Yu Sheng positioned the “First Door” at the far end of the central axis of the Portal Platform. Behind the Door, he raised a wall, then erected two tall pillars before it. Between the pillars, he shaped a smaller platform from stone. With these features, the rudimentary “decoration” of the area was complete.
Though still in its infancy, this place now bore the semblance of a proper headquarters for the Hotel.
Having completed these tasks, Yu Sheng had intended to make another trip to the deepest part of the Valley, to the crash site of the Celestial Shuttle. He remembered his earlier discussion with Bai Li Qing about bringing in a team of Special Affairs Bureau experts for investigation. However, the construction of the Portal had taken longer than expected, so he had to delay those plans for now.
It was time to inspect the wasteland again, to confirm whether the “Mind Sanctuary” was functioning as intended.
Dream Entry. Descent. Consciousness slipping through the murky veil of shadow. Yu Sheng found himself increasingly adept at entering the Sheltering Wasteland on his own. He no longer needed Irene’s help with Hypnosis or Consciousness Guidance. Now, he could descend into the dream and emerge in the wasteland simply by his will alone. When he opened his eyes on the other side of the veil, he saw the gloomy skies and endless plains of that bleak realm.
He drew a deep breath and set off across the vastness. Soon, Irene and Foxy followed, their forms arriving with a slight delay into this consciousness space. The three proceeded together, and before long, they spotted two familiar figures up ahead.
Little Red Riding Hood was resting in the grass with her Wolf Pack. Beside her stood the slim figure of Snow White. In the distance, the massive illusion of the Thunder Titan was slowly dissipating into the air.
As Yu Sheng approached, he heard Little Red Riding Hood grumbling about ambushes, near-victories, and opponents with no sense of honor.
“Didn’t win, huh?” Yu Sheng said cheerfully as he came up behind her. “Took quite the beating?”
Still fuming, she continued her rant. Snow White stood quietly by, finally sighing, “You’re doing better than me. I got beaten far worse. Bronze Titan and Frost Titan almost got killed by that lunatic.”
Little Red Riding Hood pouted, then suddenly sat up. “Next time, I’m trying a new tactic.”
“You said that last time,” Snow White replied with resignation.
Yu Sheng listened in silence, his expression slowly shifting to something unreadable.
Finally noticing, Little Red Riding Hood looked at him curiously. “What’s with that look? Something wrong with me?”
“Two things,” Yu Sheng snapped out of his thoughts. “First, your mindset has changed. You noticed? Your fear of the Black Forest is fading.”
She blinked, then looked down at herself, contemplative. “You know… you’re right,” she murmured. After a pause, she added softly, “Guess I feel more confident now?”
Understanding dawned, and she suddenly laughed.
“Feels pretty good,” she said, looking up at Yu Sheng. “So, what’s the second thing?”
“Did you see the Squirrel this time?”
“Squirrel?” She raised a brow, puzzled at his question. “Now that you mention it… I did see it. But it was acting weird. Seemed distracted, wouldn’t answer any of my questions. Just kept saying, ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’ No idea what’s going on with it.”
So, the Squirrel hadn’t revealed the truth of the past to her yet.
Yu Sheng exhaled softly, unsurprised.
Then, something shifted. He turned his gaze into the distance.
Above the wasteland, a colossal illusion appeared—a shattered, inverted spire looming in the sky. From the crumbling vision of the Dark Spire, golden hair wildly sprouted and disintegrated, vanishing into the cracks as shadowy monsters roared and faded into the abyss.
A slender figure, enveloped in a halo of golden hair, fell from the disintegrating illusion. As she dropped, the magic faded from her locks, which turned black.
A piercing screech tore through the air. A disintegrating pumpkin carriage burst from a warped rift in space and caught the falling Long Haired Girl. Behind it, flames and debris spewed forth like a crashing airship.
Suddenly, a torrent of blooming roses surged up from the earth like an upside-down fountain, cushioning the carriage’s crash.
From within came the Long Haired Girl’s shrill cry: “Ow ow ow! Thorns! Sleeping Beauty, you might as well have let me crash—OW! THE THORNS!”
The next instant, before Yu Sheng could even react, another shrill sound of space tearing shook the Sheltering Wasteland. A fiery explosion surged up from the heart of a rose thicket, and a burning, bizarrely styled warplane burst into the sky before crashing moments later into the nearby desolation. Smoke rolled thickly, and from amidst the scorched roses, a young girl clad in an eccentric Special Services Bureau Commander uniform crawled out, barking furiously into a communicator: “Scarecrow! Shift your machine gun nest fifty meters to the left! The Witches Division is charging!”
Yu Sheng stared in shock at the commander girl who had just emerged from the thicket. As the two locked stunned gazes, smoke billowed across the distance, and dragonfire lit up the sky. A Red Dragon shrieked as it pierced the clouds, tumbling down crookedly to crash into the land afar.
From the spot where the Red Dragon fell, a massive spiraling beanstalk erupted, engulfed in blazing fire. Amidst the illusory flames echoed a girl’s manic laughter:
“Hahahahaha—Today! All of you! Must meet your damn Great-Granny! I swear it!”
A towering figure in medieval plate armor booted the laughing girl off the beanstalk mid-cackle, roaring as he kicked: “For the glory of the King!”
Yu Sheng barely glimpsed the emblem on the knight’s shield—a stylized Kitty Cat head…
The scene had become pure chaos.
Irene hovered beside Yu Sheng’s head, letting out gasps of amazement every few seconds. Even Foxy, that usually unflappable Cyber Fox Immortal, had her eyes wide in disbelief as she watched alongside Yu Sheng. After a long pause, she clapped gleefully and her tail flared open like a fan: “Whoa—So lively!”
She seemed delighted.
Only after who knew how long did the sudden outbreak of chaos begin to subside. Though the occasional spatial rift still flickered open, and the unlucky ones who lost in nightmares dropped in with strange appearances, at least the bulk arrivals had ceased. The blazing flames slowly died down, the rose thickets that had blanketed the land wilted like dreams fading, smoke drifted away, and the fallen Red Dragon turned to mist. The Fairy Tale Organization members finally pieced together what had happened and began scrambling to retract their runaway powers. Amid confusion, they checked on each other and gathered around Yu Sheng.
As the eldest among them, Little Red Riding Hood naturally took charge of restoring order and explaining the situation.
As for Yu Sheng—he was numb.
He admitted his imagination was too limited. Even after being baptized by Snow White and the seven Thunder Titans, this mass descent of the entire Fairy Tale Organization was simply beyond his comprehension.
After struggling to find words, he finally muttered to Snow White beside him: “…Are all your members ?”
Snow White blinked. “Like what? This is normal.”
“Oh, I get it now,” Snow White finally realized, her expression turning slightly awkward. “Actually, it’s not that bad. It’s just that they all arrived together, so things got a bit chaotic. When you met Little Red Riding Hood alone, you handled it just fine, right?”
Yu Sheng was silent for a moment, then raised a hand and pointed to the black-haired girl in the commander uniform, bandages wrapped around her head, flanked by several guardian drones, now resting silently and sternly nearby. “…That one, Dorothy?”
“What kind of subset is hers?”
“In the war-torn Kingdom of Oz, the Dorothy Resistance Army fights a prolonged war against the wicked Witches Division…”
“And the one with all the spikes on her head?”
“Cinderella—subset ‘Eternal Ball.’ Every night past midnight, she has to carve a bloody path out aboard her flying pumpkin carriage. Good news: it flies. Bad news: the Prince has set up anti-air defenses around the Castle.”
“And that blonde just now… Oh wait, I know her. Long-Haired Princess, right? I remember her with black hair, didn’t recognize her for a moment.”
“Yes, Long-Haired Princess, subset ‘Tower.’ Random floors of the Tower spawn Demons. Actually, hers is pretty manageable. Just some demon fighting in a tower. Straightforward setup.”
Yu Sheng said nothing.
He simply sat expressionless on the grass, tilting his head to a 45-degree angle to gaze up at the sky, silently watching to see if any new ‘Princess’ or ‘Prince’ would fall from above…
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation