Chapter 28: Hunger
This novel is translated and hosted on Bcatranslation.
Yu Sheng felt himself falling, then rising, then falling again—tumbling over and over through a freezing emptiness. In that strange, endless drop, it was as if his very thoughts had knotted themselves into a tangled mess. His senses twisted into a muddled haze, sharp pains like tiny knives prickling at his mind. Just when he thought he would give up entirely, a sudden feeling of escape washed over him, as if he’d been snatched out of deep, icy waters before he could drown. With a sharp gasp, Yu Sheng jolted awake, bursting free from the darkness that had gripped him.
He bolted upright in bed so suddenly that he nearly toppled right off. The world spun around him, and he steadied himself by grabbing onto the bedside table. His head felt as if it were spinning wildly, and it throbbed in a way that made him wonder if his brain was boiling. Thankfully, the pain didn’t last long. As soon as he fully regained his senses, that terrible pressure and dizziness began to fade away, leaving only a sour memory of the dream behind.
For a few moments, he simply sat there, breathing hard, perched on the edge of the bed. His gaze drifted toward the window, where he saw the sun’s last rays slipping behind the rooftops. Night was creeping over the distant city, and that meant almost the entire day had vanished while he slept.
“A whole day gone…” he murmured, surprised, as he clutched the nightstand for support. Slowly, he stood up, made his way to the desk, poured himself a glass of water, and drank it down in heavy gulps. Then he splashed some cool water on his face, hoping to wash away the lingering, uneasy sleepiness before heading downstairs.
“I never imagined this sort of ‘sudden wake-up’ would be so awful,” Yu Sheng said aloud the moment he stepped into the dining room. He was speaking to the portrait propped up on the table, addressing it as if it could hear him. “I thought maybe I’d feel a little dizzy or have my heart race, but goodness, I nearly coughed up last year’s New Year’s dinner the instant I opened my eyes.”
When he finished his complaint, he noticed something off. Normally, Irene— the girl in the portrait—would spring to life right away and tease him with a witty remark. But now, she was disturbingly quiet. Yu Sheng peered closely at the painting and saw Irene hunched over in her chair, as though she’d broken down like a poorly wound clock. She clutched a small teddy bear, her eyes fixed blankly on the ceiling. Every so often, her eyes would roll upward, and then she would jerk forward as if about to retch.
Yu Sheng frowned. “How did your ‘wake-up’ manage to make you look just as wretched?” he asked.
Irene rolled her eyes weakly at him, opened her mouth as if to speak, and then retched again, noiselessly but miserably. Of course, since she was a doll sealed in a painting for who-knows-how-long, she had no real stomach, no proper insides at all. Nothing would ever come out, not a single drop of food or bile. Still, she leaned helplessly over the arm of the chair, as if trying to heave out something that didn’t exist. She looked so pathetic that Yu Sheng found himself feeling rather sorry for her.
It took quite a while for Irene to recover. At last, she slowly lifted her head and looked at Yu Sheng with a pitiful expression. “It wasn’t me who woke us up,” she said quietly, her voice weak. “It was you.”
“…Huh?” Yu Sheng blinked, confused.
“Your last shout woke the fox before I even realized what was happening!” Irene cried, sounding both upset and exhausted. “Why did you have to yell so loudly?!”
Yu Sheng stared at her in surprise. He rubbed the back of his head, feeling rather sheepish. “I had no idea,” he said, honestly. “I just wanted to warn Foxy. I thought she was in serious trouble.”
Irene sniffed, looking half annoyed and half too drained to bother. Then, after a few deep breaths, she leaned forward and dry-heaved again. When she’d gathered herself, she managed to speak more clearly. “Well, you weren’t wrong about that,” she said. “You did wake her before she slipped any deeper. The downside is that she ended up shaking both of us out as she woke. Still, at least she should stay a bit clearer in the head for a while.”
Hearing this, Yu Sheng pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, facing Irene. His expression became serious. “And the bad news?” he asked quietly.
Irene was silent for a moment. Then she nodded slowly, as if confirming something in her mind. “I think you’ve guessed it already,” she said at last. “She won’t hold out for much longer.”
Yu Sheng’s eyebrows knitted into a tight frown, but he didn’t say anything.
He knew she was right. Back in that peculiar valley, he’d sensed something lurking inside Foxy—something hungry and persistent, like a parasite feeding on her spirit. At first, he hadn’t understood it. But after their confrontation with that hideous flesh creature, he began to realize that this “hunger” inside Foxy was far from ordinary.
What he had witnessed deep within that dream-like trance had only made it clearer: something dreadful was feeding on Foxy’s will and would soon consume her entirely.
“If you want to save that fox, you’ll need to hurry,” Irene said, her voice low but insistent. “Something is trying to twist her into… well, into nourishment for itself. It doesn’t just want to kill her. It wants to devour her ‘madness from hunger,’ to savor it. Her strength of will is what’s keeping it hungry instead of simply eating her up at once. The longer she resists, the more ‘nutrient-rich’ she becomes. And when she finally falls, the results will be very, very bad.”
Yu Sheng nodded, deep in thought. He pieced together what he knew and what Irene had said. Then a thought struck him, and he looked up at her sharply.
“Irene,” he said, his voice serious, “do you know something about that valley? Anything about what’s lurking in there?”
Irene hesitated, her painted face seeming to cloud over. “I can’t remember most of it,” she admitted quietly. Then, oddly, she nodded and shook her head in the same breath, as if fighting with herself. “I don’t remember exactly what the valley is or what truly lies within it, but I do recall something about the kind of situation that fox is in. I believe I’ve read about it somewhere before…”
She frowned, concentrating hard, as though sifting through a cluttered attic of half-forgotten memories.
“Entity-Hunger,” Irene said at last, speaking the words slowly. “I think that’s what it’s called. It’s a high-risk, malicious presence that forms in sealed, poisonous places, where hunger rules over everything. It’s terribly dangerous, and its influence is the worst part. Anyone it targets will feel a horrible hunger, a ravenous emptiness that tests their willpower to the breaking point. I can’t recall the exact stories, but I remember it caused great suffering. The worst of it…”
Irene raised her gaze, meeting Yu Sheng’s eyes with a troubled look.
“Hunger turns people into beasts,” she said softly. “It consumes their dignity and their lives. Almost no one can resist it. Those who fail are swallowed up by Entity-Hunger and become part of it forever, trapped in endless hunger.”
A heavy silence settled between them. Yu Sheng’s face grew pale and tense as he realized how severe Foxy’s plight truly was. And then another chilling thought crossed his mind: when he fought that nightmarish flesh monster, hadn’t he also felt a strange desire to… eat it?
He felt a spike of alarm stab through his heart. Had he, too, fallen under the spell of “Hunger”?
“Wait,” he burst out, his voice strained. “What’s the main symptom of being affected by ‘Hunger’? How can you tell if you’re under its influence?”
Irene gave him a baffled look. “Er… obviously, the main sign is feeling hungry. Ravenously, terribly hungry.”
“No, that’s not what I mean,” Yu Sheng said, waving his hands anxiously. “I mean, for example, when I saw that flesh monster, I felt a strong urge to sink my teeth into it. I even thought it might taste good, and after I beat it, I cooked and ate two dishes made from it. Could that be part of Hunger’s influence?”
Irene’s eyes widened in surprise. She remembered the “local specialties” he had brought back—the four-course meal that had smelled so strangely appealing.
“You… you actually ate that thing?” Irene asked weakly. Then her voice suddenly turned loud and defensive, “No! That’s impossible! Entity-Hunger doesn’t trick you into eating it! It makes you long to devour others, not itself! It’s not offering itself as a meal.”
Yu Sheng blinked at her sudden outburst. After a moment’s thought, he realized she had a point. If “Hunger” was a kind of malicious entity, its influence would be direct and cruel. It would make him want to eat those it targeted—like Foxy—not its own hideous flesh. Entities followed strange but consistent rules in that otherworldly realm.
Thinking it through, Yu Sheng let out a long sigh of relief. He hadn’t been driven to hunger by Entity-Hunger, at least not in the way it operated. He remembered that when he ate the monster’s flesh, he felt normally full afterward, which wouldn’t match the endless torment that Entity-Hunger caused. He gave a small nod, feeling calmer.
“Well, that’s good,” he said. “I’m still normal, then.”
Irene eyed him dubiously and muttered under her breath, “If your idea of normal is feeling tempted to eat that wretched thing, then we have different definitions.” Still, she said no more on the matter.
Yu Sheng cleared his throat, eager to move on. “So that monster—the one that looked like some twisted nightmare but tasted halfway decent—was that the real ‘Entity-Hunger’? If we defeat it, will we free Foxy? Even if we can’t destroy it completely, maybe we can at least set her loose from its grip for a while?”
Irene looked uncertain, biting her lip. “I’m not entirely sure,” she admitted. “Entity-Hunger is… special. The thing you fought was one of its manifestations. The real Entity-Hunger is spread throughout the entire valley. Think of it like this: what you fought was just one of its many feeding limbs, a ‘tentacle,’ so to speak, that it uses to sense intruders and devour them. Its true form is the very hunger that hangs over that place, seeping into every corner. It’s everywhere.”
Yu Sheng went quiet, his face turning pale. He understood exactly what she meant.
“Oh, brilliant,” he said bitterly, “so it’s one of those rule-type entities.”