Chapter 118

Chapter 118: In the Forest

This time, Yu Sheng fell asleep fast.

He’d burned through too much energy. Once the earlier excitement drained away, he lay down and almost instantly drifted off.

Bizarre, fragmented dreams came and went, full of strange colors and details that slipped away the moment he tried to grasp them. Half-asleep, he felt as if his consciousness floated above a hazy surface of water.

Through that surface, he looked down and saw himself lying on the bed. He saw Wu Tong Road 66. He saw Irene fiddling with the TV remote. He saw Foxy scrubbing her tails by the sink, then hanging the clean tails one by one on the balcony rack, neatly lined up…

Yu Sheng gradually couldn’t tell what was real. He couldn’t tell whether he was dreaming or truly seeing those scenes. His awareness drifted, sinking deeper and deeper into the haze, until suddenly—

He felt a solid touch behind him.

Yu Sheng’s eyes snapped open.

Towering trees surrounded him.

An endless forest. Infinite trunks. Dense canopies layered and intertwined, sealing off a murky sky. Beneath them lay dusk-like shadows. Dark vines twisted through the undergrowth. Shrubs ran wild across the ground, along with unknown flowers and plants—lush, yet all coated in a gray, dusty texture, creeping between the giant trees.

Yu Sheng sat up, dazed, and felt thick fallen leaves and rotten soil beneath him.

As he moved, the vast, dim forest seemed to come alive. Unknown calls echoed from deeper within the woods. Something darted across the ground between trees. Wingbeats thudded through the canopy.

And in the distance came howls… wolf howls, but with a strange tone, almost like a human voice.

Yu Sheng froze. His mind cleared in a rush.

[Seriously, where did this nap dump me?]

Was he dreaming? Or had he fallen into some weird Otherworld again?

He pinched his thigh and felt a dull sting. He tried calling Irene in his mind, but only empty roaring answered—like wind sweeping through a valley.

That was enough to put him on high alert.

He reached into the air.

A moment later, a faintly glowing, illusory door appeared.

Good. The door still worked.

Only then did Yu Sheng let himself breathe. He waved the door away, steadied himself, and started forward carefully.

First, he had to figure out where this was.

He could sense it was different from Nightfall Valley. Maybe he was still “dreaming,” but this was absolutely not a normal dream. He couldn’t say how it connected to Otherworld, but this forest was definitely not something that should exist inside his own head.

His feet sank into thick, rotting leaves. The ground was slick and unstable, forcing him to watch each step. He walked for a long time, crossed a patch of open ground, stepped over two fallen trees—and the scenery never changed.

The forest felt endless. Walking on two legs through that boundless density felt pointless.

Then a faint rustling reached his ears.

He tensed and spun toward the sound.

A big, fluffy-looking squirrel stood on a dry stump nearby, watching him with shiny black eyes.

It looked like a harmless little animal, curious enough to come out and study an intruder. The atmosphere was eerie, but the sight of the squirrel still made Yu Sheng exhale, and he even managed a small smile.

The squirrel’s tail swept the stump. It squeaked, “Don’t leave the path…”

Yu Sheng’s smile froze.

The next second, his eyes went wide. “Holy shit. It talked!”

“I wasn’t done,” the squirrel snapped, smacking the stump hard with its tail as it stood upright. “Damn it, what’s the next line again… oh.”

It cleared its throat like a tiny old man. “Don’t let the pretty little flowers and mushrooms steal your attention. Hurry back to the path, so you can safely get home before it gets dark—”

It paused, then added with deep satisfaction, “And there has to be a cute little ending tone. So damn cute.”

Yu Sheng stared.

Not far away, the squirrel sat with its paws folded, looking at him like it owned the place.

Yu Sheng pinched his thigh again, as if checking whether he’d hallucinated. What the hell had that adorable creature just said?

The squirrel grew impatient. When Yu Sheng didn’t move, it slammed its tail against the stump a few more times. “Go! What are you standing there for? Don’t die in the black forest before you even finish the first step.”

Yu Sheng finally accepted he wasn’t hallucinating. But he didn’t do what the squirrel told him to do. Instead, he walked toward it, full of confusion and curiosity. “Who are you? What is this place?”

“Are you blind?” the squirrel snapped, utterly fearless. “I’m a squirrel! Can’t you tell where this is? It’s the forest. The black forest. The huge black forest with no end. You look stupid as hell.”

It shuffled to the side, glancing around as if searching for something, muttering under its breath. “That’s weird… that one isn’t dead yet, so why’s a new one showing up… is that one about to die now? And why is this one a guy…”

Something stirred in Yu Sheng’s chest at the word dead. “Die? Who’s about to die?”

“Little Red Riding Hood,” the squirrel said casually, rubbing its face with a paw. “Not sure which one she counts as… the eighteenth generation? Or the twenty-eighth generation Little Red Riding Hood…?”

Yu Sheng’s eyes widened. His heart kicked hard, fast, like something had snapped into place.

He looked up at the endless forest, then listened to the distant, strange howling. A familiar nursery-rhyme melody seemed to echo in his head: the small figure in a red cloak, walking along a path through the woods. Flowers and mushrooms luring her deeper into the trees.

And the Big Bad Wolf.

A faint sting and warmth spread across Yu Sheng’s shoulder. He turned his head.

Blood was seeping through his clothes, crimson blooming in the dim gray of the forest.

That was the spot where the Big Bad Wolf had bitten him the night at the museum, when it burst out of Little Red Riding Hood’s shadowspawn.

The stain slowly faded again, but Yu Sheng was already starting to understand.

His blood had still ended up connected to Little Red Riding Hood. And if the Big Bad Wolf hunted her, maybe it counted as part of her, too.

So was this her dream?

Before he could finish the thought, the squirrel’s voice snapped him out of it. “No! No, no, no!”

Yu Sheng jolted. “What’s wrong?”

“That Little Red Riding Hood isn’t dead yet!” the squirrel cried, hopping on the stump, suddenly panicked. “She’s not even close to dying! The wolf hasn’t caught her. The wolf is still searching in the forest…”

It whirled on him, eyes sharp. “Who are you? How the hell did you get in here?!”

For some reason, that last line felt strangely familiar.

Yu Sheng didn’t dwell on it. He spoke fast. “I’m her friend. What did you just say? You said Little Red Riding Hood will die. And you said which generation—what does that mean?”

“Friend?” the squirrel screeched as if he’d insulted it. “Where did some friend come from? She walks alone on the path through the woods—there’s no friend of Little Red Riding Hood in the forest!”

It started hopping up and down. “Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong. This forest isn’t supposed to change. If it changes, it gets even harder… Don’t make it hard for a squirrel! Squirrel is already busy! This place…”

It cut off mid-sentence, head tilting as if it had heard something.

Yu Sheng drew in a breath. “What—”

“Shh.” The squirrel lifted a paw in an eerily human gesture, ordering him silent. “Listen.”

The wolf stopped howling.

The forest went dead quiet. The distant, muffled cries vanished without him even noticing. The nearby calls of birds and beasts faded, too.

An eerie, suffocating silence settled over the trees.

Yu Sheng’s nerves tightened.

Then the squirrel jumped down from the stump, shot like lightning onto his shoulder, and shrieked, “Run! The wolf is here!”

Yu Sheng flinched at the sudden weight, but his body reacted before his mind caught up. He spun and ran.

A delayed wave of cold slammed into him—bone-deep dread, soul-piercing chill. Massive malice and the omen of death crushed down on his mind, threaded through the whistling wind that chased his footsteps.

The wolf was here.