Chapter 219 – A Little Bit of Mischief

After a stretch of extremely tense and hair-raising excitement, Yu Sheng finally managed to get those kids down from where they’d been clinging to the cruise missiles (no, that’s not a typo). The good news was that no accidents had occurred—though Hu Li looked like she hadn’t quite had her fill of fun, and a few children who hadn’t gotten their turn looked a little disappointed…

“It’s actually very safe,” Hu Li was still muttering off to the side. “I didn’t even let my tails fly that high—and if anyone really did fall, I could catch them instantly. The kids back where I’m from play like this all the time…”

“Can you even compare the martial prowess of your homeland to here?” Yu Sheng glared at her. “The kindergarteners where you’re from can probably already fly on swords!”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he turned and walked toward where the other children were resting. Hu Li froze for a moment behind him before hurrying to catch up, explaining as she went: “That’s not right, Benefactor—where I’m from, sword-flying doesn’t start until elementary school…”

Yu Sheng nearly faceplanted right into the ground…

The Fairy Tale members on the nearby platform had actually noticed the commotion earlier. By the time Yu Sheng walked over, several of the Guardians had already come to meet him, Snow White still wearing a smile on her face: “You really don’t need to be so tense about it. We confirmed the safety with Miss Hu Li beforehand. She… well, her tail-control technique is quite incredible…”

Yu Sheng looked at the few familiar faces before him, then glanced back at the Foxgirl who was smiling placidly, and couldn’t help but scratch his head: “How does it feel like you’ve all already become best friends in just this little while… and everyone, adults and kids alike, has settled in like they’re right at home.”

“This place is better than we imagined—unbelievably so,” said Match, her shoulder-length hair framing a gentle smile as she spoke softly. “And we should thank Miss Ailin as well. She quickly showed us around the nearby area and helped the children relax—everyone was actually quite nervous at first. After all, just moments ago we were all surrounded by leaked, out-of-control illusions, and some people are still sleeping in the tents and haven’t woken up. It was Miss Ailin who helped us check on their condition over in Shelter Wasteland.”

“Is that so? She’s pretty dependable then,” Yu Sheng listened and couldn’t help but smile with genuine appreciation, then turned his head to look around. “Where is Ailin?”

The words had barely left his mouth when Little Doll’s shriek came from behind him: “Yu Sheng, you bastard, you have the nerve to ask! How about coming to help!”

Yu Sheng turned around and saw that Ailin was still being chased by a pack of children—though the ones chasing her had clearly rotated out. The previous batch of little ones was now chasing the King across hills and fields.

In the instant Little Doll ran past him, Yu Sheng reached out and scooped her up, then looked at the crowd of children gathering around with an expression caught between laughter and tears: “Alright, alright, break it up, break it up. Big Sister Ailin is tired—let her rest a bit.”

The children obediently dispersed.

Yu Sheng looked somewhat helplessly at the doll now draped across his shoulder, completely unwilling to move: “Is it really that bad? You can’t even handle a bunch of six- and seven-year-olds—what happened to your super magic and super strength and super agility?”

“How could I use those? They’re all tiny little things with their tiny arms and tiny legs! If I got serious, it wouldn’t take one second before you’d be on the phone with the Special Operations Bureau explaining why you need forty-something pediatric hospital beds!” Ailin lay sprawled on Yu Sheng’s shoulder with her limbs dangling, still talking tough. “I was going easy on them… ugh, I’m exhausted… how do human children have so much energy…”

Yu Sheng just laughed, carrying the doll as he sat down on the edge of the platform, looking out at the scene before him.

This valley had never been so lively.

Children sat on the grass around the platform eating and resting. Older kids helped out at the temporary camp. Newly awakened children and their Guardians emerged from the tent area, taking in their surroundings with a mix of wonder and timidity. And a pack of energetic little ones ran wild along the edge of the distant grassy area, chasing after the Tabby Cat named King.

There was no atmosphere of gloomy tension, no panicked and oppressive mood of “refugees on the run”—at least, the youngest children had completely relaxed and were enjoying this place without a care in the world.

“This is how it should be. Kids should be like this,” Yu Sheng murmured softly, as if talking to himself. “Back at the Orphanage when everyone was gathering, they were all too well-behaved… excessively so.”

“Tense when it’s time to be tense, relaxed when it’s time to relax,” Little Red Riding Hood’s voice came from beside him. Yu Sheng didn’t turn his head—from the corner of his eye he could see a figure in red had already sat down next to him. The girl sat beside him on the edge of the platform, her two legs dangling off the side and swinging lazily in the air. “I told them the dangerous phase is over, that this is a safe place, and they can play to their hearts’ content for a while—just don’t leave the grassy area.”

“…Do you know what time it is right now?” Yu Sheng asked casually.

Little Red Riding Hood just tilted her head slightly.

“Four-thirty in the morning,” Yu Sheng said with a wry grin. “They’re this energetic… their sleep schedule is already wrecked on day one.”

“What can you do about it? Emergency assembly at two-thirty, bright daylight by the time we got here, everyone’s wide awake from all the running—and there aren’t even enough places to sleep yet. When they get tired later, they’ll have to squeeze into tents or just crawl into sleeping bags on the grass,” Little Red Riding Hood said words that sounded like complaints, but a faint smile never left her face. “Heh, it’s actually kind of fun.”

Yu Sheng raised an eyebrow, not expecting her to use that particular word to describe how she felt: “Kind of fun?”

“…Running out of the Orphanage in the middle of the night, everyone carrying hastily packed luggage together, arriving out in the ‘middle of nowhere,’ then setting up a temporary camp alongside the adults—some helping, some getting in the way, some running around everywhere—and you could even grab onto a fox tail for a low-altitude flyby,” Little Red Riding Hood said slowly. “It’s like jumping from one dream into another. Messy, a little reckless, maybe even a bit… mischievous?”

She turned her head to look at Yu Sheng: “Would you say there’s a bit of mischief to it?”

Yu Sheng blanked for a moment, then suddenly broke into a smile: “…Yeah, there is a bit of mischief to it.”

The children living in that Orphanage rarely had opportunities for this kind of “mischief” in their daily lives.

They had always been well-behaved. In their short lives of barely over a decade, they had always needed to be well-behaved.

Generation after generation of Little Red Riding Hoods and Snow Whites—perhaps only today, in this rushed and somewhat chaotic “emergency evacuation,” had they finally gotten a chance to be mischievous for once. So many unexpected things happening, so many things they’d never done before. Running ahead while nightmares chased from behind.

And they’d outrun them.

Now they could rest in a shelter, and even at four-thirty in the morning, nobody had to sleep.

If only this could go on forever.

“…How are things at the Orphanage?” Little Red Riding Hood suddenly broke the silence, turning to look at Yu Sheng. “It seems like you were held up over there for quite a while after we came through? Did something happen?”

“I saw an apparition of the Hunter, but I’m not sure if it was residual overflow from a subset,” Yu Sheng told her openly. “I didn’t have time to communicate with him before he disappeared. After that I checked the entire East Building and found nothing unusual—I didn’t get to check West Building, but I didn’t hear anything from that direction either.

“After that, the Special Operations Bureau’s takeover team arrived. Li Lin was leading them—you know him too. They’ve locked down the area around the Orphanage and will be stationed there for a while. They brought a lot of professional equipment; it looks like they’re planning long-term comprehensive monitoring of the entire zone. It all seemed pretty professional to me.”

“That’s good,” Little Red Riding Hood let out a soft breath, then hesitated for a moment. “We left in such a hurry—there are a lot of things we didn’t have time to bring. If you have time later…”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll go back and get your things. I can open a door anytime, and bringing stuff over here is easy,” Yu Sheng said with a smile and a nod. “Besides, there are the Council’s employees too—they should be coming over soon. Teacher Su and the others know the Orphanage situation better. If you can’t find something, you can ask them to help look. Don’t worry, everything will get back on track. For now, don’t think about any of that—tonight has passed safely, and the most important thing for the rest of the time is to rest.”

Little Red Riding Hood slowly nodded: “Mm.”

Yu Sheng stretched his arms in a long, lazy stretch, then fell straight backward, lying flat on the platform.

Now that his nerves had finally relaxed, he was starting to feel tired.

Ailin, who had been draped over his shoulder, executed a flip and a forward roll in the blink of an eye, seamlessly transitioning from her draped position to sitting on Yu Sheng’s chest, then flopped back down to continue resting.

Little Red Riding Hood watched this scene from the side, slightly dazed for a moment before her eyes met Ailin’s: “…Nice moves.”

Ailin reached out and poked Yu Sheng’s chin: “This guy is careless as can be. If you were in my position, you’d develop the same skills.”

Yu Sheng, eyes half-closed, blocked the little doll’s hand by feel alone: “Under normal circumstances, you should be walking on your own instead of shamelessly riding on my shoulder.”

Ailin: “Talk to me about that after you finish making my five-foot-six body!”

Footsteps approached from the side. Yu Sheng, who had been resting with his eyes closed, opened them to see a thin, dark-skinned young man in a Special Operations Bureau uniform standing nearby—clearly having come from the camp.

Yu Sheng quickly sat up. The young man waved his hands with a smile: “No, no, please keep resting—I just came to let you know the temporary Kitchen is ready to go. We’ll serve at five-thirty. We’ve made hot soup, steamed buns, and porridge for the kids. The only thing is, the dining hall isn’t set up yet. Where should everyone eat?”

“Oh, is that all?” Yu Sheng’s face broke into a grin the moment he heard it was something this simple, and he slapped his palm against the ground. “Easy fix.”

The next second, accompanied by the scraping of rock and a deep rumbling, a table over fifty meters long rose up from the center of the platform—listen to that unit of measurement: over fifty meters!

Neatly arranged on both sides of the table were over a hundred chairs… which were really just a bunch of stone stools.

“I can’t sculpt anything fancy, but throwing together a dining table is simple enough,” Yu Sheng said with a proud grin, glancing at the young man who stood there slack-jawed. “And tell your people to come eat too. You’ve all been busy all night—have a hot breakfast with the kids in the morning.”

“…You got it!”

(End of Chapter)