Chapter 132 – The True Meaning of Death

Both Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel thought something was wrong with Yu Sheng’s head.

“She died an hour ago!” Rapunzel stared wide-eyed. “All her organs—including her heart and brain—showed no signs of life long ago! We ran the checks. She’s obviously dead…”

“No, she ‘isn’t’ dead—at least not yet,” Yu Sheng shook his head still, the confusion on his face gradually fading as his expression grew resolute. “I don’t know how to explain it to you, but I can feel it… She’s still on this side of the living. She hasn’t crossed over yet.”

As he spoke, he once again pressed his fingers to the blood marks on the girl’s neck.

In a fleeting vision of black, white, and gray, he felt as though he had come to “understand” something, but the sensation vanished in an instant—when he reached back to grasp it, it was already gone.

Little Red Riding Hood seemed to think of something: “You… can’t perform ‘communion with the dead’ like you did at the museum? So you think she’s still alive?”

Yu Sheng hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

Little Red Riding Hood’s eyes widened. She instinctively doubted Yu Sheng’s judgment, yet somewhere deep down, an impractical sliver of hope lingered: “But…”

Yu Sheng waved his hand firmly, silencing both her and Rapunzel, who had been about to speak.

“You don’t understand. It’s not just because I can’t perform ‘communion with the dead’—I… can feel that she’s still here.” As he spoke, he began examining the wounds on the girl’s body. Then he suddenly pulled a small knife from his pocket. Under the astonished gazes of Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel, he sliced open his own palm and smeared his blood over the fine, dense cracks on the girl’s arms. “Do you understand what I mean? I’m saying that from my perspective, she’s alive and well—just asleep, sleeping inside a dream that’s about to end in death…”

Eileen seemed to finally realize something. She leaped straight out of Hu Li’s arms and ran to Yu Sheng’s side: “Did you ‘see’ something again?!”

“See… yes, you could put it that way. I suddenly understood some things,” Yu Sheng muttered, smearing his blood in what looked like an act of self-harm. He suddenly looked up at Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel—they had instinctively felt uneasy upon seeing his actions and moved to stop him, but froze in unison under his gaze. “Keep your distance. Yes, stay right there. The balance is extremely fragile—she’s about to fall to the other side…”

Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel stepped back half a pace, their questioning eyes fixed on Yu Sheng.

“Do you know how bees determine whether a companion is ‘dead’?” Yu Sheng suddenly asked them.

Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel exchanged bewildered glances, unsure why he would abruptly bring up such a question.

“Pheromones,” Yu Sheng continued without waiting for their answer, speaking as if to himself. “The most direct way bees identify a companion’s death is through pheromones—a dying bee releases volatile substances from its body, which are then detected by the living bees. They come to ‘bury’ their dead companion, clearing the corpse from the hive. This effectively prevents the spread of disease within the colony… But this method of identification has a problem: from our perspective, ‘pheromones’ and ‘death’ don’t always equate.

“If we artificially apply those specific volatile substances to a living bee, then even if it’s perfectly alive and kicking—even if it struggles desperately inside the hive—its companions will still treat it as a dead bee and forcibly dispose of it like a corpse. Because to the bee’s limited nervous system, a fellow bee that gives off the ‘smell of death’ is a corpse. Even if it’s fighting with all its might, it’s still a corpse—they simply don’t understand any markers of death beyond pheromones.

“But for the survival environment that bees face, this method of judgment is actually sufficient. Humans’ idle ‘interference’ is something beyond natural conditions—and bees, within their limited scope of evolution, were never meant to account for such things.”

Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel listened to Yu Sheng in stunned silence, watching as the blood silently seeped into the small “corpse” on the bed. An inexplicable… shudder quietly rose from the depths of their hearts.

“You…” Little Red Riding Hood finally broke the silence, swallowing hard and looking at Yu Sheng with an almost unfamiliar gaze. “You’re saying that we are…”

“Bees.” Yu Sheng looked up, his gaze calm as he regarded the Red-Clothed Girl before him.

He lowered his head again. His blood-stained palm gently brushed across the forehead of the child named “Xiaoxiao,” leaving a streak of vivid red that vanished almost instantly.

“Faced with ‘interference’ beyond your comprehension, the disguised ‘death’ leaves you bewildered—the heart stops beating, the brain shuts down, the nervous system collapses, blood ceases to flow and gradually cools, then cells decay on a massive scale, enzymes deactivate, and the body begins to digest itself… People regard these as the hallmarks of death. If a person exhibits these characteristics, then they are dead…”

Yu Sheng thought to himself—he was the same way. When he matched these “characteristics,” he was dead.

“Dead” in the eyes of ordinary people.

But he had merely continued living in a way that ordinary people could neither observe nor comprehend, waiting for the short-term “symptom” known as “death” to recede from his body.

“…Perhaps I’ve never actually died and come back to life.”

He murmured softly.

The small corpse lay quietly on the bed. As the blood seeped in, Yu Sheng gradually came to understand her “death”—and his own “death” as well.

He noticed how quiet everything had become around him, so he looked up—only to see Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel standing off to the side with nearly cowering postures, their gazes filled with unease as they looked at him. Eileen stood beside him, her head tilted upward; her eyes held no unease, though she did look quite puzzled.

Only Hu Li showed neither confusion nor unease. Though she couldn’t understand what was being said either, she nodded with a face full of comprehension, her voice tinged with admiration: “The benefactor seems to be comprehending the Great Dao.”

Eileen was dumbstruck: “…You’ll just accept anything, won’t you?!”

“We have three hours—possibly less,” Yu Sheng said suddenly.

Little Red Riding Hood was startled: “Three hours? For what?”

“To pull her back.” Yu Sheng raised his hand and pointed at the thin, frail figure on the bed. “The connection my blood established isn’t strong enough. She doesn’t know which way to go. We’ll need some ‘manual intervention’ next—Eileen, I need your help.”

The little doll didn’t process it right away: “Ah… huh? Help how?”

“She’s still dreaming—a dream that doesn’t rely on brain function,” Yu Sheng said casually. “Remember how you found me in the Dark Forest? Similar process. You find her, then send me in too.”

Only then did Eileen catch on: “Oh, oh! Easy enough. Just find somewhere to lie down—sitting works too. I’ve guided this once before, so you don’t need to do anything. Just stay calm and clear your mind.”

By then, Little Red Riding Hood had also caught up—though her head was still swimming with questions, at least now she knew what Yu Sheng intended to do: “Wait, you’re going to voluntarily enter the ‘Dark Forest’? To find her?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going with you!” Little Red Riding Hood said immediately, then quickly added, “I know that place better than you do!”

Yu Sheng frowned and turned to Eileen: “Can you bring one more person along?”

“Should be fine,” Eileen thought for a moment, then nodded with reasonable confidence. “She already has a deep connection to the ‘Dark Forest,’ so it wouldn’t take any effort on my part to maintain a link. In theory, I’d only need to guide you both to make sure you enter together.”

“Then let’s try it.” Yu Sheng nodded without hesitation, sat down cross-legged right beside the small bed, then patted the ground next to him and looked up at Little Red Riding Hood. “Sit here.”

Little Red Riding Hood gave a quiet “mm” and walked over in silence, sitting down beside Yu Sheng.

Rapunzel looked somewhat worried: “Will this really work? We’ve… never done this before.”

Little Red Riding Hood was silent for a few seconds, then turned to glance at Yu Sheng beside her: “Let’s try.”

Pitch-black threads materialized from thin air in Eileen’s hands, then spread wildly through the entire space, weaving themselves into a vast and intricate web in the blink of an eye. The little doll carefully controlled this “web,” draping it gently over the small bed.

The ends of the threads dangled down from above like countless tentacles extending from some bizarre jellyfish, silently burrowing into the dreamer’s body.

Rapunzel instinctively stepped back half a pace, then turned to look at Hu Li, who still wore an utterly calm expression beside her. She finally couldn’t help asking: “Are all you people from the ‘Inn’… this bizarre?”

Hu Li had absolutely no idea what the other meant. She simply watched Eileen’s wondrous operation with a look of genuine appreciation and nodded in admiration: “Eileen could become a Weaving Immortal someday.”

That was the last sentence Yu Sheng heard before sinking into the dream.

And the final thought in his mind was—Eileen seemed to have grown stronger.

The next second, a feeling of disorientation and falling hit him simultaneously. He felt himself plummeting through the darkness alongside another consciousness, and when a solid surface pressed up against him from below, he slowly opened his eyes.

The boundless Dark Forest stretched out before him.

(End of Chapter)