Chapter 209 – The Rhythm of Catastrophe

Death is the end of all things, and secrets are safest only in the mouths of the dead.

But if someone could chase you into the world after death, that was a different story entirely.

The Angel Cultist was grabbed by the collar by Yu Sheng. He spent a few seconds confirming that he had truly succeeded in completing his “self-sacrifice” under the watchful eyes of the Special Operations Bureau’s array of monitoring equipment, confirming that he had truly stripped his life from this mortal shell. Then he spent nearly half a minute confirming something else—

This goddamn freak who came from who-knows-where had followed him! Followed him into the world after death!

Perhaps because events had taken a turn far beyond imagination, even this Angel Cultist who had already cast life and death aside was somewhat dumbfounded. The bald man stared fixedly into Yu Sheng’s eyes, unable to utter a single word for the longest time.

This time, Yu Sheng wasn’t like last time where he “didn’t ask questions and just beat them up for fun.” He knew the cultist’s psychological defenses had already crumbled, so naturally there was no need to resort to previous methods. Moreover, they were currently in the phase of Speaking with the Dead, and he believed the chaos belonging to the deceased would eventually engulf this cultist’s mind. Any steadfast conviction to guard secrets was utterly insignificant before the unstoppable tide of death—so he simply sat down in front of the man, watching this “newly deceased” with a relaxed and thoroughly patient demeanor.

“You’ll tell me,” he said unhurriedly. “Death is a one-way road, and I’m the door you can’t get around on this road. I don’t know how you managed to hide a suicide method right under the Special Operations Bureau’s nose, but honestly, your choice was a colossal mistake—now, I have all the patience in the world to wait for you to confess every last secret.”

The Angel Cultist stared into Yu Sheng’s eyes, his body taut with tension, as a sensation of gradually falling finally surged up with irresistible force. He slowly felt his will beginning to drain away, felt all the memories of his life gradually dissolving into a muddled vortex, and at the very depths of that vortex… the ultimate void of death gazed back at him in perfect stillness.

That void now hovered before his eyes, trembling toward him, smiling at him, greeting him with infinite patience—

“Time’s almost up… the ‘vessel’ you mentioned refers to the children in that orphanage, doesn’t it?”

A hollow echo reverberated from within the void of death, gouging into the deepest recesses of the cultist’s memories.

But suddenly, a phantom infant’s cry pierced through death’s veil, latching onto the Angel Cultist’s final shred of consciousness.

Yu Sheng furrowed his brow. The instant the phantom crying rang out, he saw a serene, blissful smile surface on the Angel Cultist’s face—a smile that seemed almost relieved. Then, that shell of a body slowly, laboriously, raised its right hand toward him.

The man flipped him the middle finger.

“The Eternal Lord has come to receive me…”

Yu Sheng sprang to his feet, and in that instant the colors of the real dimension flooded back into his vision. The Angel Cultist was dead, his lifeless corpse collapsed on the ground, the shell no longer retaining any secrets worth excavating.

Immediately after, hurried footsteps came from outside the cell. The heavy alloy blast door opened swiftly, and Song Cheng appeared before Yu Sheng with his team.

The duration of Speaking with the Dead lasted only an instant in the real dimension. Song Cheng had rushed over the moment the Angel Cultist in the cell died. He looked at the cultist already collapsed on the ground, then glanced at Yu Sheng whose expression was shifting between light and dark, momentarily unable to grasp the situation.

“He got away from me,” Yu Sheng finally let out a long breath, pointing at the bald man’s shell on the ground. “This bastard actually managed to ‘feed’ himself to his Lord through sheer devotion at the very end. But… I still managed to get some useful intelligence.”

More than ten minutes later, Yu Sheng had brought Ailin and Hu Li to Song Cheng’s office, where he relayed the intelligence he’d extracted from the Angel Cultist to the operations captain.

“A vessel… a vessel for the angel’s descent…” Song Cheng’s eyebrows had twisted into two knots. “If the vessel that guy mentioned really is a member of Fairy Tale, then the situation is extremely dangerous. These cultists performing self-sacrifice at this particular time means some ‘moment’ is truly approaching, but we don’t even know what characteristics their so-called ‘vessel’ has. Which one could it be… among those dozens of children…”

Yet what surprised Song Cheng was that Yu Sheng’s attitude at this moment was rather nuanced.

“If it really is a member of the Fairy Tale organization, then the problem might actually still be manageable.”

A flicker of confusion crossed Song Cheng’s face. “Why do you say that?”

Yu Sheng spread his hands. “Because I’ve already placed the members of Fairy Tale under my ‘protection.’ Just today—from the five-and-six-year-olds all the way to the ones nearly grown up, I’ve covered every single one of them.”

Song Cheng: “…?”

“The exact mechanics are hard for me to explain. You can think of it as me applying an emergency soul refuge effect to all the Fairy Tale members. Once they suffer a severe shock within the Fairy Tale subset—such as mental contamination or a threat at the level of consciousness-death—their minds will be immediately transferred to a safe location,” Yu Sheng explained at an easy pace. “You can think of it as a ‘life-saving teleportation,’ on the spiritual level.”

Song Cheng studied Yu Sheng’s eyes as if trying to determine whether what this ‘person’ was saying was actually true. Just as he was about to speak again to confirm some details, the computer screen on the desk suddenly lit up.

Baili Qing’s perpetually frigid face appeared on the screen, looking at Yu Sheng.

“I won’t pry into your secrets. I only want to know—how effective exactly is this ‘sanctuary’ you mentioned?”

Clearly, nothing that happened within this headquarters building escaped the Bureau Chief’s eyes.

Yu Sheng wasn’t surprised by Baili Qing’s appearance. He simply lowered his head in thought for a moment before raising his eyes and saying with utmost seriousness, “If we’re speaking purely from the perspective of ‘protecting the mind,’ the effectiveness should be one hundred percent—it’s already been tested.”

“But you still don’t have complete confidence, do you?” Baili Qing gazed steadily into Yu Sheng’s eyes. Those faded irises seemed capable of piercing directly through a person’s soul. “You seem to be worried about something else.”

“…Yes,” Yu Sheng realized he probably couldn’t hide anything from the Bureau Chief across from him, so he nodded candidly. “I’m very confident in the ‘sanctuary’ effect itself that I’ve prepared for those children. But we can’t currently determine what the Twilight Angel’s ‘descent’ process actually looks like. What if it’s not mental contamination? What if it’s something even more advanced than mental contamination?

“And the Angel Cultist’s reaction at the moment of death was also strange… I mean during Speaking with the Dead. When I asked him whether the ‘vessel’ referred to the children in the orphanage, he didn’t answer me. But in his final smile, besides relief, there seemed to be a hint of mockery… and that hint of mockery is troubling.”

Yu Sheng laid out all his concerns in one breath, then let out a long exhale, looking at Baili Qing on the screen, waiting for her judgment.

Baili Qing on the communication screen sat perfectly still, her ice-like features showing no change of expression whatsoever, as if the connection had frozen.

But just as Yu Sheng was genuinely starting to wonder if the thing had actually frozen, the Bureau Chief suddenly spoke: “Regardless, the first priority is to prevent the Twilight Angel from ‘descending’ into the Real World. We need to consider placing all Fairy Tale members under isolation and protection—since you’re worried that the ‘sanctuary’ effect you’ve applied isn’t sufficient, then we’ll add several more layers of protection.”

Song Cheng furrowed his brow in thought, and upon hearing this, he spoke with some hesitation: “Transfer the children to the Special Operations Bureau’s containment facilities first? Or have them stay on a special floor? ‘Tranquil Town’ might work…”

“Tranquil Town is essentially an Otherworld—prolonged residence would affect a person’s mental state. The children are still young; living there for too long wouldn’t be good,” Baili Qing shook her head with a grave expression. “We can’t be certain when the ‘descent’ will occur or how long it will last. We need more alternative plans.”

“…Then the Sixth Containment Zone. The environment there is quite good, the physical ‘Caretakers’ can even give the children lessons, and there’s no worry about the ‘Caretakers’ running off either. Those ‘Guardians’ from Fairy Tale can all hold their own in a fight.”

“That’s a viable option to consider…”

Yu Sheng listened as Baili Qing and Song Cheng began discussing plans to relocate all the orphanage children to various containment facilities. Halfway through, he finally couldn’t hold back: “Wait, wait—don’t just go making decisions like this. Shouldn’t you hear from the people actually involved? Little Red Riding Hood and the other ‘Guardians’ might not agree. And besides… let’s not forget, it’s not as if the Special Operations Bureau hasn’t tried gathering up the Fairy Tale children for concentrated protection before. The incident that caused last time was no small matter.”

The moment Song Cheng heard this, his eyebrows twisted up again, his face scrunching with worry as he sucked air through his teeth.

“Of course I remember that. But the situation has pushed us to this point—the Twilight Angel might descend, and the descent vessel is almost certainly one of the children in Fairy Tale. You said yourself that the ‘sanctuary’ you gave them might not be enough to block an angel’s descent, and that cultist’s attitude when he died was so damn unsettling…”

Song Cheng was still muttering halfway through when Ailin, sitting nearby, began murmuring under her breath: “Listen to this—practically every ‘something big is about to go down’ flag has been raised. If this were a movie, this would be about the time they’d start playing an intense BGM.”

Yu Sheng reached over and poked Ailin on the forehead, then turned to Song Cheng with a dead-serious expression, as well as to Baili Qing on the screen.

“First of all, this needs to be discussed with Little Red Riding Hood and the others. After all, they know the internal situation of the Fairy Tale organization best—who’s been acting unusual lately, who might potentially be the ‘vessel’—we need to figure all of this out. Otherwise, blindly relocating people won’t solve the problem. Second, even if we really do need to move the orphanage children, you’re not the only ones with a plan—I’ve got one too…”

(End of Chapter)