Chapter 145

Chapter 145: New Theories and Guesswork

Hearing Yu Sheng’s question, Irene looked just as lost.

“If the Black Forest really is nothing but a pure space of consciousness, then how did I haul that wolf’s corpse out?” Yu Sheng spread his hands. “Wolf Granny’s body is still stashed in Foxy’s tail, right? And Little Red Riding Hood said some anomalous otherworlds don’t just trap a person’s mind—they can even pull your body into those ‘other spaces’ built from stories or emotions. So when it comes to otherworlds, the line between consciousness and matter might not be so clear. The reason we can’t open the door into the Black Forest from the outside has to be something else.”

Irene listened in a daze, not sure how much of it stuck. “Y-Yeah… I guess?”

Then she turned her head and saw Foxy looking calm the whole time. Irene blurted in disbelief, “Hey, Silly Fox, you understood all that?”

“I did,” Foxy replied evenly.

“…Seriously?!”

“Turning the unreal into the real, and the real into the unreal,” Foxy said, nodding like it was obvious. “At the base scale, everything connects. There was never a boundary between consciousness and matter. The immortals said the whole world is like a set of complex waves. What people call ‘unreal’ and ‘real’ is just the waveform showing up at different frequencies. The skyfolk call it information unification. The immortals call it the return of all things to emptiness…”

Irene went blank again. She listened to Foxy’s sudden barrage like it was scripture, stared for a long moment, then couldn’t help blurting, “What even is this… and what kind of immortal taught you that?!”

The demon fox girl answered with a straight face, “The Immortal of Compulsory Education.”

Irene turned her head stiffly. “…Yu Sheng, did you understand that?”

Yu Sheng hesitated, then nodded. “I… I think I did. But this really is the first time I’ve heard that theory.”

When he looked at Foxy, his expression only got more doubtful.

[What was going on in this fox young lady’s hometown? She hadn’t even finished elementary school, and this was what they learned in class?! Then what did their middle-school exams test—hand-building a jump drive?!]

Questions like that were never getting answers.

After a quick mental storm, Yu Sheng dragged his attention back to the Black Forest and, without meaning to, pulled in the “knowledge” Foxy had just dropped on them.

He raised his hand again and gripped an invisible handle in the air. A phantom door appeared, and he began to open it, slowly, bit by bit.

This time he moved with painful care, as if he wanted to feel every instant—from the first tremor of the hinge to the moment the whole thing fell apart. He poured almost all his focus into the opening itself.

For a brief moment, he caught the scent of the Black Forest. It even felt like the passage had formed. His connection to the Big Bad Wolf suddenly sharpened, as if the door would solidify in the next heartbeat, just like before.

Then, without warning, the newly formed “links” snapped violently out of alignment. The Black Forest yanked away, and the familiar vertigo slammed into him as the passage collapsed.

Misalignment?

Yu Sheng swayed, but didn’t fall. At this point, he was almost used to the dizziness.

“Ah, it collapsed again,” Irene said as she watched the fragments of the door fade in midair. She blinked, then looked back at Yu Sheng, whose gaze had gone a little unfocused. “You okay? Maybe we should call it for today. I’m scared you’ll throw up last night’s dinner…”

“I’m fine,” Yu Sheng cut her off. His face tightened with thought as he tried to piece it together. After wrestling with it for a moment, he suddenly looked up. “I felt it just now. The problem might be the positioning.”

“Positioning?” Irene frowned. “Like a coordinate?”

“Coordinates—yes.” Yu Sheng nodded hard, like a gear had finally clicked into place. His eyes snapped to her. “Wait, Irene… how did you confirm the Black Forest’s ‘location’ and send my mind—and Little Red Riding Hood’s mind—into it?”

Irene hadn’t expected the conversation to swing onto her, but she answered quickly anyway. “That’s… easy. Dream-walking. I can slip into dreams. It’s basically instinct.”

“Right. That’s it.” Yu Sheng lit up. “Dream entry—that’s what I was missing when I tried to lock the coordinates!”

He got so excited he scooped Irene right off the ground. “Irene, you’re amazing!”

The Little Doll’s eyes went blank as she dangled in the air. Then, once the praise registered, she instantly got smug. “Obviously! I’m a doll from Alice little house. I’m super capable… But what do you even mean?”

Yu Sheng quickly set her down on his forearm so they were eye-level. He spoke fast, bright with excitement. “When I do door opening and set the ‘frequency,’ I always calibrate using spacetime structure. That’s all I have to rely on. But to enter the Black Forest, I have to lock onto its coordinates on the dream layer, because it doesn’t have a fixed spacetime position. Dreams drift outside reality. The last few door collapses weren’t because ‘you can’t open it from this side.’ It was because, in the instant I started the door opening, the Black Forest’s ‘position’ had already moved!”

He rattled it off in one breath. When he noticed Irene still looked dazed, he tried again, slower. “Still don’t get it? Think of the Black Forest as a train that’s always moving along its tracks, and the real world as solid ground. When I left the Black Forest with door opening, it was like jumping off the train—no matter what, I’d land on the ground. But trying to enter the Black Forest from outside is like trying to jump from the ground into the doorway of a train speeding past. The moment you jump, the train’s already moved.”

He lifted a finger. “It’s just a metaphor. Reality’s more complicated. Even jumping from a moving train to the ground causes drift, but my door corrects that drift when it points to the real world. It just doesn’t work in reverse…”

“Okay, okay, stop,” Irene said quickly, waving both hands. “I get it, but if you keep explaining, I’m going to get more confused. So what now? How do you fix it? When you do door opening, you can only lock spacetime coordinates, but the Black Forest has no spacetime coordinates, and you can’t lock the dream’s position…”

Yu Sheng let out a short chuckle. His eyes shone as he looked at the doll in his hands. “I can’t. You can.”

Irene froze. “…Huh?”

“I do the door opening, you navigate,” Yu Sheng said seriously. “Use whatever magical, mystical trick you’ve got. You’re always bragging about how awesome you are—the amazing power Alice little house gave you…”

Irene went numb—lotus-root numb and all. “…Is this even reliable?!” Then she hurriedly added, “Of course the power Alice little house gave me is reliable. I mean your plan—don’t open one door and erase yourself.”

Yu Sheng shrugged. “Let’s try it.”

Irene: “…”

The Little Doll froze for a second, then finally frowned at this guy who treated “let’s try” like “let’s die.” “Seriously, why are you so obsessed with opening a door from outside and entering the Black Forest? I can use dream power to send you in too.”

“But you can only send my consciousness in,” Yu Sheng said, like it was obvious. “And right now it’s just the Black Forest. Later there’ll be Cinderella’s ball and Rapunzel’s high tower. If we can get in with door opening, it’s more convenient. And besides…”

He stopped mid-sentence, glanced at Foxy, and his voice dipped without meaning to. “I still want to see the cyber fox immortal beat up children’s literature…”

Irene stared at him. “…What is wrong with you?!”

“Just tell me if you want to see it!”

“I do.”

“Then that’s that. Let’s try it.”

“Oh.”

The Little Doll caved instantly.

Honestly, Irene had expected this from the start—not just because “cyber fox immortal beats up children’s literature” sounded insanely hype, but because she understood him. His persistence was always like this.

It went against common sense and ordinary logic. Once a wild idea cracked open in his head, he had to do it before he could stop. That stubborn drive was as pure and powerful as his curiosity—like a child.

And that was fine. Complaining was her hobby, sure, but she genuinely liked messing around with him.

“In a minute, you summon the door, but don’t open it yet,” Irene ordered sternly as she climbed onto Yu Sheng’s shoulder. “Hold it steady, then let your mind go blank. I’ll guide your consciousness. It’s similar to how I usually guide you into dreams, but this time I have to do it while you’re awake. And at the final step, I need to ‘take over’ part of your spiritual intuition. That’s the only way I can affect your door. Can you do that?”

She double-checked with unusual seriousness, then added sharply, “During this process, you absolutely have to cooperate. You have to trust me completely. Otherwise we’ll both take a hit like a violent awakening. I can’t throw up, but you’ve already gotten dizzy so many times. This time you’ll definitely be puking up last night’s dinner.”

Yu Sheng nodded rapidly. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it. Let’s start.”

Irene stared at him for a moment. Then she let out a soft breath, bent down slowly, and gently hugged Yu Sheng’s head.

“Now, let our minds become one…”