Chapter 130

Chapter 130: The Story of Fairy Tale

Irene wriggled out of Foxy’s arms and stood on the table, gazing out the window with Little Red Riding Hood at the Open Ground.

The little Doll muttered: “Fairy Tale first broke out right there, but the people hurt by it later treated this place like home. It just feels odd.”

Little Red Riding Hood turned back with a faint smile, saying: “Everyone needs a home. I don’t know how the seniors decided years ago, but the Cursed Children who live here now all see this Orphanage as home. For me, it is a place where I can finally feel calm, even though so much has happened here.”

Yu Sheng frowned, asking: “Do only orphans get affected by Fairy Tale, or will ordinary children who are affected also be sent here?”

Little Red Riding Hood sighed: “Only orphans.”

He pressed her: “What is the reason? Do you have a conclusion?”

Little Red Riding Hood answered calmly: “Because their hearts lack protection. We still have many gaps in our knowledge of Fairy Tale, but based on what we know, its influence connects to a person’s ‘personality pattern’ and ‘social ties.’ Orphans who lack parents or other family to protect them, who live in long-term mental stress, and who have weak social connections in the real world are its best ‘prey,’ because…”

She paused, then shook her head slightly: “Because if reality is too cold, the warmth in fantasy becomes very tempting. When Fairy Tale first takes hold, its power is actually weak. A single thin ‘rope’ is enough to tie the affected child to the real side. But for many orphans, even that thin rope does not exist.”

Still frowning, Yu Sheng asked after a moment: “What sets it off? I heard that Squirrel said it happens after reading the matching Fairy Tale story?”

Little Red Riding Hood gave a small nod: “That is the most important part.”

Foxy asked with open curiosity: “Then why not just make those stories forbidden? Back in my hometown there was a devil cultivator who, before dying, blended himself into a legend. He almost returned to reality by riding on people’s word of mouth. This feels similar, and just as scary.”

Irene’s eyes widened as she stared at Foxy, saying: “Wow, your hometown really is something else. Then what happened? How did you get rid of that devil cultivator? By sealing the polluted legend?”

Foxy waved her hand, saying: “No. We tried to seal it at first, but the backup tricks he left behind spread too far, so we could not keep it sealed. Then the social media era arrived.”

Yu Sheng went blank for a second, saying: “Uh… what?”

Foxy gestured as she spoke: “Parodies, remix memes, and short video clips popped up everywhere. That devil cultivator died miserably in the end. His last message for help got turned into a meme video and reaction stickers. By the time the Immortal Alliance noticed, he had already faded away amid everyone’s laughter.”

The room went quiet. Little Red Riding Hood, Yu Sheng, and Irene stared in a daze, while Foxy kept going dully: “So after that, even the big Demon Foxes in our clan do not dare to refine themselves into legends. If they have to refine into something, they choose math problems and physics formulas, since those do not change so easily.”

Little Red Riding Hood blinked at last, then turned to Yu Sheng, saying: “I think I lost the thread.”

Yu Sheng waved it off, saying: “It is fine. I often cannot follow her hometown stuff either. But the question Foxy asked is also mine: if the matching Fairy Tale story is a key trigger, why not control the spread of those stories, or even ‘break’ them the way her people did?”

Little Red Riding Hood did not answer directly. Instead she asked: “Remember when we talked about why we cannot just tear down the Old Theater to ‘permanently close’ the Otherworld Museum?”

Yu Sheng’s expression turned complicated. [I get it now.]

He asked in a lower voice: “An anomalous type of Otherworld follows the same reason?”

She nodded: “Yes. An anomalous Otherworld is still an Otherworld. The basic rules are the same. Fairy Tale’s true body is deeper ‘information,’ and those stories are only ‘entrances’ connecting it to reality. It is like how the Museum’s true body is a warped space and the Old Theater’s stage is only its entrance. Destroying an entrance only makes the Otherworld break loose in stranger, harder-to-guard ways, and the danger can even rise. Also…”

She lifted her head and looked at Yu Sheng with a serious face: “Fairy Tale has an even stranger trait. Its ‘story’ does not even need people to speak it. There is a record of a child who had never touched the matching story. After one night’s sleep, he fell into a ‘subset’ made by Fairy Tale. The later investigation found he had heard a voice from nothingness reading the story aloud. This is why, even though a Fairy Tale Otherworld does not kill directly, its danger level is set at grade three or higher. It shows active malice.”

Her explanation came to a stop. Yu Sheng sat on the sofa with a gloomy look.

A nameless irritation rose in him. He stood and paced, not sure what to say. Then he turned back to the girl in red: “It should not be like this. The Special Affairs Bureau has no solution at all?”

Little Red Riding Hood simply looked up at him with calm eyes, saying: “Have humans wiped out the common cold?”

Yu Sheng fell silent: “…”

She went on: “If you think of it as a chronic illness that targets a small number of orphans, it is easier to understand and accept. You cannot ask a natural phenomenon to disappear from the world just because you feel we orphans are ‘pitiful,’ and you cannot ask the Special Affairs Bureau to do what is beyond human power. The Otherworld is not a broken factory you can fix by closing the door. It is a ‘phenomenon’ that runs in this world. Having entrances in fixed places is already its greatest mercy.”

Her voice was steady and strong, but Yu Sheng still felt something was off.

[No. There was one Otherworld that really was wiped out.]

[That Valley.]

Yu Sheng’s thoughts raced, whirling like a storm. [Can what happened in Night Valley be repeated in the Black Forest? Even if it can be repeated in the Black Forest, how would that affect Fairy Tale’s true body? After all, the Black Forest is only a subset of Fairy Tale, just a temporary room inside that Invisible Building. And from what Little Red Riding Hood said, I cannot think of any way to touch Fairy Tale’s true body at all.]

[How am I supposed to smear my blood on a ‘collection of stories’?]

Little Red Riding Hood watched Yu Sheng stop at the window, curious about the shifting look on his face. She did not know what this strange lord from Wutong Road 66 was thinking, but she could feel that this odd Entity who made even the Special Affairs Bureau nervous really did want to help her.

She told him: “You want to do something very hard. I know you want to help us. Others tried before: Deep Divers, scholars, Investigators, even an astrologer from Alglade. Lords who wanted to help the Cursed Children resist nightmares. They all failed. I do not mean anything else by saying this. I just want you to know early that this is dangerous, and so far there are no leads at all.”

Yu Sheng seemed not to hear. He thought for a long time, then suddenly lifted his head: “I might have no ideas for Fairy Tale’s true body, but we can start with the Black Forest.”

Little Red Riding Hood blinked: “Uh… did you not hear what I just said?”

“I heard you, and I think it is fine,” Yu Sheng said with a small wave. “There are many things in this world I have no clue about. I still have no clue where my water and power bills and my drain pipes go. As for danger, honestly, which Otherworld is not dangerous?”

She opened her mouth but could not find a good reply.

Just then, as Yu Sheng was about to ask her for more information about the Black Forest, hurried footsteps sounded in the hall and cut off their talk.

The door of the parlor swung open. A girl a year or two younger than Little Red Riding Hood, with long black Rapunzel hair, rushed in.

Little Red Riding Hood stood up right away, saying: “Rapunzel? What happened?”

The girl called Rapunzel glanced at the ‘outsiders’ in the room. After Little Red Riding Hood’s look told her it was fine, she took a breath and spoke in a low, quick voice: “A child ‘left.’ It happened very fast. There was no time to…”

Yu Sheng noticed Little Red Riding Hood sway a little. Even her breathing stopped.

“…Which one?” she asked softly.

“The new one.”