Ian's divine sense entered a black stone castle.
The castle's spires twisted upward, pointing toward the blood-red sky like deformed, bony fingers.
Here, a play he was incredibly familiar with was being staged—*Snow White*.
Inside a dim room, a bloated figure stood facing the wall.
That was the "Queen."
Her body resembled a botched, stitched-together meat sack. The severed limbs and organs of countless creatures had been crudely cobbled together, leaving only her head looking human.
Mammalian hair grew over chitinous shells. Avian wings drooped from a reptilian torso.
Pus constantly oozed from her sutures, dripping onto the floor with a corrosive sizzle.
She was facing the "Magic Mirror."
The mirror itself was a lanky humanoid creature with limbs so thin they looked like they would snap at the slightest bend.
Its face was unnaturally smooth—no mouth, no nose, no eyes—just a pristine, water-like mirrored surface.
What reflected in the mirror wasn't the Queen's abhorrent appearance, but the seething, pre-programmed jealousy deep within her heart.
"Who is the fairest of them all?" the Queen rasped, her voice a garbled mix of syllables.
The mirror rippled, and a face surfaced.
A face so pale it was entirely devoid of life.
Ian's gaze shifted accordingly.
Elsewhere in the castle, a young girl walked barefoot across the freezing stone floor.
She was the so-called "Snow White."
Her skin was the white of snow, her hair the white of bone china, and even her pupils were a pure, unadulterated milky white.
Her very existence seemed to drain all color from the surrounding world.
This absolute whiteness did not convey holiness; instead, it exuded a heart-palpitating eeriness, like a delicate, unpainted porcelain doll.
Ian could sense that even her blood was white.
The play proceeded along its predetermined track.
The Huntsman arrived on orders, only to "take pity" at the very last moment.
Snow White fled in panic into that bizarre forest where every tree stood perfectly straight and every branch was perfectly symmetrical.
Ian's consciousness followed her through the rigid woods.
Eventually, she stopped before a mine and collapsed to the ground in exhaustion.
Clinking sounds echoed from within the mine—dull, fleshy thuds.
Seven short figures emerged from the darkness.
They were the "Dwarfs."
Their bodies were severely deformed, varying wildly in size with disproportionate limbs.
Their faces were covered in agonizing wrinkles, and their eyes were numb, as if they had endured thousands of years of hard labor.
They did not hold iron pickaxes, but tools ground from bone.
They weren't covered in dirt, but in dark red, foul-smelling scraps of flesh and blood.
What they were mining was a vein of flesh.
The story continued.
The Queen disguised herself as an old woman and delivered the poisoned apple.
Snow White took a bite, collapsed instantly, and fell into "death."
The dwarfs sorrowfully placed her into a coffin made of crystal.
Their grief was so realistic, with tears streaming down their filthy cheeks.
But Ian could see clearly that this sorrow, just like the Queen's jealousy, was nothing more than a pre-programmed emotional response.
Everything was ready, waiting only for the final character to make his entrance.
In the distance, the rhythmic, metallic grinding of hoofbeats approached.
A "Prince," riding a warhorse that was an amalgamation of machinery and flesh, pierced through the red dust and arrived before the crystal coffin.
The Prince's entire body was constructed from gleaming silver-white metal, with precise hydraulic rods and wiring exposed at his joints.
His face was a flawless human male visage, but his eyes held no emotion—only the cold blinking of sensors.
He dismounted, his movements precise yet stiff.
Walking over to the crystal coffin, he leaned down and pressed his freezing metallic lips against Snow White's equally cold ones.
A kiss devoid of warmth or emotion.
The next second, Snow White opened her pure white eyes and slowly sat up.
She had "awakened."
The dwarfs erupted into "cheers," their voices shrill and bizarre.
According to the script, this should have been the perfect "happily ever after" ending.
After the story concluded, the cold sensors in the Prince's eyes suddenly flashed with an ominous red light.
His handsome metallic face remained completely expressionless.
*Rumble—*
Without warning, a massive black rift tore open in the blood-red sky.
A colossal behemoth slowly descended from the gap.
It was a spaceship, but its exterior looked more like a mobile, gigantic steel factory covered in pipes and smokestacks.
Its shadow cast over the land, completely swallowing the stage where the fairy tale had just been performed.
Countless thick mechanical arms extended from the bottom of the ship like the tentacles of the Grim Reaper.
They reached toward everything on the ground with precise efficiency.
The newly awakened Snow White let out a silent scream as she was firmly grabbed by a mechanical arm and hoisted into the air.
The seven "cheering" dwarfs were scooped up in one fell swoop by another giant claw.
In the distant castle, the bloated Queen and the mirror humanoid were mercilessly captured as well.
Even in that eerie forest, the rabbit butler who had been anxiously checking his pocket watch was seized by the neck by a mechanical arm descending from the sky.
All the "actors," regardless of whether their roles were good or evil, major or minor, met the exact same fate the moment the play concluded.
Recycling.
Ian understood perfectly now. These so-called fairy tales were nothing more than plays performed in an endless loop.
A cold, calculated production process centered entirely around the torment of living beings.
His figure had already silently appeared high in the sky.
Following the massive factory ship, he wanted to see for himself exactly who the "director" behind the scenes was.
The interior of the ship was not a cockpit or control room like Ian had imagined.
It was an even larger, far more terrifying processing workshop.
The pungent stench of genetic dissolving agents permeated the air.
The captured "fairy tale characters" were expertly tossed by the mechanical arms into blenders that resembled the maws of giant beasts.
Snow White, the dwarfs, the Queen, the rabbit butler...
The moment they were thrown in, they were broken down into the most primal biomass puree by high-speed rotating blades and potent dissolving fluids.
The viscous, multi-colored liquid flowed down massive pipes toward the center of the workshop.
Ian's gaze locked onto the figure in the center of the room.
It was an unfathomably massive robot, sitting upright on a throne forged from an unknown alloy.
Its sheer size occupied almost the entire core area of the workshop, with countless thick energy pipes connected to its body.
It was the core of this mobile factory, the controller of all the machinery.
It extended a giant mechanical hand and picked up a book from beside the throne.
The book had a heavy metal cover, upon which the title was etched in ancient text—*Grimm's Fairy Tales*.
The robot flipped open the pages, its optical sensors carefully scanning the text and illustrations.
It seemed to be cross-referencing something.
A moment later, it reached out with its other hand and began operating the control console in front of it.
The various colors of biomass puree flowing from the blenders began to be injected into giant petri dishes according to precise ratios.
It was mixing them.
Formulating the genetic recipes required to produce the next batch of "actors" based on the "script" of *Grimm's Fairy Tales*.
This giant robot, this entity that used fairy tales as blueprints to mass-produce, stage, and then recycle and dissolve living beings...
It was the sole, supreme "Demon King" of this twisted fairy tale world.
A mechanical Demon King devoid of emotion or thought, knowing only to follow the instructions of the "script" to eternally manufacture suffering.