Chapter 143: A Tale in the Eyes of the Grown-Ups
Yu Sheng was earnestly explaining his grand vision to Little Red Riding Hood and the Long Haired Princess. He described his plans to develop the Valley Camp, starting with a grand Supreme Holy Temple and a series of surrounding structures. Although he hadn’t figured out the purpose of these buildings yet, he firmly believed in building them first and finding a use later. He also clarified why the square house beside the platform wasn’t, in fact, a toilet.
The two young ladies listened attentively, though their focus sharpened toward the end as they stifled their laughter.
Yu Sheng himself couldn’t deny the resemblance; even he thought the Phase One building looked suspiciously like a toilet…
Awkwardly, he wrapped up the topic and tried steering their attention elsewhere.
“These are the chickens raised by Miss Foxy,” he said, introducing more of the Valley Camp’s features. “Once the ecosystem here stabilizes, they’ll be able to roam freely.”
Little Red Riding Hood’s reaction mirrored Irene’s from before; her eyes widened instantly. “You let a Fox raise chickens?!”
“A Demon Fox Maiden—big difference,” Yu Sheng corrected her seriously. “Really, she takes very good care of them.”
As he spoke, Miss Foxy finished replenishing water and feed in the coop. She diligently checked on the chicks’ wellbeing before happily walking over, pulling two of them from her Storage Tail to show the guests. “These are Plain Boiled and Salt Baked. I’m planning for them to lead the flock one day~”
Little Red Riding Hood stared blankly for a while before realizing that Plain Boiled and Salt Baked were the chickens’ names.
Before she could respond, Yu Sheng excitedly pulled her along to continue his tour. “This area is for vegetable farming. See that water channel? It comes from the mountain’s base, good for irrigation. I also plan to build a reservoir in the platform’s corner. That field over there will eventually house pigs—though I haven’t gotten to that yet. Further out, there’s a clearing I intend to turn into a permanent Portal. Still early stages though. Right now, farming and building are the focus…”
The two girls were dumbfounded, nodding absentmindedly through Yu Sheng’s rapid-fire explanations. Especially Little Red Riding Hood, whose mind kept flashing back to when this place was plagued by Hunger. Each new project Yu Sheng mentioned sparked a mental reminder that this place was still an Otherworld. Her worldview was flipping like a corpse doing sit-ups in a coffin.
Yu Sheng, oblivious to her internal chaos, beamed with pride as he finished. “So, what do you think? How’s the Valley Camp?”
The Long Haired Princess opened her mouth, hesitated, then exclaimed, “What kind of Valley is this?! This is Star X Valley, isn’t it?!”
Yu Sheng thought about it. She wasn’t wrong… but he didn’t have the rights to that name.
A fresh breeze swept through the Valley Camp, carrying the scent of grass and soil, along with Xiao Xiao’s joyful laughter as she played on the field with Irene.
Irene, equally excited, shouted mid-chase, “Can someone please do something about this little gremlin?! Huh?! No one’s protecting Doll rights anymore, is that it?!”
“I’ll go,” the Long Haired Princess said, smiling wryly. She grabbed Xiao Xiao’s tiny backpack and strode briskly toward them. “Xiao Xiao! Take a break, get some water before playing more!”
Yu Sheng smiled, sitting on the edge of the platform. He looked over the scene: the Long Haired Princess playing guardian, Xiao Xiao chattering excitedly, and Irene fuming as she tried to reason with the chaos incarnate child. Then he turned to Little Red Riding Hood beside him. “Feels like tomorrow might be worth looking forward to, doesn’t it?”
She gazed silently into the distance. At his words, she paused before speaking in a hushed tone, as if afraid her voice might shatter a fragile hope. “The Black Forest… and the other subsets of the Fairy Tale Organization—can they really become something like this too?”
“I still don’t know how to fight the Fairy Tale Organization’s core,” Yu Sheng said calmly. “But we can start with the Black Forest. Right now, it operates like a standard Otherworld, even though it’s an awareness-based space. Its Entities—mainly Wolves—aren’t invincible and are affected by my blood.”
He continued evenly, “The main challenge now is finding the Black Forest’s true core. I suspect it isn’t a Wolf.”
Little Red Riding Hood blinked, surprised. “Not a Wolf?”
“What makes the Wolf so special in the tale of Little Red Riding Hood?” Yu Sheng countered.
She paused, caught off guard by the question, her mind struggling to catch up.
“‘Little Red Riding Hood’, with proper titling,” said Yu Sheng as he continued, offering his thoughts aloud. “If the essence of a ‘Fairy Tale’ lies in being a ‘collection of stories,’ and each subset constitutes a complete tale, then it means no single ‘element’ from within can serve as a true emblem of the whole. A lone Evil Wolf, a solitary Hunter, even a single Little Red Riding Hood—or that Black Forest itself—none can stand alone as the story’s symbol.”
Little Red Riding Hood’s expression turned contemplative. It seemed she had begun to grasp what Yu Sheng meant by the ‘essence.’
“That Black Forest and this Valley are fundamentally different—this Valley was born from a singular core: ‘Hunger.’ Every law, every part of the Valley’s design, revolves around that single concept. That’s typical for most ‘regular’ Otherworlds. But the Black Forest… its rules are twisted, intricate. Every ‘role’ within it—Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf, the Grandmother, the Hunter, even that babbling Squirrel—is just one cog in a far greater machine. They are surface elements only.”
Yu Sheng waved his hand gently through the air. With a grinding sound of soil and stone, the earth at the edge of the platform heaved and rose. Little Red Riding Hood watched in astonishment as a miniature stage emerged from the ground. On it, crude, grotesque stone figures tumbled and danced. Some broke apart, but new ‘actors’ quickly emerged to take their place, continuing a mindless, chaotic performance.
“I only realized all this after encountering Xiao Xiao’s ordeal. You, on the other hand, are bound to the perspective of ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ That viewpoint makes it hard to notice these things,” Yu Sheng continued, manipulating the crude stage as he spoke to the girl beside him. “Your attention always falls on the ‘Evil Wolf,’ naturally casting it as the sole and final ‘villain’ in the Black Forest’s subset. But from where I stand—outside the story—I realized the thing I must destroy is not the villain within the tale.”
He paused. “Or to put it differently, I’ve already slain a ‘villain’ once—that Wolf Granny who devoured Xiao Xiao. She was the ultimate antagonist in her version of the tale. And yet, when I killed her, all I felt was… emptiness. The Black Forest remained unchanged. The Wolf Pack still prowled. The Forest still loomed. I could feel its gaze. Xiao Xiao would still fall into the Forest next time, and a new Wolf Granny… would be waiting in the dark.”
“Because, for this ‘story,’ the script itself remains untouched.”
Silence fell over the platform. Little Red Riding Hood stared at the tumbling stone ‘actors’ still playing out their roles on the stage. Then she finally spoke, voice thoughtful: “So… what needs to be destroyed is the ‘story’ itself…”
“Exactly. The story. Though perhaps not destroyed—it might be that a story cannot die. But maybe… it can be controlled, rewritten, even dismembered. To do that, we mustn’t focus on the surface ‘actors.’ We must find the story’s true ‘weakness,’” Yu Sheng nodded slowly, then pointed at the crude little stage. “Just like this one—what do you think is its true core, its ‘essence’?”
Little Red Riding Hood hesitated, caught in thought, but didn’t speak.
“The answer is right before you,” Yu Sheng laughed, tapping his temple. “It’s me.”
Then, with another wave of his hand, the crude stage of soil and stone collapsed, shattering and dissolving into dust and rocks that swiftly rejoined the earth.
Little Red Riding Hood’s eyes widened. She inhaled sharply. “You mean… there’s someone behind the Black Forest—a ‘storyteller’?!”
“Not necessarily a person,” Yu Sheng said calmly. “But certainly a ‘source.’ It could be the Fairy Tale itself, or merely a tendril of it. From the moment I first entered that Black Forest, I’ve been searching for that tendril. When we discovered that peculiar Little House deep within the woods, I thought it was the root… but it wasn’t. It was just a strange corner of the stage—we were still moving along its ‘front.’ The true entity shaping the Black Forest… hides backstage.”
“I… never imagined you’d thought this far ahead,” said Little Red Riding Hood, gazing at Yu Sheng in amazement. “I’ve never considered the Black Forest this way.”
Yu Sheng chuckled. “That’s because I’m a terrible adult. Adults love to dissect Cursed Children’s stories with the cold logic of reason. We have a favorite saying—‘Someone made this all up.’”
Little Red Riding Hood blinked, then laughed as well. “No wonder the Fairy Tale hates adults.”
“No matter. I was never meant to be liked by it,” Yu Sheng rose and clapped his hands. “Alright, the field trip’s over. Time for the child to go home.”