasn’t in the seats anymore.

Foxy, Irene, and Little Red Riding Hood stood with him in the center of the stage.

Just like the info said: enter the theater, sit with a ticket, and when the applause begins, the ticket holders shift from audience to actors. Museum night opens in the sound of clapping hands you can’t see.

The stage around them rose and rearranged itself.

Walls formed—pale yellow, then patterned ceilings with reliefs and color. Dark green and dark blue floors stretched outward. Doors appeared. Display cases. Rooms. Corridors.

The space churned and reshaped in a dizzy rush. A mural flashed into existence on the opposite wall: a crimson dragon, vivid as blood. In the blink of an eye, a plaster knight appeared beside it, raised its sword, and stabbed into the dragon’s throat, the two images tangling into a new relief.

Then a line of soldiers in ancient armor marched from a distant door. Halfway across, musketeers burst from inside a painting and opened fire. Smoke spilled, gunshots cracked, and the soldiers fell—only for flowers to sprout from their bones, becoming neatly arranged potted plants and green walls lining a visitor route.

The roar of the building’s transformation lasted a full ten minutes before everything finally went still.

When the last tremor faded, a wide corridor stretched before them. Landscape paintings hung on both sides. The lights overhead were bright, and a large hall loomed faintly at the far end.

Low, uneasy whines came from nearby. At some point, Little Red Riding Hood had already summoned her phantom shadow wolf pack.

She glanced at Yu Sheng’s stunned expression and smiled. “Shocked?”

Yu Sheng swallowed. “A little.”

“The museum is unbelievable,” she said. “If you ignore the danger, you could call it an art hall full of wild imagination. That’s how Aemorabi praised it before he died.”

Yu Sheng blinked. “Who’s Aemorabi?”

“An artist from out of town. Pretty famous outside the Borderland.” A trace of emotion slipped into her voice. “He died here—in pursuit of art. If we’re lucky, we might see a painting called The Field in a sky-blue room. It has Aemorabi’s signature. That’s what he ‘created’ after becoming an exhibit.”

“After becoming an exhibit, he could still create?”

“That’s what the experts concluded.” She kept walking, careful, eyes moving constantly. “This museum occasionally gains new things, and they’re tied to the casualties who vanished here. Sometimes it’s a portrait or sculpture of them. Sometimes it’s artwork signed by them.”

Her tone sharpened with warning. “The widely accepted view is that this is the museum’s collection and creation mechanism. But don’t worry too much. The danger level here is only level two. As long as you follow the rules, don’t fight security guards directly, and don’t enter dangerous rooms, the museum won’t actively kill you.”

She gave him a look that said she meant every word. “It’s considered peaceful.”