Chapter Summaries

Teacher Su told Yu Sheng to seek the Special Operations Bureau’s classified records from seventy years ago to investigate the Fairy Tale Otherworld, but fainted after realizing he had called Baili Qing. After regrouping with his companions, Yu Sheng invited Little Red Riding Hood to go somewhere with him.

• Teacher Su described the orphanage’s recurring disappearances and advised Yu Sheng to consult the Special Operations Bureau’s records of the failed operation from seventy years earlier.
• Yu Sheng called Baili Qing, and Teacher Su fainted after hearing her own insult about the director come through the speaker.
• Yu Sheng explained the incident to Huli, Eileen, and Little Red Riding Hood, who revealed that Baili Qing was one of the council’s five top councilors.
• Yu Sheng asked Little Red Riding Hood to accept his invitation, and she told Rapunzel and Xiao Xiao that she would go out for a while.

Yu Sheng brought Rapunzel and Xiao Xiao through his door to Nightfall Valley, where he revealed that the Hunger Entity and the rules that sustained it had been destroyed. Little Red Riding Hood realized the valley had become a safe, transformed place, while Xiao Xiao and Rapunzel explored it.

• Yu Sheng opened a door to Nightfall Valley and invited Rapunzel and Xiao Xiao to come through with Little Red Riding Hood, Huli, and Eileen.
• Rapunzel and Xiao Xiao marveled at the valley’s open skies and mountains, and Xiao Xiao happily picked a bundle of weeds for Little Red Riding Hood.
• Little Red Riding Hood recognized Nightfall Valley and learned that the Hunger Entity was gone and could no longer form there.
• Yu Sheng explained that the valley was now a harmless shell connected to No. 66 Wutong Road, and that he planned to use it as a production base.
• Little Red Riding Hood accepted Xiao Xiao’s weeds as flowers and quietly felt that life had become worth looking forward to again.
• Rapunzel called Yu Sheng’s unfinished structure a toilet, and he insisted it was Phase One of their club headquarters.

Yu Sheng showed Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel the valley’s development plans, then explained that the Black Forest’s true target was not one of its characters but the source behind its story. Little Red Riding Hood began to see how the forest might be changed, and Yu Sheng ended the outing by sending the children home.

• Yu Sheng introduced the valley’s planned temple, buildings, crops, livestock, and permanent door to Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel.
• Rapunzel went to watch Xiao Xiao and Eileen play while Yu Sheng asked Little Red Riding Hood whether she could imagine the Black Forest changing like the valley.
• Yu Sheng explained that the wolves and other characters were only parts of the Black Forest’s story, and that killing a villain such as Wolf Grandma had not damaged its script.
• Yu Sheng demonstrated a crude stage and argued that the Black Forest had a hidden source behind its story, somewhere beyond the visible stage.
• Little Red Riding Hood realized Yu Sheng was searching for the source that shaped the Black Forest, and he declared the outing over and sent the children home.

Yu Sheng tried to open a door from the outside world into the Black Forest, but the attempt failed and left him dizzy. He concluded that the forest could only be entered through dreams, though Wolf Grandma and the scrap of paper made him doubt that explanation.

• Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Xiao Xiao left Yu Sheng’s valley after he offered to host future outings for the orphanage children.
• Yu Sheng called Baili Qing to request access to old Special Operations Bureau records about the fairy tales and to warn her about his planned door-opening experiments.
• Yu Sheng tried to open a door directly into the Black Forest from the valley, but it shattered and caused a wave of dizziness.
• Yu Sheng tried again from an alley near No. 66 Wutong Road, but the door failed there too, confirming the problem was not caused by the valley.
• Eileen suggested that the Black Forest’s nature as an awareness space made it possible to leave but not enter directly, while Yu Sheng wondered whether Wolf Grandma and the scrap of paper disproved that idea.

Yu Sheng theorized that the Black Forest’s shifting dream-location caused his attempts to open a door into it to fail, and asked Eileen to guide his door through dreams. Eileen prepared to link their minds so they could try entering the Black Forest together.

• Yu Sheng questioned whether the Otherworld truly separated consciousness from matter, and Huli explained that both were interconnected forms of a universal wave.
• Yu Sheng slowly opened a door and sensed the Black Forest, but the connection shifted out of alignment and the passage collapsed.
• Yu Sheng realized that he had been searching for the Black Forest using space-time coordinates instead of navigating to its drifting location in dreams.
• Yu Sheng proposed that he open and stabilize the door while Eileen guided it through her dream-infiltrating abilities.
• Eileen agreed to help and instructed Yu Sheng to keep the door closed and trust her as she began linking their minds.

Yu Sheng and Eileen opened a door into the Black Forest, and Yu Sheng briefly saw the mysterious blond puppet during their mental connection. After entering the forest physically with Huli, Yu Sheng confirmed he could open doors back to the valley and prepared to greet whatever lay behind the Black Forest with twenty chicken legs.

• Yu Sheng and Eileen linked their minds to open a door to the Black Forest, and Yu Sheng saw a vision of the shattered blond puppet.
• Yu Sheng told Eileen about the vision, then asked her to stay behind and monitor the doorway while he and Huli entered.
• Yu Sheng and Huli passed through the door into the Black Forest, and Eileen confirmed their bodies had crossed over too.
• Yu Sheng reasoned that the Black Forest could interact with the material world and opened a door back to the valley.
• Yu Sheng told Huli they would leave after greeting whatever was behind the Black Forest with twenty chicken legs.

After testing a door to the Black Forest, Yu Sheng returned to Star Valley with Huli and prepared a meal from a giant wolf while Eileen helped—and fell into a pot. Meanwhile, Little Red Riding Hood slept peacefully for the first time in a long while, but woke after dreaming of Yu Sheng’s death and told Rapunzel that something was getting strange.

• Yu Sheng ended his Black Forest experiment, returned to Star Valley with Huli, and told Eileen he planned to investigate the force behind the forest later.
• Huli revealed she had been carrying cooking equipment on every outing, then took out a giant wolf carcass so Yu Sheng could prepare a meal outdoors.
• Yu Sheng built a temporary kitchen, and Huli lit the stove with foxfire from her tail.
• Eileen fell into a soup pot while watching Yu Sheng work, and Huli asked whether she should fish her out.
• Little Red Riding Hood dreamed of finding Yu Sheng dead in an alley and of Entity-Hunger killing him in the forest, then woke after a full night’s sleep.
• Rapunzel noticed Little Red Riding Hood’s distress, and Little Red Riding Hood said she had remembered things she could not believe and that something was getting strange.

Little Red Riding Hood remembered Yu Sheng’s resurrection after coming into contact with his blood, and Yu Sheng explained that she had joined Eileen and Huli in knowing his secret. He then prepared to visit the Special Operations Bureau with Eileen and Huli, leaving for the laboratory in Xu Jiali’s battered car.

• Little Red Riding Hood called Yu Sheng in a panic after remembering that he had died and returned, and Yu Sheng explained how the memory-restoring mechanism worked.
• Eileen learned that Little Red Riding Hood had also remembered Yu Sheng’s secret, while Yu Sheng reassured her that he would not deliberately frighten Xiao Xiao by dying in front of her.
• Baili Qing told Yu Sheng that the Special Operations Bureau’s analysis laboratory and expert team were ready, and Yu Sheng agreed to leave in thirty minutes.
• Yu Sheng discovered that Huli had eaten most of his refrigerated stew but had saved him a portion of breakfast, then set out with Eileen and Huli.
• Xu Jiali picked them up in a battered Xiali after their assigned car broke down, and she explained that the machine spirit was unwell and that machine spirits in The Crossroads were more like bros.

Xu Jiali brought Yu Sheng, Eileen, and Fox Girl to Special Operations Bureau headquarters by driving through an Otherworld shortcut, then showed them the bizarre, connected floors of the building. He explained that Yu Sheng’s door opening had triggered alarms throughout headquarters and its linked facilities, leaving Yu Sheng stunned by the chaos he had caused.

• Xu Jiali drove the group through a hidden passage in the parking garage and across Depth L-1, an Otherworld shortcut leading to the Special Operations Bureau headquarters.
• Yu Sheng read the elevator’s warnings as Xu Jiali explained the headquarters’ anomalous floors, strange inhabitants, and procedures for finding lost employees.
• The group reached Floor 54½, where Yu Sheng and Huli saw a rocky expanse and a snowy forest beyond a fissure outside the windows.
• Xu Jiali explained that the headquarters connected to numerous anomalous locations and had customs offices and a border transit station.
• Xu Jiali told Yu Sheng that his door opening had set off alarms across headquarters and connected facilities, prompting an emergency evacuation of half the building during the worst confusion.

Xu Jiali explained the Crossroads’ strange spatial structure and how Yu Sheng’s doors had created a new way to leave it. Yu Sheng brought two samples to the Special Operations Bureau’s high-security laboratory, where staff followed elaborate procedures to collect even his grocery bag and old newspaper.

• Xu Jiali told Yu Sheng that the Crossroads was spatially folded off from the outside world and could be entered or exited through natural passages.
• Xu Jiali explained that Yu Sheng’s doors had become another way to travel beyond the Crossroads and offered the Special Operations Bureau’s help with studying them.
• Xu Jiali escorted Yu Sheng and Eileen to a high-security laboratory assigned by the bureau chief.
• Yu Sheng handed over a scrap left by the Hunter and a metal object recovered from his home in the Otherworld.
• Laboratory workers sealed the metal object in a marked alloy container and solemnly collected Yu Sheng’s plastic bag and newspaper as its carrying materials.

Yu Sheng watched the Special Operations Bureau analyze the samples from No. 66 Wutong Road and learned that the mysterious metal was an unknown foreign object. Baili Qing then gave him archived records about the Black Forest incident, revealing that the Bureau’s early understanding of Fairy Tale had been disastrously mistaken.

• Yu Sheng entered the observation room with Huli and Eileen, where Baili Qing showed them the laboratory staff examining the paper scrap and metal sample.
• Baili Qing explained that the Bureau could not identify the metal and was concerned because foreign objects rarely appeared in a stable Otherworld.
• Yu Sheng’s mention of things appearing at No. 66 Wutong Road alarmed Baili Qing until he clarified that he meant ordinary groceries he had brought home.
• Baili Qing gave Yu Sheng archived files on the operation codenamed Adulthood and explained that its pioneers had made mistakes while discovering how Fairy Tale worked.
• Baili Qing said the Bureau had initially misjudged Fairy Tale as a limited mental trap because affected children seemed able to resist its contamination for a long time.

Yu Sheng learned how the Special Operations Bureau’s failed “Adulthood” operation began and what it cost, as Baili Qing explained the early investigation into Fairy Tale. The surviving records suggested the deep divers had entered somewhere other than the Black Forest, leaving the nature of Fairy Tale’s deeper regions uncertain.

• Yu Sheng read how the Bureau investigated the Warm Sun Orphanage but failed to detect Fairy Tale before a runaway Sleeping Beauty incident caused disappearances.
• Baili Qing explained that a second runaway case led the Bureau to identify the Black Forest and launch the Adulthood operation.
• Yu Sheng learned that the operation’s deep dives caused numerous deaths, disappearances, and lasting harm to monitoring personnel.
• Yu Sheng questioned why the deep divers’ reported experiences did not match the Black Forest, and Baili Qing confirmed they had entered somewhere else.
• Baili Qing said the unknown place might have been an adult-only subset, the void between subsets, or Fairy Tale’s main body, then pointed Yu Sheng to two further records.

Yu Sheng read records of the failed “Adulthood” operation and learned how the sealed laboratory’s personnel experienced its final hours. Analyzed scrap paper was reconstructed as a deep diver’s old Special Operations Bureau work ID, suggesting the Black Forest “hunter” had taken part in the operation.

• Yu Sheng read an on-site operator’s chaotic note describing the deep divers’ deaths, strange sounds and visions, and the laboratory’s apparent descent into madness.
• Baili Qing showed Yu Sheng photographs and rubbings of other survivors’ indecipherable traces, then he read an outside monitoring officer’s account of the lab falling silent after lockdown.
• Yu Sheng realized the records offered a more dangerous and fundamental view of the “fairy tales” than the children’s accounts had.
• A laboratory worker alerted Baili Qing that analysts had reconstructed the scrap of paper, and she displayed the image to Yu Sheng.
• Baili Qing identified the scrap as an old work ID belonging to an unnamed Special Operations Bureau deep diver, and Yu Sheng concluded that the Black Forest “hunter” had been one of the participants in the “Adulthood” operation.

Yu Sheng and Baili Qing investigated a link between the Black Forest Hunter and the Deep Dive team that vanished seventy years ago. Yu Sheng planned to use the team’s group photo to reach the Hunter and learn how to find the Fairy Tale’s backstage.

• Yu Sheng and Baili Qing speculated that one of the twelve Deep Divers might have become the Hunter, while Eileen suggested the Hunter could instead have taken the identification document as a trophy.
• Baili Qing obtained personnel files and a group photo of the twelve Deep Divers for Yu Sheng to examine.
• Yu Sheng asked to take the group photo, and Baili Qing let him keep it on the condition that he did not share it and destroyed it after the incident.
• Yu Sheng told Baili Qing he wanted to draw out the storyteller behind the Black Forest and believed the Hunter might know a path to the Fairy Tale’s backstage.
• Yu Sheng planned to show the group photo to the Hunter in hopes of restoring her humanity and getting her help.

Baili Qing questioned Huli about her lost home and learned that its planet and sun had been traveling under the guidance of the Heavenly Beings. Suspecting the crashed immortal shuttle in Nightfall Valley could reveal more, she asked Yu Sheng to let the Special Operations Bureau investigate it, and he began negotiating for help with farming and livestock.

• Baili Qing told Yu Sheng and Huli that the bureau had found no match for Huli's hometown or biological samples.
• Huli described Hengyu, its floating continents, the Heavenly Beings' Navigation Beacon, and how the planet and sun were kept on a voyage through the Star River.
• Huli recalled that her immortal shuttle had hit a rift after its navigation malfunctioned and sent it into a danger zone.
• Baili Qing asked Yu Sheng to let the Special Operations Bureau examine the shuttle wreck in Nightfall Valley, offering a reasonable price in return.
• Yu Sheng said he had requests of his own and asked whether anyone in the bureau knew how to reclaim wasteland, farm, and raise cattle and sheep.

Yu Sheng arranged a cooperation with Baili Qing to investigate Star Valley and provide supplies and personnel. Baili Qing showed him the Crossroads’ strange Nth Floor and revealed that the Bureau suspected Huli came from beyond their known universe.

• Yu Sheng described his Star Valley agritainment project and asked Baili Qing for power equipment, supplies, and personnel in exchange for allowing Bureau specialists to investigate the valley.
• Baili Qing agreed to arrange support after an on-site survey, and Yu Sheng proposed a tour of the Bureau headquarters while Eileen and Huli waited in the laboratory.
• Baili Qing took Yu Sheng by elevator to the Nth Floor, where she showed him a floating rocky island surrounded by streams of light and offered him a drink.
• Yu Sheng asked Baili Qing what was happening with Huli’s homeland, and she said the Bureau suspected Huli came from outside their universe.
• Yu Sheng objected that Huli was a victim of the Dark Angel, and Baili Qing clarified that she considered Huli a possible outsider, not an invader.

Yu Sheng learned that Huli came from beyond the world and reflected on how distant his own homeland might be. After meeting Baili Qing’s unseen younger sister and leaving the Crossroads, he asked the Special Operations Bureau to share any intelligence about the Dark Angels so he could help Huli find a way home.

• Baili Qing explained that the Bureau had concluded Huli’s hometown lay outside the world, and Yu Sheng wondered whether his own home was similarly unreachable.
• Baili Qing’s younger sister watched Yu Sheng through a pair of illusory eyes, but vanished when Yu Sheng greeted her; Baili Qing revealed that she was her sister.
• Yu Sheng declined to pry into Huli’s origins or Baili Qing’s family and prepared to leave.
• Yu Sheng asked Baili Qing to share any future information about the Dark Angels with the Travelers’ Inn, explaining that he had promised to help Huli return home.
• Baili Qing agreed to prioritize sharing the information and warned Yu Sheng that dealing with the Dark Angels was dangerous.

Yu Sheng returned to the Special Operations Bureau with Huli and Eileen, then opened a door directly to No. 66 Wutong Road and went home. Afterward, Baili Qing discussed the incident with Song Cheng and learned that the observing eyes believed Yu Sheng’s humanity was genuine and that he may have generated No. 66 Wutong Road in the Crossroads.

• Huli offered Yu Sheng a cake stuffed with nuts and a rock-hard raisin, and Yu Sheng thanked her before taking the group home.
• Yu Sheng left a metal object with Baili Qing for the Bureau to examine and opened a door to No. 66 Wutong Road despite the Bureau’s spatial interference systems.
• Baili Qing told Song Cheng that Yu Sheng had crossed their spatial defenses without noticing them, but said she trusted him and wanted the Bureau to be his friend.
• Song Cheng reported that the Technology Department was developing automatic filtering and labeling for recorded door-opening signals.
• The eyes watching Baili Qing said Yu Sheng had genuine humanity and was likely not generated by No. 66 Wutong Road, but had instead generated the house in the Crossroads to exist in their world.

Yu Sheng settled into a peaceful evening at home with Eileen and Huli, then fell asleep while the two girls went to cook for him. In his recurring dream, he reached a silent wasteland and heard a distant wolf howl.

• Yu Sheng enjoyed the familiar warmth of home and discovered that Huli's shedding tails also built up static electricity.
• Yu Sheng asked Huli if she was happy living with him, and she said she was before he fell asleep on the sofa.
• Eileen and Huli decided to cook dinner while Yu Sheng slept, and Huli covered him with her tails.
• Yu Sheng entered a recurring dream of a dim, empty wasteland and recognized it as the place where he had once encountered Huli's dream projection.
• Yu Sheng heard the faint howl of a wolf in the wasteland.

Yu Sheng encountered Little Red Riding Hood in his dream and witnessed fragments of her childhood, including the moment she lost her parents in the Black Forest. He told her he planned to find the Hunter and destroy the Black Forest, then warned her not to approach the Hunter.

• Yu Sheng touched the flickering wolf projection and received memories of Little Red Riding Hood’s childhood, including her parents’ deaths in the Black Forest.
• Little Red Riding Hood appeared in Yu Sheng’s dream and asked where they were; he explained that people connected to him by blood could be drawn into it.
• Little Red Riding Hood recalled how she had mistaken the figures in the forest for her parents when she was a child.
• Yu Sheng told Little Red Riding Hood he planned to kill the Black Forest and whatever was behind it, beginning by finding the Hunter.
• Yu Sheng said the Hunter might be one or all of the Deep Dive Team members who entered the fairy tale’s depths seventy years earlier, and warned Little Red Riding Hood not to contact her casually.