Chapter 170 – Little Red Riding Hood’s Grandmother Wolf

The viciously shaped mace, trailing a shrieking wind, slammed hard onto that thin, elongated claw, producing a muffled “splat.” Yu Sheng watched as the claw split apart like thick mud, hissing with smoke. The sensation of the impact felt less like striking flesh and blood, and more like hitting rotten cotton and wood.

Then, in the blink of an eye, the twisted, gaunt monster standing in the doorway began to swell violently, emitting a piercing shriek. Its entire body expanded and proliferated in every direction — it had clearly been completely enraged.

But Yu Sheng was already prepared for this.

“Eileen! Now!”

Endless black threads spread out from behind Yu Sheng in an instant, growing wildly through the air as if possessed of independent life, multiplying, then silently piercing into the gaunt monster’s flesh. The creature surged in growth, and the cold spider silk surged with it. Within a few breaths, the two were locked in a deadlock, achieving a kind of equilibrium. The silk pulled taut with an unsettling crackling sound, and Grandmother Wolf was forced to stop moving.

Eileen stood inside the wooden house, both hands raised high. Her small frame seemed cast into the floor itself, bracing against the enormous force.

Just as Yu Sheng had predicted — if a body made of clay and lotus root could allow Eileen to briefly withstand The Hunger’s backlash, then a skeleton made of rebar could let her unleash truly astonishing strength. The improvement from changing the raw materials grew exponentially once they were converted into a puppet’s form.

Yu Sheng charged out of the wooden house.

He gripped that vicious club, his figure agile as the wind. A single step cracked the ground beneath him into a web of deep fissures. He lunged at the immobilized Grandmother Wolf, and the mace in his hands smashed into its chest with devastating force. The violent recoil nearly tore the rebar from his grip, while the monster’s chest was blasted open, leaving a horrifying gaping hole.

There was no flesh and blood inside the hole — only formless mist, churning mud, pale bones, and a rapidly beating black heart that spewed toxic substances.

Yu Sheng landed back on the ground from the recoil, steadied himself briefly, and looked up at the Grandmother Wolf that towered two or three times his height, staring at the terrifying breach in its chest.

This was “Little Red Riding Hood’s Grandmother Wolf” — a monster steeped in a young girl’s fear, one that had grown alongside her from childhood to the present day.

Compared to this creature, the Grandmother Wolf that had once devoured Xiaoxiao was clearly far weaker. That one could at best be considered a slightly larger wolf, whereas the one before Yu Sheng now had clearly obtained power beyond the bounds of reason.

The next second, Yu Sheng felt a sudden spike of danger.

Even though the Grandmother Wolf before him was still tightly bound by Eileen’s threads and appeared to have no ability to attack, he threw himself to the side without the slightest hesitation.

Almost the instant he dove away, a sharp, ice-cold “wind” swept past the back of his skull. He heard a piercing whistle behind him, and the ground where he had just been standing — along with a tree stump beside it — was sliced open by some invisible force, leaving a terrifying gash.

“What the hell…” Yu Sheng whipped his head around in alarm, and from the corner of his eye caught a shadow rapidly retracting.

The next second, realization struck him. He looked up and shouted toward the house, “Eileen! Its shadow!”

Night had already fallen over the dense forest, starlight blanketing the sky. Under the cold stellar glow, the shadow at the giant wolf’s feet was growing wildly.

Although the black threads had bound the wolf’s body, its shadow had now spread far enough to nearly engulf the entire wooden house. Inside that shadow, countless chaotic, blurred silhouettes churned and roiled, then struggled and whispered their way above the surface, taking shape before Yu Sheng’s eyes.

There were thin, elongated wolf shadows, featureless humanoid figures, children tottering forward, and adults who turned and walked away without hesitation. Some were wailing, some were begging, some simply stood there in silence, and others fixed Yu Sheng with gazes full of resentment or malice.

These things that emerged from the shadow lingered around the house, constantly collapsing and dissolving, only to regenerate endlessly from beneath Grandmother Wolf’s feet.

They seemed to be trying to shake Yu Sheng’s resolve — though he wasn’t entirely sure about that.

Because he didn’t recognize any of these shadows.

Then Eileen acted again from inside the house. Dense black spider silk appeared, pouring from the front door, flooding from the windows, even surging from every crack in the walls, from the chimney, from the seams where the roof met the walls. The scene looked as though the wooden house had sprouted countless strands of hair in the darkness. These “hairs” wove through the night, forming a crisscrossing web of spider silk that silently settled over Grandmother Wolf and the shadow at its feet.

A dark “blade” was extending from the shadow, trying to stab toward Yu Sheng, but was caught by the spider silk, freezing abruptly in midair.

Immediately after, pale blue Fox Fire appeared in Yu Sheng’s field of vision. The flames spread ferociously along the paths woven by the spider silk, “overflowing” from the wooden house like running water, rapidly burning away the shadows bound by the silk.

Hu Li had learned her lesson from the museum. Instead of trying to fight shadow-state enemies with physical attacks, she used her flames — and it was proving highly effective.

Yu Sheng moved.

With the giant wolf and its shadow suppressed by Eileen and Hu Li working together, he finally took action. He lunged once more at the giant wolf’s chest — at the gaping hole he had smashed open earlier. Layer upon layer of black threads interwove in midair, precisely keeping pace with every step Yu Sheng took. Eileen had already sensed his intent and woven a staircase leading to the giant wolf’s chest. At the top of that staircase was the frantically beating heart.

Yu Sheng charged up. That rapidly pounding heart became the largest target in his vision.

He honestly had no idea whether this thing was actually Grandmother Wolf’s weak point, but since there was something this conspicuous bouncing away right in front of him, he was absolutely going to go up there and give it a good wallop regardless of what it was.

The silk-bound giant wolf let out a deep howl. Overwhelming malice and fury solidified into near-physical pressure, crushing in from all directions.

Yu Sheng immediately knew he had probably guessed right.

He stepped onto the final stair and lunged at the heart.

In this life-or-death moment, part of the giant wolf’s body forcibly broke free of the spider silk — its shattered chest began writhing violently. Mud-like “flesh” pressed against the silk’s restraint and began forcibly regenerating. Pale bones grew from the ribcage, layering over one another, trying to shield the heart.

Yu Sheng swung the mace in his hands and brought it crashing down on those interlocking, regenerating ribs.

The ribs regrew with a grating screech, and then Yu Sheng’s mace smashed down again, shattering those bones to pieces.

He hammered blow after blow, the savage club — welded with blades, iron nails, and jagged rebar — swinging so fast it left afterimages. Like chiseling through stubborn rock, he smashed and gouged at the giant wolf’s chest. Layered, phantom voices seemed to echo in his ears, emanating from the wolf’s ribcage, from that heart, from the entire Dark Forest. They whispered to him in the language of wolves, in the language of humans, in the language of the forest — beguiling, leading, even disguising themselves as his subconscious, repeating over and over —

Don’t you feel fear?

Have you never hesitated?

Not even a moment’s doubt?

But Yu Sheng merely raised the “weapon” in his hands high once more.

“By all reason, I should be afraid,” he said, baring his teeth in a grin, eyes alight with excitement as he stared at the now-exposed heart, “but ‘reason’ is in my hands —”

The “reason” in his hands came crashing down. The blades and nails on it should by all rights have gone dull, snapped, and warped from all these impacts — but at this moment they seemed like indestructible, supremely hard and resilient things. Not only were they completely undamaged, they shattered the wolf’s ribs — harder than steel — into fragments.

The mace lodged between the giant wolf’s ribs, and endless black spider silk instantly filled every remaining gap, completely blocking the hole’s regeneration.

Yu Sheng reached in and ripped out that basketball-sized, still-beating dark heart with a mighty heave.

The heart pulsed violently, splitting open with crack after crack. Highly toxic substances gushed from the fissures. Some of it splashed onto Yu Sheng’s arms, effortlessly corroding his flesh, seeping venom into his veins.

Yu Sheng felt as though his insides were boiling. Wolf venom seared through his blood vessels, and the Dark Forest’s malice traveled along his arteries, stabbing all the way toward his heart.

But instead, he broke into a delighted smile.

“Yes, yes, just like that… You seep into me, same as I seep into you. Either way works…” He clutched Grandmother Wolf’s heart, squeezing the violently toxic thing that was rapidly killing him tight against his chest. “I was wondering how I’d find you… How nice — you came to find me instead.”

He heard faint crying — the wailing of an infant, as if it could pierce the soul, echoing through his mind.

He even felt as though the entire Dark Forest was crying. The sound had been there from the very beginning — he simply couldn’t hear it before touching Grandmother Wolf’s heart.

The heart, coursing with wolf venom, convulsed. Its beating finally began to weaken, and the toxins flowing from the cracks gradually thinned.

Those toxins now flowed through Yu Sheng’s veins — they were surrounded by Yu Sheng.

Grandmother Wolf’s body began to shrink, deflating like a balloon. In the blink of an eye it went from house-sized to just over two meters tall, then continued to contract and deform, collapsing like a puddle of mud.

Yu Sheng fell from midair to the ground. Still clutching the now-shriveled heart, he landed at the doorstep of the wooden house alongside the mace that had fallen from Grandmother Wolf’s chest.

(End of Chapter)