Chapter 015

Chapter 15: Trapped Here

When she said her name out loud, Yu Sheng’s first thought was that this miss was straightforward and had just named herself “fox.” After asking several times, he finally understood she meant “Foxy,” not fox.

Her name was Foxy. Strange, but it fit those many tails.

“I’m Yu Sheng,” he said as they sat together in the ruins of the temple. He introduced himself: “I’m from… uh, I’m not sure how to say it so you’ll get it. I came from the outside, not outside the valley.”

“You really came from the outside!” Foxy’s eyes went wide at once. She understood right away, and her shock carried another meaning: she knew the outside existed.

Foxy took another small, controlled bite of chocolate and stared at his face: “How did you get in? Do you know… the way out? Is it… in the sky?”

Yu Sheng blinked: “The sky? Why ask that?”

“The immortal said, before he died, that we all came from the sky. Then the sky suddenly went dark, so we could not go back,” Foxy said, choosing words with care. She was smoother now, but long sentences still made her stutter a little. “Then the ground got more dangerous. It started to be poisonous. So… many who came here died. We could not go back…”

Yu Sheng listened, relying on a lot of guesswork to follow her broken story. He realized this valley that Irene had labeled the Otherworld hid a complicated past. The many tailed miss before him had a history he could hardly believe.

She was trapped here too.

But when he tried to ask what exactly the “sky” was, who the “many people” were, and how they had arrived, her answers turned scattered again.

“The sky… is the sky. All these years I tried to return to the sky, but I couldn’t,” Foxy said, waving her hands as she explained. “I tried to jump up, but I hit something. It hurt. Everyone… forgot things. There was father, mother, the immortal, and… others. We came down by ship. A very big ship…”

She paused as if remembering something, then pointed into the darkness, toward the deep part of the valley: “Over there, the ship fell, and became part of the mountain. Father always wanted to go back to fetch something, but later… something killed everyone, so no one knew how to… get into the ship.”

Her story turned eerie. A chill ran down Yu Sheng’s back.

He did his best to piece it together and set aside, for now, what exactly an immortal meant in her mouth. He also set aside the idea of where the sky was. From her broken parts, he put together a rough truth:

Foxy, her family, and someone she called the immortal had come here years ago on a huge ship, very likely a flying vessel, and landed in this valley. Back then it was not yet a dead place. Later the sky suddenly went dark. The environment changed for unknown reasons. The area sealed itself, and everyone from the ship was trapped. After that, some powerful enemy attacked them. Nearly all were wiped out.

It had been brutal. In the end, the only survivor was Foxy.

But Yu Sheng knew this was just a story he patched together through guesswork. Foxy’s words were scattered. Her memories had gaps. Her own view warped how she understood things. The truth might be beyond even her reach.

[Her mind is really not in a good state.]

“How long have you been stuck here?” he asked.

“I don’t know. A long time,” Foxy said, shaking her head as she cradled half a chocolate bar. “Nothing changes here. I don’t know how to count days. When I get hungry, I pass out. Then when I wake up, it feels like a long time passed.”

Yu Sheng frowned. He looked at her tattered dress and thought of the rough life she had described. He realized she had likely been trapped far longer than he guessed. At least years.

“How did you survive all this time?” he asked, frowning. “What did you eat? Just digging through trash in this temple? It doesn’t look like there’s anything edible here.”

“No food,” Foxy said, shaking her head again. “In the forest… sometimes there are fruits, but they are poisonous. When I eat them, I pass out. Except for water, most things here are poisonous. So most of the time, I just stay hungry.”

She smiled, a small wrinkled smile, and pointed at herself with a touch of pride: “A monster is tough. Hunger won’t kill me. It just… feels bad.”

She seemed to remember something awful. Her smile crumpled. She sprang up, ran a short distance, and carefully fetched the kitchen trash bag from the rubble, hugging it like a treasure.

“I can still eat this,” she told Yu Sheng with great seriousness.

Yu Sheng opened his mouth, but no words came. He wished he could pull out piles of food for her, or open a door back to the living world. But he himself was barely safe.

“Benefactor…” Foxy said softly.

Yu Sheng blinked, not getting it: “What did you call me?”

“Benefactor,” Foxy repeated with a serious face. “Mother said the one who gives great help is a benefactor. You gave me food.”

Yu Sheng waved a hand: “…That title is a bit odd. Just call me Yu Sheng. That’s what I’m used to.”

“Oh, okay…” Foxy mumbled, slipping past the title. Then she pointed at his finger and lowered her head: “I’m sorry.”

“Ah?” Yu Sheng looked down and noticed the cut on his finger again. It was the mark she made when she tried to eat the bun and his hand at the same time. At some point it had healed completely. Only a smear of dried blood was left. He rubbed it away and said, unconcerned: “It’s nothing. Don’t worry. Just a scratch.”

Foxy still looked worried: “Benefactor, are you really fine? If a monster bites you… the wound hurts your core. It won’t heal.”

“But it already did,” Yu Sheng said, puzzled. He brushed the finger again and showed her. “See?”

“It really healed…” Foxy stared, surprised. “Benefactor… are you an immortal too?”

“I’m not. I don’t even know what you mean by immortal. Do you mean someone who cultivates to become an immortal?” Yu Sheng said casually. “But why would people who cultivate to become immortals travel with… uh, monsters? From what you said, you were on the same ship as a monster group and an immortal, right? From all the stories I’ve heard… immortals and monsters don’t work together like that.”

He finally asked the question that had been stuck in his head:

Foxy had used a lot of words he only knew from myths. She had a bunch of tails that looked like they belonged on a thousand year fox spirit. Yet all this pointed to an immortal leading a group of monsters around. Even after the flying vessel crashed, they banded together and tried to survive for a while. That didn’t match the usual image at all.

[In stories, those two sides usually turn each other into dumpling filling the moment they meet.]

Foxy clearly didn’t get why he was confused. She tilted her head, thought hard, and said, not fully sure: “Because he was a tour guide immortal.”

“…What?” said Yu Sheng.

He felt like he had heard something cursed.

He asked several times and confirmed that Foxy hadn’t misspoken.

It was a tour guide immortal. In other words, the immortal was a guide.

Long ago, the monsters and the immortal who fell with the celestial ship into this forbidden valley had been on a tour group.

Yu Sheng had just imagined eight hundred fifty thousand words of an epic immortal saga for nothing.

[Don’t ask why there was a tour group of monsters led by an immortal. Cheap tours go wrong. A four day trip for ninety nine yuan, no shopping, of course something would happen.]

Yu Sheng sat in the night wind. It blew through the ruins and across his face.

[This world is very weird.]

And it only kept getting weirder.

Just then, the fox girl called him again in a small voice.

“Benefactor…”

“Just call me Yu Sheng,” he sighed. “What is it?”

Foxy held her belly and looked miserable: “Benefactor, my stomach hurts.”

Yu Sheng stared for a beat and then glanced at the chocolate she had already eaten half of.

[Seriously? A fox immortal can’t handle chocolate?!]

“…Oh no! Stop eating!” Cold sweat broke out on him. He reached to take the chocolate: “This stuff is bad for you…”

Before his hand got there, a deep growl rolled out of Foxy’s throat, like a mastiff guarding a bone. She lunged and bit his hand.

“Aow!”

The next second, Yu Sheng’s yelp was louder than hers.