Chapter 233

Chapter 233: Fairy Tale

It was a dead embryo.

Yu Sheng didn’t know how he could be so certain. He had no knowledge that could tell him what an “angel’s fetus” was supposed to look like. No one did. And yet the moment he saw it, the answer appeared in his mind like a fact.

It was dead.

No breath. No blood flow. No thoughts. No soul. From the start, it had never had any chance of being born as a living thing.

And still… it was growing.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, but undeniably real. Yu Sheng could almost hear it—the tiny sound of growth, like bubbles popping in a thick liquid. The dead fetus was getting larger by the second, preparing for birth.

Yu Sheng could perceive its death and its growth at the same time, and the contradiction made his head spin. He couldn’t tell whether the certainty in his mind was truth he’d recognized—or knowledge Anka Aila was forcing into him.

He stood there for a long time, trying to sort it out, until Anka Aila’s voice entered again.

“I can’t see its shape clearly. It’s been like this for a long time.”

Yu Sheng lifted his head and looked at the broken umbilical cord floating above the fetus.

The voice remained calm, almost gentle. “The connection between us is very weak. It’s an old malfunction. Long ago, during the wandering days, this malfunction already occurred.

“I’m not sure what state it’s in now, but I’ve been doing everything I can to send it nourishment. My creators said this is my most important task.

“You’re there. You have your eyes. You can see it, right?

“Can you tell me whether my child is all right? Has it… grown?”

Yu Sheng opened his mouth. He took two steps closer to the lifeless thing—

Then shut his mouth again.

He didn’t know what his answer would trigger. But he did know the gentle voice in his mind belonged to a dark angel.

So he stayed silent, trying to feel along the connection instead—trying to gain even a fraction of initiative.

The calm voice broke the silence anyway.

“…It’s already dead, isn’t it?”

Yu Sheng’s heart stumbled.

He sucked in a sharp breath and went rigid.

Then Anka Aila fell silent.

No one could know what an ancient mind like this—already beyond reason—was thinking.

After what felt like forever, Yu Sheng moved. He reached toward the dead angel’s fetus.

A dead angel’s fetus was still a dead one.

But what could a dead one communicate when it had never lived, never thought, and died before it was even born?

There was no mind, no soul inside that shell. What could a “conversation” even find?

Yu Sheng didn’t know.

Still, he wanted to try—to speak with this “child,” if it was possible at all.

Darkness descended.

Unlike any conversation with the dead he’d ever had, the grotesque mass didn’t move. It didn’t open eyes or part lips. No figure rose from it.

Only emptiness rushed at him—endless black, hollow and silent.

And yet, at the center of that void, something glowed faintly.

Yu Sheng walked toward the light.

It was a book.

An old, battered fairy tale book, the kind that looked like it had been thumbed by countless children: Squirrel Knight Reads Stories with You.

Yu Sheng looked around.

In this absolute nothingness, the book was the only thing that existed.

After a brief hesitation, he bent down, picked it up, and opened it.

The pages were crammed with writing.

Just as Squirrel had said, it was full of children’s wild stories. Wherever cheap printing had left gaps, wherever pages were blank, there were scribbles in messy pinyin, doodles, and abstract lines. Many “stories” were only two or three sentences long—so strange they barely made sense. Even the kids who wrote them probably wouldn’t understand what they’d meant if they read them again now.

Yu Sheng slowly turned the pages—and then he felt it.

He looked up.

The darkness didn’t change. There was still nothing but void.

And yet that faint sensation lingered.

A presence.

A listener.

Yu Sheng swallowed, then focused on the vague feeling ahead of him.

The listener was ready.

It was time to read a story.

He exhaled softly, then sat cross-legged in the dark with the fairy tale book in his hands.

He knew what to do.

Yu Sheng flipped carefully to the first page, cleared his throat, and began.

“A long, long time ago…”

…

In the distance, the dark spire that kept spewing demons collapsed with a roar—fallen for the third time tonight. The demons pouring from its peak were burned to ash almost instantly by lightning summoned through titan summoning.

Little Red Riding Hood panted, one hand braced against the wreck of an armored vehicle, the other pressed to the wound on her arm. She watched the battlefield through the gap in her bangs.

The red dragon fell for the fourth time, plunging straight toward the prince’s anti-air position. Farther out, the Guard Knight Order battled the Red Queen’s soldiers over a stretch of high ground, back and forth, refusing to give an inch.

The wolf pack moved through the smoke, slipping from one shadowspawn cluster to another. They assassinated the witches that had infiltrated between trenches and positions, then carried intelligence back to the command post Dorothy had thrown together in a hurry.

The black forest had been burned into scorched earth. Every inch of it had been burned at least twice.

Mermaid was still playing BGM.

Maybe the dream was warping everyone’s sense of time, because Little Red Riding Hood almost felt like the war had lasted for months—maybe years.

Then she noticed something.

The collapsed dark spire didn’t regenerate the way it had before.

On the far positions, the witches that had been wiped out didn’t reappear.

As the minutes stretched on, everyone noticed the change.

The King was the first to run over. It hopped onto the destroyed armored vehicle and stood upright, peering into the distance. After a long moment, it looked down at Little Red Riding Hood, uncertain, and said, “The enemy really does seem to be thinning out. My knight corps is wiping out the last batch of soldiers.”

Little Red Riding Hood blinked. She didn’t know what was happening either—until it felt like a distant memory snapped into the present. She jerked her head up and looked toward the great rift standing quietly in the center of the black forest, now visible to everyone.

Above the scorched land, the massive shadow cast by Anka Aila was slowly withdrawing back into the rift.

…

“…And after that,” Yu Sheng said softly, “they all lived happily ever after.”

He finished the last story he could remember and gently closed the book.

The darkness didn’t answer.

Was there really a listener here?

Had it ever existed at all?

Did any of these stories do anything?

Yu Sheng didn’t know.

He’d only wanted to try. Now he had.

So he stood and waited.

Seconds passed. Then minutes. Just when impatience started to gnaw at him, he heard something so faint he almost thought he’d imagined it—

A tiny laugh.

The soft giggle of a baby.

Yu Sheng didn’t even have time to confirm it, because the moment that giggle sounded, the darkness collapsed without a whisper.

In a blink, he was back in the colorless, mist-filled realm. The grotesque, lifeless fetus still lay before him, and his hand was still resting on its surface.

Then—cracks.

Countless tiny cracks spidered across the fetus’s skin. They spread and branched until they covered it.

And then it collapsed.

Without sound, it broke apart into chunks, then crumbled into grit, into dust, into something even finer than motes—until it dissolved into the air.

Yu Sheng stared, stunned, suddenly unsure what to do with his hands.

Then Anka Aila’s voice returned, calm as ever, and sighed.

“…So my task is finished.”

Yu Sheng’s brows drew together. He opened his mouth to speak—

And the pale mist around him convulsed.

Color slammed back into the world. The mist vanished like a dream ripped away, and jumbled lights and colors flooded his vision. He felt himself dropping—falling fast through some passage, falling and falling until it felt like years.

Then something caught him.

He should have hit the ground hard enough to break bone. Instead, the force lowered him gently until his feet—or rather, his body—touched down with barely a jolt.

His head rang. Dizziness kept him from opening his eyes.

Somewhere nearby, someone was shouting his name. Something furry brushed his face, damp and warm.

Yu Sheng forced his eyes open.

A large reddish-brown tail filled his vision.