Chapter 012

Chapter 12: Is Someone Here?!

Yu Sheng told Irene he was signing off, but this time he didn’t hang up right away.

It wasn’t because the thing across from him had turned kind. It was because the terrifying Behemoth seemed lost for some reason.

It stood in the night wind. Dozens of messy, overlapping eyes crowded the lump of flesh and stared at their prey with a strange “look.” It sounded odd to say, but Yu Sheng truly read “confusion” in those eyes, like a mouth and a stomach arguing over the bill for half an hour and still not matching up.

Irene kept calling to him in his mind, but all his attention was on the monster. Her voice felt far away, like it came through a heavy curtain. He tensed his muscles. His heart pounded like a drum. Every twitch of the monster’s muscles and every pulse in its veins showed clear in his sight.

He had prepared himself when he “came back to life” in the ruined temple, but meeting the weight of death again still filled him with huge tension. The only difference from last time was this: the fear mixed into that tension had faded a lot. In its place rose something even he found strange… excitement.

Then he felt it.

Muscles tightened. Thick, dirty blood gathered. Hunger surged from the bottom of his heart, and a command to feed echoed through his foggy mind. In that brief instant, alarm flared in him, and its shape was sharp and clear.

The monster was about to strike from the left as a feint. The real kill would be a snake tail swinging in from behind, armed with barbs and blades.

The monster lunged. A bloody maw split open at the end of some limb and snapped toward his left side. But before it leaped, Yu Sheng had already moved. Without thinking, he twisted aside, then dove forward so fast he hardly believed it himself.

He noticed his sprained waist had somehow healed. Ever since he “revived,” this body had been in a shockingly good state.

The Behemoth bit empty air. The tail that tried a sly angle barely grazed his back. He felt the wind pressure behind him. The brush with death made his hair stand on end, yet stronger than the shock was his disbelief: [I actually dodged it? What just happened?]

He had no time to think. A new danger rushed up from behind. There wasn’t enough time to get away. He hit the ground, scrambled up awkwardly, and saw a claw crashing down toward his head and face.

In panic, he lifted his arms on reflex, using his weak human limbs to block a strike that fell like a meteor.

There was a booming crash. Air blasted out, scattering grass and dust for meters around. Pain roared through him. He felt like a dozen bones broke at once. He grunted and staggered back two steps.

But he had stopped it. He had actually blocked that hit.

He stared at his hands in shock. His left hand bent at a wrong angle. The bone really was broken. Yet the pain faded with amazing speed, and the twisted bone seemed to be slowly setting itself.

He remembered the monster’s first attack on him, remembered its real strength. Every inch of its muscle could crush a human body with ease. He was certain that if it had gone all out, he could never have blocked it. Not even with every bone shattered.

The monster didn’t give him time to think. It landed, adjusted for a second or two, then let out a messy, angry roar. Hungry, the Behemoth pounced again at the annoying prey before it.

Wind knifed through him. The flying monster dropped like a small mountain. Yu Sheng reacted early again. He rolled aside without caring how he looked and jumped away, dodging a stone-splitting tail strike. The next second, before he found his footing, the retracting tail swept him off his feet. Then the Behemoth split in its middle. A disgusting, tentacle-like “long tongue” shot out in the dark, wrapped him tight, and yanked him back.

Yu Sheng braced with both hands so the long tongue wouldn’t snap his chest in two, at least not right away. He watched as it dragged him toward the gaping hole in the monster’s body. Countless sharp teeth rose and scraped inside it like a giant mouth starved for too long.

Right as he was about to be pulled in, he kicked the ground hard. The rock under his feet cracked. The huge recoil even made the monster stumble.

He didn’t stop to wonder where his strength came from. Using that single breath of time, he roared and tore the long tongue apart. He snatched up a sharp rock from the ground and leaped at a cloudy eye trembling on the monster’s side.

The tongue snapped. The Behemoth let out a bone-chilling roar. Blood sprayed from the split in its body. Dozens of eyes stared at him with madness and Hunger.

The smell of fresh blood slid into his nose. It jabbed at his nerves, waking some long-sleeping instinct.

It really did smell good.

His heart hammered. Something hot, near boiling, surged through his blood. A kind of joy rose from deep inside. He tried to name it, and finally understood.

It was the joy of about to eat. It was the reward for Hunger being fed.

That Behemoth, that heap of flesh, that fallen, muddled spirit. That was… fine meat.

[Fine meat.]

The sharp rock turned to powder in his grip. He breathed hard, and everything around him seemed to slow.

He threw himself at the monster. The monster threw itself at him. Food embraced food. For a moment he felt like he hadn’t eaten in more than twenty years, or at least had never eaten “real food.” He hugged the monster’s twisted limb. The monster hugged him back with even more force, squeezing until one bone after another cracked in his body.

But Yu Sheng hardly felt it. He was already biting into the monster’s flesh. This wasn’t like last time, which had been a final strike of anger and despair before death. Now his mindset had changed.

[I won’t die. I will come back. This monster can kill me once, twice, a hundred times. I will come back.]

[And each time, I will learn better how to deal with it.]

This might take a long time.

[But I will enjoy this good meat, bit by bit.]

A dozen eyes on the monster’s side quivered wildly. A few seemed to sense something and finally fixed on him.

A toothed maw had clamped down on his side, yet fear seemed to rise in those eyes.

Yu Sheng felt his body being torn apart, and he knew he would lose this round. He would die and be eaten by the monster. At least this time he still couldn’t win.

Even so, he had lasted far longer than he expected. He thought he would drop dead the moment they clashed, but he had traded blows for a while.

He tried to call in his heart: [Irene.]

Irene’s voice came at once, anxious and loud: “Yu Sheng! Yu Sheng, are you okay? I kept calling and you didn’t answer…”

He answered in a low breath: “I’m fine, I told you too early. Now I’m going to hang up…”

Then he ignored her shouting and quietly waited for the descent of death.

But right before the heavy darkness fell, he heard a voice nearby, a clear voice that truly existed in this Valley: “Don’t be afraid! I’m here to save you!”

His fading mind jolted awake for a second. A thunder-like shock burst in his head.

[Someone?! There’s someone here?!]

He forced his eyes open and looked toward the sound. A figure sprinted toward him out of the distance. It looked like a ragged girl. In the next second, he saw shapes flying behind her in the night.

What was that? A tail? A fox?

Human? No, not a person at all. [A Sonic Headbutt.]

Yu Sheng watched in despair as the “rescuer” boosted midair like a long-range shell, head down and charging straight in. The monster chewing on him happened to shift its body, likely on purpose, which made Yu Sheng the perfect target.

He managed to squeeze out two syllables through his teeth: “What the…”

The charging girl didn’t even see what was in front of her. The Sonic Headbutt slammed into Yu Sheng’s chest.

Then he didn’t have a chest anymore.

Everything below his neck was gone, like it evaporated.

He groaned a last complaint: “Miss, you… hit the wrong target…”

And then Yu Sheng got saved to death.