Chapter 146: Bug in the map
To be fair, Yu Sheng found it difficult the moment the little doll said the four words "unity of mind and heart", mainly because most of the time he and Irene were together, both of them thought the other was sick - but he thought about it carefully again, both of them thought the other was sick, isn't this also a kind of unity of mind and heart?
His thoughts spread unconsciously like this, and in a few seconds he had gone astray so much that he didn't even recognize his mother. In the end, Irene hit him on the head: "I told you to empty your mind! I didn't tell you to let your mind fly! At least focus on opening the door--"
"Oh, okay."
Yu Sheng reacted instantly, quickly calmed his mind, and then began to carefully follow the steps to open the door.
But this time, he only summoned a "null gate" that led to nowhere, and then relaxed his mind little by little while maintaining the stability of the gate.
He felt Irene's small hand pressing on his temple.
He saw Irene's other hand raised, pointing at the door in the distance.
Strands of black silk threads spread and grew from the fingertips of the little puppet, silently, as if they were some strange "creature" with independent life, quickly interweaving, wriggling, deforming, splitting, and breeding in the air...
Part of the silk thread pierced into his flesh and his brain, and a strange and chilling feeling traveled along his spine, which even made people shudder.
If it was the first time that Yu Sheng came into contact with Irene's silk thread, he would have subconsciously thrown the little doll away by now - these cold and strange things did not seem harmless no matter how you looked at them. They were more suitable for the script of "the sinister cursed doll finally seized the opportunity to plot against its owner in an attempt to seize the top position at No. 66 Wutong Road", which was really suspicious.
But he was used to it - maybe that's how the puppets in Alice's Cabin were.
Another part of the silk threads spreading in the air extended towards the gate - their front ends gathered together, like a strange tentacle, first touching the door cautiously, and then began to tentatively penetrate into the interior of the door.
The connection is established.
However, at this moment, Yu Sheng suddenly felt... dazed.
The sound of the wind in the valley disappeared, and the surrounding scene was shrouded in a thick and dim curtain, as if an endless fog filled the field of vision, and in the depths of the fog, he saw...
A blonde, broken doll lay quietly in a ruin fallen into darkness. A huge shadow fell with the doll in the depths of the ruins. The dead doll had its eyes open. In the brief illusion across the curtain, Yu Sheng suddenly had the illusion that those eyes were staring at him.
However, everything was fleeting. He didn't even have time to confirm whether the dead blond doll was the one he saw in the mirror before, and all the illusions disappeared.
All he could hear was Irene's energetic shouting: "Hey, hey, hey! The door is open! I think this thing is working! Yusheng, check to see if I'm operating it correctly..."
Yu Sheng woke up with a start, and saw that the door leading to the Black Forest had been slowly opened in his hands. Countless black threads emitting a strange black mist were interweaving and wandering inside and outside the door, outlining chaotic patterns, guarding the door frame like a thorn bush, and on the other side of the door was the forest shrouded in shadows.
The gate to the Black Forest was successfully opened.
Yu Sheng looked at the door wrapped in black "thorns" in a daze. To be honest - it was a bit strange, but it was really exciting.
But he was more concerned about the "illusions" he had just seen.
"Irene."
"ah?"
"Did you see anything just now? When you were connected with my spirit, did you see any illusions or anything like that?"
"No," the little doll was stunned for a moment, and looked at Yu Sheng in confusion, "I was concentrating on helping you locate the door just now, for fear that something might go wrong... What did you see?"
Yu Sheng hesitated for a moment, but still did not hide it from the little doll: "...I saw the blonde doll again."
"Which blonde doll?" Irene didn't react for a moment, "Do you know other dolls out there?"
"The one I mentioned to you, the one I saw in the mirror," Yu Sheng reminded him, "the one that was torn into pieces and died somewhere unknown. You also said that you would help her get home if you had the chance in the future."
"Oh, I remember now!" Irene finally realized what was happening and frowned. "Why did you see her again? What did you see this time?"
"...It's the same scene as last time, but I feel like her eyes are on me," Yu Sheng said slowly, "I don't know what happened, I just saw it the moment your 'thread' connected to me... I thought you could feel it too."
He and Irene looked at each other, but after thinking for a long time, they still couldn't come to any conclusion.
A lot of guesses popped up in Yu Sheng's mind, but there was no clue at all, and all the guesses were just wild guesses in the end.
He could only focus on the door in front of him for the time being - but this time, the mysterious blond doll had inevitably left a deep impression in his heart.
Hu Li walked over and grabbed Yu Sheng's arm a little worriedly.
"The door to the Black Forest is open," Yu Sheng rubbed the fur behind the fox girl's ears comfortingly, "You will come in with me later."
Hu Li nodded immediately: "Yes."
"Erin, you stay here," Yu Sheng said to the puppet on his shoulder, "Observe the scene when we pass through the door. Hu Li and I will stay on the other side for a few minutes, and then open the door and come back directly. If everything goes well, our 'landing point' when we return should still be here."
"Don't you want me to go in with you?" Irene looked a little worried. "What if you get lost in there and need help from a 'dream expert' like me?"
"You don't need to 'navigate' to open the door from the Black Forest side and return to reality," Yu Sheng explained. "In comparison, it would be safer for you to stay outside and act as 'insurance' for Hu Li and me."
"Okay," Irene felt that this made sense, so she didn't waste any words and jumped down from Yu Sheng's shoulder. "Then I'll stay here for you - we agreed on a few minutes, don't die in there..."
As soon as the puppet finished speaking, Hu Li clenched his fists and said in a serious tone: "I will protect you till my death!"
Irene waved her hand: "That's not necessary. You should protect yourself first. Yu Sheng's life is not worth anything..."
Yu Sheng opened his mouth, but after a long while he couldn't think of any rebuttal.
What made him even more depressed was that even Hu Li didn't refute...
"I really owed you two in my last life."
He could only sigh, then pulled the fox girl and turned to walk into the door.
After a moment of dizziness and sensory resetting, he was already standing in the familiar dark forest.
The distant and vague howling of wolves, the hollow sound of the wind blowing through the forest, the dark sky between dusk and night, the ubiquitous shadows, and the bushes that seemed to always hide something and had bad intentions.
Nothing had changed from what he remembered. It seemed as if this Black Forest had always been like this.
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Hu Li on the side opened her eyes wide and looked around. It was the first time for her to come to this place. She had heard a lot about this forest from Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood before. She seemed very alert at this time. The pile of tails behind her stood there like a sword tomb, and the fluff on her ears was slightly blown up.
After briefly checking the surrounding environment, Yu Sheng called out in his heart: "Eileen, we're coming in."
"I saw you go in," the puppet responded immediately, "The door here has disappeared. It looks no different from when you normally 'open the door'."
"Our bodies also passed through the door, right?" Yu Sheng asked, "and didn't stay outside?"
"No, you went directly through the door physically."
Hearing the little doll's reply, Yu Sheng let out a sigh of relief and looked down at his hands.
Sure enough, after a series of "bug-proof" operations, he successfully entered the Black Forest in the flesh - and also successfully brought in a cyber-cultivating fox.
Everything was just as he had expected. To the Black Forest, the boundary between "consciousness" and "body" was not so clear. The products in the Black Forest could be brought into the real world in the form of matter, and the matter in the real world could also be sent to the Black Forest under certain conditions. The principle behind this might not be clear for the time being, but for him, this conclusion was enough.
What Yu Sheng feared most before was that the Black Forest was really a pure world of "consciousness", or to put it more bluntly, a conceptual and nihilistic thing.
Conceptualized and nihilistic things are the most difficult to deal with, because it means you can only fight them with the same concepts and nothingness - and humans are creatures living in reality after all, and fighting against "abstraction" is not something humans are good at.
Anyway, Yu Sheng himself thinks that he belongs to the "human race" and he only thinks according to human logic.
But since the Black Forest can establish a connection with the "material world" through a "bug", everything will be much easier.
This means it has a health bar.
Yu Sheng likes things with blood bars.
"My benefactor, what shall we do next?" Hu Li approached cautiously and asked in a low voice, "Shall we go fight those wolves? Or shall we wait for the 'squirrel' you mentioned to come out?"
"Wolves are invisible, and that evil wolf has its own conditions for showing up, and it will be hard to deal with in a short time," Yu Sheng shook his head, "We are not here to fight, nor to look for that squirrel."
As he spoke, he reached out and opened another door.
This time, the other side of the door was no longer chaotic darkness, but a clear reflection of the scenery in the valley.
He could even see Irene standing opposite the door, staring at this side with wide eyes in surprise.
"Hey, Yusheng, I see you!"
"It seems that after entering the Black Forest with a physical body, I can open the normal door here," Yu Sheng smiled and nodded to the little puppet on the other side of the door, then turned his head to look at the fox girl beside him, "I'm ready to go - but before I leave, I have to say 'hello' to the thing behind the Black Forest."
"Ah? Greeting?" The fox girl was stunned for a moment, "What greeting?"
"The kind with twenty chicken legs."
"……good!"
(End of this chapter)
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