Chapter 078

Chapter 78: Another Visit

The Door to the Valley shimmered with a faint glow as Yu Sheng stepped across the “border,” and in the next second bright daylight flooded his eyes.

He narrowed his gaze, looked into the distance, then up at a sky dotted with small drifting clouds. After that giant eye that covered the heavens left, the Otherworld once called Night Valley had ended its endless night, yet he had not expected it to still be day here now when the real world was already night. [Does this place have no day and night at all? After the Dark Angels ended the eternal night, did it become eternal day instead?]

Cautious thoughts rose, and his guard went up as he watched his surroundings with care.

He had set his Door Opening drop point near the ruined temple. The devastation from the rampage of Entity-Hunger was still plain to see. The temple, already a wreck, was now only a field of broken brick and tile, not even one upright wall left. The wasteland around it looked as if it had been deeply plowed again and again. Huge trenches ran from the ruins all the way to the edge of sight, The End Web. The old forest was nothing but withered remains. Piles of stones lay across the Valley Floor. The nearby rock faces had been scraped clean of a whole layer, exposing bare soil.

Aside from that, there were no signs of danger.

Frowning, Yu Sheng picked his way across trench after trench and reached a patch of open ground mixed with broken bricks.

He remembered this place. Here he had opened the feast. The first Entity-Hunger he “influenced” had opened its huge maw right here and started devouring other Entities.

Now every trace of an Entity had faded. Even the bloodstains were gone as if they had evaporated.

The Valley was quiet. Now and then a light breeze crossed the Valley Floor, no longer so cold, and without that sickening rot in the air. Compared with that night-shrouded, gloomy place from before, this place now carried a hint of a peaceful haven.

If you ignored the trenches.

Yu Sheng stood amid the ruin, a little dazed, staring at this small, calm world. [Is this what the Director wanted me to see? Or does she not know what is going on here and just wants me to confirm it?]

Irene’s voice suddenly rang in his mind, breaking his thoughts: “Hey! Yu Sheng, Yu Sheng, come in if you hear me: dead or not?”

“I hear you, I hear you,” Yu Sheng answered at once, brows pinched, “but can’t you say something nicer? What is ‘dead or not’ supposed to mean?”

“Please, how few times have you dropped dead outside? You pushed the Door and then went totally silent. I thought a freshly spawned Entity-Hunger got you again,” the Doll said, bold and annoying as ever. Yu Sheng could almost picture that little thing with hands on hips, swaggering on the table. He was in no mood to trade barbs.

“There are no Entities,” he said flatly.

On the other end, Miss Doll paused two full seconds: “Huh?”

“I haven’t seen any Entity. The Valley is very calm, and I can’t sense that ever-present malice or the Hunger in the air,” Yu Sheng said as he left the temple wreckage. He bent to scoop up a handful of soil: “The rot in the dirt and the air is gone too.”

“Walk a bit farther then?”

“I am heading out now,” Yu Sheng said while moving, “maybe not enough time has passed, and Entity-Hunger hasn’t regenerated yet? I did make a big mess last time…”

He did not finish before Irene cut in, full of noise: “No way. It has been a long time. Regeneration for Entities is counted in hours, some take only tens of minutes. We have been gone over twenty four hours. If Entity-Hunger could reproduce, five generations would be living together already.”

Yu Sheng sat on a big stone at the edge of the ruins. Looking into the distance, he said casually, “But there really is nothing here. To be honest, the air feels nice, and the view is easier on the eyes.”

“Huh?”

Ignoring her surprise, he pressed his shoe into the soft dirt around the stone.

He felt that subtle link. After returning here, the link had grown stronger. It was not like the peak from before, when the Valley served as a “carrier” and gave him a direct “view,” yet he could clearly sense many things around him.

There was hard stone and gentle wind, the soil under his feet, a pond hidden at the foot of the mountain on the Valley Floor, and…

Yu Sheng froze, then turned his head.

A tender green sprout was poking a sharp tip from the earth, like a young creature seeing daylight for the first time, trembling softly in the breeze. [Life is stubborn.]

Staring at the sprout, he felt his heartbeat quicken for no clear reason. That sight stirred something strange and bright inside him. Maybe it was the link with the Valley, maybe something warmer. He reached his hand out toward that patch of dirt.

The earth began to squirm.

Deep trenches knit together. Tiny buds broke through the soil. Life was growing, like rebirth after death.

Yu Sheng gaped and blurted out: “What the heck?”

Irene shot back at once: “Huh? What? What happened? Did you get hurt?”

Yu Sheng sprang up and yanked open the Phantom Door: “Hard to explain. You and Foxy should come see it.”

A blink later he stepped back into the living room and locked eyes with Irene standing on the chair.

“Foxy is still washing dishes,” Irene said after a beat, pointing to the kitchen, “do you want me to call her now?”

Yu Sheng nodded, but just as he was about to speak, his pocket buzzed again and again.

He took out his phone and saw a string of missed calls on the screen, two from Li Lin, two from Xu Jiali, and several from the same unknown number.

His expression grew odd. He was deciding whom to call back when that same unknown number rang again.

He picked up before the ringtone could even sound, and a familiar female voice came through: “It’s me, Bai Li Qing.”

Yu Sheng’s mouth twitched. [Knew it.] He could not hide the awkwardness in his voice: “Ahem, I just went out the Door for a bit. Should I have told you first?”

“It’s fine. We just need to confirm the ‘tremor’ came from your Door Opening,” Bai Li Qing’s cool voice came through the receiver, almost without emotion. “We will try to record more sample parameters so we can pick out your signature when later alarms trigger.”

Her calm, nonjudgmental tone somehow made Yu Sheng feel even more awkward. Maybe that was simply the Director’s style. He gave a weak laugh: “Sorry for the trouble.”

“Will you go out the Door again soon?” she asked.

“Probably,” Yu Sheng said, and then he remembered something and added fast, “I’m checking on Night Valley.”

He was sure he heard a small intake of breath.

Her tone changed: “You got in? It still exists?”

Yu Sheng caught the word she used: exists. [So she thought Night Valley no longer existed. Why?]

“It exists. I only took a quick look, and I am not sure what is going on inside yet. I was about to bring my team and go again,” he said, glancing at the small Doll on the chair and the dish washer in the kitchen. That was his “team.”

Bai Li Qing did not press. After a brief pause she said, “If you need support from the Special Affairs Bureau, contact me directly. This number is always on.”

The call ended with two short beeps.

“It was the Director from the Special Affairs Bureau,” Yu Sheng told Irene, “nothing big.”

He turned to the kitchen to call Foxy.

Pushing the Door open, he saw the Fox Maiden drying dishes with her tail, and stealing spoonfuls of sesame paste from the cabinet.

He did not know which to complain about first.

“Ah, benefactor,” the fox’s ears twitched twice. Hearing the Door, she turned in a fluster: “It smelled so good. I could not help it. I am sorry.”

Yu Sheng looked at Foxy, and at the sesame paste all over her mouth, half helpless and half amused: “Clean up, then come out the Door with me.”