Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Someone’s Here?!

Yu Sheng gave Irene the usual sign-off, but this time he didn’t hang up right away.

Not because the thing across from him had suddenly decided to go vegetarian, but because the terrifying behemoth seemed… confused.

It stood in the night wind, dozens of jumbled eyes stacked over that meatball body, staring at its prey with a strange expression. As ridiculous as it sounded, Yu Sheng could actually read puzzlement in those eyes—the kind of confusion you got when your mouth and your stomach argued for half an hour and still couldn’t agree.

Irene was still calling anxiously in his mind, but her voice felt distant, muffled, as if separated by a thick curtain. Yu Sheng focused entirely on the monster. He tensed. His heart hammered, and every twitch of muscle and swell of vein on that thing’s body reflected sharply in his vision.

Even though he’d prepared himself when he resurrected in the ruined temple, facing that crushing weight of death again still filled him with tension.

The difference was that the fear had faded. In its place was something unfamiliar—something that felt like excitement.

Then, suddenly, he felt it.

Muscles contracted. Thick, murky blood surged. Hunger flared in his chest, and a command rose from his muddled mind: eat.

In that split second, warning bells screamed. The warning sketched itself into shape with eerie precision.

The monster was about to strike. From the left, but only as a feint. The real killing blow would be a barbed, bladed snake tail whipping from its back.

The behemoth lunged. A huge maw split open at the end of some limb, snapping toward Yu Sheng’s left side—

—but before it even reached him, Yu Sheng had already moved.

Without thinking, he followed the prompt in his mind, swerved hard, and dove forward. He was so fast he barely believed it.

He realized, in the blur of motion, that the waist he’d strained earlier had fully recovered. Ever since his resurrection, his body had been in unbelievable shape.

The behemoth missed. The snake tail stabbed in from a vicious angle, grazing Yu Sheng’s back by a hair. He felt the pressure of wind pass behind him. His hair rose on end—yet stronger than the terror was disbelief.

He’d actually dodged it.

What had that been?

He didn’t have time to think.

Another wave of danger surged from behind. This time there was no space to evade. Yu Sheng landed and rolled, scrambling into a tight curl just as a claw smashed down toward his head like a falling boulder.

He threw up his arms on instinct—frail human bones trying to block a strike that felt like a meteor.

Boom.

The air burst outward, scattering grass and dust for meters. Pain flooded him. It felt like a dozen bones snapped at once. He lost his breath and stumbled back—

—but he’d blocked it.

He’d actually blocked it.

Yu Sheng stared at his hands. His left wrist bent at a wrong angle; the bone was clearly broken. Yet the pain faded at an astonishing speed, and the twisted bone began to restore itself, inch by inch.

He remembered the monster’s true strength. Every inch of that body could crush a person with ease. If it attacked at full force, he couldn’t block it—no matter how many bones he was willing to break.

The monster didn’t let him think. It landed, adjusted for a second or two, then let out a chaotic, furious roar and pounced again at the annoying “prey.”

A bone-cutting gale hit as it charged, like a small mountain dropping from the sky. Yu Sheng reacted early again. He rolled aside without dignity, sprang up, and slipped past a tail that could split rock—

—but before he could regain his footing, the tail swept back and knocked him flat.

Then the behemoth split open down the middle.

A sick, writhing “long tongue,” like a tentacle, shot through the night, wrapped around Yu Sheng, and yanked him back.

Yu Sheng braced with both hands, fighting to keep that thing from crushing his chest and snapping him in two—at least, not that fast. He watched helplessly as he was dragged toward the monster. Its body had opened into a giant hollow, and inside it, countless sharp teeth rose and ground together, a massive mouth starving itself mad.

At the instant he was about to be hauled in, Yu Sheng kicked hard with both feet.

The rock under him cracked with a bang. The recoil was so violent it made the monster stagger.

He didn’t spare a thought for where that strength came from. He seized the opening, roared, and tore the long tongue clean off. Then he snatched up a sharp shard of stone and lunged, driving it toward a cloudy eyeball on the monster’s side that quivered like jelly.

The tongue snapped.

The behemoth released a chilling roar. Blood sprayed from its midsection. It stumbled, fighting for balance, dozens of eyes locking onto Yu Sheng with hunger and madness.

So fragrant.

The scent of blood slid into Yu Sheng’s nostrils, sparking nerves, waking something deep, ancient, starving.

It smelled so good.

His heart thundered. Something scorching surged through his veins. Joy swelled in his chest—wild, rising, wrong. He tried to understand it, and when he did, his stomach turned.

It was the pleasure of being about to eat. The reward of hunger being satisfied.

That behemoth—that heap of flesh, that chaotic fallen thing—

Prime meat.

The shard in Yu Sheng’s hand crumbled into powder beneath his tightening grip. He breathed hard, and the world seemed to slow around him.

He lunged at the monster, and the monster lunged at him—food embracing food.

In a haze, he felt as if he hadn’t eaten in more than twenty years… or as if he’d never eaten real food once in his life. He wrapped himself around a vicious limb. The monster wrapped him in crushing strength, snapping bone after bone.

Yu Sheng barely felt it.

He was already biting into its flesh.

Unlike last time, it wasn’t a desperate final strike before death. Now he had a different mindset.

He wouldn’t stay dead. He would come back.

This monster could kill him once, twice, countless times—but he would return every time.

And each time, he would understand more. Each time, he would learn how to deal with it.

It might take a long time.

But he would savor this prime meat bit by bit.

A dozen eyes on the monster’s side quivered wildly. Some of them seemed to recognize something at last, and finally began to focus on Yu Sheng.

A huge toothed mouth was already chewing into his side, yet those eyes filled with something that looked almost like fear.

Yu Sheng felt his body being torn apart little by little. He knew he’d still lost—of course he had. He would die, eaten by this thing.

At least, for now, he couldn’t win.

Still, he’d lasted far longer than he’d expected. He’d thought he would drop dead the moment they met, but he’d actually traded blows.

“Irene…” he tried to call, his mind already slipping.

Irene’s voice came almost at once. “Yu Sheng! Yu Sheng, are you okay?! I kept calling you but you wouldn’t answer—”

“I’m fine,” Yu Sheng said weakly. “I just said it too early. Now I’m really hanging up…”

He ignored Irene’s shouting and waited for death to fall.

But just before that heavy darkness crushed down, he heard a sound nearby—clear and real, a voice that truly existed in this valley.

“Don’t be afraid! I’m coming to save you!”

Yu Sheng’s mind was already fading, but the shout jolted him awake for a single heartbeat, like lightning striking his skull.

Someone?

There was someone here?!

He forced his eyes open and looked toward the voice. A figure sprinted toward him from the darkness. Blurry as it was, it looked like a girl in ragged clothes—then he saw shapes whipping behind her.

What was that?

Tails? A fox? A person?

No.

It was a subsonic headbutt.

Yu Sheng watched in horror as the figure accelerated again in midair like a rocket-assisted shell, head down, charging straight in. The monster chewing on him shifted its body slightly—almost deliberately.

Yu Sheng became the perfect target for the incoming crash.

“Holy sh—”

He only got out two syllables.

The young lady didn’t even see what was in front of her.

The headbutt slammed into Yu Sheng’s chest—

—and then he didn’t have a chest.

Everything below his neck was gone, like it had evaporated.

“Young lady,” Yu Sheng thought dimly as his consciousness scattered, “you… hit the wrong spot…”

And that was how Yu Sheng got saved to death.