Chapter 188 – The Angel’s Name

The scene before Yu Sheng’s eyes began to violently convulse once more, accompanied by a cascade of chaotic screams and piercing noise. The cultist trapped in the dreamscape seemed to have plunged into violent emotional turmoil within his memories, and with these intense emotional fluctuations, Yu Sheng watched in astonishment as the entire dreamscape didn’t immediately collapse—instead, it began to reveal something…

Something unimaginable. Something deeply unsettling.

He watched the abandoned warehouse before him cave in, and with it the entire earth and sky began to slowly crack apart. The black figures that had originally surrounded the ritual site melted into the air one after another, then reformed into massive cloud formations that surged and swelled upward. Certain things originally hidden in the cultist’s subconscious had “leaked” out due to the dreamscape’s destabilization, unfurling their existence freely before Yu Sheng, this uninvited “parasite”—

Yu Sheng saw an enormous projection, like a colossal egg, floating above the debris left in the wake of the warehouse’s destruction. He then saw the “egg’s” surface take on a metallic sheen, and countless faintly glimmering structures resembling eyes flickered on and off along its ridges and grooves. He heard the thing humming, as though some vast mechanical apparatus was operating within…

And in the next instant, the giant egg floating in midair burst open. Endless flesh and blood proliferated wildly from its depths, grotesque tentacles surging outward through every crack, dangling from the sky, fleileeng blindly through the air. Then Yu Sheng heard a new sound—the weileeng cry of an infant…

Shaking, convulsing, shrieking—Yu Sheng suddenly felt his consciousness plummeting violently, and the moment that sensation of falling hit, he heard Eileen cry out in alarm: “Holy shit, this guy’s awake!”

The sensation of the real world came rushing back. Yu Sheng’s eyes snapped open and he gasped for air like a drowning man breaking the surface. Almost simultaneously, he turned his head and saw the Angel Cult follower nearby, whose eyes had also just flown open, chest heaving with ragged breaths.

Terror and fury surfaced on the bald man’s face. In this moment, that lofty expression was finally gone—that look of having transcended life and death, of standing above ordinary mortals. He stared fixedly at Yu Sheng as if he would lunge at him the very next second.

But Yu Sheng merely stood up and regarded the man with a calm glance. After a moment, he spoke in a low voice: “An-Ka-Ai-La—what does this word mean?”

What he didn’t expect was that the moment these words left his mouth, the cultist flew into a violent rage. He even fought against the electric current released by the restraint device and lunged forward: “Your filthy mouth is not worthy of speaking His—”

The cultist had barely gotten halfway through his lunge when a large silver-white tail came slicing through the air, whipping him mid-flight and sending him crashing into the nearby wall. Yu Sheng hadn’t even seen what happened before Hu Li had already become a blur, pouncing after the man, grabbing him by the leg and slamming him against the floor several times in rapid succession. Finally, she casually tossed him onto the ground—only to notice he was now breathing more out than in. She frantically scrambled to cast healing spells on him…

The Fox-Spirit Girl hadn’t uttered a single word throughout the entire process. The first half was all cold, aloof disdain too dignified for words; the second half was sheer panic with no idea what to say.

Eileen watched from the side in complete stupefaction, staring slack-jawed at Hu Li: “…You sure move fast.”

“Heal him back to half-alive and leave the rest to the Special Operations Bureau,” Yu Sheng said, having collected himself by now. He stepped forward and patted Hu Li on the head, then turned and nodded at the surveillance camera in the corner. “I’m done on my end.”

Moments later, he heard the clacking of mechanical gears turning within the heavy blast door. Song Cheng and Baili Qing appeared outside, flanked by several fully armed guards.

Yu Sheng led Hu Li and Eileen over at a brisk pace. Before Song Cheng could even open his mouth, Yu Sheng spoke rapidly with a grave expression: “Find us somewhere private. This is a big deal.”

Baili Qing gave Yu Sheng a long look, then immediately nodded: “My office.”

What followed was another journey like navigating a shifting labyrinth. Yu Sheng and his group traversed corridors, elevators, and empty rooms throughout the bizarre “building” for quite some time before finally reaching their destination.

The most “mysterious” place in all of the Special Operations Bureau—Baili Qing’s office.

But contrary to Yu Sheng’s expectations, it wasn’t the lavish or imposing space he had imagined. Though the office was indeed quite large, the vast room was almost entirely empty. Filing cabinets and a few display screens lined the walls, and an oval conference table sat in the center of the room. Beyond that, there was virtually no decoration—except for one enormous floor-to-ceiling window behind the desk that immediately drew the eye. The window seemed to be shrouded in an eternal mist, and the scenery deep within that mist shifted constantly—sometimes a city skyline, sometimes distant mountains, fields, and even a boundless ocean stretching to the horizon.

The guards, along with the secretary, assistants, and other non-essential personnel who had been waiting in the office, quickly filed out. Soon, the vast room held only Yu Sheng’s group, Baili Qing, and Song Cheng—who had originally intended to leave but was ordered by the Bureau Chief to stay.

“You can speak now,” Baili Qing said, her expression calm as she looked at Yu Sheng.

Yu Sheng nodded. “Right, I’ll cut straight to it—what those cultists worship appears to be a Twilight Angel in a state of dormancy or imprisonment. And if my guess is correct, this ‘angel’ is likely trapped inside a Fairy Tale.”

Song Cheng’s expression visibly stiffened. A few seconds later, his lips moved: “…That’s a hell of a way to cut straight to it…”

Yu Sheng acted as though he hadn’t heard Song Cheng’s muttering and continued on his own: “I infiltrated that cultist’s dreamscape—I found a gap in his mental defenses, and he was essentially unguarded within the dream—

“I witnessed one of their gatherings, along with a typical prayer ritual. They have more than just the two you’ve captured; several other members are still hiding in the shadows. When they spoke of the ‘Emissary’ they follow, they said it was in a state of slumber and needed to be ‘delivered from suffering.’ They also mentioned ‘breaking free from the shell’—which is why I suspect their ‘Lord’ is trapped inside a Fairy Tale…

“Additionally, I heard them mention a ‘vessel.’ This seems to be critically important for their Lord’s successful descent or liberation. The requirements for the vessel are extremely strict. The Curiosities Association member they had manipulated had already fallen under the Twilight Angel’s influence and would have gradually become a devout believer—but because he didn’t meet the standards for a ‘vessel,’ they ‘disposed’ of him. Their reasoning was that once someone who fails to meet the standard converts, it would interfere with the Lord’s descent…”

Yu Sheng rattled off his findings one after another. Song Cheng’s brow furrowed deeper and deeper, and even Baili Qing—someone whose expression rarely changed—now had an unmistakable gravity in her eyes.

When the words “Twilight Angel” were involved, even the Bureau Chief of the Special Operations Bureau couldn’t afford to take things lightly.

“Have you determined which specific Twilight Angel those cultists are following?” Baili Qing suddenly asked. “A name or distinguishing features—any leads?”

“They repeatedly invoked a word during their prayer ritual. The pronunciation was roughly like this—” Yu Sheng cleared his throat and, drawing on his memory, reproduced the strange-sounding word: “An-Ka-Ai-La—approximately that sound. But there were also some brief trills and echoes in between that I can’t replicate, and I’m not even sure whether that’s the actual pronunciation or just those cultists adding theatrical flair for the sake of ritual atmosphere—because their ceremony ended up feileeng anyway, though that might have had something to do with the knockoff aromatherapy candles they were using…”

Song Cheng: “…?”

Song Cheng had absolutely no idea what Yu Sheng’s last remark was supposed to mean.

Baili Qing’s attention, however, was fixed on that peculiar-sounding word. She frowned slightly, unconsciously repeating: “An-Ka-Ai-La… An-Ka-Ai-La…”

“Does the name ring a bell?” Yu Sheng immediately asked, his face full of curiosity.

“No, it doesn’t. But this is the first time we’ve ever heard a Twilight Angel’s ‘name,'” Baili Qing said, her tone grave. “Before today, every Twilight Angel we knew of had only a ‘codename’—like ‘The Beauty,’ or ‘Star of Heka,’ or ‘Tree Angel.’ These were all designations given by the earliest recorders based on the angel’s characteristics when it descended. But the word ‘An-Ka-Ai-La’… is by no means a codename.”

Yu Sheng instantly grasped the implications of what Baili Qing was saying.

He asked with some puzzlement: “Then how do other cultists refer to the ‘Emissary’ they follow? For instance, The Beauty and Star of Heka that you just mentioned—those two Twilight Angels should have their own followers, right?”

“They also just use the codenames directly,” Song Cheng chimed in from the side. “For example, they’ll simply use a title like ‘The Beauty,’ because Angel Cult followers were originally just ordinary people who had descended into madness. Although they fanatically claim they can hear the ‘Emissary’s’ voice, as far as we currently know, no Twilight Angel has ever rationally communicated with its followers, let alone revealed its ‘name’ to mortals… In fact, it never even occurred to us that those Twilight Angels had ‘names.'”

Yu Sheng furrowed his brow and thought carefully for a moment before looking up: “So you’re saying these cultists lurking in Boundary City may have actually ‘contacted’ a Twilight Angel capable of communication—and even learned its true name?!”

“But it could also just be another one of those lunatics’ delusions,” Song Cheng waved his hand dismissively. “Maybe they just got high one too many times and heard a single murmur from a Twilight Angel, then took whatever ‘noise’ they heard in their dreams, mentally processed it, transliterated it, and decided it was the ‘Emissary’s’ name.”

Yu Sheng’s expression was solemn, and he neither agreed nor disagreed with Song Cheng’s assessment.

“You can try interrogating the bald one again later,” he said slowly. “His mental defenses have already been broken once, and his secrets from the dreamscape have been exposed. Someone whose guard has been shattered once breaks far more easily the second time. You might be able to get something out of him—like the identities of his accomplices, and where exactly the word ‘An-Ka-Ai-La’ came from.”

“Leave that to the Bureau. Standard interrogation procedures are more our specialty,” Baili Qing nodded, then turned her gaze to Yu Sheng. “And what about you? What’s next?”

“That orphanage,” Yu Sheng said, drawing a slow breath. “Those cultists can’t possibly just sit still. If their ‘Lord’ really is trapped inside a Fairy Tale, they will absolutely strike again—the trap that Little Red Riding Hood encountered might have been nothing more than some kind of ‘preliminary test.'”

(End of Chapter)