Chapter 205 – The Second Blood-Sharing and the Old Building Investigation

Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood talked at length about Squirrel, as well as that unknown “Descent” from eighty-six years ago.

Little Red Riding Hood, in turn, told Yu Sheng quite a bit about the old history of the Orphanage, along with some of the inner workings of the Fairy Tale organization.

“See that kid over there with the slightly curly hair? The one chatting with Rapunzel — he’s the Red Dragon that fell out of the sky earlier. His situation is similar to the King’s; he also represents a type of ‘classic story archetype’ without a specific source, and the ‘subset’ behind him isn’t tied to any particular story. His codename is ‘Dragonslayer’… That’s obviously not a real dragon, it’s not that impressive.

“Why does the ‘Dragonslayer’ himself take the form of a dragon? Because ‘the dragonslayer eventually becomes the dragon,’ so sometimes when he enters a nightmare, he fast-forwards straight to becoming the evil dragon… He actually can’t fly. He just directly transforms into a defeated evil dragon. In his Red Dragon form, his only ability is to plummet from the sky in various poses — he mainly relies on falling on people to crush them. Sometimes he also plays the dragonslayer before he became the evil dragon, and then his ability is to summon a defeated evil dragon from the sky… which still just falls on people.

“Sleeping Beauty doesn’t usually talk much. Her favorite thing is sleeping — she sleeps during the day, sleeps at night too. I’ve always envied her sleep quality, but she says that when she’s sleeping, she always feels like she’s still awake, and she’s actually exhausted and drowsy every day. Her greatest wish is to get the most comfortable pillow in the world and then sleep herself to death on it.

“Dorothy can communicate with all kinds of machines. Even if those machines don’t have a Machine Spirit, they’ll produce reactions similar to a Machine Spirit when she talks to them… Right, ‘the Tin Man got a heart’ — that’s the symbolism. Dorothy can temporarily give steel a will of its own. She often uses this ability to trick vending machines into dropping her an extra bottle of drink, or to keep making phone calls when her phone’s out of credit — I’m pretty envious of that too.

“But the one I envy most is still the Little Mermaid — she didn’t come today. She sings so beautifully. She doesn’t even need to go out on missions normally; she just uses a virtual avatar to livestream, and singing for half a day earns her more than I make in a week… Me? I’m completely tone-deaf.

“But she has her troubles too… Scales inexplicably fall off when she showers, constantly clogging the drain. Even when she maintains her human form, scales always show up in the bathroom. Oh, and she actually can’t swim… Didn’t expect that, did you?

“Oh right, and over there — the ‘Little Match Girl,’ the one with the longest codename. An absolute arson expert, a supreme master. When the Orphanage’s heating isn’t warm enough in winter, we all count on her. But I hear the municipal heating pipes in our area are getting replaced next year, so she won’t have to burn the boiler in winter anymore… Don’t get on her bad side though — she gets really aggressive when she’s lighting fires.”

Little Red Riding Hood chattered on and on like this. She sat with Yu Sheng on a tall mound of earth, watching their companions in the near distance. A faint smile hung perpetually on her face, like the eldest sister in a big family — introducing her younger siblings’ many embarrassing stories to a friend with a mix of pride and affection.

A while later, the boys and girls lit a grand bonfire out on the open wasteland.

The fuel they used was a thicket of thorns summoned by Sleeping Beauty — blooming rose bushes burned fiercely in the blaze, the towering firelight illuminating this chaotic, dim wasteland. Just as Yu Sheng had anticipated, this desolate plain — as silent and monotonous as an afterlife — came alive with noise and excitement for the first time.

The older children gathered at this shelter whooped and hollered around the bonfire, singing and dancing. Most of it was tone-deaf caterwauling at the top of their lungs, interspersed with the King’s meowing.

Then Hu Li and Ailin ran over to join the fun too. Little Doll drifted in circles above the bonfire, looking like she might set her own picture frame ablaze at any second. Hu Li crackled Fox Fire into the sky one burst after another, like setting off fireworks — and Yu Sheng got dragged over as well, serving as the bonfire’s good-luck mascot.

He felt like he was participating in some bizarre yet lively sacrificial ritual, surrounded by ecstatic “worshippers” shrieking and howling. Or like a “Guardian” who’d been dragged into some campus event, encircled by children dancing in wild chaos — all he could do was maintain an awkward yet polite smile in the middle of it all.

The feeling wasn’t too bad, actually.

And then, just like that, the children’s first gathering on this Shelter Wasteland came to an end.

Early the next morning, Yu Sheng arrived at the Orphanage — according to plan, today was the day to perform “Blood-Sharing inoculations” for the younger children.

He sat in the back kitchen of the Orphanage cafeteria, watching Snow White stir a large bucket of oddly colored “nutritious vegetable soup” with a dead-serious expression. He couldn’t help but feel skeptical: “…Is this really going to work? Just looking at it kills my appetite…”

“Trust my cooking — the presentation’s a bit rough, but the little ones usually love drinking this,” Snow White said, stirring with her ladle while glancing up at Yu Sheng. “Hold on a moment. Wait until the soup cools down a bit before you ‘add the ingredient,’ otherwise the blood will get cooked…”

Yu Sheng nodded. “Oh.”

Beside them, another girl with long hair draped over her shoulders — looking about sixteen or seventeen, with a gentle and graceful demeanor — couldn’t help but mutter: “I still think it’d be better to mix it into strawberry smoothies — the cold temperature would mask the bloody smell, and the color wouldn’t look weird either.”

“It’s winter, sis. You want to give these little ones a cup of smoothie each first thing in the morning when it’s negative-something degrees out? Sure, they’d be happy, but would there be enough toilets to go around?” Snow White looked up and rolled her eyes. “I think you’re just the one who wants a smoothie.”

The gentle, graceful long-haired girl laughed awkwardly. Yu Sheng couldn’t help studying her for a few extra moments — he kept feeling she looked familiar but couldn’t quite place her. After staring for a while, he finally spoke up: “Which one are you again?”

“We met last night,” the girl said with a shy smile, pointing at herself. “By the bonfire on the Wasteland. I was standing behind Rapunzel at the time — and earlier than that, I was standing on the beanstalk.”

Yu Sheng thought hard, and a figure finally surfaced in his mind — someone cackling madly amid a sea of fire atop Jack’s beanstalk.

He slapped his palm in realization: “Oh oh oh! The one who wanted everyone to see grandma in the flames—”

But before he could finish, the girl’s face had already turned bright red. She waved her hands frantically while stammering: “I-I’m not normally like that, I just can’t control myself when I’m lighting fires…”

The corner of Yu Sheng’s mouth twitched. “Codename ‘Little Match Girl,’ right… Abilities are arson and illusions.”

“That codename’s too long. They usually just call me ‘Match,'” the girl said with an embarrassed smile. This shy, gentle demeanor really was like a completely different person from that figure cackling in the sea of fire. “Little Red Riding Hood definitely embellished a ton of stuff when she introduced me to you.”

“…She embellished quite a bit when introducing every single one of you,” Yu Sheng recalled all those ‘distinctive traits’ Little Red Riding Hood had mentioned while describing each member of the Fairy Tale organization the previous night. A smile crept onto his face. “But you could tell — she really likes all of you.”

The long-haired girl smiled, her smile warm and radiant.

Snow White finally set down her ladle. She tested the temperature of the vegetable soup, then turned to look at Yu Sheng with a half-smile:

“Bro, time to bleed.”

Yu Sheng blinked in surprise. “Bro?”

“Rapunzel and I were going to call you ‘uncle’ at first, but Little Red Riding Hood said you’re not that much older than us, so ‘bro’ seemed more fitting,” Snow White said with a beaming smile, one hand already picking up the kitchen cleaver that had been sitting nearby. “Want to cut yourself, or should I do it for you?”

Yu Sheng looked at the smile on her face and the glinting cleaver in her hand, and cold sweat immediately broke out: “I’ll do it myself, I’ll do it myself…”

…

At the same time, in the underground structure beneath the Orphanage’s West Building, Little Red Riding Hood was furrowing her brow slightly, studying the long-neglected underground passage before her while glancing down at the old documents in her hand.

A “mercenary” clad in heavy armor, with dark skin and a sturdy build, stood silently beside her. The mercenary’s face was hidden behind a thick helmet, and engraved on the breastplate was a crest bearing a cat’s head. The King perched proudly atop the mercenary’s shoulder, gazing curiously left and right.

“Is this the spot?”

The King suddenly asked.

“Hard to say,” Little Red Riding Hood shook her head. “The clues Squirrel provided weren’t very clear to begin with — the landing point she described was at the center of the Orphanage’s courtyard Clearing, but the Orphanage’s layout eighty-six years ago was quite different from now. The ‘courtyard’ back then partially overlaps with the current West Building, but exactly how much overlap, where the center point is, where the boundaries are — none of that is certain…”

As she spoke, she held up the old documents for the King to see.

“This is the layout plan from when the West Building was constructed — the most reliable document I could find in the archives. We’re roughly at this position right now. If my calculations are correct, this should indeed be in the vicinity of the ‘courtyard’ from Squirrel’s memories… right above our heads.

“Also, this point here is where I previously saw the ‘thorn shadow’ — slightly north-northeast, above us, on one of the West Building’s exterior walls.”

The King stretched his neck to carefully study the documents Little Red Riding Hood held out, then patted them with a paw: “Why are you showing me this? I’m just a cat. I can’t read these.”

“…Cut the act. I personally witnessed you doing Snow White’s physics exam for her.”

The King looked away awkwardly. “…She bribed me with cat treats.”

Little Red Riding Hood shot the Tabby Cat a contemptuous glance, then waved her hand dismissively.

“Can you sense anything? Using that ‘cat intuition’ you’re always bragging about.”

“Sense… nothing in particular,” the King mumbled, stretching lazily atop the summoned mercenary’s shoulder. His tone was languid. “But don’t you find it strange? There isn’t even a single mouse down here…”

(End of Chapter)