Chapter 132

Chapter 132: The True Meaning of Death

Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel both thought Yu Sheng had lost his mind.

Rapunzel stared wide-eyed and said: “She died an hour ago! Her organs, including her heart and brain, already showed no signs of life. We ran the tests. Of course she’s dead.”

Yu Sheng shook his head and answered, his confusion fading as his voice grew firm: “No, she isn’t dead, at least not yet. I don’t know how to explain it, but I can feel it. She’s still on the side of the living. She hasn’t crossed over.”

As he spoke, he touched the blood mark on the girl’s neck with his fingers.

In a flash of black, white, and gray Illusion Arts, he felt like he “understood” something; the feeling slipped away at once, and when he reached for it, there was nothing. [It was there a second ago.]

Little Red Riding Hood seemed to think of something and asked: “You can’t do what you did in the museum, the ‘talking with the dead’ thing? So you think she’s still alive?”

Yu Sheng hesitated, then nodded.

Little Red Riding Hood’s eyes widened. She doubted him, but a tiny, unrealistic hope still glimmered inside her: “But…”

Yu Sheng waved hard for silence, stopping both her and Rapunzel, who had been about to speak.

He said quietly as he checked the girl’s wounds, then pulled a small knife from his pocket and, under their shocked stares, sliced his own palm and smeared his blood over the fine cracks on the girl’s arm: “You don’t understand. It’s not only because I can’t talk to the dead. I can feel she’s still here. Do you get me? To me, she’s alive, just asleep, asleep inside a dream that is about to die.”

Irene seemed to remember something as she hopped down from Foxy’s arms and ran to Yu Sheng’s side, asking quickly: “Did you ‘see’ something again?!”

Yu Sheng muttered while he worked, then lifted his head; his eyes stopped Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel in place even though they had wanted to rush over: “I did, kind of. I suddenly understood a few things. Keep your distance, yes, stay right there. The balance is fragile. She’s about to fall to the other side.”

They both stepped back half a step, questions filling their eyes as they watched Yu Sheng.

Yu Sheng asked in a calm voice: “Do you know how bees decide a companion is dead?”

Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel looked at each other, confused by the sudden question.

Yu Sheng went on without waiting: “Pheromones. The simplest way bees judge death is by scent. A dying bee releases a volatile chemical, and the living bees pick it up. They rush over to ‘bury’ their dead companion and clear the body out of the hive. This helps stop disease. But there’s a problem. For us, ‘pheromones’ and ‘death’ do not always equal the same thing.

“If we smear that special chemical on a living bee, even if it is bouncing around or fighting hard inside the hive, the others will still treat it as a corpse and drag it out. In a bee’s limited nervous system, a body that smells like death is a corpse, no matter how it struggles. They don’t understand death beyond the signal of scent.

“But for the world bees face, this rule is enough. Human meddling is outside of nature’s setup, and bees, within their limited line of evolution, never needed to plan for that.”

Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel listened in a daze. As they watched, the blood soaked silently into the small “body” on the bed. A baseless shiver rose inside them.

Little Red Riding Hood swallowed and finally broke the silence, staring at Yu Sheng with a strange look as she whispered: “You mean we are…”

Yu Sheng raised his head and said evenly as he looked at the red-clad girl: “Bees.”

He lowered his head again. With his blood-stained palm, he gently brushed the forehead of the child named Xiao Xiao and left a fleeting streak of red.

He spoke softly: “You’re facing an ‘interference’ beyond what you understand. A faked or masked ‘death’ confuses you. The heart stops, the brain stops, the nervous system collapses, the blood stops and cools, cells fail on a large scale, enzymes shut down, and the body starts to digest itself. People treat those as the signs of death. If a person shows these signs, then they’re dead.”

Yu Sheng thought about himself and knew he was the same. [When I fit those signs, in normal eyes, I’m ‘dead’.]

In the eyes of ordinary people, he was dead.

But he simply kept living in a way others could not see or understand, waiting for the short-term “symptom” called death to fade from his body.

He murmured under his breath: “Maybe I never had a Resurrection.”

The small body lay quietly on the bed. As his blood infiltrated, Yu Sheng came to understand her “death,” and his own, more clearly. He sensed the room had gone quiet and looked up. Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel stood off to the side, almost shrinking back; unease filled their eyes when they looked at him. Irene stood right beside him, chin lifted. She didn’t look scared, only puzzled.

Only Foxy showed no confusion and no fear. She didn’t really understand, but she still nodded like she did and said with feeling: “Our benefactor seems to be sensing a grand truth.”

Irene gaped and blurted out: “You can accept anything, can’t you?!”

Yu Sheng said all at once: “We have three hours, maybe less.”

Little Red Riding Hood froze and asked: “Three hours? For what?”

Yu Sheng pointed at the thin, frail body on the bed and said: “To pull her back. The link my blood made isn’t enough. She doesn’t know where to go, so we need some manual intervention next. Irene, I need your help.”

The little doll blinked in confusion and asked: “Huh? How do I help?”

Yu Sheng answered simply: “She’s still dreaming, a dream that doesn’t rely on the brain. Remember how you found me in the Black Forest? Do the same thing. Find her, then send me there too.”

Irene finally caught on and said with a quick nod: “Oh, that’s easy. Just lie down somewhere, or sit if you want. I’ve guided this once before. You won’t need to do anything. Just stay calm.”

Little Red Riding Hood also understood now, even if questions still filled her mind. She asked quickly: “Wait, you’re going to enter the Black Forest on purpose? To find her?”

Yu Sheng said with a small smile: “Yes.”

Little Red Riding Hood said at once: “I’m going with you, I know that place better than you.”

Yu Sheng frowned a little and turned to Irene to ask: “Can you bring one more person?”

Irene thought it over and nodded with some confidence: “It should be fine. She’s already tied closely to the Black Forest. I don’t need to spend strength to hold a link for her. In theory I only need to guide you so you both go in together.”

Yu Sheng nodded without hesitation and sat on the floor beside the small bed, then patted the ground next to him and looked up at Little Red Riding Hood, saying: “Sit here.”

Little Red Riding Hood answered softly and went over to sit next to him.

Rapunzel still looked uneasy and asked: “Is this really going to work? We’ve never done it like this before.”

Little Red Riding Hood was quiet for a few seconds, glanced at Yu Sheng, then said: “Let’s try.”

Black threads rose out of Irene’s hands, growing wildly through the room. In a blink they wove into a huge, complex net. The doll guided the net with care and laid it gently over the space above the little bed.

The ends of the threads hung down like the many tentacles of some strange jellyfish and began to slip, without a sound, into the sleeper’s body.

Rapunzel stepped back without thinking and glanced at Foxy, who still looked completely calm, then could not help whispering: “Are the people from your Hotel always this creepy?”

Foxy had no idea what she meant. She only watched Irene’s strange work with real admiration and said: “Irene might become a Weaving Immortal.”

That was the last thing Yu Sheng heard before he fell into the dream.

His last thought was clear and simple: [Irene has become stronger.]

The next second, a blur and a drop came together. He felt himself and another mind falling fast through the dark. Solid ground met his body from below, and he slowly opened his eyes.

The boundless Black Forest spread out before him.