Chapter 052

Chapter 52: Connection

The moment he heard those four words, Li Lin felt his blood turn cold.

A second ago he was still feeling sorry that Yu Sheng had died to a sneak attack from a monster, and the next second he felt he might not live much longer either.

He muttered under the cold stare hanging in the sky: “How can this be? The files never once said there was Dark Angels living here… how can this be…” [This is wrong. Totally wrong.] Static seemed to fill his head, growing louder with every heartbeat.

Xu Jiali could not hold back his swearing as he spit out the facts: “Dormant state, and every Dark Angels has different traits… this is worse than going another round with Angel Cultists out on the wasteland.”

Everything had crashed past his expectations. They had fallen into the Otherworld without warning, then met the “Door Opening Eccentric” he had seen once on the Wasteland Planet. Beside that man stood a half meter tall Doll and a Demon Fox who looked like she had been exiled for a hundred years. Before they could say more than two sentences, the mysterious Door Opening Eccentric died on the spot. The Doll’s reaction was off the charts. Then more Hunger Entity showed up, and a Dark Angels appeared in the sky.

Even if he gathered all the imagination he had used in his whole life, he could not have dreamed up this cursed string of The Door events today.

Uneasy growls rolled out from every side. Wolves made of shadow circled them. The cold, unblinking eye in the sky pressed down on these strange creatures until even they felt fear. Yet Little Red Riding Hood, sitting a wolf as her mount, only frowned and asked: “Strange. Why aren’t those monsters coming closer?”

Held in Foxy’s arms, Irene blinked and then noticed the same wrongness.

Flesh Behemoth had gathered around the ruins of the broken temple, roaring in chaos and pacing, but oddly, none had taken a step forward to attack. Time had passed. Still nothing.

The eye floating in the sky simply watched in silence, as if it had no plan to act.

“I think we should run while we can,” Li Lin broke the silence and said, “forget why the monsters are spacing out.”

Little Red Riding Hood cut him off, speaking calm and flat: “Run where?”

That cold eye watched every inch of the Valley, and the whole Otherworld was changing as if it had come alive. Under that eye’s gaze, any plan to run shattered at once into the same despair: nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

Just then Irene seemed to remember something and lifted her head in Foxy’s arms: “You said this happened before, right? The day the Immortal died was the same. Your parents hid you in a hole?”

Foxy went blank for a second, then nodded fast.

“Where is that hole?”

Foxy snapped out of it, hugged Irene tight, and spun around to leave: “I remember. It’s near the back mountain. I’ll take you!”

Then she stopped and looked down at Yu Sheng’s body on the ground, unsure.

The benefactor’s eyes were still open. He looked like he could not rest in peace.

“What about the benefactor?” the Fox Maiden asked, flustered.

Even though she knew about Yu Sheng “dying and coming back,” she did not know the details. Last time they had met, time was short, and Yu Sheng had not explained much.

“Leave him here. Don’t worry about it,” Irene said at once. She had talked a lot with Yu Sheng and clearly knew more than the Fox. “He’ll be gone in a bit. He has a way to find me.”

Foxy stared, then nodded dumbly.

Irene suddenly remembered something and rushed on: “Right, where’s my kitchen knife… oh, there on the ground. Please grab it for me. And hang the Painting on me. I can’t be apart from it. The knife isn’t broken, right? Good. If I lose it, he’ll scold me later. The body is useless so leave it.”

The tiny Doll rattled off orders, the Fox Maiden followed them in a daze, and Li Lin’s trio watched, feeling the scene turn more and more unreal. They watched Foxy carefully pick up a cheap kitchen knife that would cost maybe a hundred at a supermarket while ignoring the body of their teammate. Little Red Riding Hood held it in as long as she could and finally burst out: “You’re just leaving him here?”

Irene leaned out of Foxy’s arms and said: “Carrying him will slow us down.”

Little Red Riding Hood opened her mouth to say more, but a roar from deep in the Valley cut her off.

Far mountains split open. Countless black boulders rolled down from the peaks. Flesh grew in the widening cracks. Teeth ground rock to powder and made a sound that chilled the heart.

The forest shook. Trees fell. It was like they shed a disguise. From where they fell, many toothed tendrils pushed out, all howling at once.

And the Behemoth circling the ruins, slow a moment ago, stirred in an uneasy rush.

Irene yelped, smacked Foxy’s shoulder with her stump of an arm, and snapped: “Yikes. We can’t stay. We’re leaving now. You three can follow or not!”

Foxy had already turned and sprinted for a gap behind the temple ruins, hugging Irene.

Li Lin and his team traded a look. Their heads were full of questions, but they had only one choice left. They rushed after the Fox toward a “shelter,” running flat out.

Little Red Riding Hood glanced back one last time at the place where Yu Sheng had fallen.

She bit her lip. One wolf peeled away from the Wolf Pack, sprinting toward Yu Sheng’s remains.

The wolf ran only a few steps, then seemed to forget its task, slowed, circled twice, and trotted back to the Wolf Pack at Little Red Riding Hood’s side.

She did not look back. She drove the Wolf Pack into a hard run, guarding the others as they followed the silver haired Fox Demon’s lead.

She had already forgotten the pool of blood left behind.

Around the broken temple, the restless Flesh Behemoth grew quiet again.

Born from the force called “Hunger,” these Entity stood among the ruins as if lost. Extra eyes, grown wrong, rolled everywhere. Twisted limbs waved in the air with no purpose. Huge mouths opened, and the forests of teeth mumbled like sleep talk, muddy and broken.

Suddenly, a clear word mixed into their murmur.

“So fragrant.”

A will spoke through their mouths.

So fragrant.

We should feed.

The Behemoth swayed on their feet. Eyes that had wandered stopped turning and fixed. One by one, they settled, and their gaze fell on each other.

Feed, but not because of Hunger.

Feed on what devours all, what sits above all. Feed. Yes. Now we should feed.

Then comes cold peace, and merciful forever. For it eats all things. It is the fairest end.

The first Flesh Behemoth moved. It staggered beside another Entity. No fancy strike, no trick. It simply opened the biggest mouth on its body and bit down, greed without limit.

The one being bitten did not dodge. It did not even wail.

As if it did not notice it was being eaten by its “own kind,” the monster only tottered forward, the other still hanging from it and chewing, and walked toward the nearest Entity.

Not one Entity-Hunger tried to chase the prey that had fled. In some instant just now, their nature had changed. Drawing power from Hunger was no longer important. The higher act of feeding had become their only mission.

In the middle of the ruins, the last trace of Yu Sheng’s blood slowly seeped into the soil. Where the blood spread, the earth changed color. It was slow, then a little faster, then unstoppable.

Yet the cold eye floating in the sky seemed to care nothing about these changes on the ground. It hung in the heights, that huge eye showing no feeling or thought a Human could read. It kept watching the Valley. It was so large that, from the ground, no one could tell what its “focus” was fixed on.

If a being like that even had a single “focus.”

Yu Sheng felt that focus, because it had fallen on him.

After drifting in darkness for a while, a strange sense of “connection” snapped him awake. At first he thought he had come back to life, but soon he knew he was still “dead.” Only this time, death was not quite the same.

He found he had gained another “view” in the dark. At first it confused him, the angle so odd and the layered data so thick that his mind reeled. Little by little, he understood.

He was answering the eye in the sky with the gaze of this Otherworld.

He had linked with the Valley.