Chapter 97 – The Surrounded White Exhibition Hall

Chapter 97 – The Surrounded White Exhibition Hall

He wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but Yu Sheng felt that Little Red Riding Hood had been a bit on edge since earlier.

He figured this probably, maybe, possibly, perhaps, might have something to do with him…

But fortunately, he was thick-skinned and broad-minded (the latter being something he’d mainly developed from spending time with Eileen), so he quickly stood up and shifted his attention to their next course of action.

He could now sense that the security guards had gone still throughout various areas of the museum. Moreover, some of them were slowly being “dissolved” in the air — it seemed that as the “intruders” vanished from every guard’s line of sight, the museum’s “purging” mechanism had also ceased, and the plastic mannequins temporarily generated as cleaners were gradually being reclaimed.

But the reclamation process was slow. If they waited until every plastic mannequin had completely disappeared before making their move, they’d likely miss the museum’s operating hours.

Yu Sheng still remembered Little Red Riding Hood’s warning that the museum was an Otherworld with a time limit — it only opened during the nighttime performance.

“We continue moving. Let’s head this way,” Yu Sheng carefully extended his senses, then raised his hand to point at a door deep within the corridor. “There are no ‘guards’ behind this door.”

“Okay.” Little Red Riding Hood wasted no words and immediately directed her wolf pack to follow Yu Sheng — the only person who could currently identify safe routes.

The next exhibition hall was bathed in warm, bright orange-yellow lighting. At the center of the hall stood a group of enormous mountain and river sculptures, while the surrounding walls were hung with many brightly colored, pleasant landscape oil paintings. None of the pieces had names, and the creator was listed as “Anonymous.”

There were no plastic mannequins here, and along the route Yu Sheng had indicated, they didn’t encounter a single “guard.”

Little Red Riding Hood found this remarkable — she had never imagined she could move through a museum that was already in an “activated” state like this. By the Special Operations Bureau’s assessment standards, a museum that had generated “security guards” was already approaching Level Three danger — the point where fully armed elite units would need to take over. Yet here she was, leading her wolf pack through this increasingly malevolent museum, passing rapidly through exhibition halls and intersections one after another. Those “Entity-Guards” distributed throughout the entire Otherworld…

It was as if they didn’t exist at all.

Only when Yu Sheng occasionally lowered his voice and pointed toward some intersection to issue a warning could she confirm once more that those lethal threats still lurked all around them.

They passed through many more corridors and rooms after that, but still hadn’t found the white, open exhibition hall mentioned in the intelligence reports.

Yu Sheng suddenly stopped, his brow furrowed deeply.

“What’s wrong?” Little Red Riding Hood tensed up instantly, her expression grave as she asked.

“We still haven’t found that exhibition hall,” Yu Sheng said in a low voice.

“Maybe it’s deeper in?” Eileen had already climbed back onto Yu Sheng’s shoulder by this point — when moving around outside, this little doll was too lazy to walk a single step on her own. “Didn’t they say the layout inside this museum is randomly generated?”

“What I mean is, we’ve already explored every area that isn’t blocked by ‘guards,'” Yu Sheng said with a serious expression. “The remaining intersections are all controlled by those plastic mannequins.”

Eileen opened her mouth, and after a long pause, managed to squeeze out a curse.

“So the worst-case scenario — the white exhibition hall really is surrounded by those ‘guards,'” Little Red Riding Hood’s face also flashed with a hint of irritation, though being properly educated was different from being homeschooled, so she didn’t curse aloud. “Honestly, of all the places they could spawn.”

Yu Sheng was silent for two seconds, then spoke with a note of speculation: “Or perhaps those plastic figures were generated right inside the white exhibition hall to begin with.”

As he spoke, he raised his hand and pointed toward a particular door.

“Going through this direction leads to the center of where those plastic figures are concentrated. There are seven or eight entities distributed within the same space. And I’ve noticed something else — the ‘guards’ in other areas are slowly disappearing over time, as if they’re being reclaimed by the museum. But the ones over here still show no signs of being ‘reclaimed.’ I suspect that’s the white exhibition hall we’re looking for, and something must have happened in there that triggered the entity generation — and whatever that ‘stimulus source’ is, it’s most likely still there.”

Little Red Riding Hood, Eileen, and Hu Li exchanged glances.

Yu Sheng’s intelligence and analysis sounded perfectly reasonable, but this hardly seemed like good news.

“So what do we do? Retreat, or go take a look?” Eileen was the first to break the silence. “This whole thing is pretty bizarre. Retreating now would be perfectly understandable, but if we just leave like this, never mind that this whole trip would’ve been for nothing — there’s also the frustration of having taken a beating for no reason… after fleeing so pathetically earlier.”

Little Red Riding Hood thought about it, then turned her gaze to Yu Sheng.

“You decide,” she said.

Yu Sheng was taken aback. “Are you sure you want the rookie making the call? Newcomers don’t know anything and tend to be reckless, you know.”

“You hold the ability to leave this Otherworld, and you’re the only person who can identify safe routes. That has nothing to do with whether you’re new or not.”

Yu Sheng’s expression grew serious. After a long, careful deliberation, he finally let out a breath and turned toward the door.

“Let’s move in closer and observe the situation first. Without alerting those entities, we find a way to get a look at what’s actually happening inside the white exhibition hall. If we can confirm the situation, great. If not, then we retreat,” Yu Sheng laid out his decision, then immediately followed up with a question for Little Red Riding Hood. “Those ‘guards’ only move when they ‘see’ us, right? Will simply getting close alert them?”

“Only when they ‘see’ you,” Little Red Riding Hood answered immediately. “Previous investigators have already confirmed this — the ‘guards’ in the museum only have vision. No hearing, no sense of smell. And their vision covers a fan-shaped area of roughly one hundred and twenty degrees in front of their heads. So strictly speaking, these dangerous ‘sentries’ actually have very limited perception. But on the other hand, within that one-hundred-and-twenty-degree fan-shaped field of view, they will never lose focus or overlook any intruder’s figure. Given that most exhibition halls in the museum are quite open, if just a few ‘guards’ stand at certain angles within a room, the entire room would have no ‘safe corners’ to hide in.”

Listening to Little Red Riding Hood’s explanation, Yu Sheng nodded thoughtfully, then led the group out of the current exhibition hall, cautiously approaching the location that felt “off” to his senses.

Before long, they passed through yet another “repeating corridor” that looked virtually identical to the ones they’d seen before, and spotted an exit at the corridor’s end.

While still some distance from the exit, Yu Sheng stopped in his tracks.

“It’s a white room.”

Eileen was sharp-eyed and immediately caught a glimpse of the scene beyond the half-open door across from them.

Yu Sheng, for his part, could clearly sense the presence of the “guards” at the end of the corridor. He could even see a small section of dark blue security uniform peeking out from the edge of the door.

The situation was exactly as he had predicted — the “entities” had been generated from the white exhibition hall as their point of origin, and even now, the entities inside that hall showed no signs of fading whatsoever.

Beside him, Little Red Riding Hood suddenly furrowed her brow, her nose twitching lightly twice.

“Blood,” she said in a low voice, her expression turning exceptionally grave.

“I smell it too,” Hu Li nodded in agreement. “It’s fresh.”

Blood. A corpse. The scent of death —

The smell of fresh blood was emanating from the white exhibition hall, and the “Entity-Guards” protecting the museum had been generated from this very source.

Without question, something had happened.

But from this angle, they still couldn’t see clearly what was going on inside that hall. Moving any further forward risked alerting the entities stationed within.

“…If I’d known, I would have borrowed Dorothy’s drone,” Little Red Riding Hood suddenly muttered. “Who could’ve predicted we’d run into something like this…”

Hearing this, Yu Sheng couldn’t help but grow curious about the “Fairy Tale” organization behind Little Red Riding Hood, as well as its other members. He’d found some intelligence related to this organization on Frontier Communications, but all he knew was that each member of the organization used a classic character from a fairy tale as their codename. Beyond that, he knew nothing.

Though judging from the wolf pack that Little Red Riding Hood commanded… perhaps every member of the Fairy Tale organization possessed abilities related to their “codename”? But then what did Dorothy have to do with “drones”?

“When we get the chance, could you tell me about your companions?” Yu Sheng asked curiously. “I’m pretty curious about your ‘Fairy Tale’ organization.”

“Too much curiosity isn’t a good thing,” Little Red Riding Hood seemed uninterested in the topic, though she didn’t refuse outright. “Maybe someday. If they don’t mind, I suppose introducing you to them wouldn’t be out of the question. But for now — it’s time to decide what we do next. Going further forward is definitely not an option.”

Yu Sheng rubbed his chin and said thoughtfully, “You mentioned a drone just now… do those ‘guards’ not react to drones?”

“They only react to the intruders ‘themselves,'” Little Red Riding Hood nodded. “When you get down to it, these mass-generated entities don’t really have any capacity for thought. Their perception is limited, and they operate entirely according to rules — which is exactly why people like us still have room to maneuver.”

“What about your wolves?” Yu Sheng asked. “Could you send your wolves to scout the situation?”

Little Red Riding Hood hesitated for a moment, then shook her head.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because in a certain sense, my wolves are me.”