Chapter 203: Mental Sanctuary

Yu Sheng placed this "First Gate" at the end of the platform's central axis, then raised a wall behind the door, and subsequently sculpted two rows of tall pillars in front of the gate, connecting them with rock to form a smaller platform, thus completing the preliminary "decoration" of this place.

Though still in its infancy, this "inn" headquarters at least now had a proper shape.

After finishing these tasks, Yu Sheng had originally planned to visit the crash site of the "Immortal Shuttle" at the deepest part of the valley again; he still remembered discussing with Bai Liqing to send a team of Special Bureau experts to investigate, but he hadn't expected building the teleportation gate to take longer than imagined, so he could only temporarily postpone this matter.

Now was the time to go see that wasteland and confirm whether that "Mental Sanctuary" was as effective as planned.

Entering the dream, sinking down, consciousness passing through that chaotic shadow curtain, Yu Sheng felt he was becoming increasingly adept at actively entering the "Wasteland"; now he hardly needed Erin's help with "hypnosis" and "guidance" to sink into the Wasteland in the dream by his own will—when he opened his eyes on the other side of the curtain, what he saw was already the endless gray and gloomy sky of the Wasteland and the boundless wilderness.

Yu Sheng took a light breath and, following his sense, began walking across this vast wasteland; the figures of Erin and Hu Li entered this "consciousness space" after a brief delay, and they walked forward together; not long after "walking," two familiar figures appeared in their field of vision.

Little Red Riding Hood was resting on the grass with her wolf pack, beside whom stood the thin and small Bai Xue, while not far away, the massive phantom of Lei Ting was gradually dissipating in the air.

As soon as Yu Sheng walked over, he heard Little Red Riding Hood muttering about things like "ambush," "almost won," and "no martial ethics."

"Didn't win again?" Yu Sheng said cheerfully from behind the girl, "Got beaten pretty badly?"

"If I had won, I wouldn't be here," Little Red Riding Hood looked up at Yu Sheng with a bad temper, then threw herself backward onto the grass, "I'm so angry! I had the situation under control, but something suddenly popped out from under my feet; I didn't notice, panicked in my heart, panicked and things went wrong... I'm so angry."

The red JK uniform girl kept muttering, clearly still furious, while the thin and small Bai Xue just stood helplessly beside her; after listening to the complaints for a while, she sighed: "You're doing okay; I got beaten much worse than you—the Bronze Titan and the Ice Titan were almost killed by that crazy old woman."

Little Red Riding Hood pouted, then suddenly flipped over and sat up: "Next time I'll try a new tactic..."

Bai Xue: "You said that last time too."

Yu Sheng listened silently beside them, never interrupting, but a somewhat subtle expression gradually appeared on his face.

Little Red Riding Hood finally noticed this; she stopped and looked at Yu Sheng curiously, frowning: "Why is your look so strange... is there something wrong with me?"

"Two things," Yu Sheng snapped out of his thoughts, his gaze falling on the other person, "First, your mindset has changed; did you notice? Your fear of the Black Forest is weakening."

Little Red Riding Hood was stunned for a moment, as if only then realizing something belatedly, and looked down at herself thoughtfully.

"It seems... yes," she muttered to herself, and after a long while whispered softly again, "Is this what having confidence feels like?"

As if understanding the change that had happened to her, Little Red Riding Hood suddenly laughed.

"Feels pretty good," she said with a smile, looking up at Yu Sheng, "So, what's the second thing?"

"The second thing: did you see the squirrel this time?"

"Squirrel?" Little Red Riding Hood raised her eyebrows, seemingly not knowing why Yu Sheng would suddenly bring this up; immediately her expression became somewhat puzzled, "Now that you mention it... I did see it, but this time it looked very strange, always seeming absent-minded; I asked it anything and it wouldn't say, just telling me 'You'll know,' I don't know what's going on."

It seemed the squirrel had not actively mentioned those truths from the past to Little Red Riding Hood.

Yu Sheng exhaled lightly, not surprised by this.

Just then, he sensed something again and immediately turned his gaze toward the distance.

The next second, he saw a massive phantom suddenly appear in the sky above the wilderness; an inverted and broken spire suddenly appeared in the sky; amidst the constantly crumbling phantom of the spire, wildly growing golden hair was breaking and fading; countless shadowy monsters roared and disappeared into the deep cracks of the broken spire; then a slender figure surrounded by golden hair fell from those dissipating shadows—along with the continuous falling, the flowing golden hair rapidly lost its magic, turning into black hair.

Immediately, another piercing shriek tearing through the air split the sky; a pumpkin carriage gradually disintegrating rushed out from a spatial rift with chaotic light and shadow, catching the long-haired figure falling from the air; behind the pumpkin carriage, hot fragments and smoke constantly collapsed and gushed out, and it tilted like a runaway airship, crashing toward the ground.

Endless blooming rose bushes suddenly surged out of the earth, like an inverted gushing angry spring rushing toward the falling pumpkin carriage, buffering this dangerous "emergency landing"; a girl's cry came from inside the pumpkin carriage: "Ahhh! Thorns! Thorns! Sleeping Beauty, you might as well not have caught us... Ow ow ow, thorns!"

The next instant, before Yu Sheng could react, another sharp sound of space tearing shook this wasteland; he saw a massive explosion fireball suddenly rise from the center of that rose bush; a burning, strangely styled fighter jet shot out from above the bushes, then crashed into the nearby wasteland in an instant; immediately, gunpowder smoke filled the air, and a girl in a strange commander's uniform crawled out from the rose bushes; as she crawled out, she roared into the walkie-talkie in her hand: "Scarecrow! Move your machine gun positions fifty meters to the left! The Witch Regiment is charging!" Yu Sheng stared dumbfounded at the commander girl crawling out of the rose bushes; while the two stared blankly at each other, smoke was rising in the distance, the sky above the wilderness was illuminated by dragon fire, and a red dragon, wailing in sorrow, pierced through the clouds and crashed crookedly onto the distant ground.

Where the red dragon fell, a winding giant beanstalk grew; a raging sea of fire burned on the beanstalk; in the illusory flames came the girl's wild laughter—

"Hahahaha—Today! All of you! You must all see your great-grandmothers! I said it!"

Then that laughing girl was kicked off the beanstalk by a powerful shadow figure wearing medieval plate armor; the armored strongman shouted while kicking: "For the glory of the King!"

Yu Sheng vaguely saw that the crest painted on the shield of that medieval armored strongman was a cat head...

For a moment, the scene was incredibly lively.

Erin floated beside Yu Sheng's head, exclaiming non-stop since just now, saying "Wow" roughly every few seconds; even Hu Li, the cyber Hu Li who usually accepted anything, widened her eyes at this moment, staring dumbfounded at this scene together with Yu Sheng; after a long while, she clapped her hands hard, her tail blooming like a peacock's display: "Eh—so lively!"

She was actually quite happy.

After an unknown amount of time, this suddenly occurring "liveliness" finally gradually calmed down; although occasionally rifts would suddenly appear, and some unlucky loser who lost in a nightmare would fall into the wilderness in various strange forms, at least they were no longer arriving in clusters—the raging flames gradually subsided, the rose bushes covering the wilderness withered like a dream, the gunpowder smoke dissipated from the sky, the falling red dragon turned into illusory smoke, the "Fairy Tale" members gradually understood the situation, began to hurriedly withdraw their scattered and out-of-control powers amidst the chaos, and then, while checking each other's or their companions' status, gathered toward Yu Sheng.

Little Red Riding Hood, as the eldest among them, naturally took on the work of maintaining order and explaining the current situation.

As for Yu Sheng, he was already numb by now.

Please... collect_(!)

He admitted his imagination was still a bit weak—although he had been through the baptism of Bai Xue and the seven Lei Ting Titans last time, when the entire "Fairy Tale" organization all fell in together, this impact still exceeded his imagination somewhat.

After holding back for a long time, he couldn't help but whisper to Bai Xue beside him: "... Do all your members have this style?"

Bai Xue obviously didn't catch on: "What style? This is quite normal."

Yu Sheng: "..."

"Oh, I know what you mean," Bai Xue saw and finally understood, a subtle expression appearing on her face, "Actually it's fine; mainly because they all fell in together, the situation was a bit chaotic; look, when you met Little Red Riding Hood alone, you adapted quite well, didn't you?"

Yu Sheng was silent for a while, then raised his hand and pointed at the black-haired girl wearing a commander's uniform, with bandages wrapped around her head, several guard drones parked beside her, resting with a serious and silent expression: "... This one, Dorothy?"

"Yes."

"What is her 'subset' like?"

"In the war-torn Kingdom of Oz, Dorothy's resistance army is engaged in a protracted war against the evil Witch Regiment..."

"Then the one with a head full of thorns is..."

"Cinderella—subset 'Eternal Ball'; every day she must drive her pumpkin carriage to fight her way out after midnight; good news is her carriage can fly; bad news is the Prince has set up anti-air positions around the castle."

"The one with golden hair just now... oh, I've seen her before, Rapunzel, right? When I saw her before, she had black hair; I didn't recognize her at first just now."

"Yes, Rapunzel, subset 'Gao Ta'; demons appear on random floors of that tower—actually her situation is okay; she just needs to fight demons in the tower; the setting is quite simple."

Yu Sheng said nothing.

He just sat on the grass expressionless, silently raising his head, looking up at the sky at a forty-five-degree angle, watching to see if any new "Princess" or "Prince" would fall from the sky...

(End of Chapter)