Chapter 95

Chapter 95: Transfer

“Didn’t you say these things wouldn’t attack us on their own?”

Yu Sheng ducked as a plastic baton whistled past his face. He twisted and shouted at Little Red Riding Hood, who was directing the wolf pack as they fought their way back.

The dummy’s baton slammed into the stone beside them, blasting sparks with a shriek of metal on rock.

Yu Sheng lunged, grabbed the plastic security guard by the arm, and wrenched it down. The joint snapped with brute force—but he didn’t fold it in half or twist its head off like he’d done before.

In the scramble, he’d noticed a pattern: once these plastic mannequins were smashed into a heap of parts—or damaged past some invisible threshold—they “repaired” themselves and returned to normal within seconds. But breaking arms and legs, crippling them without destroying them, cut their threat way down and didn’t trigger the repair.

“I don’t know either!” Little Red Riding Hood retreated with the wolves, planting herself in a corner of the exhibition hall. She blocked the uniformed figures that kept pouring in and shouted, “I’m sure we didn’t break the museum’s rules on the way here. Normally these security guards shouldn’t even appear!”

Yu Sheng opened his mouth to argue—then heard another burst of hurried footsteps from the corridor at the far end of the hall.

Wobbly, ridiculous figures spilled out one after another.

Irene’s black “spider silk” had just snared two dummies that had lunged for her. Before she could catch her breath, she glanced toward the corridor and blurted, “Holy crap… more? Do these things spawn forever?!”

“Forever—until the night show ends, or until every actor is dead,” Little Red Riding Hood said fast. “Or until we break line of sight with every security guard. That pauses the museum’s spawns. They only search on their own when they first appear. Once the intruder leaves their field of view, they freeze. But as long as they can still see you, more entities will keep appearing around you!”

Yu Sheng snapped his gaze to the only other exit besides the corridor.

That door was already choked with plastic dummies. The hall had no blind spot to hide in, no gap to slip through.

They couldn’t stay pinned here.

“Fall back!” Yu Sheng shouted. “Find somewhere without any security guards!”

He sprinted toward Little Red Riding Hood and the wolves. “Everyone, to me—Foxy, clear us some space!”

“Hold that corridor!” Foxy answered immediately.

With a sharp whum, her fox tails flared open. Sheets of eerie foxfire rolled off them in a widening ring, roasting nearby dummies until their plastic warped and sagged. Then the demon fox girl spun—two silver-white tails flashed, tore free, and screamed down the corridor like launched warheads.

“Fox-carrot missile!”

The words hadn’t even faded when the corridor erupted. Even in this sturdy otherworld, the building shuddered under the impact. A corner of the hall collapsed, and the wall beside the corridor caved in, burying the opening that had been spewing security guards.

For a heartbeat, it worked.

Then the rubble began to convulse. Rebar and concrete writhed as if alive, trying to knit themselves back together. Hands and feet—still in dark blue uniforms—shot out from between broken bricks. Ragged plastic dummies clawed their way free and kept crawling into the hall.

Yu Sheng only needed those few seconds.

With Irene slung over his shoulder, he reached out and yanked open a faintly shimmering, unreal door. “This way!”

Sieges and encirclements meant nothing to him. He might not win a straight fight, but he could always run.

Little Red Riding Hood charged through without hesitation, the wolves flowing after her. Foxy fell back, too. Before she jumped in, she gripped a tail, aimed its tip at the last wave of rushing mannequins, and fired bursts of foxfire like gunshots.

“Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat—”

“Fox-carrot machine gun!” she yelled, proud as hell.

Yu Sheng glared at her. “What kind of trash names are those—get inside already!”

Foxy blinked. “Oh.”

She sprayed one last burst to pin the dummies down, then turned and leapt through the door.

Yu Sheng followed with Irene—only for a warped plastic guard, hidden in Foxy’s blind spot, to crawl up from the side. Heat had twisted its body out of shape, and its stiff face had shriveled into something that almost looked angry. It lunged and clamped onto Yu Sheng’s ankle.

The grip was like a hydraulic press.

Yu Sheng didn’t stop. He dragged the twisted mannequin forward, hauled it across the threshold, and let the door cut the passage cleanly behind him before it could follow.

The dummy’s arm sheared off in an instant.

Everything went quiet.

The endless rush of security guards, the fox-carrot missiles, the collapsing hall—gone, like a fever dream.

Yu Sheng was getting used to it. Every time he crossed one of his doors, the world snapped into something else so violently it never felt real. This wasn’t his first time.

He looked up.

A wide corridor stretched both ways, glass display cases lining the walls with ordinary collections. Little Red Riding Hood watched their surroundings with wary focus, seven or eight shadowy wolves drifting in slow circles around her. Foxy stood guard at the far end, a tail in each hand like she was dual-wielding Barrett rifles.

The security guards hadn’t chased them. No new entities spawned in the air. Just as Little Red Riding Hood had said—once they broke line of sight with every guard at the same time, the museum’s hunt paused.

“This is a corridor we passed earlier,” Little Red Riding Hood said into the silence. “I thought you’d just open a door out of the museum.”

“Then tonight would’ve been a total waste,” Yu Sheng said, exhaling hard. “And whatever blocker-inducer you injected before coming in would’ve been wasted, too. From the way you talk, that stuff’s probably expensive. Besides… don’t you think it’s weird? Those security guards suddenly attacked people. That doesn’t match what you knew. Something’s wrong in here. I’d feel worse leaving without finding out.”

“Normally the safest option is to withdraw the moment an otherworld behaves unexpectedly,” Little Red Riding Hood said, glancing at him. Then her tone shifted. “But you’re right. Otherwise we… came for nothing. If the risk is controllable, investigating changes can pay off.”

“Yeah. And if it really goes bad, we leave from here.” Yu Sheng nodded and looked at Foxy.

The demon fox girl flashed him a smug smile, clearly pleased with herself.

“…You did great,” Yu Sheng admitted. Then he couldn’t help it. “It’s just—why do your moves suddenly have names now? Who named them?”

“Irene,” Foxy said cheerfully, selling out her friend without hesitation. “I told her all the ways I can use my tails, and she gave me lots of names! I’ve even got a new one in development called fox-carrot charge—”

Yu Sheng didn’t let her finish. He turned and stared at Irene on his shoulder. “I knew it. Who else would it be? Those names are awful!”

“I thought them through for ages!” Irene snapped, tired a second ago and suddenly full of fire. Hands on her hips, she glared up at him. “How are they awful? Look at her tails—aren’t they perfect? And I used really clever wordplay!”

Then she muttered, “Honestly, at first Silly Fox and I talked about calling the rapid-fire move ‘fox-carrot biu’… but we decided it wasn’t formal enough…”

Yu Sheng’s temple throbbed.

He tried to comfort himself with one thought: at least it wasn’t called fox-tail biu.

Little Red Riding Hood stood to the side, watching the three of them like she was witnessing a minor cosmic disaster.

Weird. Absurd. Outrageous—and somehow, internally consistent.

It didn’t fit the surroundings at all.

This wasn’t a spirit realm detective running a clean otherworld operation. It wasn’t a clueless rookie sightseeing without fear, either. If anything, she could tell they were serious.

Yu Sheng was serious. The doll arguing about whether fox-carrot counted as clever wordplay was serious. Even the muddle-headed demon fox was serious. They treated this place seriously, and what they had to face seriously—just with a mindset no normal person could copy.

From the perspective of a “normal human,” Little Red Riding Hood couldn’t understand the mood of this Hotel Trio. She also couldn’t decide whether their mental state was… correct.

In the end, she let out a small breath, sat down on a wolf’s back, and slowly recovered her strength.

What a strange experience.

Before she’d even come of age, meeting a group of such interesting “people” wasn’t bad at all.