Chapter 17

Chapter 17: Door

Everything blended together—Foxy’s frantic thoughts and her last shred of reason tearing at each other. Yu Sheng heard her painful whimpers close to his ear, but even louder were the distorted voices hammering inside his skull: hunger on the verge of losing control, bone-deep starvation, murky temptation, and the desperate shouts telling him to run.

Yu Sheng sucked in a sharp breath, lowered his body, and dashed toward the gap between the demon fox and the monster.

But he didn’t run.

He snatched up a broken blue stone slab and charged the monster from the side.

Of course he knew he couldn’t beat it. But he also knew there was no way he could outrun it on human legs—not with rubble everywhere, and not with the broken temple’s only open exit blocked by the monster’s massive body. Running blindly would only mean dying faster.

If he was going to die anyway, he might as well trade his life for something.

If he got lucky and distracted it for even a moment, maybe Foxy could break free of those restraints. She was still fighting for her mind. If she got loose, maybe there was even a chance to turn this around.

The thought finished forming as his body exploded with a burst of strength that even shocked him. He hurled the heavy slab like a cannonball at the flesh-and-blood behemoth.

He didn’t even have time to see what it did.

A warning surged up from his gut. A heartbeat before it happened, Yu Sheng somehow “saw” the counterattack—and his body flung itself hard to the side.

A black shadow, like a steel whip, slammed into where he’d been. A snake tail had split open from the monster’s surface. Dirt and stone erupted. Solid blue stone and broken brick turned to powder. Shattered fragments rattled into Yu Sheng like bullets, even making sharp, metallic clinks as they struck.

Pain flared, but he couldn’t afford to care.

He hit the ground, rolled, and barely dodged the tail’s follow-up strike. At the same time, his peripheral vision snapped to Foxy.

The demon fox was still thrashing among countless black spikes and bone fragments. The blue spirit flames on her tails flickered wildly, like they might explode at any moment.

But she was still pinned. Those restraints looked made specifically for her. Yu Sheng’s desperate interference hadn’t helped at all.

And the more he watched, the clearer it became: Foxy was far stronger than him, and yet in front of this monster she didn’t even have room to fight back. Between them, there was a crushing suppression.

And yet… outside on the open ground, she’d still charged in without hesitation to “save” him. Even though she’d failed, she’d tried.

Yu Sheng clenched his teeth and stepped in again.

He didn’t know where his extra strength and recovery had come from, but he remembered something: before these changes first appeared, he’d bitten a chunk of flesh off the monster.

He didn’t know if the two were connected, but he didn’t have choices left. He wasn’t afraid of dying. He might as well try every reckless guess he had.

“Don’t… worry about me!” Foxy’s voice came again. “It can’t kill… me. You… run!”

“It’s fine,” Yu Sheng said, spitting out a mouthful of bloody saliva. Flying debris had clipped his chin earlier. He looked at her and smiled bright as day. “It can’t kill me either. In a bit, I might die. But don’t worry. I’ll come back for you.”

Foxy’s struggling paused, like confusion had knocked a hole in her rage.

Yu Sheng didn’t explain. He just stepped toward the monster, light on his feet, his smile turning almost cheerful.

It was the smile of someone walking into a banquet.

“Don’t you love telling people to eat?” he muttered at the flesh behemoth. “Fine. I’m here to eat.”

He sprang forward, pouncing like a starving wolf diving for a feast.

Dozens of eyes on the monster trembled. For the first time, those chaotic, frenzied eyes seemed to show a hint of hesitation—and fear.

Muddled roars spilled from its many mouths. Several tentacle-like snake tails covered in black scales split from the mass of flesh and stabbed toward Yu Sheng in midair.

He felt his body get pierced through—fatally, more times than he could count. Warm blood poured out of him, dragging life with it.

But an indescribable appetite surged up from his heart.

He ignored pain. Ignored fear. He clung to the tail spearing through his belly, grinned, and bit down.

The monster let out a sharp, unnatural scream and whipped the tail violently, trying to fling him off like a poisonous parasite.

Yu Sheng held on with a death grip.

He was slammed into the ground, then smashed through a rotten wall. The impact should have shattered him—but instead, the pain only made his head clearer.

The tail rose high and snapped toward a collapsed hole in the broken temple wall.

A flash of gold cut across the edge of Yu Sheng’s vision.

In the howling wind, he forced his head up and saw golden light rushing toward him. Before he could make sense of it, he lifted a hand to block—

And grabbed something.

A handle.

Yu Sheng blinked. “…What?”

A faint creak threaded through the roar of the wind. In his mind, the image of a door appeared—plain, ordinary, leading somewhere, leading to—

The moment a destination surfaced in his thoughts, the door was yanked open in his hand.

In the next instant, Yu Sheng and the black-scaled tail fell into the door together.

With a harsh creak, it slammed shut.

The monster’s snake tail was severed cleanly by the door that appeared and vanished in a blink. A distorted howl, maddening to hear, echoed through the valley. The wound drove the monster into a frenzy. It roared through the broken temple ruins, smashing and biting everything in sight—then even turned on its own body.

After who knew how long, it finally calmed.

Its shape collapsed back into a dark, empty shadowspawn and slowly dissolved into the night.

The black spikes and bone fragments vanished without a sound. The battered demon fox fell to the ground and lay still, like a corpse.

Minutes later, Foxy’s eyes crept open.

She stared blankly around. In her golden-red gaze, it was as if all “human” spirit had been scraped away.

After a long while, her eyes finally fixed on a spot in the ruins—the steps where she and “Benefactor” had sat together.

Dragging her massive body, she crawled over and found the scattered plastic bag and rotten leftovers beneath the steps. She lowered her head and swallowed everything, whining softly as she ate.

But she was still hungry.

That tempting voice clung like a curse, whispering from the deepest part of her hunger:

“Eat. You know where there’s still something that can fill your belly…

“You buried them in the woods…

“Bones, flesh, and blood…

“Go. Eat. Eat and you won’t be hungry…”

The demon fox whined, the sound thin and broken, like crying.

Then she curled under the steps and began to chew.

She bit broken bricks and rubble. She dug up dirt and rotten wood from beneath the ruins and slowly stuffed it into her mouth, chewing and chewing.

“I’m not hungry… I’m not hungry… someone gave me food… he’ll be back soon with more… I’m not hungry…”

She kept chewing until, like she had for so many years, she finally fainted back into darkness.

The sensation of falling jolted Yu Sheng awake from his haze. His hand still carried the phantom feel of gripping a handle, but in the next breath he understood he’d crossed some kind of boundary.

He opened his eyes wide and found himself lying by the roadside.

Streetlights. Power poles. The low, old houses along Wu Tong Road.

The old outer wall and the door of Wu Tong Road 66 stood not far ahead in the faint morning light.

He turned his head with effort and saw the fading shadow of a door behind him. Deep inside that shadow, he could just make out the valley under the night sky—the broken temple ruins, and…

A white fox struggling to move.

Yu Sheng reached toward her.

The last remnant of the shadow vanished before his fingertips could touch it.