Chapter 129

Chapter 129: The Beginning of the Fairy Tale

Little Red Riding Hood did not seem to doubt Yu Sheng. An unreliable lord could hide the truth without blushing and easily fool a girl who would not turn eighteen until next month.

She simply reminded Yu Sheng to be careful and cautious when dealing with the Dark Angels, then pulled the topic back to the Otherworld.

“The Otherworld is mainly four kinds. The first three are the most direct, sorted by scale and form. They are the ‘Wilderness,’ the ‘Kingdom,’ and the ‘Fortress,’” Little Red Riding Hood said with a serious face. “From the names, you can guess what they mean.”

Yu Sheng adjusted his attitude and followed her lead, thinking as he spoke: “I did read a little of that part. I remember that a Wilderness Type Otherworld is an open space with no clear visual borders. Most of it is raw natural environment, and you cannot leave just by walking to the edge, right?”

“Right. So ‘Night Valley’ is a classic Wilderness Type Otherworld,” Little Red Riding Hood nodded. “Usually, Wilderness Type Otherworlds are very large and have no clear, fixed entrances and exits. You can only leave by meeting certain conditions or at certain times.

“The ‘Kingdom’ is another large-scale Otherworld. Its spatial size can equal the Wilderness, but it is different because you can find many human traces there, such as long rows of houses, cities, and even roaring factories whose products no one can name. A Kingdom Type Otherworld feels like a set of ruins from a civilization inside a strange space. But if you look closely, the buildings and facilities in a Kingdom are filled with things that make no sense. A bit of observation shows their twisted, wrong details.

“Also, in a Kingdom, you can usually find entrances that allow stable travel to and from reality. That is its biggest difference from the Wilderness.

“The third kind, the ‘Fortress,’ is usually a single, closed building or facility. Its scale is smaller than the Wilderness and the Kingdom, but that does not make it safer. On the contrary, a Fortress often has more complex and changeable rules and eerie environments. ‘Uncertainty’ is its biggest feature. For the same reason, the ways in and out of a Fortress Type Otherworld are all over the place. Some have stable entrances. Others, like the Wilderness, are condition based.

“The ‘Museum’ we explored together is a classic Fortress Type Otherworld. And there is another Fortress you know even better…” Little Red Riding Hood paused, looking calmly into Yu Sheng’s eyes, and asked: “Can you guess which one?”

Yu Sheng froze, then reacted and said, a little unsure: “My house?”

Little Red Riding Hood looked a bit speechless: “Is that not obvious?”

“Right, it is. I just usually do not think of it that way,” Yu Sheng rubbed his nose in embarrassment, then changed track. “Okay, you said there are four types. You listed three at once, so it is obvious. The Fairy Tale must be the fourth.”

Little Red Riding Hood exhaled, her expression a bit complicated, and nodded: “The fourth is the ‘Anomaly.’”

Before Yu Sheng could respond, Irene muttered: “The name alone says it is trouble.”

Foxy stared at the doll in her arms and asked: “Why do you say that?”

Irene rolled her eyes: “Because the Otherworld is already something not quite right. Now there is a type that even puts ‘not right’ in its name. That is as weird as it gets, like Yu Sheng’s place at Wutong Road 66.”

Yu Sheng flicked a finger against the doll’s head and said: “Stop using my team’s catchphrase.”

Then he turned back to Little Red Riding Hood and said: “Explain the details?”

“If a normal Otherworld is a twisted time and space, then an Anomaly is made of the things outside time and space,” Little Red Riding Hood said, choosing her words with care so she could explain ideas that were too abstract and strange. “They are things that are abstract, conceptual, and even beyond imagination. A feeling. A memory. Some sounds. Or… a story.”

Yu Sheng, Irene, and Foxy stared in confusion.

After half a minute, Yu Sheng spoke first: “Huh?” Then he waved his hand. “Wait. My imagination caught up, but my understanding is still behind. You mean emotions, memories, and even sounds can also become an Otherworld?”

“It is not that they make an Otherworld. It is that the Otherworld appears in those forms.”

“Got it, got it. Still…” Yu Sheng pulled a face. [It felt like he had opened a new door.] “I always thought that no matter how wild an Otherworld was, it had to be a ‘place.’ At least something you can see and touch, a thing you can enter and exit. What you are describing is so wild that I am running out of words as a novelist.”

Little Red Riding Hood blinked: “You write novels?”

Irene leaned forward right away and said: “Yes, and they are super weird. You can ask that Ren Wen Wen at the Special Affairs Bureau about it later…”

“This is not important,” Yu Sheng said as he pressed Irene back, then fixed his eyes on Little Red Riding Hood. “So now I get why one type is called ‘Anomaly.’ It is the pile for everything too weird to classify. That means the ‘Fairy Tale’ is the ‘story type’ inside the Anomalies, right?”

Little Red Riding Hood nodded.

“But the Black Forest I entered still looked like a ‘space’,” Yu Sheng said. “Or a dream?”

“That is the feature of most Anomaly Type Otherworlds. Their essence is abstract, but they trap people through illusions or dreams, shaping a concrete ‘other space.’ Some only trap your mind. Others drag your body in too. So at first, many Anomalies are misjudged as spatial types. Even experts and scholars need a long time to realize that there is a hidden body behind those strange ‘spaces.’ By then, it is already too late for many victims.”

She paused, arranged her thoughts, then went on, speaking of her own history as if it belonged to someone else: “Even among Anomalies, the ‘Fairy Tale’ is special because it has many ‘branches,’ or ‘subsets.’

“The Black Forest is one subset of the Fairy Tale.

“You can think of the ‘Fairy Tale’ as an invisible, unknowable, untouchable tower. The tower itself has no form, but because it exists, it creates many ‘rooms.’ The Black Forest where the Evil Wolf lurks is one room. Others include Dorothy’s wilds, the tower that locks away Rapunzel, and the ball where Cinderella dances on endless repeat. Besides those, there are special ‘rooms’ that do not point to a single Fairy Tale but to a class of classic elements, or to ‘hypothetical scripts,’ like the King’s Castle or the Evil Dragon’s treasure hoard. We have not found which exact Fairy Tale or which ‘role’ those subsets belong to.”

Yu Sheng frowned and listened carefully to every word, trying to map the features and rules of this special Otherworld called the Fairy Tale. In his mind, a vague outline took shape, and Little Red Riding Hood’s voice continued in his ear.

“This place is where the Fairy Tale first broke out.”

Yu Sheng looked up in surprise and saw Little Red Riding Hood gazing out the window at the Open Ground with a complicated look on her face. A group of kids ran between the swings, and their shouts carried through the glass, loud and lively.

“It was many years ago. There were no tall buildings here then, only older, lower ones. But the purpose of this courtyard has never changed. It was an Orphanage before, it is an Orphanage now, and it will be an Orphanage in the future,” Little Red Riding Hood said slowly. “Because of many reasons, a lot of records from that time are missing. We only know from a few notes that after the outbreak, this place was sealed for a while.

“At first, the Special Affairs Bureau thought it was some kind of ‘normal’ Otherworld phenomenon and moved the affected children to another high-security Containment Facility. But only a few years later, the ‘Fairy Tale’ started to appear in other parts of the Borderland, and those first transferred children began to show all kinds of unusual signs. People finally realized that an unknown ‘Anomaly Type Otherworld’ had already unfolded across the Borderland.

“After that, the Special Affairs Bureau tried many ways to stop the Fairy Tale’s influence, but results were poor. Even top Deep Divers were helpless after entering those subsets, and some lost their lives. Only after paying many prices did people sum up a few rough rules about the Fairy Tale. The most important rule is the one I just said. ‘Fairy Tale does not like lords.’ As you can see, that is the foundation for this self-governed ‘Kingdom’ run by Cursed Children.”