Chapter 139 – The Puzzling Piece of Paper

The dream imagery the little girl described made Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood—two people who had just returned from the cabin deep in the Dark Forest—furrow their brows in unison, their expressions serious as they sank into thought.

Several seconds passed before Yu Sheng was the first to look up and break the silence. “Could you make out what those people looked like? Besides telling you to run, did those people in red cloaks say anything else to you?”

But Xiaoxiao only shook her head, looking nervous again.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. If you can’t remember, don’t force it,” Yu Sheng said, quickly waving his hands when he saw her reaction, trying to soothe the still-shaken little girl. “Whenever you do remember something, just tell us then.”

Xiaoxiao blinked her eyes and hesitantly nodded, though it was hard to tell how much she’d actually taken in.

“Take her to the East Building classroom to check in first, and fill Teacher Su in on the situation while you’re at it,” Little Red Riding Hood said to Rapunzel beside her. “But no classes this afternoon—let her rest properly in her room.”

“Okay.”

Rapunzel took Xiaoxiao’s hand, and the two figures—one tall, one short—walked out of the room just like that.

The room fell quiet again. Little Red Riding Hood stared in the direction they had gone, pressing her lips together as though lost in thought. After a long while, she finally broke the silence softly. “This child is the first one to be brought into this room and walk back out alive.”

She looked up, her gaze settling quietly on Yu Sheng.

“Thank you. Fairy Tale owes you a great favor. From now on, I will always be your most steadfast friend.”

“This is only the beginning. My goal is to deal with the entire Fairy Tale Otherworld, and the first step is at least getting rid of that Dark Forest.” Yu Sheng spoke with a completely serious expression.

“Is something like that really possible?” Little Red Riding Hood couldn’t help but ask when she heard him bring up this goal again. But this time, her skepticism clearly carried a hint of wavering—Yu Sheng’s feat of rescuing a “dead” child from the Dark Forest and bringing her back to the human world had obviously dealt a massive shock to her worldview, to the point that some of her deeply entrenched beliefs about the Otherworld were beginning to falter.

Yu Sheng didn’t answer the question directly. Instead, he gazed quietly into the girl’s eyes and spoke only after a moment. “No amount of explanation compares to just showing you—once we’ve confirmed the child’s condition is completely stable, I’ll take you somewhere.”

Little Red Riding Hood nodded with a mix of curiosity and puzzlement. Then Yu Sheng reached into his pocket and fished out a grimy piece of paper that looked very old.

“This fell off that ‘Hunter.’ Do you know what it is?”

Little Red Riding Hood’s expression immediately turned serious. She took the paper fragment with great care and examined it closely for a long time, but in the end she still furrowed her brows. “…I’m no expert on item identification, and I’ve never seen anything like this in the Dark Forest either…”

Yu Sheng wasn’t particularly disappointed by this answer. He simply tucked the paper fragment away carefully again, while asking curiously, “How much have you dealt with this ‘Hunter’?”

“Not much. What appears most often in the Dark Forest are wolves, followed by cabins and the Small Path. The hunter only appears when Grandmother Wolf shows up, and only for very brief moments each time,” Little Red Riding Hood said thoughtfully, patiently explaining to Yu Sheng. “And saying I’ve ‘dealt with’ it isn’t really accurate… In fact, every time I’ve been ‘active’ in the Dark Forest, it hasn’t been like today.”

“Not like today?” Yu Sheng raised an eyebrow. “Then what was it like?”

“Dazed and muddled, like a series of disconnected dreams. Most of the time I could barely control myself, and my identity wasn’t always ‘Little Red Riding Hood,'” the girl sighed softly, her voice low. “When things were particularly bad, I would even find myself running through the forest from the wolf’s perspective. And when encountering the hunter, I would occasionally observe the wolf pack from its perspective—it was as if I simultaneously possessed many identities. Human, wolf, grandmother, hunter. My sense of self would jump between these identities, and recently, my time as a ‘wolf’ has obviously been increasing. The frequency of the hunter’s appearances… has been increasing along with it.”

This was the first time she had described her experiences in the Dark Forest to Yu Sheng in such detail.

Yu Sheng listened with a deepening frown. From Little Red Riding Hood’s description, the first word that came to mind was—engulfment.

Through those disconnected dreams and chaotically shifting perspectives, through the repeated destabilization and replacement of her sense of self, Little Red Riding Hood was clearly losing her true “self” bit by bit.

What was devouring her wasn’t just the wolf, but the entire Dark Forest—becoming a wolf was merely a “manifestation” of this process.

“Sounds like a total mess,” Eileen remarked with characteristic bluntness.

“Yes, a total mess, and that kind of chaotic experience is the norm for being trapped in the Dark Forest,” Little Red Riding Hood spread her hands, wearing a self-deprecating smile. “Something like today—walking through the forest this lucidly, then leaving just as lucidly, and being able to immediately confirm my human identity upon waking—for me, that’s actually an incredibly surreal experience. In my memory… probably only back when I was little, before the Dark Forest had affected me so deeply, was there anything similar.”

As she spoke, she shook her head, and her gaze fell on Yu Sheng once more.

“I’m sorry I can’t be of more help. I know very little about the ‘Hunter.’ Most of the time, my contact with it lasts only as long as a single gunshot. But I do have a suggestion.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“You could have the people at the Special Operations Bureau’s appraisal division take a look at that piece of paper,” Little Red Riding Hood said earnestly. “They might not know anything about the ‘Hunter’ either, but their professional equipment could at least help you analyze more details from that paper. Also, didn’t you pick up some kind of ‘metal component’ in your house before that seemed to come from nowhere? You could have them appraise that too while you’re at it.”

“Good suggestion,” Yu Sheng agreed, nodding. “I’ll give Baili Qing a call later and have her help arrange it.”

The moment Little Red Riding Hood heard him drop the name of a certain important figure so casually, a subtle change flickered across her face. She hesitated before offering a reminder. “Um, well… you shouldn’t need to contact the Bureau Chief of the Special Operations Bureau directly for something like this, right? Can’t you just go through Xu Jiali and the others?”

Yu Sheng thought about it, recalling how the last time he’d called Baili Qing in the middle of the night, the very next day Frontier Communications had pushed a hot update adding a Door Opening application button. He had to admit Little Red Riding Hood’s reminder seemed to have a point.

But just as this thought crossed his mind, before he could say anything, he felt a vibration in his pants pocket, followed by the sound of his phone ringing.

Yu Sheng pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen, where the name “Baili Qing” was prominently displayed.

Little Red Riding Hood peeked at it from beside him and froze, her expression visibly becoming exquisitely subtle.

Yu Sheng tugged at the corner of his mouth, gave Little Red Riding Hood an awkward smile, and answered the phone, holding it to his ear. “Ahem, good afternoon, Bureau Chief Baili.”

“Just call me Baili Qing,” came that familiar, cool voice from the other end. “The monitoring department just detected a very unusual spatiotemporal displacement. They can’t find the cause anywhere, so I thought I’d ask you—was it something on your end?”

Yu Sheng’s expression grew even more awkward. He laughed sheepishly. “Uh, it was indeed a door I just opened on my end… I was in the Otherworld at the time, had no phone signal, and didn’t get a chance to file a report.”

Two seconds of silence from the other end. “…The monitoring signal was different from the usual ones. Were you testing some kind of ‘new feature’?”

The monitoring signal was different from usual? Yu Sheng’s mind stirred, and he quickly connected it to the special nature of Fairy Tale as an Otherworld. He spoke up immediately. “Not exactly. I went somewhere special—I just got back from the Dark Forest, a subset of the Fairy Tale Otherworld.”

Another two seconds of silence from the phone.

Whether it was his imagination or not, Yu Sheng always felt that each of Baili Qing’s silences seemed packed with a hundred and eighty things she wanted to say—but was holding back.

“Forgive my curiosity—what were you doing entering Fairy Tale?” The voice of the female Bureau Chief finally came through the earpiece again, her tone somewhat peculiar.

Yu Sheng’s brain short-circuited, and before he knew what he was thinking, the words tumbled out. “…Would you believe me if I said I was visiting a neighbor?”

Baili Qing’s response came even faster than his blurting. “Ah, so someone you know lives over there—”

Yu Sheng cut her off before she could finish. “No, a child went missing, and I went in to help find the child.”

Baili Qing: “…”

Every silence from the Bureau Chief was so deafeningly loud. Yu Sheng suspected these two seconds contained far more than a hundred and eighty unspoken sentences.

A moment later, he clearly heard a soft intake of breath from the other end, and then Baili Qing’s tone remained calm. “Did you find the child?”

“Uh, yes,” Yu Sheng said, feeling cold sweat forming just from this one phone call. “A wolf had carried her off, but she survived.”

He paused briefly, then continued. “Oh right, since you’re already on the phone—there’s actually something I wanted to ask the Special Operations Bureau for help with.”

This time Baili Qing responded quite promptly. “Sure, go ahead.”

“I brought something out of the Dark Forest. It’s suspected to be an item carried by an entity called the ‘Hunter’ that was generated within the forest. I was hoping you could help identify it. Also, I have another item that materialized in a room at No. 66 Wutong Road, and I’d like you to take a look at that too, if it’s convenient.”

Silence from the other end again. “…”

But this time Baili Qing’s silence was brief, and a response came quickly. “No problem. I’ll arrange it. If the samples show no signs of self-disintegration, can you wait an extra day? The more comprehensive analysis lab needs a little time to prepare.”

“That’s fine. I’ll wait for your word tomorrow.”

“Alright.”

The phone hung up.

Yu Sheng looked up at Little Red Riding Hood and laughed awkwardly. “Well, uh… in the end, I had the ‘Bureau Chief’ arrange it directly after all.”

Little Red Riding Hood opened her mouth, held it in for a long time, and finally managed to squeeze out a single sentence. “Fine, I guess our ‘ordinary people’ experience is useless to you…”