Chapter 97

Chapter 97: The White Exhibition Hall Under Siege

Yu Sheng wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but Little Red Riding Hood seemed jumpier than before.

He had a sinking suspicion it might have something to do with him.

Luckily, his skin was thick and his heart was wider—thanks mostly to Irene—so he pushed the thought aside and focused on what mattered.

Through the thin link he’d built, he could sense security guards frozen throughout the museum. Some were even slowly dissolving into the air, as if the moment the intruder vanished from every guard’s sight, the museum’s cleanup mechanism paused and began reclaiming the mannequins it had spawned.

But the reclaiming was slow. If they waited until every dummy had vanished completely, they might miss the museum’s opening window.

Little Red Riding Hood had warned him: this was a time-limited otherworld, only accessible during the night show.

“We keep moving,” Yu Sheng said after another careful check. “This way.” He pointed to a door deeper in the corridor. “No security guards behind it.”

“Okay.” Little Red Riding Hood didn’t waste words. She guided the wolf pack after Yu Sheng, trusting the only person here who could confirm a safe route.

The next exhibition hall glowed with warm orange light. In the center stood a cluster of massive mountain-and-river sculptures. Cheerful landscape paintings in bright tones covered the walls. None of the pieces had names. The creator was simply listed as unknown.

No plastic dummies waited for them. Along the route Yu Sheng indicated, they didn’t meet a single security guard.

Little Red Riding Hood found it hard to believe.

By the Special Operations Bureau’s standards, once security guards spawned, the museum’s danger level was already pushing Level Three—a situation that normally demanded a fully armed elite unit. And yet here she was, leading her wolves through hall after hall, intersection after intersection, in a museum that was slowly revealing its malice… while those entity-security guards spread throughout the otherworld might as well have not existed.

Only when Yu Sheng occasionally lowered his voice at an intersection—warning them to turn, to wait, to avoid a line of sight—did she remember the lethal threat still all around them.

They passed corridor after corridor, room after room, and still never found the empty white exhibition hall from the intel.

Then Yu Sheng stopped short, his brows knotting.

“What is it?” Little Red Riding Hood tensed immediately.

“We still haven’t found it,” Yu Sheng said quietly.

“Maybe it’s deeper in,” Irene offered from Yu Sheng’s shoulder. Once they were on the move, the doll couldn’t be bothered to walk even one step.

“It’s not that.” Yu Sheng’s expression hardened. “We’ve already explored every place that isn’t blocked by security guards. Every remaining intersection is controlled by those plastic dummies.”

Irene stared at him for a second, then managed to force out a curse.

“So it’s the worst case.” Little Red Riding Hood’s irritation flashed across her face. “The white exhibition hall really is surrounded.”

Yu Sheng was silent for two beats, then said, almost like he was testing the idea aloud, “Or the plastic people spawned in the white exhibition hall in the first place.”

He lifted a hand and pointed at a nearby door.

“Go through there and you’ll reach the center of where they’re clustered. Seven or eight entities in the same space, at least. And I noticed something else—security guards in other areas are slowly fading, like the museum is reclaiming them. But the ones over there show no sign of being reclaimed.” His eyes narrowed. “I think that’s the white exhibition hall. Something happened there that caused the spawns. And whatever triggered it is probably still inside.”

Little Red Riding Hood, Irene, and Foxy exchanged looks.

Yu Sheng’s read sounded solid.

It also sounded like terrible news.

“So what now?” Irene broke the silence first. “Do we retreat, or go take a look? Either way is creepy. Retreating is normal. But if we leave like this, not only did we come for nothing—it’s going to feel like we got beat up for free. We ran away so pathetically earlier.”

Little Red Riding Hood thought for a moment, then looked at Yu Sheng.

“You decide,” she said.

Yu Sheng blinked. “You really want me—a rookie—to decide? A newcomer who doesn’t know anything and is reckless?”

“You’re the one who can get us out of this otherworld. You’re also the only one who can confirm a safe route.” Her voice stayed steady. “That has nothing to do with whether you’re new.”

Yu Sheng’s face went serious. After a long moment of weighing it, he let out a slow breath and turned toward the door.

“We get close and observe first. No alerting them. We find a way to peek inside and see what’s going on in the white exhibition hall. If we can confirm the situation, great. If not, we retreat.”

He glanced back at Little Red Riding Hood. “Those guards only move when they see us, right? Getting close won’t trigger them by itself?”

“Only when they see you,” she answered immediately. “Investigators confirmed it. The museum’s security guards have vision only—no hearing, no smell. Their vision is a fan shape, about one hundred and twenty degrees in front of them. In other words, they’re limited, and rule-bound, and full of loopholes. But as long as you’re inside that fan, they never miss you. And since most exhibition halls are open, if a few guards stand at the right angles, the entire room has no safe corner.”

Yu Sheng nodded, thinking. Then he led them out of the hall and toward the place he’d sensed as wrong.

They soon passed through another repeating corridor—nearly identical to the last dozen—and reached an exit at the far end.

Before they got too close, Yu Sheng raised a hand and stopped.

“It’s a white room,” he said.

Irene’s sharp eyes caught a sliver of what lay beyond the half-open door. At the same time, Yu Sheng could feel the security guards stationed near the entrance. He even saw a strip of dark blue uniform at the edge of the doorway.

It was exactly as he’d predicted. The entities were spawning from the white exhibition hall, and the ones inside showed no signs of fading.

Little Red Riding Hood frowned and sniffed twice.

“Blood,” she said low, her expression turning grave.

“I smell it too.” Foxy nodded. “It’s fresh.”

Blood. Corpses. The scent of death.

It seeped out of the white exhibition hall, and the museum’s entity-security guards were spawning from it.

Something had happened. No question.

But from their angle, they still couldn’t see the center of the room. If they stepped closer, they might cross into a guard’s line of sight.

“…I should’ve borrowed Dorothy’s drone,” Little Red Riding Hood muttered. “Who knew we’d run into this…”

Yu Sheng’s curiosity stirred at the mention of her organization. He’d found fragments about them on border comms, but all he really knew was that the members used fairy tale roles as code names. Beyond that, nothing.

And judging by the wolf pack under her command… maybe every member’s abilities were tied to their role.

What did Dorothy have to do with drones?

“If we get a chance later, tell me about your companions,” Yu Sheng said quietly. “I’m curious about your Fairy Tale organization.”

“Too much curiosity isn’t a good thing.” Little Red Riding Hood didn’t sound thrilled by the topic, but she didn’t refuse outright. “Maybe later. If they don’t mind, I can introduce you. But right now—we need to decide what to do next. We can’t go forward.”

Yu Sheng rubbed his chin. “You mentioned drones. The guards don’t react to drones?”

“They only react to the intruder in person,” Little Red Riding Hood nodded. “In the end, these mass-produced entities don’t have much thinking ability. Their senses are limited. They follow rules. That’s why people like us still have room to act.”

“Then what about your wolf pack?” Yu Sheng asked. “Can you send your wolves in to check?”

Little Red Riding Hood hesitated—then shook her head.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she said, voice tight, “in a sense… my wolves are me.”