Chapter 079

Chapter 79: Changes

“Out the Door?” Foxy froze at Yu Sheng’s words, then rushed to dry the last few bowls with her tail. She grabbed another tail to wipe the sesame paste from her mouth: “Okay, I am ready.”

Yu Sheng’s eyelid twitched as he watched her: “No need to rush that much. Did you really wipe your mouth with your tail?”

Foxy looked down at the paste on the tip of her tail, finally realized, dunked the tail into the sink and scrubbed. When she finished, she gave it a hard shake right in front of Yu Sheng.

“I am used to it,” she muttered, “I forgot we have better things in the house.”

“It’s fine, not a big deal,” Yu Sheng said as he wiped water off his face, “but next time be careful when you flick water near people and appliances.”

“Sorry, benefactor,” Foxy cried, now seeing she had splashed him. In a panic she leaned in with a dry tail and scrubbed at his face, asking at the same time, “Where are we going? Do we need to fight?”

“Stop, stop, I can wipe,” Yu Sheng said, fending off the tail and spitting out two silver hairs. “We are going back to that Valley, but we probably will not fight this time.”

Foxy froze where she stood, whole body tense.

The worry and fear in her eyes could not be hidden. Yu Sheng had expected this reaction even before he spoke. It was exactly why he wanted her to see the strange change with her own eyes.

“Do not be afraid. I am here,” he said, stepping up to gently press her hair. “I know you hate that place, but something odd has happened. I think you need to see it yourself. Do not worry. You will not be trapped inside again.”

Foxy stared at Yu Sheng, then after several seconds she nodded stiffly, as if she had used all her courage to decide.

Yu Sheng led her back to the dining room, picked up the already-waiting Miss Doll, opened the Door to the Otherworld Valley, and the three of them stepped in.

Sunlit Valley filled their sight. A fresh breeze passed across the Valley Floor. Far-off rocks and barren ground were bathed in light. With the night gone, everything looked bright and sharp.

Even the scars left after the “feast” seemed softened and somehow reassuring under this daylight.

Perched on Yu Sheng’s shoulder, Irene stared wide-eyed at the view for a long while before saying: “This is like Yu Sheng crawling into an Alchemy Furnace: the Door has gone really weird.”

Yu Sheng forgot what he had meant to say. He turned to her with a complicated look: “Can you please stop using me to make sayings?”

“Then explain this and tell me what happened,” Irene said, pointing at the Valley. “The aura of Entity-Hunger has completely faded. I feel like this is not the same Otherworld anymore.”

“Not the same Otherworld?” Yu Sheng picked up on her wording, his face changing a little. “What do you mean?”

“The whole environment is different. I do not know if you can feel the change in the mood of the place,” Irene said, frowning as she looked Yu Sheng up and down several times. Then, a little hesitant, she added, “It has your feeling, or maybe the feeling of Wutong Road 66.”

“…?”

While Yu Sheng stared, Foxy had been nervously checking the surroundings for a long time. When she first stepped through the Door she was all wound up, but now only confusion remained. She did not have Irene’s precise sense for the Otherworld, but as a Demon Fox she could instinctively feel things that had once threatened her.

Entity-Hunger had truly disappeared from here. And after all this time there was still no sign of Regeneration.

“I want to show you more than that,” Yu Sheng said.

He crouched and reached toward a patch of pitted earth, scarred by the tendrils of Entity-Hunger.

Foxy and Irene did not understand, but they both looked where his fingers pointed.

The soil began to rise and flow, slowly.

They heard a faint rubbing sound from deep in the dirt.

The ground started healing. Trenches filled. Corrosion vanished.

Green appeared among the stones, thin and fragile, yet enough to stun them both.

The Valley was healing. That was the only phrase that came to Irene’s mind.

She turned her stiff neck and looked at Yu Sheng’s face.

Yu Sheng let out a long breath and stood up.

Within a circle of several dozen meters, the ground had already mended. That was his limit right now. Farther out, he could feel a subtle link, but he could not simply “activate” or “reshape” at a touch. Even so, he could tell that what he had done was affecting the whole Valley, like planting a seed and starting a slow reaction. The Valley was waking and recovering life bit by bit.

“How did you do that?” Irene finally asked.

“I do not know the exact principle, but it should also be a link built by blood,” Yu Sheng said slowly, thinking aloud. “After last time ended, I felt a stable link between me and this Valley. Maybe I died too many times here, and bled enough to water the ground. At some moment I could sense it, like this.”

He pointed at the healed earth underfoot.

Irene stared at him, shocked and even a little spooked: “What kind of weird Door thing is your blood?”

Then she realized something: “Wait. You used your blood to shape my body, and you smeared it on my frame. Does that mean you can also control…”

“No,” Yu Sheng sighed. “If I could control you, would I be getting kicked all night in my sleep?”

Irene thought about it and relaxed: “Oh. True.”

She turned to Foxy: “Your homeland is Cultivation. You see it differently. What do you think?”

Foxy looked at Yu Sheng with open worship: “Benefactor, your immortal arts are profound. You can guide nature’s changes. You could be an Immortal doing landscape gardening.”

“…,” Yu Sheng thought. [I will take that as praise.]

“I should not expect you to have a real opinion,” Irene sighed after hearing Foxy’s line. She poked Yu Sheng’s head: “Put your link with the Valley aside for now. The key is the Entities that haunted this place. After so long with no Regeneration, I am afraid they are really gone.”

“Has this ever happened before?” Yu Sheng asked, doubtful.

“Of course not. At least I have never heard of it,” Irene said without hesitation. “Entities are a necessary phenomenon in how the Otherworld runs, not separate beings you can wipe out. If the Otherworld exists, Entities exist. But then again,” she paused and looked around with a subtle expression, “the whole mood of the Valley has changed. From my sense, it is no longer the Otherworld that birthed the Entity-Hunger. If that is true, then Entity-Hunger may be gone for good.”

Miss Doll’s brow furrowed. Her logic had found a way to explain it, yet she could not bring herself to believe it.

Foxy did not follow Irene’s worry. She only understood one thing: the monster might never come back. She tugged Yu Sheng’s sleeve: “So from now on, that monster will not come out to hurt people?”

“It seems so,” Yu Sheng said after a moment’s thought, nodding lightly. “Unless this Valley breaks its link with me and somehow turns itself back into what it was.”

At that answer, Foxy stared blankly at Yu Sheng, then suddenly leaped forward and hugged him hard. Her strength made even his far stronger than human body creak. Not only that, she wrapped him in a bunch of tails as well: “Benefactor, this is so good. So good.”

Yu Sheng had not seen it coming. The air in his lungs was almost squeezed dry. Warmth or no warmth, he only felt like he was locked in seven or eight hydraulic clamps from all directions: “Loosen… loosen… I am going to pass out… the tails…”

Foxy snapped back to herself, jumped aside in a panic, and blurted, “Sorry, benefactor, I got excited.”

Yu Sheng, spared, braced his hands on his knees and gulped air. After a long moment he managed a wave: “Why are your tails so strong too?”

“I was shocked as well,” Irene protested. “You swung one tail over, and you almost swept me off.”

Foxy kept apologizing with her ears flattened tight, but her happiness still shone through. It was a joy even deeper and safer than when she had first escaped the Otherworld.

Yu Sheng finally caught his breath and, along the way, fixed a few small bone cracks. He patted Foxy’s hair to calm her, straightened, and looked into the distance.

Irene noticed the shift at once. She said to Foxy, “I think he has another idea.”

“Want to walk farther?” Yu Sheng said as expected. “What do you think is outside this Valley?”