Chapter 177 – Running with the Wolves

Have you ever offended anyone before?

Yu Sheng’s sudden question left Little Red Riding Hood momentarily stunned. After a few seconds, she realized why he was asking and furrowed her brow. “Are you saying the museum incident was a trap specifically targeting me?”

“Don’t blame me for being conspiratorial, but there are a lot of suspicious things about this whole affair. The most suspicious part is why it fell on you of all people—remember that ‘sacrifice’ ritual inside? If Hu Li, Eileen, and I hadn’t stalled that big bad Wolf that crawled out of the shadows for you, you really would have lost control,” Yu Sheng said with a grave expression. “And the reason you went to the museum, the reason you stepped into the White Exhibition Hall at that exact moment, was because you accepted a commission to retrieve collectibles—one with a time limit, no less. Now it turns out the commission was fake… That makes this ‘coincidence’ very suspicious indeed.”

“The ones who engineered the sacrifice were two Angel Cult followers.” Little Red Riding Hood’s expression suddenly turned grim, as she had always been wary of anything involving those lunatics. “You’re saying those maniacs who worship the Twilight Angel deliberately set a trap for me? Why? It doesn’t make any sense…”

“That’s why I asked if you’ve ever offended anyone.”

“…What kind of offense would it take to get targeted by those lunatics?” Little Red Riding Hood’s brow furrowed into deep creases. “You know me—I never deal with anything related to the Twilight Angel. I normally only take mid-level commissions through legitimate channels, and more than half of them come from the Special Operations Bureau. The Fairy Tale organization is very cautious about external interactions too. We might have competitors in the spirit detective business, but it would never escalate to the level of ‘enemies.'”

“Then there’s another possibility—you haven’t offended the Angel Cult, but you have some ‘value’ that makes them target you,” Yu Sheng mused. “After all, like you said, they’re a bunch of lunatics. Lunatics don’t operate on the same logic as normal people. Maybe they decided you’d be useful to their ’cause’ and just went for it.”

Little Red Riding Hood said nothing, seemingly lost in thought and doubt.

Yu Sheng also knew his train of thought had veered rather wide, and figuring out the Angel Cult’s motives wasn’t something they could puzzle out just sitting here. So he quickly cleared his throat twice and steered the conversation back on track.

“Ahem, let’s talk about the commission itself. What do you know so far?”

“I was in direct contact with the liaison. Thinking about it now, because I was so familiar with him, I really didn’t carefully verify the details of the commission this time,” Little Red Riding Hood let out a soft breath and spoke with a serious expression. “The electronic commission document I received did bear the Curiosities Association’s insignia and a one-time serial number, but it wasn’t issued directly by the Association’s liaison department—it was forwarded to me through the liaison’s personal account. We’d done it that way before, so I didn’t think twice about it.”

Yu Sheng frowned. “A major organization would allow such a flawed procedure?”

“In principle, of course not. But in practice, it’s hard to avoid. It’s year-end, and for a large organization like the Curiosities Association, the deadline for outsourced commissions is very tight. So every year-end, the people in charge of outsourcing try to get the commissions dispatched before the deadline no matter what. That way they can use the dispatch timestamp to jump the queue during settlement. After all, everyone’s got KPI pressure…”

Yu Sheng: “…It’s for such a mundane reason?!”

Little Red Riding Hood fell silent for two seconds, then raised her hand and pointed at the Nine-Tailed Fox Spirit, who was walking along with her tails dragging on the ground.

“Isn’t the reason your fox drags one of her tails on the ground while walking also an extremely mundane one?”

“…Fair point.” Yu Sheng instantly made peace with reality, but couldn’t help leaning back on the sofa and sighing. “‘The world is one big amateur production’—that saying really holds up.”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, thought for two or three seconds, then looked up. “So what you’re saying is, there’s currently no way to confirm whether the original commission was forged by the liaison personally, or whether there’s a higher-level ‘mole’ inside the Curiosities Association who deleted the corresponding records after it was dispatched?”

Little Red Riding Hood shook her head. “No way to confirm. But the Special Operations Bureau will definitely investigate this angle. Regardless, these kinds of procedural loopholes stay under the table when nothing goes wrong. Now that something has gone wrong, it’s all out in the open, and they’ll inevitably audit everything from top to bottom.”

“We’ll have to check in with the Bureau about that later,” Yu Sheng muttered, then asked, “What about the liaison who died? What’s his situation—what exactly happened to him?”

“The specifics are still unclear. Based on what I’ve heard, it seems he fell from a height, unfortunately struck his head, and died on the spot,” Little Red Riding Hood said. “I’ve already made arrangements. We’ll go to his place tonight—he always lived alone, and right now a nephew of his is there handling the funeral affairs.”

“I’m going with you,” Yu Sheng said immediately.

Little Red Riding Hood hesitated, studying him. “You want to…”

“What if we can still ‘ask’ him something?” Yu Sheng’s expression was serious. “Just like that time in the museum. I don’t know what the limitations are for that kind of ‘conversation with the dead,’ but it’s worth a try.”

Little Red Riding Hood thought it over and finally nodded. “Alright… shall we head out now?”

“Right now.” Yu Sheng stood up from the sofa, then glanced down at Eileen. “You and Hu Li stay home. I’ll go alone this time.”

Eileen immediately jumped up. “Huh? Why?”

Yu Sheng rolled his eyes. “…We’re going to a dead person’s home to ask questions. You think showing up carrying a doll is appropriate?”

Eileen bared her teeth in displeasure, but ultimately had to concede his point. She sat back down on the sofa. “Fine, I’ll stay home… then I’m using your computer to play games!”

“Go ahead—but you have to use your own account, and don’t touch my personal files!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

After settling things with Little Doll, Yu Sheng turned around only to find Hu Li standing right behind him, looking worried. “Benefactor, are you sure you don’t need to bring me along? I can help in a fight.”

Yu Sheng’s eye twitched involuntarily, and he had to explain to Hu Li once more that this trip was an investigation at the deceased’s home—no fighting required. Whether it was brawling with the bereaved family or brawling with the deceased himself, neither would be particularly appropriate at someone’s memorial…

Little Red Riding Hood stood to the side, watching Yu Sheng’s exchange with Hu Li in open-mouthed astonishment, gaining an even deeper appreciation for the mental fortitude of everyone at The Lodge.

After telling Hu Li there were leftovers in the fridge that she could heat up if she got hungry—but to absolutely, under no circumstances, set the house on fire or take it apart—Yu Sheng finally changed into his going-out clothes and stepped through the door of No. 66 Wutong Road with Little Red Riding Hood.

In the short stretch from his front door to the other side of the street, Yu Sheng looked back three or four times.

This made Little Red Riding Hood somewhat curious. “That worried?”

“This is the first time I’ve gone out alone and left both Hu Li and Eileen at home,” Yu Sheng said, his tone genuinely tinged with concern. “I’m actually worried the house will be demolished by the time I get back.”

“She’s a Nine-Tailed Fox Spirit, not a nine-tailed husky,” Little Red Riding Hood sighed. “And I feel like Eileen is quite levelheaded—a little impulsive with her words sometimes, at most.”

“…I can’t believe you’d give her such a high rating. If you knew the things she’s done, you’d never say that,” Yu Sheng said with deep feeling. “With no one watching her, she’d actually stew herself—you believe that? And last time she nearly set the house on fire. The first thing she ignited was herself.”

Little Red Riding Hood: “…?”

“Someday, you’ll see it for yourself,” Yu Sheng waved his hand. “Let’s not talk about this—how do we get there?”

The “liaison” Little Red Riding Hood had mentioned lived in a different part of the city, some distance from Wutong Road, closer to the city center. Even by taxi, it would take over forty minutes.

And Yu Sheng had never been there—without coordinates on record, he couldn’t use Door Opening to go directly.

So to save time and avoid complications, Little Red Riding Hood extended a special invitation to Yu Sheng.

To travel with her wolves.

In an inconspicuous alley corner, Yu Sheng eyed the enormous wolf before him with some unease. Its entire body seemed composed of living shadow, its outline rippling and shifting.

“Seriously… this thing doesn’t bite?” he asked, full of doubt. “And can it actually carry people?”

“Of course it can carry people.” Little Red Riding Hood looked at the nervous Yu Sheng with exasperation, then felt the simple emotions the shadow wolf was transmitting to her, and spoke with deeply mixed feelings. “And you’re worried about it biting you? It’s worried about you biting it!”

“What kind of thing is that to say!” Yu Sheng’s eyes went wide. “Am I the kind of person who’s that indiscriminate about what he eats?”

Little Red Riding Hood: “…”

Seeing her reaction, and recalling that he’d previously talked her into eating Grandmother Wolf’s flesh, Yu Sheng finally felt the awkwardness hit. He abandoned any thought of further argument and obediently mounted the wolf, following Little Red Riding Hood’s example.

“Is this really going to work? Your wolf is trembling. Can it not handle heavy loads?”

Little Red Riding Hood glanced back at Yu Sheng, then smacked the wolf beneath him on the head. “Coward.”

Then she shook her head and simply issued the command to the pack. “Move out.”

Yu Sheng had been about to ask how to control the wolf he was riding, and how to leap between shadows the way Little Red Riding Hood did, but before the words could leave his mouth, the world lurched before his eyes.

In the next instant, the world transformed.

Colors collapsed into varying shades of black and white. The towering buildings of the city became silhouettes of bare outlines. The roads vanished, replaced by discontinuous “bridges” spanning between clusters of shadow. The orderly scenery that had filled his vision a moment ago suddenly appeared as though reflected in a shattered mirror—and then the city curled in on itself. The fractured, floating buildings became a three-dimensional labyrinth within this monochrome world, like a painting mapped through warped reflections, where the distance and scale of everything was reorganized in an instant.

The wolves stepped lightly forward and leaped into that phantasmagoric realm of shadows.

(End of Chapter)