Chapter 114 – The First Angel

Chapter 114 – The First Angel

Yu Sheng knew, of course, that there would be compensation—whether for providing intelligence, assisting in operations, or directly “contracting” certain projects and turning in extraordinary items, the Special Operations Bureau would pay spirit detectives and investigators according to established rates. This was also one of the most stable sources of income for “civilian anomalous individuals” like Little Red Riding Hood.

He just hadn’t expected the Bureau to deliver the money so directly, and the payment was higher than he’d anticipated.

Clearly, the extra amount was tied to the danger level of the “Angel Cultists.”

Yu Sheng recalled Little Red Riding Hood’s warning before they parted ways, and gained an even deeper appreciation for how the Special Operations Bureau viewed those so-called “Angel Cultists” as something truly special.

Song Cheng gave a slight nod after Yu Sheng took the envelope, then said casually, “Under normal circumstances, payment would be deposited directly into your account through the ‘Frontier Communications’ platform. But since this is our first collaboration, I thought a bit of ceremony would be nice—and more importantly, I wanted to use this opportunity to talk to you about the ‘Twilight Angels’ and the ‘Angel Cult.’ After all, it’s quite rare for a spirit detective or investigator to get tangled up with those lunatic Angel Cultists on their very first mission.”

Yu Sheng adjusted his posture, adopting a serious demeanor. “I saw that ‘angel’ in Night-shrouded Valley before. To be honest, it was… quite different from what I’d imagined an ‘angel’ would look like.”

Song Cheng’s voice was low and deep. “But you could feel its overwhelming presence, couldn’t you? That sense of being ‘looked down upon’ from a dimension above our own, and the… ‘holiness’ behind its grotesque form—am I right?”

“Holiness…” Yu Sheng recalled how he’d felt when he first saw that giant eye in the sky. He seemed to vaguely understand what Song Cheng meant. “If you’re talking about that aura of cold detachment that defied all reason, then yes, a little. That unholy thing was terrifying, but when it hung there in the sky, it did occasionally give off a twisted sense of the ‘sacred.'”

“That’s exactly where the word ‘angel’ comes from,” Song Cheng nodded. “The first investigator to encounter a Twilight Angel wrote the first eyewitness report about them before descending into madness. On the verge of insanity, teetering at the edge of terror, the recorder described their feelings thus—

“‘It looks down from above, as if from a higher, transcendent place. Maddening thoughts flood my mind… It is a messenger, an emissary representing some greater, more majestic power. I can almost hear it speaking to me—incomprehensible sentences conveying a will beyond human understanding… In the most extreme and pure of thoughts, I see a twilight future, where all things perish and they ascend into the sky…'”

Song Cheng recited the passage in a low, measured tone, then retrieved a thick stack of documents from the briefcase beside him. He pulled out a single page and placed it before Yu Sheng.

“This is the investigator who left that eyewitness report. We call him ‘Subject Zero.’ This is what he looks like now.”

Yu Sheng took the photograph with curiosity and glanced at it, only to see, standing alone in a pure white hall, a bizarre and twisted… “tree.”

The tree was rooted in a massive cultivation tank. All its roots and branches grew in tangled, matted clusters like hair—coiling, intertwining, knotting together. The overall silhouette faintly suggested a human figure struggling and hunched over. From the darkly colored canopy hung strand after strand of suspicious-looking “vines.” Yu Sheng studied them for a long time before realizing that the vines drooping from the canopy were actually grotesquely swollen blood vessels.

“He’s currently contained in one of the Bureau’s high-security ‘warehouses.’ We need to prune the new branches growing from his canopy every three days to prevent him from suddenly losing control,” Song Cheng’s voice reached Yu Sheng’s ears. “He didn’t become this way overnight. In fact, the entire transformation took ten years. It was… a truly horrifying process. During those ten years, Subject Zero would occasionally emerge from his madness into moments of lucidity, only to plunge back into frenzy amid overwhelming terror.”

Eileen craned her neck to peek at the document in Yu Sheng’s hands. Listening to Song Cheng’s description, she couldn’t help but shrink back, muttering under her breath, “This looks worse than being dead… If I were you people, I’d just put him out of his misery. This is just torture.”

“Yes, and so we did exactly that,” Song Cheng said calmly. “After Subject Zero’s last moment of lucidity, when he begged his supervisor, we carried out an ‘execution.’ We’re certain we killed him—or at least killed his suffering soul. But his body survived even after the lethal trauma… After careful deliberation, the Bureau decided to preserve the body as a critical research specimen for studying angelic influence.”

Yu Sheng’s brow was tightly furrowed. After a long pause, he finally spoke. “Just looking at one turns you into that? We saw that giant eye too—how come none of us seem to have any lasting effects?”

“First, brief exposure alone won’t leave irreversible effects. Subject Zero was trapped near the First Angel at the time—his contact with the thing lasted far too long,” Song Cheng said slowly. “Second, each Twilight Angel has different ‘characteristics.’ Some possess powerful mental contamination, others manifest as direct destructive force, and some… even appear to be harmless, or at least their main body has never displayed any direct aggression. The giant eye you saw should belong to an inert type with relatively weak ‘offensive’ properties.”

“There are many Twilight Angels?” Yu Sheng looked up with curiosity.

“The confirmed count has already reached double digits,” Song Cheng said, handing over another document. “This is the ‘First Angel’—the one Subject Zero witnessed. It’s also recognized as the first Twilight Angel to invade our world.”

This time, even the fox who had been diligently grooming her tail nearby couldn’t resist coming over to look at the document alongside Yu Sheng and Eileen.

“The First Angel, also known as the ‘Tree Angel’ or ‘The Inverted Tree,'” Song Cheng began speaking at an unhurried pace from the side. “When it ‘descends,’ it takes the form of a massive plant hanging inverted from the sky. Its canopy spans nearly a thousand meters wide and equally tall. It grows from a vortex structure suspended high in the sky—this vortex forms twenty-four to seventy-two hours before the ‘descent,’ which serves as an important reference point for identifying the Tree Angel and issuing advance warnings.”

Yu Sheng stared at the photograph of the enormous inverted tree, with the sprawl of city buildings visible in the background. Beneath the image, he saw a more detailed description of this Twilight Angel:

“…It does not actively move or attack, but continuously emits intense psychic interference. Witnesses will uncontrollably raise their heads to gaze up at its canopy, hearing vast and chaotic sounds until their minds are completely overtaken—some even come to believe they themselves are ‘trees.’ In certain contact reports, survivors described seeing a ‘forest,’ where they nestled around the ‘Mother Tree’ in the form of saplings…

“Currently, there are no effective means to resist this ‘compulsion to gaze.’ No matter how mentally resilient a person may be, they cannot control their impulse to look once the Tree Angel has descended. This effect is similar to those of ‘The Beauty’ and ‘The Silent Sun’… The most effective known countermeasures at present are voluntary blinding, deep hypnosis, and pre-emptive consumption of the Desert Court’s ‘Serpent Venom Wine.’ The primary approach is to forcibly block visual input or suppress mental activity…”

“The Tree Angel first appeared above the Otherworld known as the ‘Silent City,'” Song Cheng said from beside him. “It caused the entire Otherworld to activate. Nearly all the investigation teams and scholar groups operating within that Otherworld at the time were killed—only Subject Zero survived. Its most recent appearance was three years ago, above a distant alien planet, where it directly invaded the real world. Although it remained in the sky for only a few dozen minutes that time, the consequences were devastating. It was a remote and underdeveloped planet with no experience or capability to combat Twilight Angels. Post-incident statistics showed over a hundred thousand people were affected, with direct casualties exceeding ten thousand. The rest continue to suffer to this day.”

Yu Sheng felt a powerful wave of… shock.

When he’d seen that enormous solitary eye in the valley, the danger hadn’t felt this real. But now, through these concrete cases, he finally understood just how dangerous “Twilight Angels” truly were.

“These things… can appear in the real world?!” He looked up at Song Cheng with disbelief in his eyes.

“Generally speaking, Twilight Angels tend to ‘descend’ more often in Otherworlds, but in reality, they can appear anywhere,” Song Cheng nodded. “They’re not bound by the constraints of space-time dimensions. Their appearances and departures follow no pattern whatsoever. They are true ‘free wanderers.'”

Yu Sheng said nothing for a long time. Beside him, Eileen, after a brief moment of stunned silence, couldn’t help but mutter, “…Holy shit.”

“Where do these things even come from?” Yu Sheng asked after a moment’s thought.

“Nobody knows,” Song Cheng sighed. “But the prevailing theory now is that all Twilight Angels originate from beyond our world—they are a wave of ‘invaders’ attacking our universe.”

(End of Chapter)