Chapter 045

Chapter 45: Contact, Take Root

Yu Sheng’s mind sank in the huge, nameless tide of darkness. This shadow, cast by the body of Hunger, was even larger than he had imagined. That size felt exactly like what Hunger should be, the biggest and oldest terror hanging over every living head and buried in every living heart.

Then, in the depths of this shadow, he sensed the thing slowly drifting and squirming there: the Entity.

He could hardly say what it was. It seemed to have countless tendrils and swollen clumps of flesh. Every part of it kept changing shape, even collapsing and forming new structures or gaps as Yu Sheng watched. Its surface was black. Yet in the weave of those tendrils, colors shifted, carrying a dizzying, mind-twisting feel.

The instant Yu Sheng sensed it, it sensed him.

He had no time to react. From inside that thing, uncountable new tendrils and branch-like growths spread in a flash. Malicious tendrils reached him in an instant and wrapped around his mind.

A thousand voices exploded in his “head.” He could not block or dodge. His mind had already formed an irreversible link with something far larger. That thing roared in the depths of his awareness and poured out wild, terrible thoughts. In the next second, Yu Sheng noticed it did not truly have reason or will.

It was a vast, savage instinct. The crazy whispers and lures he heard were just tools that this instinct used to hunt.

They came from the beings it had devoured before. They were the madness and despair inside Hunger’s End Web, the dying cries of its victims. All of this gathered into the monster’s total malice and let what had been only a fusion of instincts grow to this day, even into a powerful Entity that actively hunted, tempted, and cornered prey.

It was still growing. Its fake thinking was turning into real thought.

Now it tried to take apart Yu Sheng’s mind and turn the uninvited guest into new food.

A feeling like his mind was melting spread through him. Yu Sheng felt himself getting digested fast, becoming a part of the monster. He fought with all his strength to tear off the tendrils, but the harder he struggled, the stronger the tendrils grew.

Right then, Yu Sheng felt something.

He snapped his gaze to the huge Entity writhing in the dark. In the next second, he saw that among the shifting colors in the darkness, countless eyes of different shapes appeared, and one pair of those eyes was his.

His view shook. In the dark he saw countless tendrils reaching forward. The ends of the tendrils wrapped around a human-shaped shadow that thrashed and fought.

He felt the monster digesting and absorbing him.

He felt himself devouring something.

He was eating.

He was eating.

At the moment when Yu Sheng could no longer tell where his view was or where the border between himself and the monster lay, Irene’s shocked yell echoed from the dark: “What the heck?!”

In the next second, Yu Sheng felt a violent drop.

The same awful snap-awake from last time hit him again.

He opened his eyes with a jolt. A stabbing ache and heavy buzzing filled his head, and pain washed through his whole body. He rolled over, grabbed the nightstand, and dry-heaved hard, as if to throw up his own heart, but nothing came out. Only after a very long ten-plus seconds did the horrible aftershock slowly fade.

Leaning on the nightstand, Yu Sheng pushed himself up. Pale morning light slipped through the curtains. A doll with a frame on her back sat on his bed, her small face full of worry and nerves.

Irene scooted over on hands and knees, grabbed his arm, and shook hard as she asked fast: “Are you okay? Are you still you? Do you remember who I am?”

Yu Sheng waved his free hand weakly and said: “Don’t shake me. I’m still dizzy… what the heck, why does my whole body hurt…”

Irene stared at him for several seconds, then finally let go and blurted out: “You scared me to death! You, you, you… you suddenly went all dead, no mental response at all! Then you suddenly came back, your mind a total mess, and I didn’t even know if I had woken the real you! You scared me to death! To death!”

She said “scared me to death” several times. She had truly been terrified. Yu Sheng did not have the extra energy to comfort the little doll. The massive shock of linking deeply with Hunger still lingered in him, like a giant shadow he could not shake. He worked to steady himself, rested against the headboard, and breathed for a long while until his mind finally cleared.

He looked Irene in the eyes and said: “Irene, that thing is dangerous.”

The little doll stood on Yu Sheng’s stomach and snapped back: “Of course it’s dangerous! I told you from the start it was dangerous!”

Yu Sheng shook his head and said: “No. I mean it is even more dangerous than you knew. It is about to truly learn how to think.”

Irene froze with wide eyes.

Yu Sheng went on, calm but serious: “It used to be pure instinct. Only after devouring countless minds did it learn methods to corner and lure. Simple killing gets limited ‘food.’ Driving a mind mad brings huge ‘nutrition.’ It did not know that at the start. It learned it bit by bit. Now it is almost showing real thought.”

At last fear crept over Irene’s face. Then another thought hit her, and she shot forward until her nose almost touched his as she demanded: “How do you know that?”

Yu Sheng did not hide it and said: “I formed a link deeper than we planned. For a moment I felt like I had become part of it. In the dark, I saw its most primitive shape and the secret of how it grows.”

Irene all but jumped straight up and burst into a storm of words: “I said this wouldn’t work! It’s too dangerous! Nobody knows what would happen, and you just had to try. What do we do, what do we do… we are so done for! It definitely took root! You weren’t just marked, it already chewed you! Hunger has Take Root in your mind! It’s over! Totally over!”

Her fuss grew louder and louder. She crawled all over the bed and over Yu Sheng’s stomach. Yu Sheng tried to interrupt several times and failed. In the end he had to lift her up into the air to make her quiet as he said: “Calm down, Irene. Calm down.”

Irene swayed in the air and shouted: “Calm down for what? Hunger already has Take Root in you! Are you not even a little nervous about your own state? It will grow inside your mind, bigger and bigger, then boom, you’re done! Even in the real world! Do you even get how bad this is? And don’t tell me you can revive. This thing has Take Root in your mind! Your body can refresh, but can your mind? Are you sure dying and coming back will shake off that Root?”

Yu Sheng knew all that, yet he also did not know why he felt no ticking clock of doom in his heart. Even his lately sharper Spiritual Intuition did not warn him. He knew by reason that this was dangerous, but a strange calm filled him. [Do not let her see you are calm.]

He chose his words and said: “As long as we destroy Hunger before that happens… I mean, kill the instance of the Entity that is affecting me, then it will be fine, right? The part that has Take Root needs time to explode. We still have time.”

Irene’s eyes narrowed as the key point grabbed her, and she said fast: “Time. Right, we still have time. Hurry, we have to hurry!” Then she noticed she was still being held up and barked: “Put me down! Put me down now! We leave at once to wipe out that Entity instance. Yes, yes, right now, while you still feel fine…”

Yu Sheng let out a tiny breath of relief, set Irene on the bed, and started to get up.

The moment he made a bigger move, pain throbbed through all his limbs and bones. He sucked in a sharp breath and muttered: “Ow. Why does it hurt so much…”

He frowned and said, confused: “I remember last time after the snap-awake, the aftershock faded pretty fast. And my body didn’t hurt. Why do I feel like I got beaten up this time…”

The doll who had been all flustered a second ago suddenly went quiet. Irene edged toward the foot of the bed and mumbled under her breath: “Sometimes snap-awake can cause a few physical side effects…”

Yu Sheng caught on at once, yanked up his sleeve, and said: “No. I did get beaten. There are bite marks on my arm.”

By now Irene had scurried to the footboard. She crossed her arms and declared: “You grind your teeth in your sleep. You bit yourself.”

Yu Sheng stared at the tiny marks and said: “You call these small teeth marks my own?”

Irene put her hands on her hips and argued, righteous as ever: “I was trying to wake you up. When normal methods don’t work, you have to use unusual ones.”

Then she hopped off the bed, turned, and bolted for the door.