Chapter 101: Curtain Falls Amid Applause

Chapter 101: Curtain Falls Amid Applause

Yu Sheng seized the moment before he forgot that crackling long string of information and poured out all the intelligence he had heard, even nearly biting his tongue in the middle. The entire process was supported almost entirely by instinct and that bit of short-term memory. In the end, after he finished, Little Red Riding Hood let out a dumbfounded “ah?”, and he felt utterly unsettled.

But fortunately, immediately after, Little Red Riding Hood pulled a voice recorder from her pocket……

“My habit is this. You should also develop this habit in the future: carry a recording device that stays on 24 hours a day. Don’t use the Special Operations Bureau-issued phone; it wastes too much battery. A voice recorder is enough,” Little Red Riding Hood said to Yu Sheng while operating it, “In the Other Domain, you will always encounter sudden situations. Human attention is not always reliable. Having a recording device is very useful for reviewing things anytime.”

After a brief burst of static, the voice recorder played back the long string of content Yu Sheng had just rapidly relayed.

Little Red Riding Hood, Irene, and Hu Li simultaneously looked up; puzzled, astonished, and curious gazes fell on Yu Sheng.

Hu Li was the first to speak: “Benefactor, this is……”

“He said it,” Yu Sheng raised his hand and pointed at the corpse beside him, “He spoke too suddenly, I almost didn’t react. Luckily my short-term memory is still decent.”

Irene and Little Red Riding Hood both looked shocked, while only Hu Li continued to look at Yu Sheng with carefree admiration: “Benefactor’s spirit-summoning technique is truly brilliant!”

“Why can you accept every weird thing so easily! Anything that happens to Yu Sheng you just think is normal, right?” Irene looked at Hu Li in astonishment, then turned to Yu Sheng, her pair of crimson eyes wide, “What exactly is going on? Weren’t you just standing beside that platform dazed for a moment? When did the corpse start speaking?!”

“Maybe… because I touched this?” Yu Sheng was also thinking about this question. At that moment he looked thoughtfully at the trace of dried blood remaining on his fingertip. “At that time, I suddenly saw the entire hall freeze…”

He recounted without reservation his brief experience, including abnormal phenomena in the hall and the strange states of Hu Li, Irene, and Little Red Riding Hood. After finishing, he curiously rubbed the blood on the display again, but this time, the “voice of the dead” phenomenon did not appear.

“Seems one-time,” Yu Sheng muttered, rubbing his fingers, “Little Red Riding Hood, is this reasonable?”

Little Red Riding Hood did not respond, still in a state of “this is too chaotic, I haven’t figured it out yet.”

Yu Sheng immediately knew no answer was needed; it was clearly unreasonable.

Just like many unreasonable things happening to him, and like countless things in this world that were unreasonable in his eyes.

Irene, after a moment of daze, finally understood the situation. She hesitantly spoke: “I think… this probably isn’t an illusion.”

“Whether it’s an illusion, we’ll know by looking,” Yu Sheng said, pointing to the exit at the other end of the white exhibition hall, “The deceased told me the killers threw the Wailing One sculpture into the corridor.”

Hu Li immediately walked toward the corridor.

Irene hurriedly warned: “Hey, be careful, don’t run into traps or anything.”

Hu Li felt it made sense and nodded. She raised her hand to form a strange gesture. Eight of the nine tails behind her immediately detached, flying forward surrounded by fox fire, moving ahead like a group of reconnaissance and strike drones.

She also turned back to Yu Sheng and introduced: “Benefactor, this is called Tail Control Technique……”

Yu Sheng’s expression twitched slightly. He forced himself to stay serious, while briefly sensing ahead to confirm there were no hidden “guards” in the corridor.

Little Red Riding Hood still struggled to accept the sight of this demon fox sending her tails out like drones. Her eye twitched several times, but she ultimately said nothing.

After a short while, one fox tail returned from deep inside the corridor, its tip coiled around something.

It was a small white statue, a woman sculpture covering her face with both hands, crying in a strangely twisted posture.

This was the original target of the “commission.”

The fox girl withdrew her tails, happily hugging the small statue as she returned to Yu Sheng, presenting the commission item as if offering prey: “Benefactor, it really is here!”

Yu Sheng reached out and took the small sculpture, only a little over twenty centimeters tall, but its arrival brought him no sense of “successful completion” whatsoever.

What had originally seemed like a simple, veteran-led beginner mission had now turned into a far more complicated and troublesome incident.

“The statue really was in the corridor… so the information you ‘heard’ from the corpse is probably true as well,” Little Red Riding Hood said with a complicated expression while looking at the Wailing One sculpture in Yu Sheng’s hands, “I just recalled something. The ‘Five Dao River’ you mentioned was probably mistaken. There is a district in the southern part of Boundary City called Five Pine River, far from here… Boundary City is large, and some districts have different accents from the main city.”

“And what about ‘let His descent be aided’ and ‘save the Savior from suffering’? Do you understand what that means?” Yu Sheng asked curiously.

“I have never dealt with Angel Cultists. For ordinary spirit-world detectives, they are far too dangerous. Any encounter with clues related to them is immediately reported, and we try to stay as far away as possible,” Little Red Riding Hood shook her head, “People from the Special Operations Bureau probably know more, but… I really don’t recommend you investigate them.”

Yu Sheng frowned slightly: “Why?”

“Because the ‘angel’ worshipped by Angel Cultists is, to put it bluntly, the Dim Angel you saw in that valley last time,” Little Red Riding Hood said gravely, “People who worship that thing as a god—do you think anything good can come from them?”

“In every extremist cult or deranged organization out there, Angel Cultists are among the most irrational. Even forces like Black Point Group, which are widely wanted in many orderly regions, issue warrants against Angel Cultists within their own territories. That alone tells you how dangerous they are.”

She paused, then added again, clearly worried Yu Sheng still did not grasp the danger: “What’s more important is that they seem to have a real connection with the Dim Angel. Prolonged contact can spread madness, and even draw the attention of the Dim Angel itself. That is why even the official forces that eliminate them must undergo strict psychological evaluation and administrative leave after each encounter. Seriously, do not get involved with them.”

Yu Sheng felt the seriousness of the matter from her repeated warnings. He recalled the terrifying, grotesque giant eye he had seen in the valley, and his expression turned solemn as well: “Alright, I understand.”

Little Red Riding Hood sighed in relief and looked around the white exhibition hall, now even more eerie and devastated.

“We should leave.”

“How do we get out again?” Yu Sheng asked, “I mean, the normal procedure.”

Before Little Red Riding Hood could respond, Irene spoke first in confusion: “Huh? Don’t we just open the door and go home?”

“Better not,” Yu Sheng said awkwardly, “It’s late at night, and we can’t report to the Special Operations Bureau from inside an Other Domain. If their alarm suddenly goes off it’ll be scary. Besides, I also want to experience the normal exit procedure from an Other Domain.”

“Ahem. There are only two normal ways to leave a night museum,” Little Red Riding Hood said lightly, “Either survive here until the ‘night performance’ ends, which is the next morning in the real world, or make the ‘Museum Night’ reach a grand finale, causing prolonged applause in the theater. After the applause, the performance ends early.”

“That takes too long,” Yu Sheng immediately shook his head, “What does a grand finale mean exactly? What do we need to do?”

“There is no fixed standard. Essentially, if the entire process inside the museum is treated as a stage performance, then you need to make the unseen audience feel satisfied or astonished,” Little Red Riding Hood explained, “There are many ways to achieve this. Sometimes applause is triggered for no reason at all. Someone improvises a painting, someone hums a song, even internal conflict between teammates can trigger applause. The most absurd case was a researcher trapped inside who, in despair, started cursing the museum loudly, and midway through the rant, the applause suddenly thundered……”

Yu Sheng: “……”

So random?

After a brief moment of emotion, his gaze turned toward Irene, now perched on his shoulder again.

Irene immediately reacted, glaring fiercely: “Why are you looking at me! That’s very rude to a lady, you know! My blunt speech is all sincere expression, don’t stereotype me……”

Yu Sheng considered it and felt relying on Irene’s outbursts to satisfy the audience was unreliable, so he turned to Little Red Riding Hood: “The chase fight we had with the guards earlier was pretty intense. Didn’t that count as satisfying the finale condition?”

“Combat is actually the least likely to trigger a finale,” Little Red Riding Hood analyzed seriously, “Because guards are part of the museum’s mechanism. Fighting them is treated as part of the performance itself. It does not count as something surprising or outside the script.”

“So the key is something that should not happen within the Museum Night script,” Yu Sheng muttered.

He thought for a moment.

Then he spoke again: “You said fighting the guards is a normal part of the script, right?”

“Yes,” Little Red Riding Hood nodded, not knowing what he was planning.

“So what if we create a huge ‘art event’ without ever encountering the guards?”

“……”

Little Red Riding Hood blinked. “Huh?”

Yu Sheng did not explain further. He turned to Hu Li: “Is your tail supply enough?”

Hu Li nodded repeatedly: “Quite a lot, and I still have fox fire. That one is unlimited.”

“Good.” Yu Sheng smiled.

Little Red Riding Hood suddenly felt a chill run down her spine. “What exactly are you planning?”

Yu Sheng grinned and pointed toward the distant entrance: “See over there? That’s the hall we came through. It’s full of sculptures and antiques. Later, have Hu Li stack all her spare tails there. Before the guards arrive, we’ll make a big explosion. If that’s not enough, we’ll burn down every exhibition hall along the way, collapse all the corridors……”

Little Red Riding Hood was stunned.

What stunned her even more was that Hu Li actually nodded without hesitation.

But the next second, before Little Red Riding Hood could object, and before Yu Sheng could actually act, a sound suddenly erupted from all directions, interrupting everyone’s movements.

The museum erupted in thunderous applause.