Chapter 245
Chapter 245: A New Life Starts with Civil Engineering
Yu Sheng had started to suspect Princess Rapunzel was treating him like some kind of all-purpose wishing machine. As if she could casually blurt, “Make the sky go dark,” and expect him to snap his fingers and do it.
And yet, when he saw the young lady staring at him with eyes that practically sparkled, he couldn’t bring himself to refuse outright. Instead, he asked, genuinely curious, “You really think I can do something that ridiculous?”
“I heard Irene say it. Everything in the Valley listens to you,” Princess Rapunzel said, pointing at Little Doll, who was running laps around the edge of the Plaza for reasons no one dared ask about. “You could even move mountains to make room for Little Red Riding Hood’s Black Forest, so you should be able to turn off daytime too… right?”
She stared at Yu Sheng with huge, hopeful eyes. Yu Sheng stared back at this super-JK girl until she finally understood what his look meant.
“So you can’t?” she asked, deflating.
“I told you it wouldn’t work.” Little Red Riding Hood walked over, looking helpless. “You just wouldn’t believe me.”
Yu Sheng took in their disappointed faces. Then he looked around at the firewood pile already stacked on the Plaza, the half-grown kids helping in every direction, and the little ones still sprinting circles along the edge of the space.
Somehow, he suddenly felt awkward.
He raised a hand, cutting Little Red Riding Hood off before she could say anything else. “Wait. Maybe it’s not completely impossible. Give me a second to think.”
He tipped his head back and stared at the sky in silence. Little Red Riding Hood and Princess Rapunzel didn’t dare interrupt, so they just watched him, curious and tense.
After a while, Yu Sheng narrowed his eyes. His gaze settled on the sky above the Black Forest at the far end of the Valley.
Then the clouds began to spread in.
At first, it was only a thin veil above the Black Forest, still catching the last blush of sunset. But right after that, clouds began to form from every direction around the Valley. Thick, heavy banks rolled in like a curtain being dragged between the mountains, closing toward the center of the sky with the steady pressure of nightfall.
Gradually, everyone noticed the change. The kids and the staff moving around the Plaza slowed, then stopped altogether, heads tilted up in surprise at the “curtain” drawing shut overhead.
Yu Sheng felt someone tug on his arm.
It was Foxy.
The clouds paused mid-motion. Yu Sheng turned, and Foxy’s smile slowly blossomed as if she’d been waiting for this moment.
She looked back up at the dimming sky, her gold-and-red eyes glittering. “Benefactor, you’re amazing!”
Yu Sheng smiled and patted her head. “I just remembered something. I can’t control the Valley’s original ambient light, but the clouds that came in with the fairy tale fusion are controllable. Pulling the curtains by hand once in a while… isn’t that much work.”
The curtain kept closing, and an artificial night gradually settled over the Valley.
Someone let out a startled cry.
Princess Rapunzel immediately started shouting at the crowd, loud enough to shake the Plaza. “Don’t panic! Don’t panic! We’re testing the lights! It’s not raining—we’re just turning off the sky for a second to see how it looks!”
The tension eased. Then someone by the woodpile yelled, “Leave a crack! Otherwise it’s too dark—we’re working here!”
Yu Sheng quickly looked up. The clouds were almost sealed. With a small adjustment, he left a cross-shaped slit in the middle, just wide enough to spill a beam of “sunlight” down onto the Plaza.
Foxy craned her neck to stare up. After a few seconds of intense silence, she murmured, “It looks like a mushroom…”
Yu Sheng: “…”
Then Foxy pointed at the woodpile. “Benefactor, I want to help thread the skewers!”
Yu Sheng didn’t answer. He just stared at the nine-tailed fox girl whose drool was practically about to drip onto her clothes.
Foxy’s ears drooped immediately. “I-I won’t steal any. It’s raw meat. Eating too much raw meat… not good.”
“Yeah, right. I’d have to be crazy to believe you.” Yu Sheng reached behind her ears and ruffled her fur until she squirmed. “I send you out to buy a bottle of vinegar and you come back with half a bottle left. You expect me to believe you can resist stealing meat? If you really want to help, go play with Irene and the little ones. The kids like you two.”
Foxy thought about it and decided that did sound fun. She nodded brightly. “Oh, okay~”
Yu Sheng remembered something and hurried to add, “Wait! You are not allowed to hang kids on your tail and launch them again. Low-altitude cruising is also not allowed! And no, it doesn’t matter if they cry and beg you!”
Foxy’s ears and tails drooped together. “Oh…”
After Foxy walked off, Little Red Riding Hood leaned in and said, “I suddenly feel like your daily life is pretty exhausting.”
“Foxy lacks basic common sense for living in this world,” Yu Sheng sighed. “But she’s improved a lot lately. She can even go buy things from the little convenience store on the corner by herself. Before, I didn’t even dare let her go out alone. Last week I had a nightmare she got lost, then came back and released an elephant from her tail, telling me she picked up a spirit beast while traveling. Then I had to lead the elephant to the zoo in South City to apologize… Don’t laugh. She really could do that.”
“I’m laughing because I know she really could,” Little Red Riding Hood said, grinning. “It reminds me of when King first arrived. Back then we were terrified it would send troops to attack the pet food shop next to the Orphanage and loot cat stick treats. Thank goodness we later found out it was a reasonable cat. To be fair, that trait isn’t common in cats.”
So they chatted on the Plaza, talking about how a nine-tailed fox from another world learned to survive in the Borderland, about all the absurd, funny things that used to happen at the Orphanage, about the strange legends in LC City—what was true and what was made up—and about the homework and exams waiting for them tomorrow. This time, none of the kids could use “we don’t really have to graduate anyway” as an excuse to slack off.
As they talked, Yu Sheng noticed a new group arriving near the “little town.”
A caravan rolled in, escorted by more than a dozen soldiers and knights. The lead wagon flew a kingdom flag with a kitty head on it. Flatbeds behind carried everything imaginable—elegant old-fashioned tables and benches, doors and windows taken from who-knew-where, full sets of beds and quilts, wardrobes, sofas, chairs, and bedframes…
Wagon after wagon passed through the Valley and into the “town,” clattering down the street in the dim light.
Yu Sheng stared, a little dazed, then turned to Little Red Riding Hood. “What’s going on?”
“Aren’t we building this into a new home?” Little Red Riding Hood smiled. “The Orphanage is gone, and we didn’t have time to bring a lot of things out. We also feel bad always asking the Special Operations Bureau for everything, so King suggested we go ‘shopping’ in each subset. That convoy you just saw… they just finished raiding Snow White’s castle.”
Yu Sheng felt his face go faintly hot. At the words “feel bad always asking,” he exchanged a guilty glance with Princess Rapunzel.
He didn’t have the heart to tell Little Red Riding Hood that Princess Rapunzel had once suggested they “borrow” a resettlement fund from the Special Operations Bureau to rebuild the Orphanage.
He felt even worse admitting he’d doubled the number himself—squeezing out enough money for two Orphanages—then quietly splitting the “loot” between the Hotel and the Orphanage.
And it would probably come out soon.
“Still,” Yu Sheng said, forcing a clumsy change of topic, “at first I thought some of you might choose to live in certain fairy tale subsets. They’re all harmless now, and the castles and palaces look so fancy. If you can get past the mental hurdle, it could actually be kind of awesome.”
The look Little Red Riding Hood gave him turned strange.
“Am I wrong?” Yu Sheng asked.
Little Red Riding Hood sighed. “You didn’t really check the details when you brought the fairy tale fusion over, did you?”
Yu Sheng rubbed the back of his neck. “…Honestly, no. Things were urgent. Who had time? I just yanked off the stages connected to Anka Aila, welded them onto the Valley side, and ran for my life.”
“If you take one look, you’ll understand.” Little Red Riding Hood explained patiently. “Those story stages are generated only for the story. No matter how gorgeous the set is, it’s not suitable for real living. Weird, off-putting things are everywhere. In Snow White’s castle, more than half the rooms are actually solid. In Princess Rapunzel’s tower, seventy percent of the stairs are misaligned with each other. In the Oz kingdom, the entire country has three bathrooms total, and Dorothy built them herself.”
Yu Sheng: “…”
“Of course, now they’re great for exploring and tourism, or for training newcomers,” she added. “They just need renovations.”
Yu Sheng honestly hadn’t considered any of that.
“The good news is, even though each stage is weird and not fit for living, a lot of things inside can still be useful.” Little Red Riding Hood kept going. “King and I checked. Anything moved out from those stages can serve as real building materials and daily supplies. We shipped over a batch of urgently needed furniture and bedding first, and we’re stocking up on materials too. Once everything is on track in a couple of days, Dorothy plans to build a logging camp directly in the Black Forest. And Snow White is going to send titan giants back to keep dismantling her castle. She wants to turn it into a sightseeing ruin within two months. I think there’s a bit of personal emotion in that, but she won’t admit it…”
Without noticing, she’d been talking for a long time.
She finally stopped, a little embarrassed, and looked at Yu Sheng. “Why do you keep staring at me…?”
“Nothing,” Yu Sheng said, smiling. “It just feels nice. It sounds interesting. When you start building houses, call me over to help. The engineering crew here is pulling out tomorrow anyway. Their work is done.”
“Sure,” Little Red Riding Hood said. “Then you can help us reinforce the foundation. We’re not just building houses—we’re building classrooms and a playground too!”
“I can help you build the houses too…”
“You can help us reinforce the foundation!”
“…I mean, I can also—”
“You can help us reinforce the foundation!”
Yu Sheng sighed. “Fine.”