Chapter 170

Chapter 170: Little Red Riding Hood’s Wolf Granny

The vicious-looking spiked club came down with a shriek of air and slammed into that long, thin claw with a dull puff. Yu Sheng watched the claw burst apart like thick mud, hissing smoke. The impact felt less like flesh and blood and more like rotten cotton and splintered wood.

In the blink of an eye, the twisted, lanky monster in the doorway began to swell violently, letting out a shrill screech. Its entire body ballooned and multiplied in every direction, as if pure rage had set it off.

But Yu Sheng had been ready for this.

“Irene! Now!”

Endless black threads burst from behind Yu Sheng, surging through the air like living things. They multiplied wildly, then stabbed into the monster in complete silence. The creature kept expanding, and the cold spider-silk threads expanded with it. Within a few breaths, the two forces tangled into a deadlocked balance. The silk drew tight with an unsettling crackle, and Wolf Granny was forced to stop moving.

Irene stood inside the little house with both hands raised. Her tiny body looked like it had been nailed to the floor, bracing against something enormous.

Just as Yu Sheng had guessed, a body made from clay and lotus root let Irene endure the backlash of “hunger” for a short time. With a rebar skeleton, she could unleash shocking strength. Swap out the raw materials, and once the doll was complete, the boost became downright explosive.

Yu Sheng dashed out of the cabin.

He gripped the brutal club and moved like a gust of wind. One step shattered the ground into a crater of spiderweb cracks. He lunged at the immobilized Wolf Granny and smashed the spiked club into its chest. The recoil nearly tore the rebar from his grip, and the monster’s torso blew open into a horrific hole.

There was no flesh inside—only invisible fog, churning mud, pale bone, and a black heart that beat rapidly as it spat out poisonous filth.

Yu Sheng landed hard from the backlash, steadied himself, and looked up at the Wolf Granny towering two or three times his height. His gaze locked on the ghastly cavity in its chest.

This was Little Red Riding Hood’s Wolf Granny, a monster steeped in a girl’s fear, grown from childhood all the way to the present.

Compared to this thing, the Wolf Granny that had once swallowed Xiao Xiao had been far weaker. That one was, at best, a bigger wolf. The one in front of Yu Sheng now carried power that made no sense at all.

A sudden warning flared in Yu Sheng’s mind.

Even though Wolf Granny was tightly bound by Irene’s threads and looked completely incapable of attacking, he threw himself sideways without hesitation.

A sharp, icy “wind” swept past the back of his head. A piercing howl rang out behind him, and the ground where he’d been standing—along with a nearby stump—split open as if sliced by an invisible blade, leaving a terrifying gash.

“What the hell was th—”

Yu Sheng spun around, catching a retreating shadow in the corner of his eye. Understanding hit him like a slap, and he shouted toward the little house, “Irene! It’s the shadowspawn!”

Night had swallowed the dense forest, and starlight glazed the sky with cold silver. Under that dim sheen, the shadowspawn beneath the giant wolf’s feet was spreading like madness.

The black threads restrained the wolf’s body, but its shadow had already reached far enough to nearly encircle the little house. Countless chaotic, blurry shapes churned inside that darkness, then struggled upward. They broke the surface in whispers and formed before Yu Sheng’s eyes.

There were lanky shadow wolves, faceless human silhouettes, swaying children, and adults who turned and walked away without hesitation. Some wailed. Some begged. Some only stood in silence. Others stared at Yu Sheng with resentment or naked malice.

These things wandered around the little house, collapsing and dissolving, only to be born again from the shadow beneath Wolf Granny’s feet.

It felt like they were trying to shake Yu Sheng’s resolve—though he couldn’t be sure.

Because he didn’t recognize any of them.

Then Irene inside the little house moved again.

A dense flood of black spider silk poured out through the door, the windows, and every crack in the walls—down the chimney, along the seams where the roof met wood. Under the night sky, the cabin looked as if it had grown countless strands of hair. Those “hairs” wove through the darkness into a crisscrossing web, draping over Wolf Granny and the shadows beneath it.

A dark blade stretched out of the shadowspawn, angling for Yu Sheng’s throat, but spider silk snapped around it and froze it in midair.

An eerie blue foxfire flared into view. The flames raced along the paths of silk like water finding channels, spilling out of the cabin and burning through the shadowspawn caught in the threads.

Foxy had learned from last time in the museum. Physical attacks couldn’t touch a shadow-formed enemy. Fire could—and it worked.

Yu Sheng moved.

With the giant wolf and its shadowspawn suppressed by Irene and Foxy together, he finally acted. He lunged again, straight for the hole he’d smashed open in the wolf’s chest.

Layers of black threads interwove in midair, tracking every step he took with precision. Irene had already understood his intent. She wove a staircase up to the wolf’s chest, and the top step ended at that wildly beating heart.

Yu Sheng charged up the silk stairs, the pounding heart filling his vision.

He had no idea if it was truly Wolf Granny’s weak point. But when something that obvious was bouncing right in front of his face, he was going to hit it—no matter what it was.

The bound giant wolf let out a low howl. A sky-filling wave of malice and rage pressed down like real weight, crushing in from every direction.

Yu Sheng knew, instantly, that he might have guessed right.

He stepped onto the final stair and launched himself at the heart.

At the edge of life and death, the wolf forced a clone-body free of the spider silk. Its shattered chest writhed violently. Mud-like “flesh” pushed against the threads and began to heal. Pale bone sprouted from its ribcage in layered stacks, trying to shield the heart.

Yu Sheng swung the spiked club and smashed down, cracking those newly grown ribs.

They regenerated with a shriek, and Yu Sheng’s club came down again, shattering them into pieces.

Again and again he hammered. The brutal weapon—welded with blades, nails, and jagged rebar stubs—blurred into afterimages. Like carving hard rock, he smashed and gouged at the giant wolf’s chest. In his ears, layered phantom voices rose—out of the heart, out of the wound, out of the black forest itself. They whispered in wolf language, in human language, in the forest’s language. They tempted. They guided. They even tried to wear his own thoughts like a mask, repeating over and over:

Weren’t you afraid?

Did you never hesitate?

Not even a little?

Yu Sheng only lifted his weapon higher.

“By reason I should be afraid,” he bared his teeth, staring at the exposed heart with fierce excitement, “but reason is in my hands—”

The “reason” in his grip smashed down hard.

By all logic, the blades and nails welded onto the club should have dulled, snapped, or warped under that abuse. Instead, they felt like unbreakable steel. Not only were they untouched, they shattered ribs harder than iron into splinters.

The spiked club jammed tight between the wolf’s ribs. At once, black spider silk flooded the other gaps, choking off the regeneration around the wound.

Yu Sheng reached in and yanked out the dark heart.

It was still pounding—bigger than a basketball.

The heart thrashed violently. Cracks split across its surface, and highly toxic filth sprayed out nonstop. Some of it splattered onto Yu Sheng’s arm, burning through skin as it seeped poison into his blood.

Yu Sheng felt like his insides were boiling. Wolf poison scorched his veins, and the malice of the black forest surged along his arteries straight toward his own heart.

But he laughed, almost delighted.

“Yes. Yes, that’s it… You seep into me, just like I seep into you. Either way works…”

He hugged Wolf Granny’s heart against his chest, crushing that vicious, toxic thing that was killing him faster by the second.

“I was still wondering how I’d find you. Perfect. You came to me.”

A faint baby’s cry echoed through his mind, sharp enough to pierce the soul.

It even felt like the entire black forest was crying. The sound had been there from the start—he just couldn’t hear it until he touched Wolf Granny’s heart.

The heart twitched. Its beating weakened, and the toxin bleeding from its cracks thinned and thinned.

Now that poison ran through Yu Sheng’s veins—and it was trapped inside him.

Wolf Granny’s body began to shrink like a deflating balloon. In an instant, it dropped from house-high to a bit over two meters, then warped and collapsed further until it melted into a puddle of rotten mud.

Yu Sheng fell from midair as well. Still clutching the equally shriveled heart, he hit the ground at the little house’s entrance beside the spiked club that had dropped from Wolf Granny’s chest.