Chapter 132

Chapter 132: The True Meaning of Death

Little Red Riding Hood and Princess Rapunzel both stared at Yu Sheng like he’d lost his mind.

“She’s been dead for an hour!” Princess Rapunzel snapped. “Every organ in her body—including her heart and brain—has shown no life response for a long time! We checked her. Of course she’s dead…”

“No.” Yu Sheng shook his head again, and the confusion on his face slowly drained away, replaced by something firm. “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 living side. She hasn’t crossed over.”

As he spoke, he touched the blood marks on the girl’s neck again.

For a heartbeat, a strange black-white-gray haze swept through his senses. It felt like he understood something—then the feeling vanished. When he tried to grab it, it was already gone.

Little Red Riding Hood’s eyes tightened as if she’d thought of something. “You… can’t do ‘communication with dead’ like you did in the museum? So you think she’s still alive?”

Yu Sheng hesitated, then nodded.

Little Red Riding Hood stared, wide-eyed now, doubt warring with a hope she didn’t dare name. “But—”

Yu Sheng cut her off with a sharp wave of his hand, forcing both her and Princess Rapunzel into silence.

“You don’t understand. It’s not just that I can’t do ‘communication with dead’. I can feel that she’s still here.” He bent closer and checked the wounds again. Then he pulled a small knife from his pocket.

Princess Rapunzel stiffened. Little Red Riding Hood’s breath caught.

Under their shocked stares, Yu Sheng cut open his own palm and smeared his blood across the fine cracks on the child’s arm.

“Do you get what I mean?” he said, voice low, urgent. “To me, she’s still alive. Perfectly alive. She’s just asleep—asleep inside a dream that’s about to die…”

Irene slid out of Foxy’s arms and rushed to his side. “Did you see something again?”

“See…” Yu Sheng muttered. “Yeah. You could say that. I suddenly understood some things.”

He kept smearing his blood, as if the pain didn’t matter. Then he looked up at Little Red Riding Hood and Princess Rapunzel.

They both flinched, instinct telling them to step in and stop him. But when they met his eyes, they froze.

“Keep your distance,” Yu Sheng said. “Stand right there. The balance is fragile. She’s about to fall to the other side.”

Little Red Riding Hood and Princess Rapunzel stepped back half a step, faces tight with questions. Irene hovered by Yu Sheng’s shoulder, tense but focused.

“Do you know how bees judge a companion’s death?” Yu Sheng asked suddenly.

Little Red Riding Hood and Princess Rapunzel glanced at each other, thrown by the question.

“Pheromones,” Yu Sheng continued without waiting. “The most direct way bees judge death is pheromones. A dying bee releases a volatile substance, and living bees pick it up. Then they rush over to bury the dead bee and clean it out of the hive, to prevent disease.”

He wiped his blood-streaked fingers once against his palm and went on, voice steady.

“But this method has a problem. In our eyes, pheromones and death don’t always mean the same thing. If we smear that volatile substance on a living bee, then even if it’s perfectly alive—even if it struggles desperately—its companions will still treat it as a corpse. Because to a bee’s limited nervous system, anything that smells like death is dead. Even if it fights, it’s still dead.”

Little Red Riding Hood and Princess Rapunzel listened as if hypnotized, watching Yu Sheng’s blood sink into the small body on the bed. A trembling fear rose in them for no clear reason at all.

“You…” Little Red Riding Hood forced the word out, swallowing hard. “You mean we’re—”

“Mmm. Bees,” Yu Sheng said.

He lowered his head again. His blood-stained palm brushed gently over Xiao Xiao’s forehead, leaving a red smear that seemed to fade the moment it appeared.

“Facing interference beyond your understanding, a disguised death confuses you,” he said. “Heart stops. Brain shuts down. Nervous system collapses. Blood stops flowing and cools. Cells decay. Enzymes deactivate. The body starts digesting itself. People take these as signs of death. If someone shows those signs, then he is dead.”

Yu Sheng had believed that too.

When he met those signs, he died—dead in the eyes of ordinary people.

But he had kept living in a way ordinary people couldn’t observe or understand, waiting for the short-term symptom called death to fade from his body.

“Maybe I never resurrected,” he murmured.

Xiao Xiao lay quiet beneath the blanket. As Yu Sheng’s blood seeped into her, he began to understand her death—and his own.

He looked up.

Little Red Riding Hood and Princess Rapunzel stood off to the side now, almost shrinking back, staring at him with unease. Irene stood close, not afraid so much as confused.

Only Foxy looked perfectly calm. Even though she clearly didn’t understand, she nodded like she did, sounding moved. “Benefactor is having an enlightenment moment.”

Irene gaped at her. “…You can accept literally anything, can’t you?!”

“We have three hours,” Yu Sheng said abruptly, “maybe even less.”

Little Red Riding Hood froze. “Three hours? What?”

“To pull her back,” Yu Sheng said, pointing at the thin figure on the bed. “The link my blood set up isn’t enough. She doesn’t know where to go. Next we need manual intervention. Irene, I need you.”

Irene blinked. “Huh? How?”

“She’s still dreaming,” Yu Sheng said, as if it were obvious. “A dream that doesn’t rely on the brain to run. Remember how you found me in the Black Forest? Same process. You find her, then send me over too.”

Irene’s eyes lit. “Oh. Easy. You just lie down somewhere—sitting works too. I’ve guided this once before. You don’t need to do anything, just stay calm.”

Little Red Riding Hood finally caught up, even if her head was still full of questions. “Wait. You’re going to actively enter the Black Forest? To look for her?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m coming with you,” Little Red Riding Hood said at once. Then, more tightly: “I know that place better than you do.”

Yu Sheng frowned and looked at Irene. “Can you bring one more person?”

“It should be fine.” Irene thought for a moment, then nodded with confidence. “She’s already deeply linked to the Black Forest. I don’t need to spend extra effort to hold the link. In theory, I only need to guide you so you can go in together.”

“Then let’s try.” Yu Sheng didn’t hesitate. He sat down on the floor beside the small bed, patted the space next to him, and looked up at Little Red Riding Hood. “Sit here.”

Little Red Riding Hood made a small sound and sat down beside him.

Princess Rapunzel still looked uneasy. “Will this really work? Before… we’ve never done it like this.”

Little Red Riding Hood fell silent for a few seconds. She glanced at Yu Sheng, then nodded once. “Let’s try.”

Black silk threads appeared from Irene’s hands and spread rapidly through the room. In a blink, they wove into a huge, intricate net. With careful control, she lowered it over the space above the bed.

The ends of the threads hung down like countless tentacles from a strange jellyfish, silently threading into the bodies of the dream-entry subjects.

Princess Rapunzel took a cautious step back, then looked at Foxy—who remained unnervingly relaxed—and finally couldn’t hold it in. “You people from Hotel… are you all this creepy?”

Foxy blinked like she had no idea what the question meant. She watched Irene’s technique with open admiration and nodded in praise. “Irene, you might be able to become the weaving immortal.”

That was the last thing Yu Sheng heard before the dream took him.

And the last thought that flickered through his mind was simple and absurd.

Irene seemed stronger.

The next second, dizziness hit—then the sensation of falling. He felt himself and another consciousness dropping through darkness at terrifying speed. When something solid rose beneath him, he opened his eyes.

An endless Black Forest filled his vision.