Chapter 144: This Door Cannot Be Opened From This Side

Little Red Riding Hood looked in high spirits; if someone very familiar with her had seen the expression on her face at that moment, they would have been greatly shocked—she had not relaxed like this for a very long time.

However, she still seriously refuted Yu Sheng: "I turn eighteen next month; you can't treat me like a child."

"Anyone under eighteen is still a child; I'll treat you like an adult after your eighteenth birthday," Yu Sheng raised an eyebrow, "Don't forget to save me a slice of cake then."

No sooner had he finished speaking than Hu Li, who was seriously observing the chicks nearby, instantly lifted her head: "I want one too!"

So while Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood had been chatting here for ages, the fox Miss had only heard that one crucial sentence.

Little Red Riding Hood laughed, her smile brilliant, then she bared her teeth at Yu Sheng and Hu Li—like a mischievous wolf cub: "Fine, when the time comes, even if knives rain from the sky, you must come celebrate my birthday; whoever doesn't come is a puppy."

Yu Sheng grinned, took out his phone, tapped the one-click report button, then turned sideways and casually pulled open a door leading to the orphanage.

A shimmering, illusory door opened silently; on the other side was an empty corridor on the west building of the orphanage.

"Xiao Xiao! Long Hair! Time to go home!" Little Red Riding Hood reached the edge of the platform and shouted loudly at the two children, one big and one small, still frolicking on the grass, "It's almost getting dark!"

Long Hair Princess brought Xiao Xiao back to the platform, but the latter was still looking at the place with reluctance.

"I haven't had enough fun yet," the little girl pouted, "Can we come again next time?"

"Of course," Yu Sheng nodded immediately, "I can come find you often in the future; perhaps one day I can even 'leave a door' specifically in your orphanage."

"Uh, you don't need to take it so seriously," Long Hair Princess heard this and her expression became a bit awkward, "That's too much trouble..."

"Not trouble at all; it's actually one of my recent research projects," Yu Sheng was quite calm, "If you have any activities over there involving organizing children for outings or older children doing field sketches, you can all come find me. My valley has nothing else right now, but plenty of space—those so-called parks in the city definitely can't compare to this place."

Little Red Riding Hood thought for a long time, but still felt that putting the words "outings" and "otherworld" together was simply too weird.

But she had gotten used to it.

The guests left.

"I don't like human cubs," Irene stomped over, puffed up with anger, and after straightening her skirt, she grabbed Yu Sheng's pants, climbing up while muttering, "So noisy, always saying boring things and doing boring things; I just don't know what's so fun about chasing each other running around on the grass..."

"But I saw you having quite a lot of fun with that child in the second half," Yu Sheng turned his head with a smile to look at Irene, who had already climbed onto his shoulder, "And you have the nerve to call others noisy?"

Irene thought for a moment, then hugged Yu Sheng's head and started gnawing.

But Yu Sheng simply patted her down with one hand.

"What are we doing next? Going home?" Irene, held up in mid-air by Yu Sheng grabbing her collar, asked casually with a look of habit, "It's not even mealtime yet."

Yu Sheng shook his head: "No rush; I still need to do some... 'experiments', but I have to call Bai Li Qing over there first."

While speaking, he took out his phone amidst Irene's puzzled gaze, then slightly organized his thoughts and dialed the number that had been bothering him recently.

The other party answered very quickly this time: "Hello? Yu Sheng?"

"Ahem, it's me," Yu Sheng cleared his throat, "Sorry, things have been quite chaotic over here today; I just remembered to call you."

"It's fine; what do you want to say?"

Bai Li Qing's tone was very calm, as if she had already forgotten the "Steel Stoic" comment from their last conversation.

"Two things. First, didn't I tell you I have something I want the Special Bureau to help identify tomorrow? One of the items is something I found in the Fairy Tale - Black Forest," Yu Sheng said, recalling the "suggestion" Teacher Su had mentioned to him, "I also want to apply to access some data... about the 'Fairy Tale'."

Silence fell on the other end of the phone for two seconds, then Bai Li Qing's voice came through: "The files regarding the Special Bureau's centralized management of the initial victims of the 'Fairy Tale' and the early exploration of the 'Fairy Tale' otherworld, correct?"

"You guessed it," Yu Sheng exhaled, "It's that batch of data, from about seventy years ago."

"I guessed it after learning about your actions today," Bai Li Qing said calmly, "I'm just a bit curious why you suddenly became interested in this matter... Is it because of the Spirit World Detective named 'Little Red Riding Hood'?"

"She was the cause, but the main reason is that I want to manage it," Yu Sheng said, "I have serious objections to this otherworld right now; leaving it unmanaged makes my thoughts feel blocked. Is that reason sufficient enough?"

"Sufficient," Bai Li Qing answered immediately, "I can arrange it; someone will come to pick you up tomorrow. Before then, the identification and analysis laboratory and the archival data will all be prepared for you."

Yu Sheng knew Bai Li Qing would most likely agree, but he didn't expect her to agree so readily, causing him to be stunned for a moment, but he quickly reacted: "Ah, thank you very much."

The voice on the other end of the phone remained unfluctuating: "A mere trifle. What about the second thing?"

"Uh, the second thing isn't troublesome, just a bit annoying..." Yu Sheng suddenly felt a bit awkward saying this, "I plan to do some 'experiments' in a while."

"Experiments?"

"Experiments on opening doors," Yu Sheng said, adding another sentence, "The frequency might be high, the method might be innovative, the scale is hard to say, and the duration is uncertain—I figured the one-click report function on the phone probably isn't enough anymore, so I still have to call you."

Silence fell on the other end of the receiver.

Irene (who had already been put down by Yu Sheng at this point) immediately started muttering: "She's cursing! Cursing in her heart, hey!"

"No problem," Bai Li Qing's voice came through the phone; although it still sounded very calm, perhaps because there was a chattering doll nearby providing atmosphere, Yu Sheng felt that the Director Lady was slightly gritting her molars while speaking, "I'll notify the monitoring team to block the automatic alarms for the entire area and switch to manual recording—call me when you're done over there."

The phone call ended; Yu Sheng lowered his head, looking at the small doll who was standing there with hands on hips and head tilted up, looking completely justified.

"She definitely cursed just now! My spiritual intuition tells me so!"

Then she paused, looking curious again: "What are you going to experiment on?"

Yu Sheng took a light breath, his hand already reaching into the air: "First, test whether a door leading to the Black Forest can be opened from the outside."

An illusory door rapidly took shape in his hand; a simple door emitting a faint glow trembled slightly in the air.

Yu Sheng narrowed his eyes slightly, recalling the "frequency" he had recorded in the Black Forest, imparting it to the door before him, and then carefully pulled the door open.

The next second, the door shattered silently.

Irene and Hu Li watched this scene and exclaimed softly at the same time.

Immediately, a strong dizziness suddenly struck; Yu Sheng instantly covered his head and stepped back half a pace.

"Benefactor!" Hu Li instantly rushed over and wrapped her tail around Yu Sheng's body, "Did the immortal technique backfire?!"

"It's fine, just a moment of dizziness," Yu Sheng steadied himself, feeling the dizziness in his mind gradually fade, and waved his hand at Hu Li and Irene, "Opening the door failed... for the first time."

"It can actually fail?" Irene was dumbfounded, looking at Yu Sheng with some worry, "Hey, are you really okay?"

"Really okay." Yu Sheng tugged at the corners of his mouth, broke free from Hu Li's tail, exhaled lightly, and looked at the spot where the door had just shattered, frowning in thought.

"That shouldn't be," a moment later, he muttered to himself quietly, "A door can be opened to return to the outside from the Black Forest; how come one can't go to the Black Forest from the outside?"

Irene thought for a moment and muttered: "Because 'this door cannot be opened from this side'?"

Hearing this, Yu Sheng instantly felt a chill: "Don't say that; I'm allergic to that phrase!"

"Could it be because this valley is part of the Benefactor's 'cave dwelling'?" Hu Li also tried to think hard, speaking with little confidence, "After all, this isn't the normal 'present world', right? Could there be an influence in that regard?"

Irene's eyes lit up: "Hey, silly fox, your brain actually works sometimes!"

"Hu Li makes a good point," Yu Sheng nodded in agreement, "let's try 'outside'."

As he spoke, he casually pulled open a door leading to an empty alley near No. 66 Wutong Road.

Moments later, Yu Sheng sat dizzily on the curb near his doorstep, seeing double on the telephone pole across the street.

Even the lanky shadow standing beside the telephone pole had three heads.

It proved that the failure of the door-opening process had nothing to do with whether one was in the true "reality space"; as long as one attempted to open a door directly from the "outside world" into the "Black Forest," problems would arise.

In despair, the group returned to the valley.

"It seems it truly won't work," Irene said, sitting on Yu Sheng's shoulder with her hands propping up her cheeks, "one can only open a door to exit from within the Black Forest, not enter the Black Forest from the outside. To go in, one must take the 'dream' path—I think this is related to the Black Forest essentially being a 'consciousness space.' It's like you can wake up from a dream, but if you try to physically 'walk' from the real world into a dream, that makes no sense..."

Yu Sheng said nothing.

As he listened to Irene's analysis, similar conjectures were turning in his mind.

But he felt something was off.

The "one-way nature" of the Black Forest... was it really just because of this? Was it really just because it was a pure "consciousness space"?

Then what about the "Wolf Grandmother" he brought out from the Black Forest, and that piece of paper?

(End of this chapter)