Chapter 143 – Stories Through the Eyes of Adults

Yu Sheng very earnestly introduced his construction plans for the valley to Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel, including the grand temple he envisioned and a series of auxiliary buildings that would eventually surround the platform—though he hadn’t figured out what these buildings would actually be used for, the point was to build them first and figure that out later—and then took the opportunity to explain why the square building at the edge of the platform was not, in fact, a toilet.

The two girls listened quite attentively, though the most attentive part was the latter half, when they were desperately holding back laughter.

Yu Sheng was rather helpless about this—because even he had to admit that the Phase One construction did kind of look like a toilet…

He could only awkwardly end the topic and find a way to redirect his guests’ attention.

“These are chickens that Hu Li is raising,” he said, introducing other things in the valley to Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel. “Once the ecosystem here recovers, we can let them roam outside.”

Little Red Riding Hood’s reaction was exactly the same as Eileen’s had been—her eyes went wide immediately: “You’re having a fox raise chickens?!”

“A fox spirit—there’s a huge difference,” Yu Sheng corrected her very seriously. “I mean it, she actually takes pretty good care of them.”

As he spoke, Hu Li had already finished adding water and feed to the chicken coop, carefully checked on the condition of the chicks, and then happily walked over. She turned her head and rummaged through her own tail, pulling out two chicks to show Little Red Riding Hood: “These are poached and salt-baked. I’m planning to make them the leaders of the flock~”

Little Red Riding Hood stared blankly for a long while before realizing that poached and salt-baked were the names of two chickens.

And before she could even open her mouth, Yu Sheng was already enthusiastically pulling her along to introduce other areas: “This section here, I’m planning to use for growing vegetables. See that irrigation channel over there? It draws water from the base of the mountain for watering the fields. Later I’m also planning to build a water reservoir in one corner of the platform. Another plot of land I’m setting aside for raising pigs in the future, but I don’t have the time for that yet. A bit further out, there’s an open space over there—did you notice it? I’m planning to set up a permanent ‘gate’ there, though right now it’s just a preliminary plan. The specifics of how to implement it still need research. For now, my main focus is on farming and building…”

Both Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel were dumbfounded, just nodding blankly as Yu Sheng rattled off one introduction after another. Especially Little Red Riding Hood—her mental impression of this place was still stuck on the time when The Hunger was rampaging here. With every new project Yu Sheng introduced, her brain involuntarily ran through the thought “this place is an Otherworld,” and her worldview was doing sit-ups in a coffin, dying and resurrecting over and over.

But Yu Sheng hadn’t thought that deeply about it. After finishing his introductions with a face full of pride, he looked happily at the two girls and asked with great anticipation: “So how does it feel? What do you think of this valley?”

Rapunzel opened her mouth, and after a long pause managed to squeeze out: “What kind of valley is this?! Is this Stardew Valley or something?”

Yu Sheng thought about it and felt the other party’s summary was quite apt, but he didn’t have the copyright, so he couldn’t use the name.

A fresh breeze blew from the depths of the valley, carrying with it the faint scent of grass and earth, along with Xiaoxiao’s cheerful laughter—the little girl was running back and forth across the meadow, chasing and playing with Eileen in high spirits.

Eileen was also quite excited, shouting and yelling as she ran: “Can somebody come and deal with this little brat?! Huh?! Does nobody care about the human rights of puppets?!”

“I’ll go keep an eye on them,” Rapunzel said, glancing up with a helpless smile. She picked up Xiaoxiao’s little backpack and walked toward the distance with light steps. “Xiaoxiao! Take a break and have some water before you keep playing!”

Yu Sheng sat down at the edge of the platform with a smile on his face. He watched Rapunzel tending to the child, Xiaoxiao excitedly chattering about something, and Eileen fuming as she tried to communicate with the little brat. Then he turned to look at Little Red Riding Hood standing beside him: “Feeling like tomorrow is something to look forward to?”

Little Red Riding Hood was also quietly gazing into the distance. Hearing Yu Sheng’s words, she was silent for a moment before speaking: “Can the Dark Forest… and the other subsets within the Fairy Tale, become like this too?”

Her voice was very soft, as if she feared that speaking any louder would shatter a slender ray of light.

“I still don’t know how to fight the Fairy Tale’s ‘true form,’ but at least we can start with the Dark Forest. From what I’ve seen so far, although the Dark Forest is a ‘consciousness space,’ it still follows the general rules of Otherworlds in every respect, and the entities it generates—mainly wolves—are not invincible. They’re also affected by my blood.”

Yu Sheng spoke at an unhurried pace.

“The key question right now is how to find the most core, most essential part of the Dark Forest—I suspect it’s not some ‘wolf.'”

Little Red Riding Hood’s eyes widened slightly: “Not a wolf?”

“For ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ as a story, what’s so special about the wolf?” Yu Sheng asked calmly in return.

Little Red Riding Hood was taken aback, seemingly unable to follow his train of thought for a moment.

“‘Little Red Riding Hood,’ with quotation marks around it,” Yu Sheng continued, voicing his thoughts. “Since the essence of the Fairy Tale is a ‘collection of stories,’ and each of its subsets is a story, that means no single ‘element’ within a story can serve as the sole ‘representative’ of the entire story. A single wolf won’t do, a single huntsman or a single Little Red Riding Hood won’t do, and even that Dark Forest itself… cannot represent ‘Little Red Riding Hood.'”

A contemplative expression finally appeared on Little Red Riding Hood’s face. She seemed to understand what Yu Sheng meant by “essence.”

“The Dark Forest is different from this valley—the ‘Hunger’ that manifested in this valley was its sole core. All the original rules here, even the entire valley environment, were built around The Hunger, and this is also the characteristic of most ‘standard’ Otherworlds. But that Dark Forest—its rules are extraordinarily complex. Every ‘character’ in the forest, including Little Red Riding Hood, the Big Bad Wolf, Grandmother, the Huntsman, and perhaps even that eccentric squirrel, is merely one ‘link’ within this rule system. They’re just the ‘surface’ layer.”

As Yu Sheng spoke, he raised his hand and waved it gently through the air. Accompanied by the sound of earth and rock grinding together, Little Red Riding Hood watched in astonishment as a patch of ground at the edge of the platform suddenly swelled upward. The ground then formed into a small “stage,” upon which crude, ugly things sculpted from stone rolled and scurried about. Some quickly crumbled apart, but new “actors” emerged from the stage to continue their blind and meaningless activity.

“I started thinking about all this after seeing what Xiaoxiao went through. And you, as the person involved, are limited by your perspective as ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’ which actually makes it harder for you to notice this,” Yu Sheng said, manipulating the crude little stage while continuing to speak to the girl beside him. “Your attention has always been fixed on that ‘big bad wolf,’ so naturally you treat the wolf as the one and only ultimate ‘villain’ in the Dark Forest subset. But from my perspective, standing outside the story… I’ve realized that what I need to kill isn’t the villain inside the story.

“Or to put it another way, I’ve already successfully killed the ‘villain’ once—Grandmother Wolf, who devoured Xiaoxiao. She was the ‘final villain’ from Xiaoxiao’s perspective. But in the process of killing her, all I felt was… emptiness. The Dark Forest didn’t change one bit because of Grandmother Wolf’s death. The wolf pack remained, the forest remained. I could feel those watching eyes. Xiaoxiao would still fall into the forest the next time, and a new Grandmother Wolf… would still be waiting for her at the end of the darkness.

“Because for this ‘story,’ its script had not suffered any damage from beginning to end.”

The platform fell quiet. Little Red Riding Hood silently watched those stone “actors” still rolling and scurrying about on the stage, and finally spoke after a moment of thought: “So what needs to be killed is the ‘story’ itself…”

“Yes, the story. Though it might not necessarily be ‘killing’ it, because a story might be unkillable. But perhaps we can find a way to control it, tamper with it, or even dismember it. And to do any of that, we can’t keep our eyes fixed on the ‘actors’ on the surface of the story. We need to find the ‘vital point’ of the entire story,” Yu Sheng nodded lightly, pointing at the crude stage. “Like this stage—what do you think its true essence and ‘core’ really is?”

Little Red Riding Hood froze for a moment, her expression thoughtful, but she didn’t seem to have an answer right away.

“The answer is right in front of you,” Yu Sheng said with a laugh, raising his hand to point at his own head. “It’s me.”

With that, he waved his hand once more, and the crude stage of earth and rock collapsed with a bang, disintegrating back into clods of dirt and stones that swiftly melted back into the ground.

Little Red Riding Hood suddenly understood, gasping sharply: “You’re saying that behind the Dark Forest… there’s a ‘storyteller’?!”

“Not necessarily a person, but definitely a ‘source.’ It could be the true form of the Fairy Tale, or it could be a tendril extended by the Fairy Tale,” Yu Sheng said at his unhurried pace. “Ever since I first entered the Dark Forest, I’ve been searching for this ‘tendril.’ This time, we found a ‘special cabin’ deep in the forest, and I thought the tendril would be there. But it turned out it wasn’t—it was just a special corner of the stage. We’ve still been going around in circles on the ‘front’ of the stage, but the thing that shapes the Dark Forest is hiding on the ‘back’ of the stage.”

“I… had no idea you’d thought about this so deeply,” Little Red Riding Hood said, looking at Yu Sheng with surprise. “I’ve never thought about the Dark Forest this way before.”

Yu Sheng laughed: “Because I’m a detestable adult, and detestable adults always use this utterly uninteresting rational thinking to poke holes in children’s stories. The line we use most often is—’It’s all just made up by people.'”

Little Red Riding Hood stared blankly for a moment, then suddenly laughed as well: “So that’s why fairy tales don’t like adults.”

“That’s fine. I was never here to be ‘liked’ by it,” Yu Sheng said, standing up and dusting off his hands. “Alright, field trip’s over. Time for the kids to go home.”

(End of Chapter)