Chapter 222

Chapter 222: A Real Shadowspawn

Hearing those two words, Yu Sheng froze. The first thing he felt wasn’t suspicion or excitement—it was recognition.

In a previous dream, he’d seen Hunter appear before him in silence. Back then, curiosity had made him reach for that empty hunter’s garb, and he’d watched his arm pass straight through the sleeve. If something hadn’t startled him, he would have put it on right then.

So that bizarre dream had been Hunter’s first attempt.

Even then, they’d been trying to make him wear the garb.

Yu Sheng frowned. Caution anchored his feet in place. “Why?”

“We know what you’re looking for,” Hunter said inside his head. “The path to the deeper level has been sealed by illusion arts. Only by becoming part of it can you bypass this forest. We found a method, but we cannot oppose its will, so we have only acted by the stage’s script. But you… might be able to.”

They pointed at themself again.

“Put it on. Become Hunter in the black forest. Then you’ll see the forest’s real path. If you truly have the courage and determination to fight it—go and face it.”

Yu Sheng’s gaze sharpened. Hunter had used a very specific word.

We.

“You were the deep dive squad back then,” Yu Sheng said, voice tight. “You fused into one person?”

“Yes. Just like you think,” Hunter answered. “It cannot tell an individual from a group, so after the break happened, we fused during the fall.”

There was no dramatic emotion in the voice—only a faint trace of nostalgia.

“But we still remember many things. That group photo you brought…”

The buzz in the forest suddenly rose into a high, echoing hum. It cut the voice off mid-thought and slammed into Yu Sheng’s nerves like pressure against bare skin.

His spiritual intuition shook violently.

For an instant, a hallucination swept through him: an endless presence watching, cold and indifferent. A black shadow skimmed across the black forest—a shadow made of countless enormous, strange eyes.

Then it vanished.

The forest fell briefly quiet again, and Hunter’s voice returned, urgent now. “Hurry. We don’t have much time. It has realized the actor on stage is moving on its own. Hunter must return to the state from before Wolf Granny appears. You have to trust us. We have waited for this chance. It is about to—”

Yu Sheng lunged forward and reached for the hunter’s garb.

He knew he was being reckless.

Hunter hadn’t explained enough. A few rushed sentences weren’t enough to build trust. What would happen after he put it on? What was he supposed to do? What did the “real path” even look like? How was he meant to traverse the forest like that—and what would it mean to face Anka Aila directly?

None of it had been answered.

Reaching out like this was practically throwing his life away.

But he didn’t have time.

Because at that very moment, he felt Anka Aila again. The shadow piled with countless “eyes” swept across the sky above the black forest, like a mechanical scanning program searching through every hidden corner. Yu Sheng could almost hear the entire forest responding to that command, resonating. The noise mixed into the baby’s cries grew louder and louder, and he faintly sensed the dark angels trapped deep within Fairy Tale had already locked onto him—this intruder in the black forest.

He could open a door and escape. But if he did it now, it might expose the real world’s coordinates directly to those dark angels.

Yu Sheng’s hand passed through the garb again, just like before. Hunter was like a hollow phantom. He couldn’t feel their “body” at all.

But he did feel something else.

As he threw himself at the empty clothes, the connection between him and the hunter’s garb suddenly tightened—like a knot pulling shut.

Anka Aila’s gaze snapped over, like a puppeteer noticing a puppet on stage move on its own.

Yu Sheng felt the clothes wrap around him.

It was like hiding inside an extra shell.

His mind dulled for a beat. Emotions and memories that weren’t his surged in, then slipped away without a sound. Still, in that brief contact he caught fragments—jagged, messy images:

Twelve people in heavy protective gear standing together, and himself among them.

Commands in his ears.

The sound of water being pumped into the deep dive pool.

Chaotic roaring and countless voices blurring together, twisting, with the hum of many devices running at once braided into the noise.

Himself crossing a stretch of darkness—then feeling his outer shell crack.

Violent, out-of-control energy streams licking at a protective layer.

Alarms of internal structural collapse burning like lava through his nerves.

Endless error messages flooding his mind, and a voice shrieking:

Warning: “umbilical cord” severed. Warning: “umbilical cord” severed…

Core link lost…

Yu Sheng’s mind seemed to jump between viewpoints. And those viewpoints didn’t belong only to the deep divers from seventy years ago.

He saw “memories” that could never have come from human senses.

The last thing he saw was himself falling through a whirl of frenzied light and shadow.

The fall ended on open ground. Several low, old buildings stood around it.

The light went out.

Yu Sheng opened his eyes.

Wearing Hunter’s outfit, he stood in the center of the dark little house.

His vision swayed. In that unsteady view, countless red cloaks looked like flames burning, and the silence felt sharp enough to cut.

Anka Aila’s gaze swept across the air above the house.

Yu Sheng lifted his eyes. Through the edge of Hunter’s hood, he saw the roof seem to vanish for an instant as the shadow of countless eyes drifted across the sky, then slowly “fell” toward the edge of the black forest.

It didn’t notice the intruder hiding inside Hunter’s outfit.

Yu Sheng steadied himself and tested the question in his chest. “Are you still there?”

No answer came.

But he faintly heard a hollow rushing sound, like wind in an empty tunnel—like someone was deliberately sending him a signal.

So they were still there. They’d simply hidden themselves to avoid provoking Anka Aila further.

Yu Sheng stood still for a moment, thinking. Then he looked down and cautiously lifted his arm.

He could see the hunter’s garb on his body, but when he moved, it felt… normal.

So the worst hadn’t happened. His biggest fear had been that putting on the garb was a trap—that he’d be seized and controlled and turned into the next Hunter, forced to act by the black forest’s rules. That would be worse than dying.

But for now, nothing like that had happened.

Yu Sheng blinked. He sensed changes in himself, subtle ones he couldn’t name yet.

Then he felt another gaze.

He looked down and found Squirrel crouched beside him. She waited there, nervous and trembling—but she hadn’t run out of the house.

In a tiny voice, she asked, “So… you’re Hunter now too?”

“I guess?” Yu Sheng said. He thought for a second, then stepped forward and scooped her up. “But nothing seems to have changed—”

He stopped mid-sentence.

Squirrel’s claws tightened on his finger. “What’s wrong?”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer. He just stared at the wall in front of him.

It was flickering.

The wooden wall flashed in an irregular pattern, disappearing and reappearing. When it vanished, he could see the black forest outside—and the forest itself was flickering too.

Every tree, every bush, every flower shimmered at random, like a projector with a bad connection. Reality turned into a trembling illusion, and the longer Yu Sheng looked, the more unreal it became.

Dazed, he walked forward. Carrying Squirrel, he passed straight through the flickering wall and stepped out of the little house.

“Wow!” Squirrel squeaked, stunned. “We just went through the wall! How did you do that?!”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer, because he saw something else.

A massive rift stood quietly in the center of the black forest—like the rift he had seen in Old Zheng’s room when Anka Aila’s tentacle stabbed into the real world.

It was there.

It had been there all along.

The path behind the stage had been hidden inside the black forest the whole time. No one had seen it before because no one could.

“Do you see that?” Yu Sheng raised his hand, lifted Squirrel slightly, and pointed with his other hand.

Squirrel blinked blankly. “Huh? What?”

“…Nothing.” Yu Sheng lowered his hand. “Looks like only Hunter can see it.”

He drew a quiet breath and started walking toward the rift.

But the instant he took the first step, endless wolf howls erupted, followed by a terrifying roar that slammed into his bones.

Squirrel screamed without thinking. “The wolves are here!”

They weren’t just here.

They were everywhere.

Countless wolves appeared in Yu Sheng’s view.

Even when he’d led Foxy through the forest, blasting a path to fight Wolf Granny, he’d never seen this many. Dense shadow wolves materialized out of the air, filling every inch of his vision against the flickering backdrop. It was as if every wolf that had ever existed in this forest had been shoved onto the stage at once.

Malice and killing intent thickened until the air almost smelled like blood.

Yu Sheng sucked in a sharp breath, clenched his teeth, and reached behind him. He yanked out the hunting gun and gripped it awkwardly in his hands.

“Come on—”

And then the wolves hit him.

They tore him apart.

Into pieces.

Tiny pieces.