Chapter 147 – A Very Wild Meal

Accompanied by an earth-shaking explosion, a massive fireball rose from the Dark Forest. The light and heat were quickly swallowed by the endless darkness within the forest, but the shockwave it brought was enough to silence the rising and falling wolf howls for just a moment.

Yu Sheng knew that afterward, the howling would quickly resume, the forest would quickly heal, and the Dark Forest would continue running according to its own script, its own rules. That “source” hiding behind the stage, weaving nightmares, would continue murmuring in the bad dreams it had spun — let it murmur away. He didn’t care about that right now.

Yu Sheng had already brought Hu Li through the door and returned to the Valley.

“I saw a huge commotion through the door just now!” Eileen immediately ran over, grabbing Yu Sheng’s pants and climbing upward, chattering away as she climbed. “You didn’t start a forest fire, did you?”

“It’d actually be great if it could burn, but unfortunately, that bit of firepower is far from enough to ignite the Dark Forest,” Yu Sheng said casually while steadying the Little Doll. “Don’t worry, it’s not yet time to launch a full assault on that Dark Forest. I haven’t dragged out whatever’s hiding behind the stage yet… but soon, very soon.”

Hu Li came over and tugged at Yu Sheng’s sleeve, looking a bit embarrassed. “Benefactor, I’m a little hungry. When are we going home to eat?”

Yu Sheng had still been immersed in his plans for the Dark Forest — his “Cyber Fox Spirit Beats Up Children’s Literature” scheme — but when Hu Li reminded him, he quickly pulled out his phone to check. “Oh, now that you mention it, it really is almost mealtime. There’s not even any change in daylight in this place — lose track for a moment and you forget the time entirely…”

“Huh, you’re not doing any more experiments?” Eileen sat on Yu Sheng’s shoulder and asked curiously. “Didn’t you say opening the Dark Forest door was just the first test?”

Yu Sheng hesitated, rubbing his forehead. After a moment, he sighed. “I was planning to try figuring out how to construct a door that could stay open without me personally maintaining it, but I think that’ll have to wait for next time — those failed attempts at opening the Dark Forest door left me dizzy and disoriented. No more messing around today.”

Eileen was deeply moved. “How rare — even you have times when you’re too tired to keep going.”

Yu Sheng didn’t bother responding to the doll on his shoulder. Instead, he pulled out his phone and dialed Baili Qing’s number. “…Yeah, it’s me. I’m done with my experiments on this end. Thanks for the trouble, duty personnel… Mm, I’ll give you a heads-up next time too. Oh, there might be one or two more signals coming — that’ll be me opening a door to go home. Nothing else, I’ll hang up now. Bye.”

Eileen stared in astonishment. “You’ve gotten so smooth at this now — you don’t even give the other side a chance to curse you out in their head!”

Yu Sheng casually ruffled the head of the endlessly chattering doll a couple of times, then turned to look at the fox girl beside him. “Tonight we’re eating something fresh — first, let that big bad wolf out of your tail. I’ll process it. That thing’s too big; there’s no room in the kitchen at home…”

The moment Hu Li heard this, she nearly started drooling. She immediately followed Yu Sheng’s instructions and released the massive wolf carcass hidden in her tail. Then, while she was at it, she also produced a cleaver, a chopping knife, a wok, two soup pots, two spatulas, a cutting board, cooking wine, soy sauce, Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, and a barrel of peanut oil…

Yu Sheng had been about to open a door home to grab supplies, but when he saw what Hu Li had produced, his eyes went wide. It took him a long moment to react. “When did you start carrying all this stuff on you?!”

Hu Li lowered her head shyly. “When we left the house. I just grabbed it on my way out.”

Yu Sheng: “…You just ‘grabbed’ the entire kitchen on your way out?!”

“N-no!” Hu Li quickly waved her hands in explanation. “I didn’t take the gas stove…”

“Obviously! It’s connected to the pipe! You would have taken it if you could!” Yu Sheng discovered that when humans reached the ultimate limit of speechlessness, they really did burst out laughing. And then he quickly realized something else. “Wait — so does that mean… every time you go out with me, you’ve actually been carrying the whole kitchen?!”

Hu Li nodded eagerly. “Uh-huh.”

“And every time we get home, you rush ahead of me to get into the kitchen first… that’s to put everything back?”

Hu Li continued. “Uh-huh.”

Yu Sheng’s expression went blank. “…Why though?”

“I thought… what if it comes in handy?” The fox girl stuck out her tongue, muttering quietly. “What if we need to cook outdoors? Like a picnic or something… And look, didn’t it come in handy this time?”

Yu Sheng thought about it. He considered pointing out to this fox that a “picnic” wasn’t supposed to be this wild — this was way too wild. But after careful consideration, he suddenly felt like this actually wasn’t bad at all.

Look at this place — blue sky, green earth, verdant mountains and clear waters. When the Real World outside was already going completely dark, it was still bright and sunny here. In a place like this with gentle breezes, lush grass, and vast open skies… how could they not roast a Grandmother Wolf to liven things up?

As an after-party for their Dark Forest expedition, dismembering Grandmother Wolf at base camp with his crew — that was just too fitting.

So Yu Sheng immediately manipulated the rock beneath his feet, raising temporary tables and a stove on the platform. He directed the fox girl to set up the makeshift kitchen, then picked up the cleaver and bone-chopping knife and began attempting to dismember the enormous wolf carcass. As he worked, he muttered with some regret, “Too bad Little Red Riding Hood and Xiaoxiao already went back. Otherwise I’d absolutely make them try some of this…”

Eileen stood on the makeshift stone stove with her hands on her hips. “Aren’t you worried about scaring them out of their minds?!”

“What do you know? The best way to conquer fear is to face it head-on. And what’s more thorough than eating it? Is there any more complete form of ‘facing it’ than that?” Yu Sheng glanced up at the Little Doll. “As for you, stop showing off up there. You’ll fall into the pot later.”

Eileen made a face at him and refused to come down, continuing to stroll around on the stove while curiously watching Yu Sheng disassemble the carcass that was two to three times larger than a normal wolf.

And then, halfway through his work, Yu Sheng suddenly realized a problem.

“Wait, there’s no fire here.” He looked up and glanced around. All he could see was the bare Wilderness. The Valley now had quite a bit of greenery, but it was still a long way from growing trees, let alone finding any firewood — and gas was even more out of the question. At least for now, Yu Sheng couldn’t figure out how to run the gas line from No. 66 Wutong Road all the way to this Star-X Valley…

But the moment he finished speaking, Hu Li walked over. “It’s fine, Benefactor. I have fire.”

As the Fox-Spirit Girl spoke, she casually reached behind her and detached one of her tails. Holding the silvery-white fluffy thing, she rubbed it against the stove a couple of times, like striking a match, and a ball of Fox Fire burst to life at the tip of the tail with a whoosh.

“Here you go.” She smiled brightly and cheerfully, holding out the burning tail to Yu Sheng.

Yu Sheng: “…This thing can be used for cooking?!”

“Sure, you just have to control the output. At full power it can smelt steel. At low power you can use it to warm yourself by the fire.”

“…Then stuff it in the stove first and boil a pot of water.”

“Okay,” Hu Li nodded and carried the tail toward the stove. But halfway there, she turned back. “Benefactor, should I fish Eileen out of the pot first?”

Hearing this, Yu Sheng quickly turned to look and saw the soaking-wet Little Doll scrambling out of the large soup pot on all fours. He was stunned. “Good grief, when did you fall in?!”

“Just now when Hu Li was striking her fire — I lost focus for a second and fell in… Don’t laugh! Don’t you dare laugh, either of you, do you hear me?!”

…

It was a peaceful night — a long-overdue, calm, relaxing night.

Little Red Riding Hood hadn’t slept like this in a very long time.

As adulthood approached, her sleep had been steadily decreasing. By now, her daily sleep had shortened to only about two hours, and during those two hours of brief sleep, she spent almost all of it enduring the terror and malice of the Dark Forest. She could no longer remember how long this had been going on. The Dark Forest’s erosion had muddled her sense of time — while dreaming, she even felt as though her entire life had always been this way.

But today, she had fallen into deep sleep early on, and then drifted up and down through a string of light, peaceful dreams.

She vaguely knew she was dreaming. She passed through scenes from her daily life, through her early school memories, through the corridors and courtyards of the orphanage. She wandered through shallow dreams without seeing sky-blotting tree shadows or the howling that usually surrounded her. Only occasionally did she see those familiar wolf silhouettes — the ones close to her — walking alongside her in relaxation.

And then, in some dream she’d lost count of, she saw herself walking into an alley.

It was an alley somewhere in the Old City District. It looked somewhat familiar, as if she had been there not long ago.

She didn’t remember why she was going there. She only saw herself leading her wolf pack through the alley at a brisk pace.

She saw her wolves discover something, growling uneasily up ahead. She saw herself stride quickly to the depths of the alley, where she saw a figure collapsed on the ground. There was blood everywhere, and a familiar face.

In the depths of the dream, Little Red Riding Hood’s eyes went wide.

She saw Yu Sheng lying still in the alley — the dead Yu Sheng — his chest torn open with a gaping hole, the Rain Frog having taken his heart.

A sudden surge of terror and bewilderment seized the girl’s mind. She stood in the dream in shock, watching as that familiar person had died before her eyes long, long ago. And then suddenly, she saw the forest under night skies again, saw Yu Sheng fall under the Entity-Hunger’s attack.

She saw blood spreading outward, spreading onto her.

Little Red Riding Hood’s eyes snapped open as she gasped for air in great heaving breaths.

Outside the window, daylight was already bright.

A head poked out from the upper bunk. Rapunzel stared at her with wide eyes. After a long while, she finally spoke in disbelief. “You slept the entire night! You haven’t slept this soundly in ages!”

But Little Red Riding Hood didn’t speak. She was still just gasping for breath. It was a long time before she finally calmed down, but her gaze remained distant and dazed.

Rapunzel noticed something was wrong and immediately grew anxious. “What’s the matter? A nightmare? Or… did you go into the Dark Forest again?”

“…No,” Little Red Riding Hood said haltingly, shaking her head slowly. “I just… suddenly remembered some things. Things I can’t believe. Rapunzel, things are getting strange.”

“Huh?”

(End of Chapter)