Chapter 054

Chapter 54: Yu Sheng’s Return

The chewing that filled the whole Valley rose like waves, and the entire Otherworld turned into a feast. Very soon, everyone hiding in the cave understood what that sound meant.

Li Lin crept to the mouth of the cave and, scalp tingling, risked a quick look outside.

The fangs in the mountains were biting each other. Trenches like giant jaws were collapsing inward, then splitting into more cracks, swallowing and melting together. Feeding tendrils that covered the ground had begun to digest themselves. Flesh Behemoths kept budding from certain shadows, only to be swallowed in a blink by some unseen force.

Against that terrible banquet, he saw a figure. Yu Sheng stood on the open ground outside the cave, staring, a little lost, at the Valley devouring itself.

Li Lin felt dazed for a second, then the small wrongness slipped away. He had already forgotten the scene of Yu Sheng’s death and only felt like Yu Sheng had left the team for a while.

Foxy and Irene, who were guarding the cave mouth, also saw Yu Sheng at once.

Foxy blurted out, voice bright with relief: “benefactor, you really didn’t die!” Then she grew tense and waved him in: “benefactor, get inside! It’s dangerous out there!”

Yu Sheng finally turned around and hurried into the cave. As he walked, he muttered: “That thing in the sky is creepy, but it doesn’t seem eager to attack…”

Irene ignored his muttering and, tense, looked him over from head to toe: “Are you really okay? Is your mind still normal?”

Yu Sheng shot the doll a glare and snapped back, sounding put out: “Can’t you wish me well for once? Do you know how hard it was to come back?”

He lifted his head and glanced outside again, voice low and steady: “‘Hunger’ should be ending, but I don’t know what that big eyeball in the sky is. It isn’t one with ‘Entity-Hunger,’ and it doesn’t even feel like something native to this Valley.”

Irene had prepared a bunch of jokes to ease the mood, but she froze at that: “Huh? It isn’t from this Valley?”

“No,” Yu Sheng said, shaking his head. He still kept a subtle link with the Otherworld, so he could clearly pick out the gaze falling from the sky and the “border” between that eye and the Valley: “Right now every Hunger Entity is within my perception. I can tell that the eye is an outsider. For many years it has just been ‘perched’ above this Otherworld, taking the place of the sky here.”

Irene’s mouth hung open in shock. A deep voice rose from the back of the cave and broke the short silence: “That is an Angel.”

Yu Sheng looked up, surprised. A man nearly two meters tall was coming from the depths of the cave, cold blue Fox Fire throwing sharp shadows across his face.

The big man looked Yu Sheng up and down. His expression carried a heavy caution: “Did you fall behind earlier?”

Maybe it was his imagination, but Yu Sheng felt the man’s eyes on him were strange, full of guard and wariness. There was no real hostility, but there also wasn’t the normal concern or curiosity you’d show a teammate who had just rejoined. [Why is he looking at me like I might explode?]

Yu Sheng didn’t dig into it. He cared more about the odd name the big man had said.

He waved a hand, casual: “I didn’t keep up, but it’s fine.” Then he asked, focused: “What do you mean by ‘Angel’?”

The big man chose his words and answered slowly: “More accurate is ‘Dark Angels.’ They are unknown and dangerous. Sometimes the name also covers special phenomena caused by these dangerous individuals. Each Dark Angel is different. Form, ability, even how they appear, all vary a lot. The one covering the sky now probably parasitized this Otherworld many years ago. Because of its influence, the Entities here mutated.”

Yu Sheng listened in surprise and soon noticed that this big guy knew more than he was saying. There had to be more detailed information about these so-called Dark Angels.

But the man didn’t share it all. Maybe there were rules. Maybe he was wary. That was normal. None of them really knew each other. They had fought side by side once, but they hadn’t even exchanged names yet. Sharing anything at all already counted as goodwill.

Yu Sheng offered his hand with a friendly smile: “I’m Yu Sheng. These two are Foxy and Irene. They’re my friends.”

The tall man hesitated, then shook his hand: “Hello. I’m Xu Jiali.”

Yu Sheng blinked and then faltered: “Sorry, I didn’t catch that, you’re…?”

The red-clad girl on a stone stool lifted her head and cut in, deadpan: “He said he’s Xu Jiali, like ‘pretty ladies.’ You can call me Little Red Riding Hood.”

Yu Sheng blinked, then got it and nodded with a grin: “Oh, I see. You’re clearly pros. You use codenames when you’re out on a job, right?”

The big man rumbled, flat and dry: “She uses a codename. Mine is my real name.”

Yu Sheng fell silent. [What am I supposed to say to that?] He recovered with an awkward cough and praised the name as cultured and elegant. Then his eyes went to the last young man who hadn’t spoken yet.

The face felt familiar, like he had seen it somewhere, but he couldn’t place it at first.

Li Lin didn’t hesitate. When he met Yu Sheng’s eyes, he came over with easy manners: “I’m Li Lin.”

Yu Sheng hadn’t answered yet when Irene suddenly squawked, sounding thrilled by the ordinary: “Hey! That’s a normal name!”

Li Lin went speechless. He glanced at Yu Sheng’s group. One fox demon with a bunch of tails, one doll barely half a meter tall, three people together almost making one Human, and they dared to judge if someone’s name was normal. [Unbelievable.]

His attention shifted quickly to something else.

The chewing from outside the cave was sinking lower and lower. The rumbling that had filled the whole Otherworld was fading fast.

Xu Jiali strode to the mouth of the cave in a few steps and leaned out. The whole Valley had been turned on its head.

It looked as if a layer had been chewed straight off the distant mountainsides and the nearby valley floor. Only jagged rocks and bare soil were left on the slopes. The far forest was gone. Ravines crisscrossed the ground below the hills.

He snapped back around to face Yu Sheng, who stood by Foxy.

He asked it carefully, because it sounded ridiculous even to him, yet his gut wouldn’t let it go: “Was this… done by you?”

“Sort of,” Yu Sheng said easily. He was in a great mood. A deep, satisfied fullness warmed him from the inside. He nodded, cheerful: “It did take a lot of work.”

Li Lin had also seen the Valley. When he looked back at Yu Sheng, his face held pure shock: “…How is that possible…”

Yu Sheng thought about it and knew there was no easy way to explain what had happened. [What do I say, that I got eaten by Hunger, but my appetite beat its appetite? That a Human mentally polluted an Entity, and after it ate something dirty, the Hunger Entity got even hungrier and ate itself?] That wasn’t just hard to explain. Even if he explained it, no one would know who the real villain was.

Besides, he didn’t want these not-yet-familiar people to know too much about him.

He waved it off, voice light: “Lucky break. I found the Entity’s weak spot. I think it triggered a chain reaction where the Entities in this Valley started devouring themselves.”

It sounded like a brush-off, and he made it obvious on purpose. Li Lin understood at once. Some things were other people’s secrets.

Irene’s shout cut across their doubts: “Hey! Is that thing in the sky floating up?”

Yu Sheng hurried to the mouth of the cave and craned his neck to look at the sky over the Valley.

The huge eye that had covered the Valley was rising slowly. It made no sound. It was like a giant projection shrinking in the sky. In just ten-odd seconds it was down to a third of its old size.

It was pulling away fast.

Brighter, more normal daylight spread over the peaks in the distance. The shredded clouds returned. The eye shrank to a palm-sized disk hanging in the center of the sky. After a few breaths more, the disk vanished from sight.

Irene stared upward, lost: “It… ran away?” Then she turned to the tall man named “Jiali,” flustered: “The ‘Angel’ you mentioned ran away! What do we do?”

Xu Jiali only let out a slow breath. He even managed a small smile for the doll’s sake: “What else? We celebrate. After that I go home and write the report.”