Chapter 136 – Traces of the Past

Grandmother Wolf lay on the bed in the cabin, hiding its claws, ears, and tail. It swallowed Little Red Riding Hood in one gulp, and then…

The hunter never appeared.

What came instead was a cook.

Yu Sheng felt something struggle violently in an instant. In the air, the invisible Grandmother Wolf suddenly let out a shrill howl. Fresh blood appeared from nowhere where the small knife had sliced, and the cut fur, fat, and muscle curled and tore apart, materializing in midair along the path of the blade. Meanwhile, a gust of pressure and a sense of threat suddenly emerged from beside him—it was the wolf raising its forepaws and head—

Unfortunately for it, this was not the evil wolf from the deepest depths of Little Red Riding Hood’s fears, the one that had grown larger than a house.

It was merely what a six-year-old girl imagined a big bad wolf would look like—it was strong, but not as strong as Yu Sheng. It was fast, but not as fast as a grown adult. It was ferocious… but Yu Sheng had handled uglier cuts of meat.

Yu Sheng shot out his hand, seizing the invisible wolf’s head, then used his arm to press its neck down hard against the small bed. His other hand continued carving open the beast’s flesh with the small knife. Amid the spreading blood and increasingly shrill howls, the wolf’s form became visible—much larger than an ordinary wolf, large enough to swallow a child whole, with a lean, elongated body dressed in a ridiculous apron and floppy bonnet, a hideous and twisted skull, and a swollen belly.

Now it was nearly dead. The ferocity in its eyes was slowly fading, its throat rattling with dying gasps, its limbs twitching as its final struggle neared its end.

“Easy now, easy… it’s almost over…” Yu Sheng leaned down, gazing into the evil wolf’s eyes. His expression carried a hint of delight, his words gentle and expectant. “I have to cut carefully—after all, I mustn’t hurt the child. But you can’t struggle too hard either. If the muscles tense up too much, it’ll really affect your usefulness going forward… There. It’s open.”

The big bad wolf’s belly was completely split open. As a strange, membrane-like structure was neatly severed by the blade’s second pass, a thin little girl tumbled out from inside.

The girl’s eyes were shut tight, her body untouched by a single drop of blood, as if she had merely fallen asleep on this little bed, trapped in a dream she couldn’t wake from.

Little Red Riding Hood immediately stepped forward, catching the girl with both hands before she could tumble to the floor. At the same time, she couldn’t help but widen her eyes, staring at the big bad wolf lying gutted on the bed with its limbs still faintly twitching, and at Yu Sheng, who was putting away his small knife. “You… how did you see it? Why couldn’t I see it before?”

“It’s hard to explain—I currently have some extra ‘perspectives’ that let me observe certain things only the wolves of the forest would know,” Yu Sheng said, wiping the blood from his small knife on the wolf’s fur before turning to Little Red Riding Hood. “As for why you couldn’t see it… probably because this wasn’t your Grandmother Wolf?”

Little Red Riding Hood froze for a moment, a trace of contemplation surfacing on her face.

But just as she was about to say something more, a chorus of howls suddenly erupted from outside the cabin, interrupting her train of thought.

Seven or eight wolves made of shadows instantly materialized around her, confronting the howling outside the cabin with equally hoarse and terrifying howls of their own, protecting their “master.”

“The pack’s been disturbed. They don’t sound too happy,” Yu Sheng said, immediately raising his head while glancing from the corner of his eye at Little Red Riding Hood, whose entire body had gone tense. “You’d better take her and get out of here—we’ve already cut her out of Grandmother Wolf’s belly. Once she returns to the real world, the child will wake up.”

“But it’s not time yet!” Little Red Riding Hood said anxiously, her words tumbling out rapidly. “You have to stay in the Dark Forest for a certain amount of time before you can leave…”

Yu Sheng frowned and immediately called out to the puppet in his mind. “Eileen, pull them out by force—use that thing you’re best at.”

“Okay,” Eileen responded at once. “But what about you? You’re not leaving?”

“I’m going to observe a bit longer, see what other changes are happening here. Don’t worry about me.”

“Oh… if you end up dying your way out, give me a heads-up first.”

“Can’t you say something nicer for once!”

Little Red Riding Hood didn’t know what Yu Sheng was doing, but she instinctively sensed that something had abruptly appeared in her connection with the Dark Forest—some kind of… interference. An external force was rapidly peeling her away from this place. The unknown change made her speak up reflexively: “What are you doi—”

“Eileen will get you both out,” Yu Sheng said, nodding to her. “Though the process might be a bit intense—when you throw up later, try not to do it on me.”

Little Red Riding Hood: “Huh?”

Then she and the girl Xiaoxiao both vanished from the cabin at the same time.

Along with Little Red Riding Hood, the seven or eight wolves condensed from shadows also disappeared.

Yet the howling outside the cabin didn’t fade with Little Red Riding Hood’s departure. Instead, it instantly grew denser, closer, and more… hostile.

“So they were coming for me after all.” Yu Sheng frowned, completely unsurprised. He knew that here, he was a “story-breaker,” and according to the rules the fairy tale had exhibited, those who broke the story would certainly not be welcome here.

Especially not an adult who broke the story. Fairy tales disliked adults most of all.

But after maintaining his vigilance for several seconds, Yu Sheng noticed that although the howling outside had drawn much closer, it ultimately stopped at a certain distance. The invisible wolf pack merely circled out there, yet for some reason did not directly “attack” the cabin.

Yu Sheng furrowed his brow slightly and surveyed the cabin once more—this cabin hung with red cloaks everywhere, where the firelight and candlelight both seemed to have been extinguished many years ago.

He still remembered what the squirrel had said before, and recalled the condition of the cabin where he had previously taken shelter—once the candlelight and firelight went out, the cabin would be swallowed by the forest, just like those paths that could be consumed by the forest at any moment. The fundamental nature of these “shelters” seemed to be nothing more than “illusions” temporarily illuminated by firelight. But what was the deal with this cabin?

Was it really as Little Red Riding Hood had said—that this was “where the story ultimately ends”? And so it would never be swallowed, but would instead remain forever sunken in the deepest reaches of the forest, becoming the burial ground for every Little Red Riding Hood?

The howling outside was rather irritating, but Yu Sheng forced himself to ignore the disturbance. Now that he had gotten the people out safely, his mind was much more at ease, and he decided to thoroughly investigate this place.

He carefully searched every corner of the cabin, even lifting each red cloak to check whether anything was hidden beneath them.

He found a stick and used it to rake through the stone-cold fireplace, carefully examining its ashes.

Finally, he simply shoved the dead big bad wolf off the bed and flipped the entire bed over.

Yu Sheng’s eyes narrowed suddenly.

After lifting the small bed, he had found something.

On the floorboards beneath the bed, there were many fine, winding marks—patterns that looked like scratched engravings.

Yu Sheng pressed himself flat against the floor, his eyes nearly touching the boards as he carefully examined the scratches.

The light inside the cabin was dim, but his eyes glowed with a faint, wolf-like luminescence. He could see that those marks were crooked, messy handwriting—extremely chaotic and distorted, almost impossible to make out.

He strained to read them for a long time, managing to piece together only a few scattered, broken fragments of information—

“…is alive… it’s dreaming… hidden in all… shared… common…”

Yu Sheng’s brow furrowed tightly. The information in the text was far too fragmentary to discern anything meaningful, so he didn’t waste time speculating. He simply extended his fingers, slowly tracing the surface of those scratched marks, trying to deduce how these characters had been “carved.”

They seemed to have been clawed out, little by little, with very sharp fingernails.

Human fingers—but those nails must have been very hard, very sharp. Like a wolf’s.

He continued tracing downward, noticing that the later scratches grew increasingly tiny and shallow.

“So tired, so cold, so hungry…

“Can’t remember… how long…

“Wolves are outside.

“I am…”

The scattered, broken words were mixed in among scratches that had become almost impossible to read. The final marks were so faint they were nothing more than the thinnest of lines, as if the person who had carved them had finally exhausted all her strength and, after writing those last two characters—”I am”—never moved again.

Yu Sheng’s brow was locked tight as he slowly rose to his feet.

He thought this must have been left behind by one of the past Little Red Riding Hoods—he didn’t have many alternative answers on that front.

But which one? Why had she left these behind? Why here?

If this truly was the place where every Little Red Riding Hood ultimately “ended,” then the one who had left this information—how had she managed to maintain her sanity long enough to write these things in her final moments? What had she discovered?

Yu Sheng’s gaze fell once more upon the beginning of those words.

“…is alive…”

This likely meant that “something” was alive—but what exactly? What was alive? What was dreaming?

Yu Sheng raised his head.

The big bad wolf’s corpse had finally stopped twitching entirely. The blood in its belly had nearly drained dry. Soon, it would make for very good meat.

And not far away, at some point, a thin layer of pale starlight had begun filtering through the cabin’s window.

The howling around the cabin had vanished at some unknown moment. Now, outside, there was nothing but a silence as deep as death.