Chapter 170

Chapter 170: Little Red Riding Hood’s Wolf Granny

The vicious looking Spiked Mace slammed into the long, thin claw with a whooshing wind and a thick “puff” sound. Yu Sheng saw that claw split like sticky mud, smoking and hissing. The feel under his hands was not flesh. It felt like rotten cotton and wood.

In the next blink, the twisted, tall monster standing at the Door began to swell wildly. It shrieked in a high, sharp voice. Its body grew in every direction, multiplying as if completely enraged.

But Yu Sheng was ready.

He shouted: “Irene, do it!”

Endless Black Threads rushed from behind Yu Sheng. They spread like living things, racing through the air, splitting and multiplying, then silently stabbed into the monster’s flesh. The monster kept growing. The cold Spider Silk grew too. In a few breaths, the two forces tangled and reached a strange balance. The Spider Silk stretched tight and creaked in an unnerving way, and Wolf Granny was forced to stop moving.

Irene stood inside the little wooden house with both hands raised high. Her small body looked welded to the floor as she held back a huge force.

Just as Yu Sheng expected, a body made from clay and lotus root had already let Irene endure the backlash from Hunger for a short time. With a skeleton made of rebar, she could bring out amazing power. Changing the raw materials, then turning them into a Doll, made the boost grow at an exponential rate.

Yu Sheng rushed out of the Little House.

Holding the brutal club, he moved as fast as the wind. One step burst the ground into cracked pits. He leaped at the trapped Wolf Granny, and the Spiked Mace smashed into its chest. The recoil was so strong he almost lost the rebar handle, but a shocking hole opened in the monster’s chest.

Inside there was no blood or flesh. There was invisible mist, churning mud, pale bones, and a black heart that beat fast and spat poison.

Yu Sheng landed, steadied himself, and lifted his head to look at the Wolf Granny that stood two to three times taller than he was. He stared at the awful hole in its chest.

This was Little Red Riding Hood’s Wolf Granny, soaked in the girl’s fear and grown with her from childhood to now.

Compared to this, the Wolf Granny that swallowed Xiao Xiao before had been much weaker. That one was at best a big wolf. The one before him now clearly held power beyond common sense.

The next second, Yu Sheng felt a sudden flash of danger.

Even though Irene’s threads still bound Wolf Granny tight and it looked unable to attack, he threw himself to the side without hesitation.

Almost at the exact instant he leaped, a sharp, icy “wind” swept past the back of his head. A piercing whistle sounded behind him. The ground where he had just stood, along with a nearby stump, was sliced by some invisible thing, leaving a terrifying crack.

He spun back, heart pounding, and muttered: “What was that…” Out of the corner of his eye he caught a shadow snapping back.

Then he understood and shouted toward the Little House: “Irene, its shadow!”

Night had already covered the Dense Forest. The sky was full of stars. Under that cold starlight, the Giant Wolf’s shadow stretched and grew madly.

The Black Threads bound the wolf’s body, but its shadow spread until it almost wrapped around the whole Little House. Inside the shadow, countless blurry shapes rolled and churned. They struggled and whispered, then climbed up from the ground and formed in front of Yu Sheng.

There were thin Shadow Wolves. There were people with smudged faces. There were children staggering toward him, and adults turning away without a second look. Some howled. Some begged. Some just stood still. Some stared at Yu Sheng with bitter or hateful eyes.

These things wandered near the Little House. They kept collapsing and fading, then kept forming again from the shadow at Wolf Granny’s feet.

They seemed to be trying to shake Yu Sheng’s will. [He was not sure about that.]

He did not know any of these shadows.

Then Irene moved again. Dense Black Spider Silk flooded out, pouring from the Door of the Little House, from the windows, from every crack in the walls, from the chimney, and from the seams where the roof met the walls. It looked like the Little House grew a wild coat of hair under the night. Those “hairs” wove themselves into crossing Spiderwebs that spread without a sound over Wolf Granny and the shadow under its feet.

A dark blade grew from the shadow, aiming to stab Yu Sheng, but the Spider Silk wrapped it. It stopped dead in the air.

Right then, ghostly blue Fox Fire flared in Yu Sheng’s sight. The flames raced along the paths the Spider Silk had woven. They flowed like water out of the house and melted the shadows that the Spider Silk had trapped.

Foxy had learned from the fight in the Museum. She did not try to hit shadowy enemies with physical attacks anymore. She used her fire. It worked.

Yu Sheng moved.

With the Giant Wolf and its shadow pinned by Irene and Foxy, he finally acted. He lunged for the hole in the Giant Wolf’s chest again.

Layer after layer of Black Threads crossed in the air, matching every step he took. Irene had guessed his plan. She wove a stairway up to the Giant Wolf’s chest. At the End Web of the stairway sat the heart, beating fast.

Yu Sheng charged up. The pounding heart filled his sight.

He did not know if this was truly Wolf Granny’s weak point. But it was bright and moving right in front of him. No matter what it was, he was absolutely going to hit it hard.

The Giant Wolf howled low under the Spider Silk’s hold. A sea of malice and rage turned into pressure that crashed in from every side.

[He guessed he was right.]

He stepped onto the last stair and dove for the heart.

In that life or death moment, one part of the Giant Wolf’s Clone Technique forced itself free of the Spider Silk. Its shattered chest writhed. Sludge like “flesh” pushed against the Spider Silk and began to heal. Pale bones grew from the chest cavity, layer on layer, trying to block the heart.

Yu Sheng swung the Spiked Mace and smashed the regrowing ribs.

The ribs grew back with a screech. He smashed again, breaking them into shards.

He hit again and again, carving and pounding like hewing stone into the Giant Wolf’s chest. Shards of the brutal club, welded with blades, nails, and rebar stubs, blurred through the air. He heard stacked, ghostly voices at his ear, rising from the Evil Wolf’s chest, from that heart, from the whole Black Forest. The voices whispered to him in the language of wolves, in the language of people, in the language of the Forest. They tempted, guided, and even pretended to be his own thoughts as they repeated again and again: “Do you not feel fear? Have you never hesitated? Not even for a moment?”

Yu Sheng only raised his “weapon” high again.

He grinned and stared at the heart, now fully exposed, and said: “By Reason I should be afraid, but Reason is in my hands.”

His “Reason” came down hard. The blades and nails on Reason should have dulled, snapped, or bent from so many hits, but now they felt unbreakable. They did not take any damage. They shattered ribs that were harder than steel.

The Spiked Mace jammed between the ribs. Endless Black Spider Silk filled the other gaps at once and blocked the whole Regeneration process.

Yu Sheng reached in and yanked out the heart. It was bigger than a basketball, black, and still thumping hard.

The heart bucked. Cracks split open. Poison sprayed from the splits. Some of it splashed onto Yu Sheng’s arm and ate through his flesh with ease, sending venom into his blood.

He felt like his body was boiling. Wolf poison burned through his veins. The Black Forest’s malice rushed along his arteries and stabbed toward his heart.

But he only laughed, happy: “Right. Yes. Like this. You seep into me, and I seep into you. Either way works.” He hugged Wolf Granny’s heart tight, this deadly thing that was killing him fast, and said: “I was wondering how to find you. Good. You came to find me.”

He heard a faint crying. It was a baby’s cry, sharp enough to cut into the soul. It echoed in his head.

He even felt like the whole Black Forest was crying. The sound had been there from the start. He just could not hear it until he touched Wolf Granny’s heart.

The heart shook and its beat finally slowed. The poison that leaked out grew thin.

That poison now flowed in Yu Sheng’s veins. He wrapped it up inside himself.

Wolf Granny’s body started to shrink. Like a balloon losing air, it fell from house height to a little over two meters, then kept shrinking. It changed shape and flopped down like a pool of rotten mud.

Yu Sheng fell from midair too. Hugging the now shrunken heart, he dropped with the Spiked Mace that had torn loose from Wolf Granny’s chest and landed at the Door of the Little House.