Chapter 48: The Day of Feeding
This novel is translated and hosted on Bcatranslation
Foxy, the young fox girl, blinked in astonishment as she gazed at the enormous heap of food that Yu Sheng had just placed on the ground. For a long moment, she stood there, completely still, as if she couldn’t believe her own eyes. Only when Yu Sheng opened a can of porridge and held it up to her lips did she finally move.
“Go on, eat!” he urged, his voice gentle but firm. “It’s all yours. And if this isn’t enough, there’s more.”
The smell drifted toward her—real food, with a warm, comforting scent. Not stones or dirt, not the empty ghosts of meals that had danced through her dreams, never filling her stomach no matter how hard she tried to imagine it. This was something genuine, solid, and life-giving.
Foxy’s eyes went even wider. Suddenly, as if a spell had been lifted, she snatched the can straight from Yu Sheng’s hand. She didn’t bother with a spoon. Instead, she tilted the can straight into her mouth and swallowed the porridge in great, hungry gulps, making quiet, muffled sounds as she ate.
Within moments, the can was empty. Foxy licked the rim again and again, trying to reach every last drop. When Yu Sheng moved closer, intending to help, Foxy surprised him by simply ripping the can apart with her bare hands. The metal squealed as it tore into thin strips. She licked each piece clean, leaving not a single speck behind.
“Here,” Yu Sheng said at once, pulling more food out of his bag. He handed her a loaf of bread and a bottle of water. “Slow down a bit, alright?”
But Foxy didn’t slow down at all. She snatched the bread and water right away, devouring them with the same desperate hunger. In the silence of the ruined landscape around them, her eating was the only real sound. Sometimes she looked as if she wanted to speak, but the words never made it out—she couldn’t bring herself to stop eating for even a moment.
Then, without warning, tears began to roll down her cheeks. She didn’t sob or wail, but her eyes filled with quiet sorrow. Each tear fell onto the bread she was still cramming into her mouth, softening it before she ate it. She wept in silence, tears and dirt smudging her face as she ate.
Yu Sheng reached out, wiping the grime and tears from her cheeks. “Don’t cry,” he said softly. “You’ll make yourself ill, eating so fast in this cold wind. There’s plenty of food now, and there will be more later. There’s no need to cry…”
At his touch, Foxy seemed to finally settle down. She looked up at Yu Sheng with a dazed expression, as if waking from a long, terrible dream. Then she suddenly held out the half-eaten bread to him. “Benefactor,” she said gently, “you… you eat too.”
Yu Sheng quickly shook his head. “I’ve already eaten before I came, so I’m not hungry.”
Yet Foxy kept holding out the bread, not budging. Even though all this food belonged to Yu Sheng, she insisted on sharing it with him. It clearly mattered to her, as if this small kindness was a precious gift.
At last, Yu Sheng accepted the half-piece of bread. Foxy gave a quiet, relieved smile and then picked up a packet of crackers. This time, she opened it carefully and began nibbling very slowly, trying to enjoy each bite as much as she could. For the first time, she no longer seemed quite so desperately hungry. She was still hungry, but now she savored the taste, letting herself believe it would not vanish.
“It’s good,” she whispered after a while. “Benefactor, it’s really good…”
“No need to call me ‘Benefactor’ before everything,” Yu Sheng said, shuddering slightly as if it reminded him of something unpleasant. “Just eat until you’re full, alright?”
Foxy nodded at once. “Mm-hmm.”
A sudden voice broke the quiet. “Well, she’s finally calmed down,” said Irene, who had been silent until now. Relief was evident in her tiny voice. Irene was perched on Yu Sheng’s shoulder—a living doll with her own thoughts and words. She eyed Foxy with a look of satisfaction. “You really managed to hold on, huh…”
Foxy jumped slightly at Irene’s words. It seemed she had only just noticed that the small doll was not only alive but also capable of speech. Her wide eyes turned to Irene in disbelief. “Is… is this alive?!”
Irene gasped and rolled her tiny eyes. “What do you mean, ‘is this alive’?! Of course I’m alive! I even helped you open a sausage wrapper earlier!”
Yu Sheng quickly stepped in, “This is Irene,” he explained. “She’s a living doll from Alice’s Little House. Remember how I told you I had someone helping me? That’s her. Don’t be fooled by her size—she’s very good at what she does. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have been able to reach you through your dream.”
Irene puffed out her miniature chest and stood proudly, one tiny hand on her hip, the other gripping a small kitchen knife. She looked very pleased with herself, perched on Yu Sheng’s shoulder like that.
Foxy stared for a moment, trying to wrap her mind around a doll that could talk and move on its own. She didn’t understand it fully, but she knew Irene was Yu Sheng’s friend. After some thought, Foxy held out her cracker toward Irene. “Irene,” she offered quietly, “you eat too.”
Irene’s proud grin vanished at once. She hesitated, then said with an awkward cough, “Er… I can’t eat. Dolls don’t eat, you know…”
Foxy tilted her head, then, without fuss, drew the cracker back and took another nibble herself. “If dolls don’t eat,” she said simply, “then giving it to you would just waste food.”
Irene huffed in annoyance, cheeks puffed up. “Oh, well, thanks a lot! When you shared with Yu Sheng, you were kinder!” she grumbled.
Foxy didn’t respond. She seemed to think that was just common sense.
By now, Yu Sheng’s gaze had wandered from Foxy and Irene to the dark, chilly night around them. The air in the ruined valley felt different now, more unsettled. He could sense a change. The terrible presence lurking in the Otherworld—this entity he called the Hunger—was stirring. Perhaps it was angered by the rescue, furious that Foxy was being fed real food, freeing her from its grasp.
Yu Sheng had come here for two reasons: first, to save Foxy, and second, to confront the Hunger itself. He might have left it alone before, but now he knew too much. It was learning to think, becoming something far more dangerous. He couldn’t just turn his back on it.
Yet, strangely, the creature still hadn’t shown itself.
As doubts flickered in Yu Sheng’s mind, a faint, distant sound drifted on the wind. It reached their ears like a ghostly call.
A wolf’s howl.
Yu Sheng and Irene exchanged worried looks. Irene broke the silence first. “Yu Sheng, did you hear that just now?”
“Yes,” he replied, frowning. “A wolf. I thought maybe I misheard…”
They both turned to Foxy, who was still carefully chewing on her cracker. “Are there wolves around here?” Yu Sheng asked.
Foxy shook her head slowly. “No, it’s always just been me and that monster. I’ve never heard a wolf before.”
But there it was again, another howl, louder this time. It carried a tense, sharp edge that set their hearts pounding.
Somewhere in the darkness, a pack of wolves was drawing nearer, as if hunting or being hunted. The sound grew closer, each howl calling out into the cold air, weaving itself through the trees and the thickening gloom.
Meanwhile, deep within the dark forest, the giant, fleshy beast slithered through the shadows like a waking nightmare. Its shape was dreadful, shifting and twisting, moving silently among the trees, blending with the mist. One moment it was there, the next moment gone.
All around it, wolves formed from darkness itself seemed to leap through the undergrowth, attacking from all sides. They lunged at the monstrous creature, shadowy bodies jumping in and out of sight. More wolves appeared, trying to encircle it, snapping and snarling.
In a heartbeat, countless tendrils and jagged, bone-like limbs lashed out from the beast’s body. They slashed through the pack of wolves, forcing them to retreat, breaking their careful formation apart. The wolves scattered, and the creature’s many eyes fixed on a distant figure beyond them.
There she was: Little Red Riding Hood, calmly perched atop the largest wolf. Her gaze met the creature’s dozens of cold eyes. She stared back without fear, as if studying it. The air between them crackled with tension.
All at once, the beast’s body tore open in the middle, and a black, scaly tongue shot out. It hissed as it sliced through the air, aiming straight for the girl’s throat like an arrow launched in silence.
But Little Red Riding Hood simply shifted her position. At the very last instant, she lifted her right arm. Her slender limb burst apart, flesh unraveling into bloody mist. In that haze, the shape of a giant black wolf’s head formed, massive jaws snapping shut around the scaly tongue. The creature tried to pull back, but she held firm, refusing to let go. Her wolf mount stood its ground, planting its paws firmly in the earth.
In that split second, while the monster struggled, another figure darted from the forest. Li Lin emerged like a hunting cat, sprinting at the beast’s flank with quiet grace. He carried a short knife that glinted in the faint moonlight—an emergency blade borrowed from Xu Jiali.
The creature noticed Li Lin at once. Some of its many eyes whirled in his direction, a claw raising to tear him apart. But Li Lin anticipated this. He ducked in a way that seemed impossible, slipping just beneath the claw’s deadly sweep.
Then came the real attack from a different direction. Another figure sprang from the monster’s blind spot—a huge, powerfully built man nearly two meters tall. This was Xu Jiali, armed with a blade that for him was more like a short sword. He swung it down with all his strength, driving the heated steel deep into a swollen lump on the creature’s back.
The blade sank into the beast’s flesh with a sickening hiss, slicing a large chunk off its hide. The creature shrieked—a wailing, unnatural sound that shook the trees. In its fury, it flung Little Red Riding Hood aside and hurled Xu Jiali away, sending him crashing into the bushes.
Xu Jiali tumbled into the undergrowth and groaned in pain. Li Lin rushed to help, dragging him clear of the twigs and leaves, both of them turning back to look at the wounded beast.
But when they looked, the creature had vanished. The fog in the forest thickened, swirling into strange, twisting shapes. In the drifting mist, countless shadowy figures rose from the ground, their forms oddly distorted and swaying in the cold wind. It was as if the entire forest had become a hungry mouth, ready to swallow them whole.
Xu Jiali’s chest heaved as he struggled to catch his breath. He managed to gasp, “We can’t stay here! We have to keep going—get out of the forest!”