Chapter 146

Chapter 146: Glitching Into the Map

To be fair, the moment Irene said “mind as one,” Yu Sheng thought it sounded hard. Most of the time when they were together, both of them felt the other was not right in the head. Then he thought again: [If we both think the other is crazy, isn’t that also a kind of mind as one?]

His thoughts drifted fast, running off in a few seconds, until Irene bumped her forehead against his and snapped: “I told you to empty your mind, not let it fly away. At least keep your attention on Door Opening.”

He blinked and came back to himself, then started following the steps for Door Opening carefully.

This time, he only summoned a Null Gate that led nowhere. Keeping the Door stable, he slowly relaxed his mind.

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

He saw her other hand lift and point at the Door.

Black Threads spread from her fingertip. They stretched in silence, like a strange living creature, weaving, squirming, changing shape, splitting and growing in the air.

Some of the threads stabbed into his flesh and into his mind. A weird, icy feeling crawled up his spine and made his skin prickle.

If this had been the first time he met Irene’s threads, Yu Sheng would have tossed the little doll straight off his shoulder. No matter how you looked at them, these cold and creepy things did not feel harmless. They fit a story like “the sneaky cursed doll finally seizes a chance to backstab her keeper and steal the top seat at Wutong Road 66,” which was very suspicious.

But he was used to it now. Maybe dolls from Alice’s Little House were just like this.

Other threads uncoiled through the air toward the Door. Their tips gathered like a tentacle, carefully touched the surface, then probed into the Door’s inside.

The connection formed.

Right then, Yu Sheng suddenly felt dazed.

The wind in the Valley vanished. A heavy, dim curtain fell over everything. Endless fog filled his sight, and in the depth of the fog he saw…

A blonde, broken Doll lay in ruins swallowed by darkness. A huge shadow had fallen with the Doll deep in the wreckage. The dead Doll’s eyes were open, and in that brief Illusion Arts across the curtain, Yu Sheng felt as if those eyes were looking at him.

It ended in a heartbeat. He did not even have time to check if the dead blonde Doll was the same one he had once seen in the mirror. The Illusion Arts scattered like smoke.

Irene’s bright shout rang by his ear: “Hey hey hey! The Door opened, the Door opened! I think it’s connected! Yu Sheng, check if I did it right!”

Yu Sheng jolted fully awake. The Door to the Black Forest was slowly opening in his hands. Countless Black Threads, misted with eerie black haze, twined inside and outside the frame, sketching chaotic shapes like thornbushes guarding the border. Beyond the Door lay the Forest drowned in shadow.

The Door to the Black Forest had truly opened.

Yu Sheng stared at the Door wrapped in black “thorns.” To be honest, it looked weird, but it was kind of cool.

He cared more about what he had just seen.

He asked, “Irene, did you see anything just now? When you linked with me, did you see any Illusion Arts?”

Irene paused, puzzled as she looked at him and said: “No. I was focused on helping you lock onto the Door so nothing would go wrong. What did you see?”

Yu Sheng hesitated, then chose not to hide it: “I saw that blonde Doll again.”

Irene blinked and asked: “Which blonde Doll? Do you know another Doll out there?”

He reminded her: “The one in the mirror. Broken to pieces, dead somewhere. You said if we get a chance we should help send her home.”

Irene snapped her fingers and said: “Oh, right! I remember now.” Then she frowned and asked: “Why did you see her again? What did you see this time?”

He spoke slowly: “Same scene as before, but I felt like her eyes were on me. I don’t know why. It was the moment your threads connected to me. I thought you might feel something too.”

They looked at each other. After thinking together for a while, they still had no answer.

Yu Sheng came up with plenty of guesses, but with no clues, they were only guesses. [I’m just spinning ideas in the air.] He had to push the thoughts aside and focus on the Door in front of him. Still, that mysterious blonde Doll had carved a deep mark in his mind.

Foxy walked over and gripped his arm, clearly worried.

He rubbed the fur behind the Fox Maiden’s ears and said: “The Door to the Black Forest is open. You’re coming in with me.”

Foxy nodded at once and said: “Okay.”

Yu Sheng turned to the doll on his shoulder and said: “Irene, you stay here. Watch what happens when we step through. Foxy and I will stay on the other side for a few minutes, then we’ll Door Opening right back. If all goes well, our return point should be here.”

Irene looked uneasy and asked: “You don’t need me to go with you? What if you get lost in there and need a Dream Expert?”

Yu Sheng explained: “Coming back to reality from the Black Forest side doesn’t need your navigation. It’s safer if you stay outside as our backup.”

Irene nodded, finding that reasonable, then jumped off his shoulder and said: “I’ll stand guard here then. You said a few minutes. Don’t you dare die in there.”

Foxy clenched her fists and said with a serious face: “I swear I will protect my benefactor with my life.”

Irene waved and said: “No need. Mainly protect yourself. Yu Sheng’s life isn’t worth much.”

Yu Sheng opened his mouth, then shut it again. He could not think of a comeback. What made it worse was that even Foxy did not argue.

He sighed and muttered: “I must have owed you two in a past life.”

He tugged Ms.Fox along and stepped into the Door.

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

Distant wolf howls, wind moaning through the trees, a sky caught between dusk and night, shadows everywhere, and bushes that always seemed to be hiding something unfriendly.

Everything matched his memory. This forest never seemed to change.

Foxy, on her first visit here, looked around with wide eyes. After hearing many stories about the place from Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood, she was on high alert. Her tails stood like a field of swords, and the fur on her ears was slightly puffed.

After a quick check of their surroundings, Yu Sheng called in his mind: “Irene, we’re in.”

Irene answered at once: “I saw you go in. The Door on this side vanished. Looks the same as your normal Door Opening.”

Yu Sheng asked: “Did our bodies go through too? We didn’t leave them outside, right?”

Irene replied: “No, you both crossed with your bodies.”

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

After a whole series of glitch moves, he had brought his physical body into the Black Forest. He had even brought in a cyber-cultivation fox.

It matched what he expected. In the Black Forest, the line between mind and body was not that sharp. Things from the Black Forest could be carried into the real world as physical objects. Things from the real world could also be sent into the Black Forest under certain conditions. He did not know the full theory yet, but the conclusion was all he needed.

What he feared most was the Black Forest being purely a world of “mind,” or in plain words, a concept made of nothing.

Concepts and nothingness are the hardest to fight, because you can only fight them with more concepts and more nothingness. Humans live in the real world, and fighting the abstract is not what humans are good at.

Yu Sheng counted himself human. He thought like a human.

Since the Black Forest could Establish Link with the material world by “glitching,” then things became much easier.

It meant the forest had a health bar.

[He liked enemies with health bars.]

Foxy edged closer and whispered: “Benefactor, what do we do next? Do we find those wolves and fight them, or wait for that Squirrel you mentioned?”

Yu Sheng shook his head and said: “The Wolf Pack has no form, and the Evil Wolf has its own conditions for appearing and is not easy to handle. We are not here to fight, and we are not looking for the Squirrel.”

As he spoke, he reached out and pulled open another Door.

This time the other side was not chaos, but a clear view of the Valley.

He could even see Irene on the other side, staring at him with wide eyes.

Irene waved and said: “Hey, Yu Sheng, I can see you!”

Yu Sheng smiled, nodded to the doll across the Door, and said to the fox beside him: “Looks like once we enter the Black Forest with our bodies, we can open normal Doors here. Get ready to go. But before we leave, we should say hello to whatever is behind this Black Forest.”

The Fox Maiden froze and asked: “Hello? What kind of hello?”

Yu Sheng grinned and said: “The twenty drumsticks kind.”

Foxy’s eyes lit up and she said: “Okay!”