“Orphanage has stood up…”
Li Lin’s voice trembled over the phone. Although he was an elite operative—perhaps not yet fully seasoned—this young man usually kept his cool. But this time, whatever he was seeing had clearly surpassed all his training and experience.
“To be precise, those two buildings…they’re ‘growing.’ They look like some sort of plant, twisting around each other with a deafening noise. We’ve already called for backup. Right now, we’ve withdrawn beyond the outer wall. The nearby blocks are being evacuated, and just now, the ground—”
Suddenly, the call began to break up, as though harsh interference had disrupted the signal. Right after that, Yu Sheng heard a baby crying, mixed with a shrill noise like an alarm. At first, he thought it was all in his head. But a second later, he realized the sound was coming from the phone.
The crying on the other end and the static in his mind overlapped, making him dizzy.
Finally, Irene’s frantic hollering brought him back to himself. “Hey! Yu Sheng! What’s going on? Hello? What happened?”
“Anka Aila… Orphanage is actually the real container for the Dark Angels!” Yu Sheng gasped and summoned a large Door that led somewhere far away. “Foxy, Irene, come with me!”
But just as he was about to step through, he remembered something, and his hand froze.
He looked around at the camp’s little houses. Through the blood-based link he had forged, he sensed that almost every child was already in a deep sleep, and some had even entered the Sheltering Wasteland.
“Is that even human language?!”
“Don’t interrupt—split your focus. One part of you needs to head into the Sheltering Wasteland. Remember how we opened the TeleportationDoor to the Black Forest last time? I just realized something that might help me break through the wolf packs in there. I’ll need your abilities…”
He paused, a strange gleam appearing in his eyes.
Irene recognized that look right away: [Yu Sheng has a new idea].
“I’m about to give Anka Aila one huge strike…”
Under the dark night sky, unsettling roars and squeaking, scraping noises filled the air, as if some unstoppable force were tearing the world apart. Towering shapes—part cement and steel, part black, alien substance—rose toward the heavens like wild, out-of-control limbs. They twisted and wrapped around each other, forming a spiral that connected earth and sky.
Yet beyond Orphanage’s walls, all that noise and horror vanished. From nearby streets, everything looked normal. The dreadful mutation and corruption seemed trapped inside those walls like a phantom scene.
Still, Li Lin knew something was leaking outward. He could see how the outer wall bulged from time to time, like the stirring limbs of a fetus inside a womb. Even after withdrawing, he occasionally heard strange sounds overhead. Glancing up, every couple of minutes he caught a glimpse of that twisted “umbilical cord,” which always disappeared in a blink—only to reappear, growing even more grotesque each time.
Before pulling out, they had tried to charge into the buildings and set up emergency surveillance devices, but the buildings’ structure changed in the blink of an eye. It was as if the place sensed their intentions—doors vanished, and twisted shadows swarmed to block them. They had no choice but to retreat.
Now, the sensors left inside the perimeter showed nothing but chaotic data. The surveillance feeds grew steadily more unreal. Indescribable figures appeared around the two main buildings—swaying people, thrashing limbs, and disturbing, inhuman shapes.
That was when Li Lin saw something flicker in the corner of his vision: a shimmering Door appeared in midair nearby, and the three members of the Hotel stepped out.
For some reason, he breathed easier—like he’d just seen backup from the Special Affairs Bureau.
Yu Sheng strode over, gripping his sinister-looking staff, and looked briefly back at Orphanage’s main gate.
Through the darkness, the wall and gate twisted now and then, as if some force inside was slamming against them, trying to break out of this “forbidden zone.”
“How’s it looking?” Yu Sheng turned to Li Lin, the Special Affairs Bureau operative. “I saw those two buildings…”
“The mutation is trapped inside the wall for now, but it’s spreading,” Li Lin answered quickly. “Before we retreated, we tried to get surveillance gear into those two main buildings. But they seemed to erase their own doors, then sent out those twisted shadows to block us. We had to fall back.”
Yu Sheng nodded. “Got it. You stay here—we three will go in.”
Li Lin froze. “Wait! Just the three of you? You’re going straight in?”
Yu Sheng was already moving. He glanced back. “Yeah. What else would we do?”
“I just thought…maybe you had a bigger plan, or you’d coordinate with backup from the Bureau, come up with a combat strategy…”
“Oh.” Yu Sheng scratched his chin, then shook his head. “Haven’t really thought that far. Our society isn’t exactly professional.”
He marched forward, leaving Li Lin and his coworkers gaping. The next moment, he passed through the deformed main gate, which bulged against the night sky.
Inside, Yu Sheng saw the truth behind the wall.
The upper halves of the East and West Buildings had become clusters of strange fragments, held together by fibrous black strands. The lower halves still looked roughly like buildings, but they were drowned in thick shadows. Beyond those two main structures, the entire orphanage yard brimmed with roiling darkness and pulsing, shapeless matter. The swing sets and slides used by the Cursed Children were wrapped and swallowed by that creeping substance, the sandpits and flowerbeds brimming with an inky liquid. And that eerie crying of a baby…Yu Sheng heard it in his mind and in the real world at the same time.
“Ugh…” Irene clung to Yu Sheng’s hair. The little Doll tensed up completely. “I’m starting to think just barging in was a bad idea…”
Next to her, Foxy’s nine tails were all fluffed out, like a row of unsheathed swords. “Benefactor, it doesn’t look like we can get through…”
Yu Sheng didn’t reply. He simply stared at the two twisted towers that still “grew” into the night.
It seemed to him he could see something Li Lin, Irene, and Foxy could not.
He saw a path winding through that swirling darkness, through the thick, tar-like material around the buildings.
He glimpsed faint glowing traces stretched across the shattered ground, leading all the way to the East Building’s spiraling form.
A subtle warmth pulsed in his chest, growing hotter by the second, with a hint of both burning and trembling.
Reaching into his coat, Yu Sheng found the source—a bullet, tipped with a spiral-shaped point.
It was heating up as if just fired from a blazing gun barrel, fulfilling a mission to strike its target.
From the corner of his eye, Yu Sheng saw those shifting shadows and sticky black substance turn into lines of looming trees. The swing sets and slides, once coated by the strange fluid, now sprouted bright flowers like in the Dense Forest.
Little Red Riding Hood would walk along that lonely path.
The Big Bad Wolf would ambush her.
Wolf Granny waited in the last little house, hungry for its prey.
And the Hunter—he would cross the forest to reach that little house.
Yu Sheng spoke softly, clutching the bullet in his palm. He moved forward as though guided by instinct, heading toward the two main buildings that wound around each other like a massive umbilical cord.
Foxy followed without hesitation, tails bristling.
Irene held on to Yu Sheng’s head, eyes wide, and suddenly flung out her arms. “Ugh…fine! I’m the Doll of Alice’s Little House!”
Black threads unraveled from Irene’s hands. They drifted around the three of them, weaving together into a shifting barrier.
Yu Sheng hardly noticed. He just walked, following the path only he could see. Soon, he seemed unable to recognize the writhing shadows and sticky walls. He slipped past what looked like dead ends and barriers, guided by faint light. Irene let out quiet exclamations as he passed through what appeared to be solid walls and locked doors—as though he were simply crossing patches of forest light.
On the first floor, the lobby was filled with dense thickets. The reception desk’s doorway overflowed with shrubs, and a fallen tree trunk blocked the stairs. Vines hung from the ceiling. Nearby walls had cracked open, and a dim glow flooded the classroom beyond.
Yu Sheng climbed a slope tangled with vines. He squeezed through a broken window that felt like a hollow in a dead tree. He pushed aside tall grass with his staff. At the end of that path, he paused, seeing a small sign half-buried in mud and rotting leaves.
It read: “Reading Room.”
[Yes, the reading room—every ‘story’ in an orphanage begins here,] he thought quietly.
He muttered to himself, “For the Cursed Children who grew up in Orphanage, all tales start in this place.”
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation