Chapter 171

Chapter 171: Death and Response

The wolf’s presence retreated—for now. The heart laced with wolf poison withered in Yu Sheng’s arms, shrinking and drying out. The black forest fell abruptly silent. The low, chaotic howls were gone, and so was the gaze from deep within the trees.

Foxy and Irene rushed out of the little house and dragged Yu Sheng inside, half hauling, half pulling.

“Benefactor, Benefactor, how are you?” Foxy stared at Yu Sheng’s bluish face, trembling with nerves. The fur on her tail puffed up. “Can you still hear me?”

“I can, I can… don’t get so close.” Yu Sheng wheezed as the cold numbness crept through his veins. “I’m about to die. This thing’s poisonous. The second I touched it, I got poisoned…”

“Even I can tell you’re about to die. Your face is turning black.” Irene scooted over and climbed onto Yu Sheng’s chest, her crimson eyes studying him. “So? Wolf Granny’s dead too, right? Did we actually kill it?”

“Dead, but only for now.” Yu Sheng spoke with effort, coughing twice before he forced the words out. “Like any entity, it’ll come back. The black forest will reset to how it was before we entered on the next cycle. But it’s fine. I’ve already stepped into its loop… We succeeded, at least a huge step. Now get off me. You’re heavy as hell.”

“Obviously. This body’s steel and stone.” Irene grumbled, but she obediently climbed down. “But when I sat on your shoulder before, you didn’t complain.”

“I’m not exactly in peak condition right now,” Yu Sheng said through a ragged breath. “I’m about to die.”

He reached toward Foxy. “Help me up.”

Foxy hurried to support his arm. “Benefactor, what are you doing?”

“You two go back.” With Foxy’s help, Yu Sheng raised a hand. A door flickering with faint light shimmered into existence in the air. “Bring my weapon. It’s pretty useful. I’ll improve it later and keep using it… And take this shriveled heart too. Little Red Riding Hood’s Wolf Granny didn’t leave anything useful behind. Only this heart looks like real meat. Now that the toxic blood’s drained out, I’ll study it and see if I can make a spicy stir-fried wolf heart…”

“You’re planning to eat that?” Irene stared at him, horrified, mouth hanging open. “Isn’t that a little too scary?”

“Gotta try it.” Yu Sheng took another breath. “It took forever to kill, and it killed me once. If I don’t stir-fry it, I’ll feel cheated.”

Irene looked deeply uneasy, but Foxy—who always listened to Yu Sheng—had already used two tails to roll up the shriveled wolf heart and the tetanus staff lying on the floor.

She stepped to the doorway, then turned back. “Benefactor, aren’t you coming back?”

Yu Sheng waved a hand. “I’m staying here.”

“Huh?” Irene tipped her head back, stunned. “You’re not going home to die?”

“I’ll wait here and see when Hunter shows up.” Yu Sheng swayed on his feet. “If we can communicate… I’ll just die here instead.”

“Alright. Then we’ll go back first.” Irene sighed, then asked casually, “When you get back, want something to eat? Foxy and I will prep it for you… Don’t look at me like that. We won’t cook. We’ll just wash some vegetables or something.”

“Wash two cucumbers and two tomatoes. When I get back, it should be morning.” Yu Sheng’s voice was thin. “I just died, so I want something light. Cold noodles with tomato-and-egg sauce, with shredded cucumber.”

“Okay.”

Irene and Foxy stepped through the flickering door. It faded away behind them until nothing was left but darkness and smoke.

The little house fell quiet.

Yu Sheng looked around. The place was a disaster. Even though the giant wolf never stepped inside, the spreading foxfire and stabbing silk threads had nearly destroyed the furniture, leaving scorched marks across the walls and floor.

He exhaled and trudged to the small bed in the corner, already half-collapsed from burning. He sat among the wreckage and waited for Hunter, waiting to die.

Wolf poison flowed through his veins. His blood flowed through the black forest.

The faint crying grew distant and blurred, as if a curtain had dropped over it—or as if something had begun to soothe whatever was crying, coaxing it slowly into silence.

A soft rustle came from the bed’s charred remains.

Yu Sheng looked over. A small, dark-brown furry thing poked its head out of the debris. A torn strip of red cloth was wrapped around its head.

“Oh, Squirrel. I thought you would’ve run for sure.” Yu Sheng managed a weak grin. “You’re pretty brave.”

“Squi… Squirrel knight fears nothing… fears nothing…” Squirrel repeated the words like a broken record. Then it suddenly froze and stared at Yu Sheng with round eyes. “Wait, you’re going to die… the wolf bit you, the wolf’s heart bit you! You… you’ll die! You really will die! You’ll die in the real world too! What do we do, what do we do, what do we do…”

It finally understood something terrifying and began to babble in a frantic panic.

“I came here with my real body in the first place.” Yu Sheng’s smile was faint, like a final flicker of light. “Don’t panic. I’ll come back. To me, death is just a temporary symptom. Of course, you don’t need to think about something that complicated right now. Calm down, little Squirrel. If you don’t want to leave yet, stay and talk with me.”

Squirrel stared at him, clearly not understanding and not knowing what to do, stuck in that miserable state of having too little brain for too much fear.

“You tied that red cloth on again.” Yu Sheng lifted a finger and gently pressed it to Squirrel’s head. “You really like it?”

“Red cloth… red cloth is a good omen,” Squirrel blurted out on instinct. “Squirrel also needs its own red cloak… the red cloak scares off Big Bad Wolf. The red cloak proves you haven’t turned into a wolf…”

“So a red cloak is proof you haven’t turned into a wolf. I see.” Yu Sheng spoke slowly, forcing his heavy eyelids open. “You’re worried about turning into a wolf in the forest too?”

Squirrel went silent at once, blank as a pebble.

This little animal crashed like that all the time, as if its tiny brain kept running into thoughts it couldn’t carry.

Yu Sheng felt like he was about the same now.

His mind was going numb. The wolf poison seemed to replace his blood, branching through his vessels into countless cold, vicious tendrils. His vision swam. Squirrel split into multiple afterimages.

He heard hollow wind in the forest. A wolf pack began to howl in waves—always howling, because that was how the story went. At least… the one telling the story believed it did.

In his darkening vision, Yu Sheng saw something.

His gaze seemed to pierce the black forest, pierce the shadowed barrier, and slip beneath the heavy soil. He saw countless fine branches like tree limbs, bracing this place from the other side. He saw woven structures like blood vessels and nerves, tangled and spreading through chaos and emptiness. Each cluster ended in branching supports that pushed upward.

They held up the King’s castle. They held up the wasteland where a knight battled a dragon. They held up the never-ending ball and the princess’s high tower, the sleeping palace wrapped in thorns, the beanstalk reaching the clouds, the singing sea, and the royal court…

But that wasn’t what Yu Sheng wanted to see.

What he wanted was the other end—the depths of those woven structures.

He tried to steer his sight, to turn his gaze toward the deep chaos, toward the source of those interwoven roots.

Absolute darkness blocked him. In that churning depth, there seemed to be nothing at all.

Footsteps reached his ears.

Yu Sheng jolted awake for a moment. His mind yanked back from that impossible vision and settled into the cabin again.

The fire in the hearth had gone out. The candle on the table was long dead. Cold silence covered everything.

A tall figure pushed open the cabin door and stepped inside with stiff, mechanical strides.

Dim starlight traced a faint outline around it.

“Hello, Hunter,” Yu Sheng said with a crooked smile. Slumped amid the bed’s ruins, he could feel that hollow, invisible shell looking at him. “I’ve been waiting a long time. Long enough to nearly die waiting.”

Hunter approached at an unhurried pace. The empty hood dipped, as if examining this “dying” “person” up close.

Even without an expression to see, Yu Sheng could feel Hunter’s hesitation.

Maybe because wolf-tainted blood flowed through Yu Sheng right now, making Hunter unable to decide whether to shoot.

Yu Sheng didn’t explain. Saving every last shred of strength, he slowly pulled out a sheet of paper and unfolded it in front of Hunter.

A group photo. Twelve men and women in heavy protective armor stood in a perfectly neat row.

“Do you remember this?” Yu Sheng lifted his head, voice quiet. “Were you… one of them?”

Hunter stood motionless, offering no response at all.

Yu Sheng waited, wondering which would arrive first—his death, or Hunter’s answer.

Then the hollow shell slowly raised its hunting rifle.

Yu Sheng blinked. “…Seriously?”

Bang.

The gunshot rang out.

Death and response arrived at the same time.