Chapter 144 – This Door Cannot Be Opened from This Side

Little Red Riding Hood appeared to be in a very good mood. Anyone who knew her well would have been shocked to see the expression on her face right now — it had been a very long time since she’d looked this relaxed.

Still, she earnestly corrected Yu Sheng: “My eighteenth birthday is next month. You can’t treat me like a child.”

“Anyone under eighteen is still a kid. I’ll start treating you like an adult after your eighteenth birthday,” Yu Sheng raised an eyebrow. “Don’t forget to save me a piece of cake when the time comes.”

The moment he finished speaking, Hu Li — who had been earnestly studying the little chickens nearby — instantly lifted her head: “I want some too!”

So after Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood had been chatting all this time, this fox girl had only caught that one crucial line.

Little Red Riding Hood laughed, her smile radiant. Then she bared her teeth at Yu Sheng and Hu Li — like a mischievous wolf pup: “Deal. Even if it’s raining knives, you’d better come celebrate my birthday. Whoever doesn’t show up is a dog.”

Yu Sheng grinned, then took out his phone to file a one-click activity report. He turned to the side and casually pulled open a door leading to the orphanage.

The shimmering, ethereal door opened silently, revealing an empty corridor in the orphanage’s West Building on the other side.

“Xiaoxiao! Rapunzel! Time to go home!” Little Red Riding Hood walked to the edge of the platform and called out to the two children — one big, one small — still frolicking on the grass. “It’s going to get dark soon!”

Rapunzel brought Xiaoxiao back to the platform, but the latter kept looking back at the place with reluctance.

“I haven’t played enough,” the little girl pouted. “Can I come back next time?”

“Of course,” Yu Sheng nodded immediately. “I can come visit you all regularly from now on. Maybe someday I’ll even set up a permanent ‘door’ right in your orphanage.”

“Uh, you really don’t have to take it that seriously,” Rapunzel looked a bit embarrassed when she heard this. “That’s too much trouble…”

“No trouble at all. It’s actually one of my current research projects,” Yu Sheng said quite matter-of-factly. “If you ever organize outings or nature trips for the little kids, or sketching excursions for the older ones, feel free to come find me. My valley may not have much else going for it, but there’s plenty of space — those so-called parks in the city can’t compare to what I’ve got here.”

Little Red Riding Hood thought about it for a long time, but still felt that putting the words “nature outing” and “Otherworld” together was just too bizarre.

But she was used to it by now.

The guests departed.

“I don’t like human young,” Eileen came stomping over, looking puffed up with indignation. After straightening her dress, she grabbed Yu Sheng’s pants and started climbing while muttering nonstop. “All that shrieking and fussing, always saying boring things and doing boring things. I just don’t understand what’s so fun about chasing each other around on the grass…”

“But I saw you having quite a good time playing with that kid during the second half,” Yu Sheng said with a smile, turning to glance at Eileen, who had already climbed up to his shoulder. “And you have some nerve calling other people noisy.”

Eileen thought about it for a moment, then latched onto Yu Sheng’s head and started gnawing on it.

But Yu Sheng brushed her off with one hand.

“What are we doing next? Going home?” Eileen dangled in the air, held by the collar by Yu Sheng, her expression one of practiced nonchalance as she asked casually. “It’s not mealtime yet anyway.”

Yu Sheng shook his head. “No rush. I still need to do some… ‘experiments.’ But I need to make a phone call to Baili Qing first.”

As he spoke, he pulled out his phone under Eileen’s puzzled gaze, briefly organized his thoughts, then dialed that number he’d been bothering so often lately.

The other party picked up quickly again: “Hello? Yu Sheng?”

“Ahem, it’s me,” Yu Sheng cleared his throat. “Sorry, things have been chaotic on my end today. I just remembered to call you.”

“It’s fine. What did you want to say?”

Baili Qing’s tone was calm, as if she had already forgotten the “stone-cold poker face” remark from their last call.

“Two things. First, didn’t I mention I have something I’d like the Special Operations Bureau to help appraise tomorrow? One of the items is something I found in the Fairy Tale — Dark Forest,” Yu Sheng said, his mind recalling the ‘suggestion’ that Teacher Su had mentioned to him. “I’d also like to apply for access to some files… about the ‘Fairy Tale.'”

There was two seconds of silence on the other end before Baili Qing’s voice came through: “You mean the archives from when the Special Operations Bureau conducted centralized management of the early ‘Fairy Tale’ victims and carried out preliminary exploration of the ‘Fairy Tale’ Otherworld, correct?”

“You guessed it,” Yu Sheng exhaled. “That batch of materials, from about seventy years ago.”

“I figured as much after learning about your activities today,” Baili Qing said calmly. “I’m just a bit curious — what suddenly sparked your interest in this matter… Is it because of that Spirit Detective called ‘Little Red Riding Hood’?”

“She was the catalyst, but the main reason is that I want to get involved,” Yu Sheng said. “I have serious issues with this Otherworld right now. If I leave it alone, it’ll weigh on my mind. Is that reason sufficient?”

“Sufficient,” Baili Qing replied immediately. “I can arrange it. Someone will come pick you up tomorrow. Before then, the appraisal lab and the archived materials will all be prepared for you.”

Yu Sheng had expected Baili Qing would probably agree, but he hadn’t anticipated such a swift response. He was momentarily stunned before quickly recovering: “Ah, well, thank you.”

The voice on the other end remained without any fluctuation: “It’s nothing. And the second matter?”

“Uh, the second thing isn’t really troublesome, just a bit of a headache…” Yu Sheng suddenly felt a little awkward at this point. “I’m about to do some ‘experiments.'”

“Experiments?”

“Door Opening experiments,” Yu Sheng said, then added, “There might be quite a few attempts. The methods might be somewhat innovative. The scale is hard to say, and the duration is uncertain — I figured the one-click report function on my phone probably wouldn’t cut it, so I’d better give you a call.”

The other end of the line went quiet.

Eileen — who by this point had been set down on the ground by Yu Sheng — immediately began muttering: “She’s cursing, she’s cursing in her head, heh!”

“No problem,” Baili Qing’s voice came through the phone. Though it still sounded calm, perhaps because of the little doll yammering away beside him creating atmosphere, Yu Sheng couldn’t help but feel that the Bureau Chief was speaking through slightly clenched teeth. “I’ll notify the monitoring team to disable the automatic alerts across all zones and switch to manual logging — call me when you’re done on your end.”

The call ended. Yu Sheng looked down at Little Doll, who stood with her hands on her hips and chin tilted upward, looking perfectly righteous.

“She was definitely cursing just now! My spiritual intuition told me so!”

Then she paused, her face shifting to curiosity: “What are you going to experiment with?”

Yu Sheng took a light breath, his hand already extended in the air: “First, let’s see if I can open a door to the Dark Forest from out here.”

An ethereal door rapidly took shape in his hand. The plain, faintly glowing gate trembled slightly in the air.

Yu Sheng narrowed his eyes slightly, recalling the “frequency” he had recorded while inside the Dark Forest. He imparted it to the door before him, then carefully pulled it open.

The next second, the door silently shattered.

Eileen and Hu Li watched this happen and let out soft gasps of surprise in unison.

Immediately after, a wave of intense dizziness crashed over him. Yu Sheng clutched his head and staggered back half a step.

“Benefactor!” Hu Li instantly rushed over and wrapped her tail around Yu Sheng’s body. “Is it a magical backlash?!”

“I’m fine, just got dizzy for a second,” Yu Sheng steadied himself, feeling the dizziness gradually fading from his mind. He waved off Hu Li and Eileen. “The Door Opening failed… That’s a first.”

“It can actually fail?” Eileen stared wide-eyed, looking at Yu Sheng with some concern. “Hey, are you really okay?”

“Really okay.” Yu Sheng forced a grin, wriggled free from Hu Li’s tail, and let out a soft breath. He gazed at the spot where the door had just shattered, brow furrowing in thought.

“That shouldn’t be right,” he murmured to himself after a moment. “I can open a door from inside the Dark Forest to return to the outside. So why can’t I go to the Dark Forest from out here?”

Eileen thought about it and muttered: “Because ‘this door cannot be opened from this side’?”

Yu Sheng shuddered the moment he heard it: “Don’t say that! I’m allergic to that phrase!”

“Could it be because this valley is part of Benefactor’s ‘dwelling’?” Hu Li also thought hard about it and spoke up, though without much confidence. “This place isn’t really the normal ‘mortal world’ after all. Could that be a factor?”

Eileen’s eyes lit up: “Hey, you dumb fox, your brain actually works sometimes!”

“Hu Li has a point,” Yu Sheng nodded in quick agreement. “Let’s go try it ‘outside.'”

As he spoke, he was already pulling open a door leading to a deserted alley near No. 66 Wutong Road.

A short while later, Yu Sheng sat on the curb near his front door, head spinning, seeing double when he looked at the utility pole across the street.

Even the gaunt, ghostly figure standing beside the utility pole appeared to have three heads.

The evidence proved that the failure of the Door Opening process had nothing to do with whether one was in actual “real-world space.” Any attempt to open a door directly from the “outside” into the “Dark Forest” would encounter the same problem.

Dejected, the group returned to the valley.

“Looks like it really can’t be done,” Eileen said, sitting on Yu Sheng’s shoulder with both hands propping up her cheeks. “You can only open a door from inside the Dark Forest to get out. You can’t open a door from outside to get in. The only way to enter is through the ‘Dream’ route — I think this is related to the Dark Forest being fundamentally a ‘consciousness space.’ It’s like how you can wake up from a dream, but trying to physically ‘walk’ from the real world into a dream doesn’t make sense…”

Yu Sheng said nothing.

He listened to Eileen’s analysis while similar speculations turned in his own mind.

But something felt off.

The “one-way nature” of the Dark Forest… was it really just because of that? Really just because it was a pure “consciousness space”?

Then what about the “Grandmother Wolf” he had brought out of the Dark Forest, and that slip of paper?