Chapter 129 The beginning of a fairy tale
Little Red Riding Hood didn't seem to doubt Yu Sheng's statement - unreliable adults were always able to hide the truth without blushing or getting nervous, and they easily fooled JK, who was turning 18 next month.
So she just reminded Yu Sheng again to be cautious and vigilant when facing the dark angel, and quickly brought the topic back to the "foreign land".
"There are four main types of foreign lands. The first three are the most intuitive. In terms of scale and form of expression, they are 'Wilderness', 'Country', and 'Fortress'," Little Red Riding Hood said to the student with a serious face, "You should be able to guess their meanings from the names."
Yu Sheng also quickly adjusted his attitude. As Little Red Riding Hood spoke, he also thought and said, "I have already read a little about this part... I remember that the 'wilderness' type alien area refers to 'open space, no clear visual boundaries, most of the area is pristine natural environment, and it is impossible to leave directly by walking to the end', right?"
"Right, so that 'Nightfall Valley' is a typical wilderness-type alien world," Little Red Riding Hood nodded, "Generally speaking, wilderness-type alien worlds are very large, and there are no obvious and fixed 'entrances and exits'. Basically, you need to meet certain conditions or leave at a certain time.
"And the 'country' is another type of large-scale alien domain. Its spatial scale is sometimes comparable to that of the wilderness, but the difference is that there are often a lot of 'man-made traces' in the 'country', such as continuous houses, cities, and even rumbling factories that produce something unknown. The 'country' type alien domain gives people the feeling that it is a relic of civilization located in an abnormal space, but in fact, those buildings and facilities throughout the country are full of unreasonable places. A little observation will reveal their distortions and inconsistencies.
"In addition, in a 'country' type alien domain, you can basically find an entrance and exit that allows you to stably travel back and forth to reality. This is also the biggest difference between it and the wilderness.
"The third type of alien domain, 'fortress', is often manifested as a single and closed building or facility. Their 'scale' is smaller than that of wilderness and kingdom, but this does not mean that 'fortress' is safer. On the contrary, fortresses often have more complex and changeable rules and strange environments. 'Uncertainty' is the biggest feature of fortress-type alien domains. It is precisely because of this feature that the ways of entering and exiting fortress-type alien domains are also strange. Some have stable entrances and exits, while others are like wilderness, with 'conditional round trips'.
"The 'museum' we explored together was a typical fortress-like foreign land, and the other 'fortress' you are more familiar with..."
Little Red Riding Hood paused here and looked calmly into Yu Sheng's eyes: "Guess where it is?"
Yu Sheng was stunned for a moment, then quickly reacted and said uncertainly: "It's not my house, is it?"
Little Red Riding Hood seemed a little speechless: "...Isn't it obvious?"
"Well, that's true, but I don't usually think in this direction," Yu Sheng touched his nose awkwardly, and quickly changed the subject, "Well, there are four types of exotic areas, and you mentioned three in one breath, so it's obvious that 'fairy tale' is definitely the fourth type, right?"
Little Red Riding Hood exhaled, and nodded with a complicated expression: "The fourth type, 'abnormal'."
When Yu Sheng heard the name, before he could even open his mouth, he heard Irene say, "Hey, I know something difficult is coming."
Hu Li stared at the little doll in his arms in a daze: "Why do you say that?"
Irene rolled her eyes. "What nonsense! The whole concept of alien worlds is just something that is wrong. And now there is a special category of alien worlds that even emphasizes the word 'wrong' in their names. It's like Yu Sheng entering No. 66 Wutong Road - it's really weird!"
Yu Sheng poked the puppet's head with his finger and said, "I told you not to use my allegorical sayings!"
Then he turned to look at Little Red Riding Hood: "Can you explain it in detail?"
"If a normal alien world is a distorted space-time, then an 'abnormal' alien world... is those things outside of 'space-time'," Little Red Riding Hood chose her words carefully, trying to explain the overly abstract and bizarre things that followed, "those abstract, conceptual, even 'things' that you can't imagine. For example, an emotion, a memory, some sounds, or... a story."
Yu Sheng, Ailin and Hu Lisan were all confused.
After being stunned for half a minute, Yu Sheng was the first to break the silence: "Huh?"
Then he waved his hands and said, "Wait a minute, my imagination has caught up, but my comprehension is still lagging behind... You mean, emotional memories and even sounds... can also form a foreign land?"
“It’s not that they form the alien world, but that the alien world manifests itself in these forms.”
"I understand, I understand. Let's just say it anyway..." Yu Sheng was confused, and felt that he had opened the door to a new world. "I always thought that no matter how outrageous the 'foreign land' is, it must at least be a 'place'... It should at least be something that can be seen and touched, and can be entered and exited. All of these things you mentioned... I tell you that my vocabulary is almost not enough to write a novel here. How outrageous is this!"
Little Red Riding Hood was stunned for a moment: "Ah? You write novels?"
Irene leaned forward immediately and said, "Yes, it's very weird. You can ask Ren Wenwen from the Secret Service about it later..."
"That's not important!" Yu Sheng pushed Irene back and fixed his eyes on Little Red Riding Hood. "Anyway, now I understand why there is a type of alien world called 'abnormal'. It must be something so weird that it can't be classified, right? In that case, 'fairy tales' are the 'story-type' of the abnormal alien world you mentioned just now?"
Little Red Riding Hood nodded.
"But the black forest I entered still seemed to be a 'space'?" Yu Sheng noticed something was wrong. "No... It seemed like a dream?"
"This is exactly the characteristic of most 'abnormal' alien domains. Their essence is abstract, but they will trap people in a concrete environment similar to 'different space' through hallucinations and dreams. Some will only trap your mind, while others will drag your body in as well. Therefore, many abnormal alien domains will be misjudged in the early days of the world. Even professional scholars will need a long time to realize that there is another entity behind those strange 'spaces'. By that time, it is too late for many victims..."
At this point, Little Red Riding Hood paused, organizing her thoughts, and then continued to speak - she talked about her own things, but calmly like an outsider: "As for 'fairy tales', even among the abnormal alien domains, it is a relatively special one, because it has a large number of 'derivative branches', or... 'subsets'.
"The Black Forest is a subset of 'fairy tale'.
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“You can think of a fairy tale as an invisible, unknowable, and untouchable building. This building itself is invisible, but because of its existence, it has many rooms. The dark forest where the wolf lurks is just one of the rooms. There is also Dorothy’s wilderness, the tower where Rapunzel is imprisoned, and Cinderella’s ball that is always on a loop. In addition, there are some special rooms.”
Yu Sheng raised his eyebrows: "Special 'room'?"
"It doesn't point to any specific fairy tale, but to a type of classic fairy tale elements, or... 'fictional scripts'," Little Red Riding Hood nodded gently, "such as the king's 'castle', or the dragon's 'treasure house' - we haven't found out which fairy tales or 'characters' these 'subsets' exactly correspond to."
Yu Sheng frowned. He listened carefully to every word Little Red Riding Hood said to him, trying to understand and outline the various characteristics of this special foreign land of "fairy tales" and the various rules that might exist in it. Some vague and general impressions took shape in his mind, and Little Red Riding Hood's next narration rang in his ears again.
"This is where the 'fairy tale' first broke out."
Yu Sheng looked up in surprise and saw Little Red Riding Hood looking at the open space outside the window with a complicated expression - a group of children were running around between the swings, and their shouting sounds came through the window, sounding very lively.
"That was many, many years ago. At that time, there were no these two buildings here. Instead, there were some older, lower buildings. However, the 'function' of this compound has never changed. It has always been an orphanage. It was, is, and will be in the future," Little Red Riding Hood said slowly. "Regarding the outbreak that year, a lot of information has been lost for various reasons. We can only know from sporadic records that after the outbreak, this place was briefly blocked for a period of time.
"At the time, the Secret Service thought it was just some 'ordinary' alien phenomenon, and temporarily transferred the children affected by the 'fairy tale' to another high-security detention facility. But just a few years later, the 'fairy tale' phenomenon began to appear in other places in the border area, and the children who were initially transferred away also began to show various abnormalities. People then realized belatedly that an unknown 'abnormal alien' had 'unfolded' within the border area.
"After that, the Secret Service tried many ways to curb the influence of 'fairy tales', but they were not very effective. Even the most professional deep divers were helpless after entering those 'subsets', and some even lost their lives in vain. After that, people paid a lot of price to summarize some superficial rules about 'fairy tales', and the most important one... is what I just mentioned, 'fairy tales don't like adults' - as you can see, this is the foundation of the existence of this 'kingdom' governed by children."
(End of this chapter)
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