Chapter 96

Chapter 96: Active Testing

“The security guards the museum spawns won’t cross zones. We can rest in this corridor for a while,” Little Red Riding Hood said, scanning the quiet hallway. “When we transfer to another area later, we need to be extra careful. We still don’t know how many guards the museum has spawned. If they all end up blocking the area around the white exhibition hall… we’re screwed.”

“The real question is how those security guards got activated in the first place.” Irene hopped down from Yu Sheng’s shoulder, her face set in intense concentration. “We definitely didn’t break any rules, but the moment they showed up, they charged in swinging…”

Little Red Riding Hood opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, then hesitated.

Irene didn’t bother with subtlety. “Spit it out. What are you thinking?”

Only then did Little Red Riding Hood speak. “The most likely explanation is that someone else entered the museum besides us. They triggered the museum’s cleanup mechanism, but… in theory, that shouldn’t happen. I checked before we came. There weren’t supposed to be any other investigators coming here tonight…”

“Maybe they came in secretly,” Irene said, thinking out loud. “With some shady purpose or something…”

“Unlikely.” Little Red Riding Hood shook her head. “The Special Operations Bureau has rules. Opening an otherworld within the borderland has to be reported in advance. Every node has monitoring functions. They form a huge sensing net. If an otherworld passage—or a spacetime rift—opened by accident, it would trigger an alert.”

“Yeah, yeah, we know that one,” Irene said, nodding without an ounce of shame. It was hard to tell whether she understood, but her eyes soon drifted to Yu Sheng.

Yu Sheng was squatting on the floor, turning a twisted plastic arm segment over in his hands.

It was what the security guard that had grabbed him at the last second had left behind. His door had cut the arm off. Maybe because it was too far from the main body, it had completely lost its activity. It lay like a chunk snapped off a plastic mannequin.

Yu Sheng tapped it against the floor. Hollow. Cheap.

[Plastic. Looks like plastic, feels like plastic… I wonder if it would taste like plastic if I took a bite…]

The moment the thought slipped through, Irene shrieked beside him. “Hey! Yu Sheng, what are you doing?! That’s plastic! You can’t eat it!”

“Of course I know I can’t eat it.” Yu Sheng shot her a helpless look. “I’m not that insane. Even if it wasn’t plastic, those security guards are humanoid, okay? I’m not doing that. I’m just curious how these entities move.”

Irene clutched her chest in relief. “Thank God. You scared me to death… I’m telling you, if you pulled out a pot and stewed it on the spot, I wouldn’t even be surprised. You’re that kind of person.”

Yu Sheng sighed. “That’s what I am in your head?”

Little Red Riding Hood watched from the side, visibly horrified.

Not because Irene had yelled, you can’t eat that.

Because Little Red Riding Hood remembered the plate of stir-fried meat she’d seen the last time they went to Wu Tong Road No. 66. And now she couldn’t stop her brain from wondering whether Yu Sheng really had been thinking about it—at least, wondering what it would taste like.

Then Yu Sheng drew a small knife.

Before she could blink, he’d sliced a shallow cut in his arm, let blood bead up, and smeared it across the plastic limb.

A different kind of horror rose in her stomach. She blurted, “What are you doing?”

“Trying to get some intel and build an advantage.” Yu Sheng spoke casually as he spread the blood with careful, almost practiced precision. “My blood can establish a link with a lot of things, including entities. I just don’t know if it still works on a limb that’s been cut off.”

This time Irene was calm. She’d built up a resistance to Yu Sheng’s particular brand of nightmare. She even explained, as if it were normal, “His blood’s really weird. Foxy and I have both come into contact with it…”

“So, seriously,” Yu Sheng said, turning to Little Red Riding Hood and holding out his arm, “you sure you don’t want a sip? The cut hasn’t healed yet. My wounds heal fast. If you don’t do it now, you’ll miss your chance.”

Little Red Riding Hood sprang backward off the wolf. “No!”

She turned to the only person who hadn’t said much—Foxy. Instinctively, she still wanted to believe the great fox demon was the most normal-minded member of the Hotel Trio. “Don’t you think something is wrong with this?”

Foxy only stared at Yu Sheng with devotion. “Benefactor’s arts are profound. Witch-blood art is like that!”

Little Red Riding Hood went blank. She had no idea what “witch-blood art” was supposed to mean. She was a high schooler. She hadn’t dealt with cultivation types much before now.

Meanwhile, Yu Sheng noticed the blood seeping into the plastic at a visible pace.

“Looks like it worked,” he murmured.

“It really works?” Irene leaned in, eyes bright. “What do you see? What do you see? Did you figure out why those security guards went crazy?”

“It’s a vague connection I just formed. I can’t probe information that complex yet.” Yu Sheng waved her down, then closed his eyes and focused on the thin thread of sensation his blood had built between him and the museum.

He imagined his awareness stretching, passing through corridor after corridor, door after door, exhibition hall after exhibition hall. Among countless arranged collections, he searched for the source of the arm—searched for other presences like it.

All at once, he felt them.

For an instant, it was as if he stood among them. A security guard uniform hung on his body. His limbs were stiff, crooked, surrounded by other plastic dummies in the same dark blue.

The illusion shattered almost immediately. Just like the first time he’d sensed “hunger” moving, Yu Sheng knew he’d mistaken blood-borne information for an extension of his own limbs.

He wasn’t connected to the museum that deeply yet. But if the link kept strengthening… maybe it wouldn’t stay an illusion. Maybe, like the grand feast in that valley back then, he really could briefly become those security guards standing in the halls and corridors.

“Most of the security guards are concentrated that way, two intersections down.” Yu Sheng opened his eyes and pointed along the corridor. “They’re all frozen right now, like they haven’t received further orders. There are a few scattered farther out in distant halls, too. None of them look like they want to move on their own.”

Little Red Riding Hood’s eyes widened, disbelief written all over her face.

This was the first time she’d understood Yu Sheng’s ability so clearly. Back in Nightfall Valley, everything had been chaos—helping hands in the dark. She’d never gotten clean intel out of it.

Now she did, and she immediately grasped how terrifyingly useful it was.

With one touch—with one chance to plant his blood—Yu Sheng could build a stable sense. He could get early intelligence on entities in an otherworld, track their positions and state…

Then a colder thought followed: would it work on humans, too?

For some reason, Yu Sheng’s “take a sip” invitation flashed through her mind again.

Her skin crawled. She shoved the thought down, forced her voice steady, and spoke quickly. “Then we can avoid direct contact. But can you sense anything besides the guards? Can you tell what’s going on in the exhibition halls—can you find the white one?”

“No.” Yu Sheng shook his head. “The link’s still shallow, and it’s mostly tied to the guards. I can barely feel the museum’s structure itself.”

As he spoke, he cut another small slit in his arm—the last one had already healed—and, as a test, smeared his blood across the nearby wall and floor.

The blood seeped into tile and plaster, but Yu Sheng felt almost nothing change.

“Probably not enough volume,” he said, entirely serious. “I figure I’d have to smear my whole body on this place three or four times…”

Little Red Riding Hood’s expression went beyond horror into something close to despair.

Yu Sheng caught her look and, for once, had enough common sense to read it. He waved his hand quickly. “Joking. Joking. I’m just curious.”

Little Red Riding Hood stared at him.

Is that what “curious” meant?