Chapter 223: Damaged

Yu Sheng awoke from an endless fall through darkness and chaotic visions, opening his eyes in a dim bedroom, then tried to sit up sharply... but failed to sit up.

Two Ailins sat on his arms, one on the left and one on the right, while a rebar one sat on his chest; beside them, a Hu Li lay on the bedside table with wide eyes staring straight at them, its two large eyes glowing with a faint gold-red light in the gloom, looking utterly demonic.

Yu Sheng nearly choked, waving his hand to try and push the rebar Ailin off: "We agreed you wouldn't suddenly jump onto the bed, yet you're up again. Don't you know how heavy this body is..."

The small doll stared with scarlet eyes: "I didn't suddenly jump up; I climbed up slowly."

Yu Sheng struggled hard to finally sit up; the dizziness in his head hadn't faded, and he instinctively blurted out: "What are you all doing here, surrounding me like you're viewing a corpse..."

Before he could finish speaking, he saw Ailin nod: "Yes, we are viewing a corpse."

Yu Sheng: "......?"

"Benefactor, your aura vanished completely for half an hour; we thought you had died," Hu Li nodded beside him, speaking with a serious expression, "Then I and Ailin discussed how you died. Ailin said humans are fragile and die suddenly from staying up too late, so you died suddenly—but I think you were crushed to death by her sitting on your chest. So we waited here, hoping to ask you once you came back to life..."

Yu Sheng: "...... Can't you learn something reliable from Ailin!"

As he spoke, he felt another wave of dizziness in his mind; he didn't know if this was a side effect of returning from death or the impact of a rebar-plus-stone doll sitting on his chest nearly causing him to die again, and then he gradually recovered, and memories of his recent experience surfaced in his mind—

The squirrel, the small house, the hunter, the flickering Black Forest, Anka Ela's patrol sweeping across the sky, the wolf pack... and death.

A pair of gold-red eyes quietly approached from the side; Yu Sheng instinctively looked up and saw Hu Li's face just a dozen centimeters from his, the latter looking worried: "Benefactor... what's wrong?"

"I became the 'Hunter', saw the rift behind the Black Forest—then was ambushed by the wolf pack," Yu Sheng said, suddenly realizing something, and sat up sharply to look out the window, "Wait! What time is it now?!"

"It's already dark; you've been sleeping for a long time, Benefactor," Hu Li, startled, quickly replied, "Ailin and I went to the valley this afternoon; everything there is fine..."

"No, no, something bad is coming, night is falling again—" Yu Sheng said, a strong sense of unease rising in his heart as he got out of bed and spoke rapidly, "Anka Ela's activity is still intensifying; it's preparing a larger assault... I missed something, I definitely missed something..."

The three Ailins looked at each other; one suddenly jumped from the bed to the bedside table, looking up at Yu Sheng: "Wait, what do you mean something bad is coming... wasn't the most dangerous night already over? Besides, Hu Li and I just confirmed in the valley that the children are all safe..."

"But Anka Ela's activity hasn't decreased; it's increasing!" Yu Sheng interrupted Ailin urgently, looking at the doll's scarlet eyes in the gloom, "The previous blood-bestowal ritual's protective effect on the children and the valley's own 'shielding' did weaken Anka Ela's 'control', but its awakening speed is actually accelerating!"

The three Ailins froze simultaneously: "...... What?!"

"I saw it in the Black Forest... that Dark Angel is scanning all subsets," Yu Sheng, now quickly putting on his outer robe and casually picking up his phone to send a notification to the Special Bureau, said while reaching for the door, "I suspect it's searching for those 'disturbed' Fairy Tale members—I believe my protective measures for those children appear as some kind of 'abduction' to Anka Ela; it has noticed the stage is losing control, but I'm not sure how much its accelerated awakening relates to this..."

Ailin listened, stunned, and hopped down from the bedside table: "Hey, where are you going?"

"To the valley—you and Hu Li come with me!"

An illusory door opened out of thin air; Yu Sheng appeared directly in the temporary camp in the valley. The bright daylight made him, who had been in a dim room just a second ago, feel momentarily unaccustomed, and immediately, he saw Little Red Riding Hood standing not far away, looking at him in surprise.

"Why have you come?" the girl in red walked over quickly, a smile on her face, "Ailin told me you were exhausted and went straight to sleep after returning home—we were just preparing dinner; would you like to join us?"

"Is everything normal in the camp?" Yu Sheng, ignoring the invitation, asked hurriedly, "Has any child suddenly fallen into a coma or seen or heard anything strange?"

Little Red Riding Hood immediately noticed the grave expression on Yu Sheng's face and became tense at once: "No, everything in the camp is normal—what's happened?"

Yu Sheng then quickly explained the situation he had encountered to her, and said: "Next, I must return to the Black Forest as soon as possible and try to approach that rift—but Anka Ela's activity is a major problem. My act of 'taking you away' seems to have provoked it, greatly provoked it."

Little Red Riding Hood listened with a serious and tense expression, opening her mouth several times but finding no opportunity, and finally spoke hesitantly: "So... was the previous 'protection' too hasty? Shouldn't we have provoked that Dark Angel like this?"

"We certainly can't think that way," Yu Sheng interrupted without hesitation; he remained clear-headed on this matter, "It's not just us acting—the angel cultists have been trying every means to advance Anka Ela's awakening; the situation when 'blood-bestowal' was performed on the other children already left no room for our hesitation."

"Ultimately, while the 'protection' act provokes Anka Ela, failing to execute protection would cause Anka Ela to awaken early anyway, after all, those cultists were crazy enough to hold collective self-sacrifices to provoke their master—so we must seize this time; seizing it at least puts the initiative in our hands." "True, I was panicked," Little Red Riding Hood nodded quickly, her eyebrows furrowing tightly, "So what now? Anka Ela is awakening further and has started scanning all subsets... the nightmares afterward will probably be even more dangerous."

"So I rushed over now to confirm the situation—the real world is already dark, and next comes another cycle of 'Fairy Tale' stage activity; this night will be especially important," Yu Sheng said gravely, "As long as the protection over the Wasteland remains effective, surviving the nightmare is no problem; no matter how much Anka Ela's activity increases, it is still trapped within the 'Fairy Tale' otherworld—theoretically, its connection to the real world has been severed by your 'evacuation'."

"I understand," Little Red Riding Hood said immediately, "Tonight I will increase patrol frequency; the King is also prepared, and his court wizard will monitor the entire camp without interruption."

Yu Sheng nodded.

But he still felt a vague unease lingering in his heart; even though he had confirmed all the children in the camp were fine, even though he had arranged tonight's patrols and camp monitoring, he still felt something was wrong, felt something was about to go wrong.

Yu Sheng's expression was grave, and just as he felt he had grasped a key point, a sudden ringtone from his phone startled him from his thoughts.

He instinctively frowned, picked up his phone, and saw it was a call from Bai Liqing.

After answering, before he could speak, the cold and concise voice of that female director came from the other end: "We found that book."

Then she paused for less than half a second and added: "The book 'Zhao Lele' handed to Anka Ela back then; we found its same-batch, same-edition materials, including several scanned images; they have been sent to you on 'Border Communications'; please check them."

Yu Sheng hung up the phone; although his mind was full of restless thoughts, he immediately opened Border Communications on his phone to check the private message sent by Bai Liqing.

Ailin and Little Red Riding Hood nearby immediately leaned in, and even the fox, who couldn't read well, leaned in too.

No mistakes, one chapter, one release, one content, all in one view!

Yu Sheng quickly found the image file mentioned by Bai Liqing; after clicking it, the first thing that came into view was a pattern scanned by a low-fidelity scanner: a colorful but poor-quality fairy tale book cover that looked heavily dated, its edges damaged, clearly an archive left from an old book.

The cover depicted a graffiti-style forest, a winding path, and... a reddish-brown squirrel sitting on a tree stump by the road.

An exaggerated and comical squirrel holding a pine needle in its hand and pointing the pine needle at the book title.

"The Knight Squirrel Takes You to Read Stories"

Yu Sheng's gaze instinctively lingered on that squirrel; he stared at it for a long time before taking a light breath and clicking to the next page.

It was a scanned image of the table of contents.

The first story, "Little Red Riding Hood".

The second story, "Bai Xue".

The third story, "Sleeping Beauty"...

Little Red Riding Hood stood beside him, eyes unblinking as she watched the content on the phone; after a moment, she murmured softly: "Oh, so I am the first story..."

Yu Sheng lingered on that table of contents for a few seconds, then clicked to the next page.

On the yellowed, damaged paper, low-quality printed text told the first story, accompanied by simple illustrations and some pinyin annotations.

The entire story, including illustrations, occupied only two pages, extremely concise, clearly prepared for children who had just become able to read storybooks independently.

Yu Sheng continued flipping down, viewing the subsequent scans—

He saw chaotic printed text and occasional blank spaces.

(End of this chapter)