Chapter 16

Chapter 16: Hunger

Foxy sat slumped on the broken temple steps, head drooping, looking like she’d been hurt.

Yu Sheng sat slumped on the broken temple steps too—because he had been. Foxy had torn off a whole chunk of skin and flesh with that bite.

He knew dogs guarded their food. He just hadn’t expected a fox girl to make that kind of sound while doing it.

“Benefactor…” Foxy’s voice came from the side, trembling like she was about to cry. “Sorry. I… I couldn’t hold back. I… I hurt you again…”

“Yes, you hurt me again,” Yu Sheng said, sighing like he’d run out of life, “but it’s still lighter than the first time we met.”

He glanced at the blood at the corner of her mouth and thought, thank God it was only one bite. The first time they met, that near-sonic headbutt had left a much bigger wound. That one had practically been “amputation below the neck.”

Foxy only tilted her head, confused. She still couldn’t remember what he meant by “the first time.” He’d tried circling back to it before, and she’d reacted the same way every time.

“Benefactor, you said… we really met once outside the broken temple before?”

“You don’t remember anything?” Yu Sheng frowned. “I was fighting some messed-up-looking thing. You rushed over and said you wanted to help, and then—boom. Everything went black. When I woke up, I was here, and you were wandering around outside.”

Foxy narrowed her eyes as if trying to grab hold of a slippery thought. A moment later, even the fluffy ears on her head drooped, like remembering physically hurt.

Yu Sheng lowered his gaze to his hand.

The place she’d bitten was healing—visibly fast. Between the torn flesh, tiny new buds of skin pushed through. Blood moved like it had a mind, wriggling through the gaps, stitching everything together. He could almost hear it: his body rebuilding itself, the split skin knitting closed, everything returning to how it had been.

Within minutes, he barely felt pain at all—only a faint, itching tingle.

This wasn’t normal. Human wounds didn’t heal like this. And compared to fast healing, coming back from death was even more wrong.

The change in his body unsettled him. Even if it seemed “good” for now, he couldn’t shake the feeling there was a hidden price behind it—something waiting to be paid.

People feared the unknown. They feared losing control. And right now, Yu Sheng’s own body was becoming the biggest unknown in his life.

Then an odd sensation cut through his thoughts.

He couldn’t explain it. It was like he heard something, or like thoughts had suddenly flooded into his mind—thoughts and memories that weren’t his. A small corner of his consciousness stirred out of control, and inside that stirring corner he felt another mind—

[mother was gone, dad was gone, uncle and aunt were all gone, it was dark, poisoned, cold, scared, hungry, so cold, so hungry, the fruit was poisonous, bark couldn’t be eaten, leaves couldn’t be eaten, dirt couldn’t be eaten, stones couldn’t be eaten… can’t eat, can’t eat, can’t eat anything, hungry, so hungry, so hungry, so hungry…]

A crushing hunger swept through Yu Sheng’s mind like a storm. It was only a thread of foreign feeling, but it still felt like his sanity was about to be swallowed whole. The frantic thoughts roared through his skull, and only when they finally began to fade did he manage to breathe again.

He lifted his head and looked at Foxy.

The fox girl was slowly licking the corner of her mouth. Yu Sheng saw his own blood moving on her tongue as if it were alive, sinking into her skin, into her teeth, into… something deeper.

Foxy noticed his gaze. She licked away the last bit of blood and looked up, giving him a simple, harmless, stupidly sweet smile.

But Yu Sheng looked at her like he was staring straight into her soul. Behind that smile, he saw a mind teetering on the edge. He saw wild hunger coiling and growing.

She was hungry. Still hungry. Far hungrier than she looked—maybe even hungrier than she could feel.

“Benefactor…” She peered at Yu Sheng’s pocket, smiling dazedly. “Do you still… have food? My stomach doesn’t hurt anymore, but I’m still… a little hungry.”

A chill crawled up Yu Sheng’s spine.

He barely understood what had happened, and he was even more curious. Why had he “heard” her thoughts? He remembered his blood seeping into her skin just now.

Was it because of that?

Foxy’s expression flickered.

Her eyes went distant, then that distance sharpened into shock. She slowly stood, staring at Yu Sheng like she was relearning what he was, and then she jerked her head and pointed at him in disbelief.

“Benefactor… you… you’re not dead?!”

Yu Sheng froze.

Foxy pressed a hand hard to her forehead, swaying. The chaotic, conflicting memories made her already fragile mind wobble, and then she finally dragged up the “truth” that had vanished from her memory—

She remembered their first meeting. She remembered the terrible mistake. She remembered what “Benefactor” had looked like torn apart. She remembered warm blood.

And then that blood had turned to nothing. The remains vanished. The fact of Yu Sheng’s “death” slipped away again, like it was being erased even as she tried to hold it.

She steadied herself, golden-red eyes cloudy. “Ah… I remember, Benefactor. We just met, outside on the open ground. I messed up and I… but…”

She stopped. The rest dissolved into a muddled mumble, like her daze was dragging her back under.

Yu Sheng didn’t know why she’d suddenly remembered now. Maybe it had something to do with what he’d just felt. But this wasn’t the moment to dig into it.

Foxy’s body swayed again, like she might tip over.

Yu Sheng took a half step forward—then stopped cold.

Foxy lifted her head. Her golden-red eyes flooded with a bloodlit shine, and a low, beastlike whine rumbled in her throat.

She bent down slowly. Behind her, her messy tails spread wider and wider. Blue flames jumped to life at the tip of each one, flickering in the night.

She held herself like a predator, letting a feral pressure spill out without restraint.

Hunger exploded in those bloodlit eyes. Through that faint, inexplicable connection, Yu Sheng even felt like he heard the voice echoing in her heart—

[Benefactor, you smell so good…]

Yu Sheng swallowed and took a small step back.

And then, at the edge of his vision, he saw something moving behind her.

A massive shadow was spreading out of the darkness, inching closer. In the wavering light of Foxy’s blue spirit flames, the shadowspawn slowly took shape: countless twisted beast limbs mashed together. A mass of blood and flesh several meters tall, studded with crisscrossing mouths, eyes, and claws—an avatar of hunger and hunting. It let out a low, muddled hiss behind Foxy, urging.

Under that urging, Foxy lowered herself further. Silver-white fur spread over her skin. Her face warped, fangs pushing in. Her human features retreated in a blink.

The girl who always wore that stupid smile was gone. An enormous silver-white demon fox stood in the night, blue flames burning on its tails and lighting the crumbling broken temple—and Yu Sheng’s face.

A voice drifted faintly, thick with temptation and sharp enough to stab straight into the mind—

“Eat… eat it, and you won’t be hungry…

“Feed…

“Feed, together…

“You’re hungry. Eat…”

For a heartbeat, Yu Sheng thought it was Foxy’s thoughts.

Then he realized it was something Foxy was hearing. The true source was that hideous monster.

It was urging her to eat, urging her to surrender, like it had been waiting for something it had nurtured for a long time to finally bloom.

Yu Sheng wanted to shout, to tell her not to listen, because he’d already guessed part of the truth—but the next instant, that terrifying hunger surged up from deep inside Foxy’s mind and drowned everything else.

All he could do was give a bitter smile and spread his hands toward the demon fox.

“I’m telling you,” he said softly, “in a bit, you’re going to regret this. Next time we meet, you’ll be too embarrassed to look me in the eye.”

Then he set his jaw, like he’d just delivered his last words, and dropped into the opening stance of military boxing.

Military boxing obviously couldn’t beat a nine-tailed demon fox—or maybe seven or eight tails—but it could at least let him die with some dignity.

And besides… what if?

His body had become stronger in ways he didn’t understand. Maybe, right before he died, he could punch Foxy in the nose and make it sting for a while.

That pointless thought flickered through his mind. The next second, a fierce wind hit his face as the massive demon fox leapt.

Yu Sheng shut his eyes on instinct.

The death he expected never came.

He opened his eyes.

The silver-white demon fox twisted in midair and slammed into the disgusting monster instead. With a furious howl that sounded almost like sobbing, she opened her jaws and bit down.

Then black, hornlike spikes and jagged bone fragments burst out from inside her body, spearing through her and pinning her in midair.

Yu Sheng stared, stunned.

The demon fox struggled to turn her head, golden-red blood pouring from wounds all over her body and steaming beneath the night sky.

“Benefactor… run…”

[You smell so good…]

“I’m not a monster yet…”

[So hungry…]

“Run!”

[Run!]