Chapter 48

Chapter 48: The Day of Feeding

Foxy stared wide-eyed at the pile Yu Sheng had set down.

She stood there blankly for several seconds, like her mind couldn’t catch up with what her eyes were seeing—until Yu Sheng popped open a can of eight-treasure porridge and held it to her mouth.

“Eat,” he said gently. “It’s all for you. And if it’s not enough, there’s more.”

The smell of food.

Real food.

Not stones. Not dirt. Not bricks or wood—not the dream-phantoms that could never fill her stomach no matter how hard she imagined.

Foxy’s eyes widened slowly. Then, as if something snapped in her, she grabbed the can from Yu Sheng’s hand and poured it into her mouth without a spoon, swallowing in frantic, muffled gulps.

She finished the entire can in barely ten seconds. Then she licked the rim, careful and desperate, but quickly grew impatient when she couldn’t get it clean. Yu Sheng started to reach for it—

And Foxy pinched the can in her fingers and tore.

With a sharp screech of ripping metal, she opened the sturdy can like it was paper. Then she shredded it into long, narrow strips, licking every last drop of porridge clinging to the inside.

“Here’s more,” Yu Sheng said quickly, rummaging through his pockets. He pulled out a piece of bread and a bottle of water. “Slow down.”

A blur flashed.

The food was already in Foxy’s hands.

She devoured everything. For a long time, feeding was the only thing she did. Yu Sheng and Irene stayed silent. The ruins held only the sound of chewing and swallowing, and the occasional muffled noise from Foxy’s throat—like she wanted to speak but couldn’t bear to stop eating.

Then Foxy began to cry.

Without warning, tears slid down her face. She kept stuffing bread into her mouth. She didn’t sob. She didn’t make a sound. The tears ran calmly along her cheeks, dripped onto the bread, and she ate them too.

Yu Sheng startled and wiped at her dirty cheeks with his sleeve. “Don’t cry. The wind will choke you, and your stomach will hurt. Don’t cry—there’s more. From now on, there will be more…”

Only then did Foxy seem to come back to herself enough to think about anything else. She stared at Yu Sheng for a long time, then suddenly held out the half piece of bread still in her hand.

“Benefactor,” she said, voice small. “You eat too.”

Yu Sheng waved quickly. “I ate before I came. I’m not hungry.”

But Foxy didn’t move. She held the bread out stubbornly, as if giving it to him mattered more than eating it herself.

In the end, Yu Sheng took it.

Foxy smiled.

She grabbed a pack of compressed biscuits from the ground. This time, she didn’t wolf it down. After tearing open the wrapper, she nibbled carefully, one bite at a time, as if trying to stretch the feeding out for as long as she could.

For the moment, she seemed less starving.

“Good,” she whispered. “Benefactor… good…”

“Don’t put ‘Benefactor’ in front of ‘good,’” Yu Sheng said with a shiver, remembering some unpleasant things. “Just… eat until you’re full.”

“Mm.” Foxy nodded quickly.

“Finally catching your breath,” Irene said. She looked at Foxy—more stable now, if only barely—and let out a relieved sigh. “You really managed to hold on…”

Foxy jumped. It was as if she only noticed the doll on Yu Sheng’s shoulder now—or only realized this tiny human-shaped thing could talk and move. She stared in shock. “This… is alive?!”

Irene’s eyes widened. “…Obviously! Of course I’m alive! I even helped you bite open a sausage just now!”

“She’s Irene,” Yu Sheng said quickly, stepping in before Irene exploded. “A living doll from Alice Little House. This is the helper I mentioned. I was only able to contact you in dreams because she helped. Don’t let her size fool you—she’s capable.”

Irene held the cleaver in one hand and planted her other hand on her hip, chin lifted proudly.

Foxy hesitated. She clearly didn’t understand what a living doll was, or why something this small could speak and move—but she understood that Irene was her benefactor’s companion. After a few seconds, she extended the biscuits in her hand.

“Irene,” she said carefully. “You eat too.”

Irene’s proud look turned awkward. “Uh… I can’t. A doll can’t eat food.”

Foxy pulled the biscuits back and kept nibbling.

Irene sputtered. “…Hey! You just took it back like that without even insisting?! When you shared bread with Yu Sheng, you weren’t like this!”

“A doll can’t eat food,” Foxy said softly, as if explaining something obvious. “Give you… waste food.”

Irene puffed up her cheeks, offended, but nobody paid her any attention.

Yu Sheng’s focus had already shifted to the cold night around them.

He could feel it. With his arrival, the valley was changing. The entity entrenched in the Otherworld had stirred. Bringing food—letting Foxy escape hunger, even temporarily—had provoked the monster.

He’d come today for two reasons. First, to save Foxy. Second, to find a way to deal with the Hunger entity squatting here. That hadn’t been strictly necessary before, but now he’d formed a connection with it, and he knew it was learning to think.

He couldn’t ignore that.

But for some reason, the monster still hadn’t shown itself.

Doubt rose in Yu Sheng’s chest.

Then a faint sound drifted in on the night wind, reaching all of them.

A distant wolf howl.

Yu Sheng and Irene looked at each other. After a beat, Irene asked, “Yu Sheng… did you hear that?”

“It sounded like wolves.” Yu Sheng frowned, then turned to Foxy, who was still nibbling diligently. “Are there wolves here?”

“No.” Foxy looked just as confused. “There’s only me and that monster. This is the first time I’ve heard such a strange sound.”

The howl came again, cutting through their exchange.

Closer now.

Something was approaching. Or running. Or being chased.

In the dense forest, a massive behemoth of flesh wandered like a nightmare. It shifted in the trees’ shadows—appearing in the mist one moment, vanishing the next.

No matter which way they ran, the monster would reappear nearby in some unfair, unnatural way and strike from an impossible angle.

Wolves made of shadowspawn leapt through the woods, pouncing at the behemoth. More surged in from every direction, trying to lock down its movement.

But countless tendrils and barbed, bone-like jointed limbs stabbed out of the behemoth. The wolf pack was forced back, and a gap opened in their encirclement.

Dozens of eyes snapped onto a figure beyond the wolves.

Little Red Riding Hood rode the largest wolf, her calm gaze meeting those cold, hungry stares from afar.

The behemoth’s midsection split open. A black, scale-covered long tongue shot out with a tearing whistle—an arrow aimed straight at the girl’s throat.

Little Red Riding Hood only tilted slightly. The instant the tongue was about to touch her, she snapped up her right hand.

Her slender arm swelled violently. Flesh hissed. Smoke billowed. Blood and mist twisted together into a huge black wolf head that clamped down hard on the tongue, locking it in place.

The behemoth lurched back, but Little Red Riding Hood held on. She and her mount were like nails driven into the earth, braced in a brief, brutal struggle with the monster.

In that flicker of time, another figure burst from the shadows.

Li Lin sprinted along the monster’s flank like a nimble predator. A short blade glittered in his hand—a spare weapon Xu Jiali had shoved at him on the fly. The behemoth noticed the ambusher immediately. Several eyes swung toward Li Lin, and a raised claw slammed down.

But the real trick was still to the side.

Mid-charge, Li Lin dropped low and twisted in a way no normal person could, slipping past the claw. At the same time, a taller figure emerged from behind—leaping from the monster’s blind spot.

Xu Jiali raised the beam dagger, which would have been a short sword in anyone else’s hands, and stabbed down into a tumor-like lump on the monster’s back.

With a hiss, the burning blade slid in without resistance, severing the growth clean off.

The behemoth answered with a chaotic, ear-splitting roar. It spun violently, flinging Little Red Riding Hood away, then slammed Xu Jiali hard before he could recover.

Xu Jiali tumbled into a shrub patch and let out a muffled grunt.

Li Lin rushed over, dragged his colleague out of the bushes, and both of them looked toward where the monster had been.

It was gone.

Mist thickened through the dense forest. In the rolling fog, countless twisted phantoms began to sprout—pushing up from the soil, swaying faintly in the cold wind.

Layer upon layer. Endless.

The entire forest felt like a giant mouth, waiting to feed.

Xu Jiali sucked in a sharp breath. “We can’t stay. Keep running toward the edge of the woods!”