Chapter 227

Chapter 227: Make a Big Scene

Yu Sheng spent a long time before he finally calmed the squirrel down.

In the process, he felt like he finally understood why the foundations of this strange otherworld called “fairy tale” were such a mess.

The wild imagination of children. The dark angels misunderstanding human stories. And generation after generation of “fairy tale” members reshaping the stage after falling into subsets.

Those three forces had piled together and warped for eighty-six years, until they formed the bizarre, twisted fairy tale system of today.

Now the massive, mutated story collection was like an obese lump of flesh grown past its limits—teetering on the edge of total collapse and rupture. And Anka Aila’s “child” was about to be born from that grotesque growth.

The friction of growing trees and a low rumble from deep underground echoed through the black forest.

Yu Sheng packed away the sorted scraps, shoved them into his clothes, then rose slowly. He stayed cautious, one hand gripping the bullet that radiated heat, the other holding his weapon.

Irene perched on his shoulder. The squirrel had somehow ended up in Irene’s arms.

Foxy stood to the side, ears slightly bristled, nerves taut. “Benefactor… the atmosphere’s changed…”

Yu Sheng didn’t answer. He only looked up.

The fragments that once belonged to the orphanage buildings had vanished from view. Through gaps in the canopy, he saw a muddy, hazy dusk that clearly wasn’t the sky over borderland.

Dusk filtered through the forest, casting mottled shadows between tall trunks. Faint wolf howls drifted from afar, sounding near and far at the same time, as if an invisible encirclement were forming.

Something rustled against Yu Sheng’s skin. He lowered his head and saw a layer of phantom fabric spreading over him.

It was the Hunter’s outfit.

The hunter’s garb he’d worn before was reappearing.

Yu Sheng blinked, startled for half a heartbeat—then he understood.

The subset was sealing shut. The stage of fairy tale was fully replacing reality. Inside the orphanage wall, “reality” had faded completely. He’d fallen entirely onto the black forest’s side.

“The depth is at least L-3…” Yu Sheng muttered, recalling what he’d read in the database.

Foxy stared at his clothes, eyes wide. “Benefactor! Y-your clothes…”

Yu Sheng gave a short laugh. “I got an identity in the black forest. Don’t worry.”

Then he lifted his head and looked deeper into the trees.

The endless forest flickered in his vision. From the Hunter’s perspective, the true paths were becoming clearer and clearer.

And deep in the dense woods, he saw it again—that massive rift. Like a split scar standing on the earth, with tiny tendrils wriggling along its edge like living things.

Before the rift could fully consume his attention, wolves appeared around them.

Big and small. Vicious and bizarre. Wolves overflowing with killing intent and malice, surfacing from the shadows. Against the constantly flickering backdrop, they gathered into a pack that made your scalp crawl.

Some were mere phantoms the size of ordinary wild wolves. Some were more than twice that size. Some even stood hunched like humans, eyes glowing hungry green in the dark.

“Holy shit,” Irene cursed the instant she saw them. “How the hell are there this many?!”

“This is the immune mechanism of the black forest as an otherworld,” Yu Sheng said calmly, tightening his grip on his weapon. “We’re about to do something out of line. The forest noticed.”

The nearest wolves crouched, ready to spring.

“Foxy.”

“Here!”

“Go cause trouble.”

“Okay!”

The next second, ghostly blue foxfire erupted into sweeping barrages. A savage crossfire net lashed toward the surrounding pack like the hand of a brutal reaper—

—and as the foxfire swept in, the Big Bad Wolves howled and launched their own furious assault.

The grandest fireworks show ignited across the flickering forest.

Foxfire surged, tearing and scorching the air. Big Bad Wolves kept coming like an endless tide. Yu Sheng stepped forward toward the rift at the center of the stage, and with every step the forest shuddered as if struck by heavy blows.

More wolves—more twisted, more vicious—sprouted from the air and from shadows between trees, leaping at the intruder who was breaking the order of this stage.

Irene clutched Yu Sheng’s hair with one hand and held the squirrel with the other, shouting despite herself, “When do I act?! This looks unwinnable!”

Yu Sheng swung the club down hard, snapping a wolf that lunged at him cleanly in half. “Don’t worry about this side yet—focus on the sanctuary wasteland!”

“Ah—hey!” Irene answered in a panic.

Out of the corner of Yu Sheng’s eye, a giant tree nearby began to shake. Its branches drooped. The surface of its trunk shrank and warped. It sprouted sharp teeth, claws, and fur like steel needles, hunching as it transformed into a massive Big Bad Wolf that reared up and roared—

A silver-white fox tail with blue thruster flames slammed straight into its mouth.

The roar—and the wolf—exploded into a mushroom cloud.

Three sharp cracks tore the air. Several fox-carrot missiles ripped open the dusk sky of the black forest and bombed the distant pack that was still gathering.

Watching those explosion clouds rise one after another, Yu Sheng couldn’t help grinning. “I’m telling you—monsters that pose and roar before charging are brain-dead. That one shout gives you enough time to stuff a missile in their mouth…”

He hadn’t even finished speaking when another pitch-black wolf slipped through the crossfire and lunged at his blind side.

The squirrel screamed.

“Holy shit!” Yu Sheng twisted to dodge and raised his club, its cold flicker of light ready to fall—

—but before he could swing, another shadow slammed in from the side, smashed the wolf to the ground, and then several shadowspawn piled on top, shredding it to pieces in an instant.

Yu Sheng turned.

A girl in red stepped out of the nearby shadows, a hazy pack at her side.

“You finally showed up,” Yu Sheng breathed. “I was starting to think, with the fight this loud and you still not appearing, something happened to you…”

“Why do you make such a huge scene every time?!” Little Red Riding Hood snapped. “Can’t you do some high-tech stealth or something? The black forest is for stealth! This isn’t Princess Snow White and her crazy stepmother’s reckless, lunatic stage!”

“I didn’t want to either—I couldn’t even take the first step without failing!”

“Ah—whatever!” Little Red Riding Hood kicked a wolf that rushed from the side, sending it flying. “Tell me what we do next. I just got here and I’m still confused!”

Yu Sheng pointed toward the distant direction of the rift without slowing. “That way. Carve a path.”

Little Red Riding Hood looked where he pointed. To her, it was only endless repeating forest.

She didn’t ask. She nodded, then raised both hands high.

“I’m telling you—I almost never use this move,” she said viciously. “If Dr. Lin finds out, she’ll scold me all day!”

Shadows spread beneath her feet, solid as substance. They rose and writhed until they covered hundreds of meters, creeping into the air, darkening the surrounding world.

“But who cares? I’m turning eighteen soon anyway. Either we solve this today, or this is the last time!”

In the shadows and the air, countless hazy wolves surfaced. Countless restless illusions condensed into entities.

Her coat shifted into a cloak, blood-red, snapping in the wind.

She smiled, eyes glowing faintly, and opened her mouth.

Her voice carried the sound of wolves.

“Awooo—”

And then Little Red Riding Hood’s true wolf pack appeared.

Every wolf she had ever seen.

Every wolf she had ever fought.

Every wolf she had ever killed.

With that single howl, they surged out beneath her cloak, within the shadows at her side, and in the air around her.

In an instant, her wolves outnumbered the black forest’s own pack in a wide area.

“Hunting time!”

She rode the strongest wolf and raised her arm high. Fine fur spread across her cheeks. Her eyes sharpened into a wolf’s shape. Her voice mixed with the howls around her—

“Charge!”

Her pack slammed into the forest’s pack.

The black forest became a battlefield of Big Bad Wolves tearing Big Bad Wolves apart.

They were everywhere.

Foxy charged too. After Yu Sheng’s order to “cause trouble,” she dove straight into the densest part of the pack and rolled in place.

Light and shadow flared.

A nine-tailed demon fox as big as two vans rose in a dazzling ripple, and with one sweep of her tail, a sea of ghostly blue flames poured out.

Little Red Riding Hood, still on her wolf, stared blankly at the demon fox bulldozing through the pack—biting, tearing, crashing. After a long moment, she turned back to Yu Sheng.

“She can turn into that?”

“I never told you?” Yu Sheng bared his teeth in a grin. “When she really foxes out, it gets loud.”