The dream scenes described by the little girl made both Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood, who had just returned from the deep cabin in the Black Forest, furrow their brows simultaneously, sinking into serious contemplation.

Several seconds later, Yu Sheng was the first to lift his head and break the silence: "Can you clearly see the faces of those people? Other than telling you to run fast, did those people in red cloaks say anything else to you?"

However, Xiao Xiao just shook her head, looking more nervous.

"It's okay, it's okay, if you can't remember then don't force it," Yu Sheng quickly waved his hands, comforting the unsettled little girl, "Tell us whenever you recall something."

Xiao Xiao blinked her eyes, hesitated, and nodded, though it was uncertain how much she understood.

"You go ahead and take her to the class in the East Building, and also inform Teacher Su about the situation," said Little Red Riding Hood to the long-haired princess standing beside her, "But she won't attend class this afternoon, let her rest well in her room."

"Okay."

The long-haired princess took Xiao Xiao's hand, and the two figures, one tall and one short, walked out of the room like that.

The room quieted down again, Little Red Riding Hood watched the direction they left and pursed her lips, not knowing what she was thinking, and it was a long while before she softly broke the silence: "This child is the first one to be sent into this room and then walked out alive."

She lifted her head, her gaze quietly resting on Yu Sheng.

"Thank you, 'Fairy Tales' owes you a big favor, from now on, I will be your staunchest friend."

"This is just the beginning, my goal is to resolve the entire Fairyland, starting at least with clearing that piece of the Black Forest," Yu Sheng said earnestly.

"Is it really possible to do that?" Little Red Riding Hood finally couldn't help but ask upon hearing his goal again, but this time there was a noticeable wavering in her skepticism—Yu Sheng's action of rescuing a "dead" child from the Black Forest had obviously caused a great impact on her worldview, causing some of her deeply ingrained ideas about the Exotic Realm to start wobbling.

Yu Sheng did not directly answer the question, but quietly stared into the girl's eyes for a moment before speaking, "Explaining too much is not as good as letting you see for yourself—after confirming that the child's condition is completely stable, I'll take you to a place."

Little Red Riding Hood nodded with a hint of doubt and curiosity, and then Yu Sheng dug into his pocket and pulled out a dirty, seemingly very old piece of paper.

"This fell from that 'Hunter,' do you know what this is?"

Little Red Riding Hood's expression turned serious at his words, she carefully received the paper piece and scrutinized it for a long while, but finally frowned, "…I'm not an expert on artifact analysis, and I've never seen anything like this in the Black Forest…"

Yu Sheng wasn't very disappointed with this answer, he just carefully put away the paper piece again, curiously asking, "How much have you dealt with that 'Hunter'?"

"Not much, the most common things in the Black Forest are wolves, followed by cabins and paths, the Hunter only appears when Wolf Grandmother is around, and each time only briefly," Little Red Riding Hood pondered while patiently explaining to Yu Sheng, "And saying 'dealt with' isn't precise… in fact, every time I 'act' in the Black Forest, it's not like today."

"Not like today?" Yu Sheng raised his eyebrows, "Then how?"

"It's chaotic, like a bunch of discontinuous dreams, often hard to control myself, and my identity isn't always 'Little Red Riding Hood'," the girl sighed softly, her voice low, "When it's particularly bad, I might even run through the forest from the perspective of a wolf, and when encountering the Hunter, I occasionally observe the Wolf Pack from his perspective—I seem to have many identities all at once, human, wolf, grandmother, Hunter, my 'self-awareness' jumps between these identities, and lately, I am increasingly often a 'wolf,' and the appearances of the Hunter... have also become more frequent."

This was the first time she had described her situation in the Black Forest so detailedly to Yu Sheng.

Yu Sheng listened and frowned, the first word that came to mind from Little Red Riding Hood's description was—encroachment.

In those discontinuous dreams and chaotic shifting perspectives, in the repeated falterings and swaps of "self-awareness," Little Red Riding Hood was clearly losing her true "self."

What was consuming her wasn't just the wolves, but the entire Black Forest—becoming a wolf was just a sort of "manifestation" of this process.

"It sounds very messed up," Erin's remark was quite straightforward.

"Yes, messed up, and this kind of chaotic experience is the norm when trapped in the Black Forest," Little Red Riding Hood spread her hands, a self-mocking smile on her face, "Like today, passing through the forest so lucidly and then leaving lucidly, waking up and immediately recognizing my human cognition—that's an incredibly unbelievable experience for me, in my memory… probably only when I was a child and not so deeply affected by the Black Forest I had similar experiences."

Saying this, she shook her head, her gaze once again landing on Yu Sheng.

"I'm sorry I couldn't be of help, I know very little about the 'Hunter,' most of my encounters with him have lasted only the duration of a gunshot, but I do have a suggestion."

"Let's hear it."

"You can have the people in the Special Service Bureau's artifact analysis department take a look at that piece of paper," Little Red Riding Hood said earnestly, "They might not understand the 'Hunter's' situation either, but their professional equipment might at least help you analyze more details from that piece of paper, also you found a 'metal part' in your house last time, you can have them identify it too."

"Good suggestion," Yu Sheng found it reasonable and nodded, "Then I'll give Baili Qing a call later and ask her to arrange it."

Little Red Riding Hood heard him mention a big shot's name so casually, and her expression subtly changed for a moment, hesitantly reminding him: "Well...you probably don't need to directly contact the Director of the Special Service Bureau for this kind of thing, right? Can't you just reach out to Xu Jiali and the others?"

Yu Sheng thought about it and remembered the time he called Baili Qing in the middle of the night, and the next day "Border Communication" had a new feature update with a door-opening declaration button; he realized that Little Red Riding Hood's reminder made some sense.

Just as he was thinking about this and hadn't managed to say anything yet, he felt a vibration in his pocket, followed by his phone ringing.

Yu Sheng pulled out his phone and saw the name "Baili Qing" on the screen.

Little Red Riding Hood caught a glance and froze, her expression visibly peculiar.

Yu Sheng tugged at the corner of his mouth, gave Little Red Riding Hood an awkward smile, and picked up the call: "Ahem, good afternoon, Director Baili."

"Just call me Baili Qing," came the familiar yet cold voice from the other end, "Just now, the monitoring department detected a very unusual space-time displacement and couldn't find the cause, so I thought to ask you—was it your situation?"

Yu Sheng felt even more awkward and chuckled sheepishly, "Uh, actually, I just opened a door... I was in the Exotic Realm when I opened the door, didn't have a signal on my phone, and didn't get to report it in time."

The other side was silent for two seconds: "… The monitoring signal this time was a bit different from usual. Were you testing some kind of 'new function'?"

A monitoring signal a bit different from usual?

An idea struck Yu Sheng, and he quickly connected it to the special nature of "Fairyland" as an Exotic Realm, immediately saying: "Not really, I just visited a special place—I just came back from the 'Black Forest', a subset of the 'Fairyland' Exotic Realm."

There was silence again for two seconds on the phone.

Maybe it was an illusion, but Yu Sheng always felt that each of Baili Qing's silences seemed to be crammed with hundreds of unspoken words.

"Forgive my curiosity—what were you doing in 'Fairyland'?" Finally, the voice of the female Director came through the receiver again, her tone slightly peculiar.

Yu Sheng's mind jolted, and before he knew it, he blurted out: "…Would you believe me if I said I was just dropping by?"

Baili Qing responded even more unexpectedly than him: "Ah, so there was someone you knew over there…"

Yu Sheng didn't wait for her to finish and quickly interrupted: "No, a child got lost, and I went in to help find the child."

Baili Qing: "…"

Every silence from the Director was deafening, and Yu Sheng felt that these two seconds might be crammed with even more than just a couple of hundred sentences.

A moment later, he clearly heard a faint inhalation from the other side, and then Baili Qing's tone remained calm: "Did you find the child?"

"Uh, found them," Yu Sheng felt sweat breaking out from this call, "They were carried away by a wolf, but didn't die."

After saying this, he paused, and then continued: "Oh, and since you've already called, I actually have a favor to ask the Special Service Bureau—"

Baili Qing's response was rather prompt this time: "Sure, go ahead."

"I brought something from the 'Black Forest', suspected to be an object carried by a 'Hunter' generated in the forest; I'd like your help to identify it—also, I have another item refreshed from room No. 66 Wutong Road, and I'm hoping you can check that out too, would that be convenient?"

There was another silence from the other end: "…"

But this time Baili Qing's silence was brief, and she quickly responded: "Fine, I'll arrange it. If the samples don't show signs of self-collapse, can you wait one more day? The comprehensive analysis lab needs a bit of time to prepare."

"That's fine, I'll wait for your message tomorrow."

"Okay."

The phone hung up.

Yu Sheng raised his head, looked at Little Red Riding Hood, and gave an awkward smile: "Well, in the end, I still asked 'the Director' to handle it."

Little Red Riding Hood opened her mouth, held it for quite a while, and finally squeezed out a sentence: "Alright, our 'ordinary people' experience isn't useful to you…"

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.