Chapter 146

Chapter 146: Bug Exploit Entry

To be fair, the moment the Little Doll said “let our minds become one,” Yu Sheng knew this was going to be hard.

Most of the time, he and Irene got along in a state where both of them thought the other was sick in the head. But then he thought about it, and if both of them thought the other was sick, wasn’t that also a kind of being on the same wavelength?

His thoughts drifted without him noticing. In a few seconds, they veered so far off course they didn’t even recognize their own mother anymore.

In the end, Irene slammed her forehead into his. “I told you to empty your mind!”

Not to let it fly off into space.

“At least focus on the door opening—”

“Oh. Oh, okay.” Yu Sheng snapped back, reeled himself in, and started carefully following the steps.

This time, he only summoned a null door that led nowhere. Then, keeping the door stable, he slowly relaxed his mind.

He felt Irene’s small palm press against his temple.

He saw her raise her other hand and point at the door from a short distance away.

Thin strands of black silk spilled from her fingertips, silent as death—like some strange creature with a will of its own. In the air, they wove together, wriggled, twisted, split, multiplied…

Some pierced into his flesh, then sank into his mind. A cold, eerie sensation crawled up his spine, the kind that made your skin crawl.

If this were his first time dealing with Irene’s threads, Yu Sheng would’ve flung her away on instinct. These things didn’t look harmless. They looked better suited for a script like: “A treacherous cursed doll finally finds her chance to ambush her master, plotting to seize the top seat at Wu Tong Road No. 66.”

Suspicious as hell.

But he was used to it. That was probably just how dolls from Alice little house were.

More threads drifted toward the door. Their tips gathered together like a strange tentacle, touching the surface first, then probing, trying to push into the interior.

A connection formed.

And in that instant, Yu Sheng felt a sudden wave of disorientation.

The wind in the valley vanished. At some point, everything around him had been draped in a heavy, dim curtain, as if endless fog had swallowed his vision. And deep within that fog, he saw—

A blond, shattered doll lying quietly in ruins drowned in darkness. A massive shadow loomed nearby, deeper in the rubble. The dead doll’s eyes were open, and in that brief illusion beyond the curtain, Yu Sheng had the eerie feeling those eyes were looking straight at him.

Then it vanished. He didn’t even have time to confirm whether it was the same blond doll he’d seen in the mirror. The vision dissipated like smoke.

All he heard was Irene shouting at full volume, “Hey! Hey, hey, hey! The door’s open, the door’s open! I think it connected! Yu Sheng, check if I did it right…!”

Yu Sheng jolted, and saw the door to the Black Forest slowly opening in his hands.

Countless black threads—faintly steaming with strange dark mist—wove across the doorway, sketching chaotic patterns. Like brambles, they guarded the frame. And on the other side was that shadow-soaked forest.

The door to the Black Forest had really opened.

Yu Sheng stared at the door wrapped in black “thorns,” stunned. Honestly… it was weird, sure, but it was also kind of cool.

But what mattered more was the vision he’d just seen.

“Irene.”

“Huh?”

“Did you see anything just now? When you linked with me—did you see any illusions? Anything like that?”

“No,” Irene said, startled. She looked up at him, confused. “I was focused on helping you lock the door’s position. I was terrified something would go wrong. What did you see?”

Yu Sheng hesitated, but didn’t hide it. “…I saw that blond doll again.”

“Which blond doll?” Irene didn’t react at first. “You know another doll out there?”

“The one I told you about,” Yu Sheng reminded her. “The one I saw in the mirror. Torn apart, dead in some unknown place. You even said that if we ever got the chance, you’d help her go home.”

“Oh, right. I remember!” Irene’s brows knit tight. “Why did you see her again? What did you see this time?”

“Same scene as last time,” Yu Sheng said slowly, “but I felt like her gaze landed on me. It happened the instant your threads connected. I thought you’d feel something too.”

They stared at each other. They thought it over for a long time, but nothing clicked.

Yu Sheng had plenty of guesses, but with no clues, they were all just speculation.

In the end, he forced his attention back to the door in front of him. Still, the blond doll’s eyes left a heavy mark on his mind.

Foxy walked over and, still uneasy, held onto Yu Sheng’s arm.

“The door to the Black Forest is open,” Yu Sheng said, rubbing the fluffy fur behind her ear to soothe her. “In a bit, you’re coming in with me.”

Foxy nodded at once. “Mm.”

“Irene, you stay on this side,” Yu Sheng told the doll on his shoulder. “Watch what it looks like when we pass through. Foxy and I will stay on the other side for a few minutes, then door opening straight back. If everything goes well, our landing point when we return should still be here.”

“You don’t need me to go in with you?” Irene looked worried. “What if you get lost in there and you need me, the dream expert, to help?”

“Returning to reality with door opening from the Black Forest side doesn’t need your navigation,” Yu Sheng explained. “Compared to that, you staying outside as backup for me and Foxy is safer.”

“…Alright.” Irene couldn’t argue with that. She jumped down from Yu Sheng’s shoulder. “Then I’ll guard the door here. You said just a few minutes. Don’t die in there…”

The moment she finished speaking, Foxy clenched her fists, solemn. “I will protect Benefactor with my life!”

Irene waved a hand. “No need. Mainly protect yourself. Yu Sheng’s life isn’t worth much—”

Yu Sheng opened his mouth, fought for a comeback, and lost.

What made it worse was that even Foxy didn’t object.

“I must’ve owed you two in my past life,” he sighed.

Then he grabbed the fox young lady and stepped through the door.

After a moment of dizziness and a hard reset of his senses, he was standing in the familiar Black Forest again.

Distant, faint wolf howls. The hollow sound of wind sliding through the trees. A dim sky caught between dusk and night. Shadows everywhere, and shrubs that always looked like they were hiding something nasty.

Nothing had changed. The Black Forest was always like this.

Beside him, Foxy looked around with wide eyes. It was her first time here. She’d heard plenty from Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood, so she was on full alert. The tails behind her stood up like a graveyard of blades, and the fur on her ears puffed slightly.

After a quick scan of the surroundings, Yu Sheng called inwardly, “Irene, we’re in.”

“I saw you go in,” Irene replied immediately. “The door on this side has already disappeared. It looks exactly like it usually does when you do door opening.”

“Our bodies went through too, right?” Yu Sheng asked. “They didn’t get left outside?”

“No. You went through with your bodies.”

Yu Sheng let out a quiet breath and looked down at his hands.

Sure enough, after a whole string of “bug exploit” moves, he’d successfully entered the Black Forest with his physical body—and even dragged a cyber cultivation fox in with him.

Everything matched what he’d predicted. To the Black Forest, the line between consciousness and body wasn’t clean. Things produced inside it could be carried into the real world as material objects, and matter from the real world could also be sent into the forest under certain conditions. The principle might still be unclear, but the conclusion was enough.

Yu Sheng’s biggest fear had been that the Black Forest was a purely conceptual world—something void-like and abstract.

Abstract things were the hardest to deal with, because you could only fight them with concepts and emptiness in return, and humans—at the end of the day—lived in reality.

At least, Yu Sheng thought he counted as human. He only knew how to think like one.

But if the Black Forest could link to the material world through a “bug exploit,” then everything got easier.

It meant it had a health bar.

Yu Sheng liked things with health bars.

“Benefactor, what do we do next?” Foxy crept closer and asked in a low voice. “Do we go find those wolves and fight them? Or wait for that ‘Squirrel’ you mentioned to show up?”

“The wolf pack is invisible, and the Big Bad Wolf has its own conditions for appearing. It won’t be easy to deal with yet,” Yu Sheng said, shaking his head. “We’re not here to fight today, and we’re not here for that Squirrel either.”

As he spoke, he raised a hand and opened another door.

This time, the other side wasn’t chaotic darkness. It was a clear reflection of the valley.

He could even see Irene standing there, staring at them with wide eyes, shocked.

“Hey, Yu Sheng, I can see you!”

“Looks like once we enter the Black Forest physically, we can open a normal door from this side,” Yu Sheng said with a smile. He nodded at Irene through the doorway, then turned to Foxy. “Ready to go. But before we leave, we need to say hello to whatever’s behind the Black Forest.”

“Huh? Hello?” Foxy blinked. “What kind of hello?”

“The kind that costs twenty chicken legs.”

“…Okay!”