Chapter 99: Evil Wolf

Chapter 99: Evil Wolf

Little Red Riding Hood showed no reaction at all to the giant wolf emerging from the shadows behind her. It was as if something had nailed her mind firmly in place, leaving her entire body in a dazed state.

But Yu Sheng reacted instantly. Moving faster than he ever had in his life, he slammed a foot into the ground, even crushing a deep crater into the solid marble floor. Then he launched himself like a cannonball toward the girl in red.

The moment after he shoved Little Red Riding Hood out of the way, he felt a burst of agony in his shoulder as sharp fangs tore into it.

Before the bizarre “giant wolf” could bite down again with a fatal attack, countless black threads rapidly sealed off every opening behind Yu Sheng. The threads pierced through the wolf-shadow, binding the seemingly intangible monster layer upon layer. At the same time, a blaze of scorching foxfire erupted. Hu Li’s entire body was wrapped in ghostly blue flames as she streaked overhead with an afterimage and a thunderous sonic boom, crashing violently into the enormous wolf-shaped humanoid.

Boom!

The deafening impact shook the entire exhibition hall.

This was the furious headbutt of a well-fed Hu Li. It was nothing like the headbutt that had killed Yu Sheng before. Yu Sheng felt the shockwave nearly blow him away, while the giant wolf itself was smashed into a vast spray of ink-like darkness by the demon fox girl’s attack.

Yet only two or three seconds later, the darkness gathered together again.

Pure physical damage seemed completely ineffective against it. A headbutt powerful enough to punch through the armor of a main battle tank had only managed to disperse the thing briefly. It rose upright once more. Its blurry, distorted head opened a pair of blood-red eyes, but its gaze fell upon Yu Sheng.

Yu Sheng’s blood still stained its fangs, making it look especially savage and sinister.

“What the hell is that?!” Irene gasped. Then she raised both hands and once again wove spiderweb-like black threads, trying to restrain the unkillable shadow while shouting to Hu Li, “Stupid fox! Stop ramming it! We might not be able to kill this thing!”

But the instant Irene finished speaking, the enormous wolf-shaped humanoid suddenly froze.

Locked in a pose as though preparing to pounce on Yu Sheng, it hung stiffly in midair.

Howls rose one after another.

The wolf pack, which had become motionless when Little Red Riding Hood fell into her dazed state, suddenly regained the ability to move.

Howling fiercely, they lunged at the frozen giant wolf-shadow.

To the astonishment of Yu Sheng, Irene, and Hu Li, these wolf cubs, tiny as puppies compared to the giant wolf, bit and tore at it. Almost instantly, they ripped apart the monster that had withstood Hu Li’s headbutt.

The black fragments drifted down to the floor and gathered into dense, ink-dark shadows that slowly returned behind Little Red Riding Hood.

Yu Sheng noticed that the crimson color gradually faded from her eyes.

A trace of reason returned to the girl’s gaze.

Moments later, she blinked and became fully conscious.

“Are you alright?”

“Are you alright?”

Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood shouted the exact same thing to each other at almost the same moment.

Then both of them fell silent.

A heavy atmosphere briefly lingered in the white exhibition hall.

“What happened just now?” Yu Sheng was the first to break the silence. He looked seriously at the girl in red. “That half-man, half-wolf thing came out of your shadow.”

Irene silently moved to Yu Sheng’s side. A hint of wariness appeared on the little doll’s face.

Hu Li looked much the same.

“...That was the wolf hunting me, the curse Fairy Tale placed on me,” Little Red Riding Hood said with her head lowered, carefully keeping her eyes away from the sinister sacrificial scene in the center of the hall. “The person over there, the one sacrificed in place of the Wailing One sculpture, carries intense mental corruption. I saw something I shouldn’t have seen, and that allowed the Evil Wolf to briefly enter the real world. Sorry. You even got hurt because of me.”

Yu Sheng glanced at his shoulder.

Quite a bit of blood had flowed out, but he could already feel the wound beginning to heal.

“The injury isn’t serious, but your loss of control definitely was. You just said this curse came from Fairy Tale, but isn’t Fairy Tale the name of your organization?”

Little Red Riding Hood remained silent for two seconds before speaking softly.

“...Fairy Tale is an Other Domain.”

Then she quietly reached into the bag she carried and pulled something out.

It was a needleless injector.

Inside the glass tube was a faintly glowing liquid.

At a glance, Yu Sheng could tell it was expensive.

The way Little Red Riding Hood hesitated and visibly winced before injecting herself made that obvious.

“Don’t worry. I won’t lose control again, at least not during this operation,” Little Red Riding Hood said after administering the medicine and letting out a quiet breath. She raised her head and looked at Yu Sheng. “The payment for this mission, if there’s still going to be any payment after all this, belongs entirely to you.”

Yu Sheng frowned in confusion.

“Why?”

Little Red Riding Hood sighed.

“I held everyone back. Rules are rules.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary. We can split it according to the original agreement. What happened just now was an accident. When people work as a team, somebody’s bound to run into trouble occasionally. That doesn’t count as holding everyone back.”

Yu Sheng waved dismissively.

Then a strange smile appeared on his face.

“Compared to questions about payment shares and holding people back, there’s something I’m much more interested in.”

Little Red Riding Hood paused and looked at him in confusion.

“Curiosity. I’m interested in that Other Domain you mentioned, Fairy Tale, and in the curse on you. Actually, if my guess is right, the curses on all of you.”

Yu Sheng spoke with complete seriousness.

His eyes were even sparkling slightly.

“I want to know what’s really going on with all of you. Why were you cursed by an Other Domain? And why did you choose the name of that Other Domain as your organization’s name?”

His gaze was exceptionally sincere.

Yet as Little Red Riding Hood met that gaze, she suddenly felt something she could not explain.

Fear.

And trembling.

It was not that she sensed any malice.

Nor was she afraid of Yu Sheng himself.

She could not describe it.

It felt as though she were facing something intensely blazing, utterly pure, free of malice, yet far beyond human understanding.

Was that really just curiosity?

She hesitated.

Ordinarily, she would never reveal her organization’s secrets to outsiders.

But this hesitation clearly contained other emotions as well.

Under Yu Sheng’s gaze, however, her hesitation finally gave way.

She slowly nodded.

“If you truly want to know, I can tell you. But it’s a very long story.”

“That’s fine. We’ll talk about it later when there’s time.”

Yu Sheng nodded readily, his mood visibly improving.

“This situation definitely isn’t suitable for storytelling. We’ve still got this mess to deal with.”

He raised his head and looked toward the sacrificial victim.

The brief but dangerous chaos had caused significant damage throughout the exhibition hall. Craters and foxfire scorch marks could be seen on the floor and walls everywhere nearby.

Fortunately, because the situation had been resolved quickly, the central platform remained untouched.

Only two security guards had been knocked over by the shockwave from Hu Li’s headbutt.

Yet the silver-white fox tails still completely covered the plastic mannequins’ heads.

These entities, which followed their rules with absolute rigidity, simply lay motionless on the ground.

The sight was eerie, yet somehow faintly ridiculous.

“...Could the security guards have done this?” Yu Sheng asked Little Red Riding Hood while looking at the dead victim.

“No.” Little Red Riding Hood immediately shook her head.

After injecting the additional rationality blocker, she could finally observe the sinister sacrifice. Though every time she looked at it, faint static-like noise still echoed in her mind.

“The security guards only kill rule-breakers inside the museum. They wouldn’t perform something this complex and symbolically meaningful. This kind of sacrifice... feels more like the work of a human.”

“So someone really entered the museum before us, stole the original Wailing One, and then placed a living person here as a sacrificial offering.”

The more Yu Sheng spoke, the deeper his frown became.

“...And this whole sequence of actions activated the museum’s security guards, which led to us being attacked?”

“That’s a reasonable conclusion.”

Little Red Riding Hood nodded lightly.

But seeing Yu Sheng standing beside the sacrificial altar as though nothing was wrong, she finally could not help asking:

“You... feel absolutely nothing when looking at this sacrifice? And you didn’t use any rationality blocker beforehand?”

“Nope.”

Yu Sheng spread his hands.

“I don’t even know where you’re supposed to buy rationality blockers. I suspect I haven’t even finished the beginner tutorial yet. Besides, you said you were contaminated when you looked at the person on that platform. I didn’t feel anything at all.”

Little Red Riding Hood blinked and looked at Irene.

“A mere mental contamination can’t affect a doll!” Irene declared with her hands on her hips.

Little Red Riding Hood then looked toward Hu Li.

“She spent decades in Nightfall Valley fighting Hunger by herself,” Yu Sheng reminded her. “She pushed Hunger so hard it was practically on the verge of growing a brain.”

Little Red Riding Hood: “...”

What kind of people are these?!