Chapter 174

Chapter 174: Piercing Deep Dream

After handling the director’s instructions, Song Cheng returned to his office, lit a cigarette, and stared out the window in a daze.

Outside, layered walls folded back on themselves like a maze. They repeated and stacked as they stretched into endless distance. Then heavy rain poured out from between the maze’s walls, flying up into the sky and washing over another land above.

Song Cheng blinked and remembered it was Friday. After midnight, the floor his office sat on would shift into the observation level in the Maze District.

Friday. Nice. Something to look forward to.

Tomorrow would be a pleasant weekend… overtime day.

He gave a self-mocking smile, pulled down the blinds, and turned to his desk. Several case files had just been delivered by a subordinate.

They were all materials related to the otherworld fairy tale, along with intelligence on current fairy tale organization members.

Thanks to the recent activity of a newly rising Spirit Realm Detective Organization, several departments in the Special Operations Bureau had shifted their focus onto fairy tale.

He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray, steadied himself, and began reading the documents.

After who knew how long, hurried footsteps sounded in the hallway outside, making him stop turning pages.

The knock came a heartbeat later.

“Come in,” Song Cheng said.

The office door opened, and Ren Wen Wen—with short black hair—appeared in the doorway. “Captain Song, the arrest team sent to South City is back. The mission was completed successfully.”

“They caught the two angel cultists?” Song Cheng lifted his brows, a slight smile tugging at his mouth. “Any bigger fish?”

“Seems… no.” Ren Wen Wen shook her head. “The team camped there for days. Those two cultists seemed to be acting alone, or they were the standard ‘disconnected member.’ Their superior assigned the job, then temporarily cut the line.”

She hesitated. “Do you want to go check the situation?”

“…All right. I’ll go now.”

—

In the bedroom, Yu Sheng slept like the dead.

The exploration in the black forest and the vicious fight with Wolf Granny had drained too much from him. Some strange excitement had been propping him up, making him feel like he wasn’t that tired, but the moment he returned to bed it hit him in an irresistible wave. He fell asleep in under two minutes.

Half-asleep, he sensed soft rustling beside him—maybe a doll coming over to nap too. He heard bare footsteps in the hallway, probably Foxy heading back to her room.

Then he heard hollow wind.

It swept through the forest, stirring thick leaves, threading between towering ancient trees and dried fallen trunks, howling emptily. And within it, there was that sound again—faint baby crying.

Yu Sheng’s eyes snapped open.

He found himself lying in darkness. Everything around him was hazy, as if an impossibly heavy curtain hung over the world. Something seemed to be behind that curtain, but he couldn’t see it at all.

In the darkness before him stood a tall, blurred shadowspawn.

It wore an old set of hunter’s garb and a dark hood. Under the hood was emptiness—no body at all.

And yet Yu Sheng could clearly feel a gaze within that void, quietly resting on him.

He jolted fully awake and sat up, staring hard at the figure.

At the same time, he swept his surroundings with a quick glance, trying to judge the situation.

Was he back in the black forest?

It didn’t feel like it. The black forest didn’t have a place like this. This heavy curtain felt more like a dream… but he’d heard that hollow wind, and it had felt like the black forest. And there was that other sound in it. A baby’s cry.

Was this his dream?

Was it the black forest?

Or… had his dream connected to something strange again?

Yu Sheng steadied himself. When he realized he couldn’t tell what this was yet, he focused on the phantom figure in front of him.

The other side didn’t move, as if it had no intention of suddenly raising a rifle and putting one through his heart.

“Hello,” Yu Sheng said cautiously. “Should I call you Hunter?”

No reaction.

“You definitely are.” He grimaced, forced to keep talking into the silence. “We met in the black forest. Twice. The second time you even shot me. I didn’t really mind. You must’ve had your reason, right…? Hey, buddy, can you give me anything? Any response? You’re making this really awkward.”

Still nothing—like it was nothing more than a projection that had appeared for some unknown reason in this dark, dreamlike space.

Yu Sheng frowned. He stepped closer, careful, watching for any sudden movement. Then he circled Hunter once.

“You can’t speak?” he asked.

No answer.

After holding there for a while, Yu Sheng gritted his teeth and reached toward the hunter’s garb floating in midair.

He only wanted to touch it and see how Hunter would react. But the moment his fingers brushed the cloth, they passed through it with ridiculous ease.

Yu Sheng jerked back.

Hunter still stood there, blank.

Only then did Yu Sheng relax a fraction. He tried again, pushing his hand farther in.

This time he felt the faintest resistance—a half-real drag as his fingers slid through “fabric.” Then a chill, like touching air a few degrees colder than everything around it.

Nothing else.

Yu Sheng stood beside Hunter, sliding his entire arm into the hunter’s garb. And then, without meaning to, he paused.

Part of his arm overlapped with the sleeve—like he was wearing it.

In the next instant, the sleeve moved.

The garment that had floated there like an illusion, unmoving the entire time, shifted with his arm. The motion was small, but unmistakable.

He was putting on the clothes.

The moment that realization hit, it was like something slammed into the foundation of this dark, chaotic “dream.” Violent shaking came from all directions. In that shaking, Yu Sheng realized he’d already pulled his arm back without noticing.

The heavy curtain around him began to collapse. The space cracked and broke apart.

And Hunter moved too.

The hollow figure stepped backward with stiff, eerie strides. In the blink of an eye, it was already fading, leaving only a phantom smear of shadow.

Yu Sheng lunged on instinct, reaching out as if he could stop it. But the moment he lifted his arm, a voice spoke beside his ear—familiar, small, almost scolding.

“Uncle, what are you doing?”

Everything shattered.

Yu Sheng blinked, disoriented, and suddenly he was standing in an endless gray wasteland.

A murky gray sky pressed low over open wilderness. Nameless wild grass carpeted the ground, rippling under a slow breeze. A familiar small hill stood quietly in the distance.

And beside him stood a little girl, maybe five or six years old, looking up with wide, curious eyes.

Yu Sheng’s mind was still tangled in the moment he’d almost worn Hunter’s garb. He stared blankly for two or three seconds before he finally reacted.

“Xiao Xiao?!”

“Uncle, hi!” Xiao Xiao broke into a smile, bright and happy.

“Uh, hi… wait, no. Why are you here?” Yu Sheng stared at her, completely lost. Then he looked around quickly, but he didn’t see Little Red Riding Hood anywhere. “Is it just you?”

“I don’t know either.” Xiao Xiao tilted her head, puzzled. “I was taking a nap.”

“A nap?”

“Yeah. Teacher Su makes us nap. We have to sleep at noon or we’ll be tired in the afternoon.” Xiao Xiao spoke as if explaining something obvious. “I fell asleep, and I dreamed Big Bad Wolf was chasing me. So I ran and ran and ran. Then I couldn’t run anymore and I fell… and I fell here. After a while, I saw you came too, but you looked like you were spacing out.”

The little girl’s story was messy, but the basic logic was clear. Yu Sheng understood immediately—and his expression went even blanker.

Xiao Xiao had dreamed of Big Bad Wolf. No doubt that was fairy tale affecting her. She must have fallen into the black forest again in her sleep, and the wolf found her.

But she said she fell while running… and dropped into this wasteland?

Yu Sheng looked around.

Of course he knew where this was. It was still his strange “dream.” But after several incidents in a row, he was starting to realize something.

Was this place… really a dream?

He remembered the last time he’d met Little Red Riding Hood here. He remembered that after he woke up, she had still been in this field. If her teacher hadn’t caught her sleeping in class and woken her by throwing chalk, she could have stayed here even longer.

And this time, Xiao Xiao had arrived before Yu Sheng even entered.

All the clues pointed to one thing.

This field wasn’t a dream at all.

It was a place—an awareness-space, or something else entirely. It had always existed.

And when he slept… there was a good chance he could come here.