Unbeknownst to him, Yu Sheng felt that Little Red Riding Hood had been acting a bit nervous since a while ago.
He thought this might somehow be related to himself.
Nevertheless, he had a thick skin and a broad heart—a trait cultivated from spending time with Irene—so he quickly stood up, directing his focus to their next move.
He could sense that the security guards had frozen in various areas of the museum.
Some of them appeared to be slowly "disintegrating" into the air, seemingly in sync with the "intruders" vanishing from the guards' sight.
With this, the museum's "cleansing" mechanism had also ceased.
The plastic dummies, temporarily created to serve as janitors, were gradually being recycled.
However, this recycling process was slow.
If they waited for all the plastic dummies to disappear before acting, they would likely miss the museum's opening hours.
Yu Sheng remembered Little Red Riding Hood had cautioned him that the museum functioned on a timed basis, only open during night performances.
"Let's move on. We’ll go this way," Yu Sheng carefully sensed the area and pointed toward a door deep within the corridor.
"There are no guards behind that door."
"Got it."
Little Red Riding Hood wasted no time and directed her wolf pack to follow Yu Sheng, who was currently their only safe option.
The next exhibition hall was filled with warm, bright orange light.
In the center stood a series of massive mountain sculptures, while the walls were adorned with many bright and pleasant landscape paintings, all without names, marked simply as "Anonymous."
There were no plastic dummies here, and along the route Yu Sheng had indicated, they didn’t encounter any guards either.
Little Red Riding Hood found this quite extraordinary—she had never imagined she could move through a fully "activated" museum like this.
According to the Special Operations Bureau’s assessment, the danger level of the museum had reached the third tier once the guards were generated, requiring a fully armed elite team to take over.
Yet, she was now leading her wolves through this increasingly sinister museum, swiftly navigating exhibit halls and corridors, with "real" guards spread throughout the area...
It felt as if they didn’t exist at all.
Only when Yu Sheng occasionally lowered his voice to point out certain intersections did she remember that those deadly threats were still lurking nearby.
They traversed many corridors and rooms but still hadn’t found the spacious white exhibition hall mentioned in their intel.
Suddenly, Yu Sheng came to a stop, furrowing his brow.
"What’s wrong?" Little Red Riding Hood tensed up, looking grave.
"We haven’t found that exhibition hall yet," Yu Sheng replied in a low voice.
"Maybe it’s deeper inside?" Irene had already resumed her position on Yu Sheng’s shoulder—in situations like this outside, the little figure was too lazy to walk herself.
"Didn’t they say the structure of this museum is randomly generated?"
"What I mean is, we've already explored all the places without guards blocking our path," Yu Sheng said with a serious expression.
"The remaining intersections are all controlled by those plastic dummies."
Irene opened her mouth, then finally managed to spit out a curse.
"So the worst case scenario is that the white exhibition hall is indeed surrounded by those ‘guards’," Little Red Riding Hood's face flashed an unhappy expression, but having received an education was different from those without; she refrained from swearing.
"Seriously, why did they have to generate there?"
Yu Sheng fell silent for a moment before speculating: "Perhaps those plastic dummies were generated right in the white exhibition hall."
As he spoke, he raised his hand, pointing towards a door.
"Exiting this way leads to the center surrounded by those plastic dummies. There are seven or eight of them all in the same space, and I’ve noticed something—other guards in different areas have been slowly disappearing with time, seemingly recycled by the museum, but these few here haven’t shown any signs of being ‘recycled’ yet. I suspect that’s the white exhibition hall we are looking for, and something must have happened there that triggered the creation of the entities, which likely still continues."
Little Red Riding Hood, Irene, and Hu Li exchanged glances.
Yu Sheng's intel and analysis sounded valid, but that didn't seem like good news.
"What should we do? Retreat or take a look?" Irene was the first to break the silence.
"Anyway, this whole situation feels eerie, and pulling back now would be normal. But if we leave like this, it would feel like we went through all this effort for nothing, plus it feels frustrating, especially after having escaped so ungracefully before."
Little Red Riding Hood contemplated for a moment before shifting her gaze to Yu Sheng.
"You decide," she said.
Yu Sheng was taken aback.
"Are you sure you want me, a newbie, to make the decision? Newbies know nothing and are reckless."
"You’re the one with the ability to leave this domain, and you’re the only one who has confirmed the safe route, which has nothing to do with whether you're a newbie."
Little Red Riding Hood’s expression turned serious.
After weighing the options for a long time, Yu Sheng finally sighed, turning towards that door.
"Let’s get closer to observe the situation. Without alarming the entities, we’ll try to see what’s happening inside the white exhibition hall. It’s best if we can ascertain the circumstances, but if it doesn’t work, we can always retreat," Yu Sheng stated, confirming his decision.
He then asked Little Red Riding Hood, "Those 'guards' will only act if they 'see' us, right? Would just getting close alert them?"
"They only react when they ‘see’ something," Little Red Riding Hood answered without hesitation.
"Previous investigators have confirmed that the ‘guards’ in the museum have only sight, lacking hearing and smell. Their field of vision is about a hundred and twenty degrees in front of them—strictly speaking, these dangerous ‘guards’ have very limited perceptive abilities. However, as long as someone is within that hundred and twenty-degree view, they won't miss or neglect any intruder’s figure. Given how most exhibition halls in the museum are quite open, as long as several ‘guards’ are positioned at certain angles in a room, there won’t be any ‘safe corners’ to hide."
Listening to Little Red Riding Hood’s explanation, Yu Sheng nodded thoughtfully.
They subsequently left that exhibition hall, cautiously approaching the area he sensed was “off.”
Soon, they passed through yet another "repetitive corridor" that looked nearly identical to the ones they had seen before and finally arrived at an exit at the end of the corridor.
As they got closer to the exit, Yu Sheng came to a stop.
"It’s a white room."
Irene’s keen eyes immediately spotted a glimpse of light on the opposite side of the half-open door.
Meanwhile, Yu Sheng distinctly sensed the presence of the "guards" at the corridor's end and could even see a sliver of dark blue security uniform peeking out from the door’s edge.
Just as he predicted, the "entities" were indeed generated from the white exhibition hall, and so far, there were no signs of them fading away.
Little Red Riding Hood suddenly frowned, her nose twitching slightly.
"Blood."
She whispered, her expression turning exceedingly serious.
"I can smell it too," Hu Li nodded in agreement.
"It’s quite fresh."
Blood, corpses, the scent of death—
The white exhibition hall was saturated with the scent of blood, which was the source from which the "entities" guarding the museum were produced.
It was clear that something had gone wrong.
Yet from this angle, they still could not see what was happening in that hall, and advancing further might disturb the entities inside.
"... If I had known, I should have borrowed Dorothy's drone," Little Red Riding Hood suddenly muttered.
"How was I supposed to know we'd run into this situation..."
Upon hearing this, Yu Sheng couldn’t help but grow curious about Little Red Riding Hood's "Fairy Tale" organization and the other members.
He had indeed found some intel relating to this organization on the border communications but only knew that its members took classic characters from fairy tales as their code names, and he was unaware of more details.
However, from the wolf pack led by Little Red Riding Hood... maybe each member of the fairy tale organization possessed some abilities related to their “code names”? Then what did Dorothy and the "drone" have to do with anything?
"Maybe you'll get a chance to tell me about your companions later?" Yu Sheng asked curiously.
"I'm quite interested in your 'Fairy Tale' organization."
“Being too curious isn’t a good thing,” Little Red Riding Hood seemed uninterested in the topic but did not directly refuse. “If there’s an opportunity, I could introduce you to them if they don’t mind. But for now—we need to decide what to do next. We definitely can’t proceed any further.”
Yu Sheng stroked his chin, pondering as he spoke, “You mentioned a drone... Do the ‘guards’ not respond to drones?”
"They only respond to the ‘intruder’ themselves," Little Red Riding Hood nodded. “Essentially, these entities, which can be generated in such large numbers, have no thinking ability, limited perception, and act entirely according to rules. That’s how they leave us ample opportunities to maneuver."
"And your wolves?" Yu Sheng asked again, "Can you send your wolves to check the situation?"
Little Red Riding Hood hesitated for a moment before shaking her head.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because in a sense, my wolves are me."
(End of Chapter)