Chapter 124

Chapter 124: Savoring Yu Sheng

Yu Sheng’s mind drifted in endless darkness. The familiar emptiness and pressure flowed quietly along the edge of his senses, and his thoughts slowed and slowed. In this lonely yet familiar afterworld, he even started to enjoy the silence a little: [Well… it went pretty much as expected.]

The house sized Evil Wolf pounced, and Yu Sheng died on the spot. He did not last any longer than the Squirrel.

The main reason it ended so fast was that Yu Sheng never dodged. Not only did he not dodge, he even offered himself up on purpose-his blood, his flesh, his spirit, his everything, all pure burning joy and curiosity.

He lay quietly in the darkness after death.

He flowed quietly inside the Evil Wolf’s spirit and flesh.

He seeped quietly into the Black Forest, searching inside it for the feelers of the Fairy Tale.

Yu Sheng kept tight control of his thinking so he would not be pulled around by the strange flashes and shards of memory in the dark.

For him, every death was practice. At first he was muddled and reborn without knowing anything. Later he noticed the darkness around him. After that he learned to sense himself returning to the human world. Now he could keep a clear head in the dark and even try to steer his mind in this purest state, freed from the weight of a body.

He trained his mind on purpose, tried to count time in the dark, and even tried to sense what was happening outside.

He knew his body still slept in the real world, with Irene and Foxy by his side. This time only his soul had died-like when Entity-Hunger swallowed him during their direct contact.

But this time was also clearly different.

Yu Sheng could faintly feel his torn soul pieces slowly breaking down and becoming part of another being, like a swallowed seed sprouting, the tender sprout growing into winding tendrils. He sensed one tendril, so in the dark he stretched out his will and gently plucked it.

He saw “himself” running through the Forest, blind and raging, cloaked in night and throwing a huge shadow.

He could even faintly feel his own fur, feel the night wind of the Black Forest pass his ears. Howls rose around him. Unseen wolves followed him and ran forever under the mantle of night.

He could feel that these wolves fed on fear. That was what the Fairy Tale did at the start, its oldest and truest use: to scare and press down, to show scary and wicked faces so the children listening would fear the Wilderness and strange places and stay at home like they should.

That fear grew in the Black Forest and turned into these wolves that fed on fear, a wolf pack.

But now they were starving.

Because their hunt just now had given them nothing to feed on. They swallowed a stranger’s flesh and blood, but felt only fearless emptiness, and a joy and curiosity the wolves could not name and that puzzled them.

The huge Evil Wolf crossed Open Ground in the trees. Its foggy mind could not understand why this happened. Eating should not be like this. Whatever got eaten should carry fear. But the thing it had just swallowed held no fear at all. It even felt as if that “food” was itself a joyous eater.

Had it eaten that human, or had that human crawled into its body and started eating it from the inside out? The wolf did not understand. The wolf only followed instinct and ran through the Forest, patrolled every place Little Red Riding Hood might appear, searched those hiding spots, and smashed those hiding spots.

“Are you going to keep running like this?”

A voice appeared out of nowhere-Yu Sheng whispered beside the wolf, using the wolf’s low whine to breathe the words into its ear.

The Giant Wolf stopped at once, lifted its head in a haze, and looked around at a Black Forest that was much the same as in its memory.

It could not yet tell where the voice came from, and could not link it to that “meal” it had just taken.

But it could feel that something had appeared. It felt a little familiar, like prey-yet also like a hunter.

The howls rising and falling around them slowly went quiet. The unseen wolf pack paced nervously through the Forest and began, by instinct, to search for that unseen invader.

Grass and leaves shook. Wind brushed the treetops. A leaf spun past the Giant Wolf’s face, and in the gaps of the spinning leaf, a wide curious eye stared at it.

“Are you… tasty?”

The leaf faded away, and at the same time the odd thing vanished from the wolf’s senses. It lowered its head and let out a confused growl. The wolf pack whimpered around it, the sound rising higher and higher until the whole Black Forest rang with howls.

Far off in a bush, a pair of tight anxious eyes watched and let out a small whisper: “Weird. It’s getting weird…”

Yu Sheng dropped in the dark, then that familiar feeling of crossing a boundary rushed over him. In the last part of the fall he felt his body again. The soft touch of a mattress rose up under him, and he opened his eyes.

He found two Irene doll heads pressed together right in front of his face, two pairs of crimson eyes staring without a blink.

Freshly alive again, Yu Sheng almost got sent off by these little dolls and felt awful, blurting out: “Whoa! You almost scared me to death!”

Irene made an even bigger scene. The two dolls saw Yu Sheng’s eyes snap open and both yelped, then jumped-and dropped straight off the bed edge with two heavy thuds.

It sounded painful.

“You scared me!”

“And you have the nerve to say that? Who sticks their face that close and stares like that? Good thing I opened my eyes before sitting up. If I had popped up fast, I’d have two bumps on my head,” Yu Sheng said, eyeing the climbing Irene. Then he saw the fox maiden standing politely by the bed, smiling gently, and nodded: “See how well behaved Foxy is? She knows to stand quietly to the side and even smiles to say hi.”

Irene had just crawled back onto the bed. Hearing the second half, she planted her hands on her hips and tattled: “She’s smiling because she feels guilty!”

“Uh?”

“She ate all the meat filling! No buns tonight!”

Yu Sheng stared, then turned to the Fox Maiden. Her smile finally went stiff. She dropped her head, and even her tail and ears drooped: “I just wanted to taste the salt.”

“And then when the first bite was too salty you drank water, and when the water made it too bland you took another bite of the filling, right?” Irene said proudly at the headboard. “A whole basin! You ate it all!”

Yu Sheng had just woken up and got hit with a head full of trouble. His mind buzzed for a few seconds before he woke all the way up. He looked at Irene and asked: “Then what about you? While Foxy was stealing the filling, what were you doing?”

“I was pouring water for her,” Irene said, full of confidence. “I didn’t want her to choke.”

Yu Sheng smacked his forehead.

[In my last life I must have owed these two clowns.]

“Benefactor… I’m sorry,” Foxy said. Seeing Yu Sheng go quiet, she thought he was truly angry and leaned in, a bit nervous. “I won’t eat it all next time.”

As she spoke, a big fluffy silver tail settled in front of Yu Sheng.

“You can pet my tail. Don’t be mad.”

Yu Sheng glanced up, the corner of his mouth twitching: “Well, it’s nice of you to let me pet your tail, but you don’t have to pull it off and hand it to me… That’s kind of creepy.”

“Oh.”

“Forget it, I’m not mad. I just ‘came back to life’ and my brain’s a mess. With all this noise I can’t keep up,” Yu Sheng said, sighing. He handed the still warm fox tail back to Foxy. “I’ll go cook some noodles in a bit. I’m guessing you’re still not full. Go downstairs and wait. I’ll rest for a minute.”

Foxy gave a little “oh” and walked out. Irene went to the bedside, then suddenly turned back: “Right, you never said how it went-judging by when you woke up, did you ‘die’ again?”

Yu Sheng smiled: “That thing’s teeth are thicker than my thigh. What do you think?”

Irene pulled a face: “You’re in quite a good mood.”

Yu Sheng thought for a moment, like he was savoring something. After a long while, a hard to read smile touched his lips: “Yeah, good mood. I didn’t get to taste it, but it feels… worth looking forward to.”

Irene blinked. Then she shivered a little at the thought: “Wow. Not surprised it’s you.”

She hopped off the bed and ran after Foxy, slippers patting the floor, calling as she ran: “Hey! Silly Fox, listen up! We might add a new dish in a few days!”

“Huh? What dish?”

“Maybe wolf meat…”

Hearing Foxy and Irene’s voices fade down the hall, Yu Sheng smiled without meaning to. Then he let out a long breath, relaxed, and leaned back against the headboard.

After a moment, he reached for the phone on the nightstand.

He opened Border, found Little Red Riding Hood’s avatar. As a high schooler, she should be in class right now.

He used to feel it was strange that someone like her, a Spirit Realm Detective, still went to school. After a few meetings, he was used to it.

This Boundary City never lacked for all kinds of strange people.

He quickly typed a message to the girl with the wolf:

“I entered the Black Forest, saw the unseen and seen wolves, the path, the cabin, and the Squirrel. Do you have time to talk?”