Chapter 49

Chapter 49: Door-Opening Kills (For Real)

The wind in the valley began to churn.

Yu Sheng didn’t know what had happened, but he could feel the atmosphere shifting inside the Otherworld. It was hard to describe. If he had to put it into words…

It felt like the entire valley was waking up.

The distant woods were waking. The mountains were waking. The ground was waking. Even the sky carried a scalp-prickling, icy gaze full of hungry desire.

Foxy trembled beside him. She clutched her food tight, fear spreading across her face. She lifted her head toward the black night sky and backed behind Yu Sheng step by step, whispering the same words over and over.

When she got close enough, he finally heard it clearly.

“This is what it’s like when an immortal dies… This is what it’s like when an immortal dies…”

“What’s going on?” Irene asked quickly. Even she had tensed up, hugging the cleaver as her whole body went rigid. “Do you know something?”

Foxy didn’t answer. It was as if she’d slipped back into a dazed trance, repeating the line like a broken charm.

And soon, neither Irene nor Yu Sheng had the spare attention to press her.

Yu Sheng felt that familiar presence nearby. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a malformed entity condense within the shadows at the edge of the ruins. Deformed, swollen layers of flesh multiplied and stacked, as if parts had been hacked from different creatures and pressed together. Dozens of hungry eyes opened across its surface. Between them, fangs and torn mouthparts formed and shifted, letting out a muddy, guttural growl.

The Hunger entity had finally come for its prey.

“Holy—” Irene blurted. “This thing is so ugly!”

“Watch for surprise attacks,” Yu Sheng said at once. “Every limb can change shape. It can grow tentacles and tails out of nowhere.” He turned to Foxy. “You just protect yourself. You’ve been deeply corroded by this thing. You can’t fight it.”

Foxy’s state was wrong. Even with the monster right there, she kept staring at the sky in terror. But at Yu Sheng’s words, she nodded blankly. She gathered the scattered food from the ground as she backed away, but she didn’t retreat far—like she was afraid to leave Yu Sheng alone with it.

“So how are you planning to fight?” Irene whispered. The monster prowled at a distance, almost as if it were waiting, and the delay only made her more uneasy. “Don’t tell me you’re going to run in barehanded and box it with military boxing. You didn’t even bring a weapon. I at least brought a cleaver.”

Yu Sheng hadn’t brought a weapon because he’d tested the idea. Most of the monster’s structure was harder than stone. Even if he carried an axe and managed to hack off a softer chunk of flesh, it wouldn’t matter. From the start, he hadn’t planned to rely on steel.

For an untrained person, even a dragon-slaying sword would just mean cutting yourself first.

He had prepared a different method.

“Same plan we discussed at home,” Yu Sheng said fast. “You lock down its movement with your silk threads. Then I rush in and tear a hole for it. Watch closely—if I mess up, you grab Foxy and run right away. Don’t worry about me. Foxy’s survived under this thing before, and you won’t be targeted by hunger…”

Irene blinked. “Uh… and then?”

“After I come back to life, we regroup and try again,” Yu Sheng said flatly. “This thing has to die eventually.”

“Your uncle—so it’s that simple, brutal plan again?” Irene hissed. “We said try not to use resurrection as your basic attack!”

“I’m trying, aren’t I?” Yu Sheng snapped back, then frowned, sensing something off. “Why isn’t it attacking yet…”

Irene had the same feeling. “It’s stalling on purpose. Like it’s waiting for something. Don’t tell me it already understands ‘strategy’?”

“Then we really can’t let it keep waiting.” Yu Sheng clenched his teeth. “We go first!”

The moment the words left his mouth, he charged.

At the same time, Irene flipped off his shoulder, hit the ground, and thrust out her right hand. Her eyes turned pitch-black. Countless thin, black silk threads spilled from her palm—cold, sinister—spreading through the space like a spiderweb growing out of control.

The threads avoided Yu Sheng’s path. He accelerated through the expanding net, his strengthened body leaving a blur as he lunged straight at the grotesque behemoth.

The monster finally moved.

Faced with prey attacking first, it seemed startled for a fraction of a second—then counterattacked. A savage claw rose high from its back and smashed down toward the only path Yu Sheng could take.

In that instant, Yu Sheng felt it again.

That strange prediction.

He sensed which muscles tightened. He sensed the killing intent—and where its gaze truly focused. He even seemed to see a hidden tentacle extending behind the claw, sealing off every retreat he might choose in the next heartbeat…

The thoughts flashed and vanished. Yu Sheng crossed the last few meters in a blink as the claw came down.

He didn’t dodge.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the silk threads closing in. In the next moment, countless black lines wrapped around the monster’s limbs and—like penetrating phantoms—wove through its claw, tentacles, and gaping maw.

Cold.

Numbness.

Sluggishness.

It felt like even thought was being pierced full of holes, as if a spiderweb were wrapping layer after layer around the soul.

A flood of negative sensation surged up. For a heartbeat, Yu Sheng saw himself trapped in a web. Silk wrapped his limbs, even piercing through. And at the edge, a shadow with blood-red eyes watched from the dark, crawling toward him in a twisted, hideous posture…

“Yu Sheng!” Irene shouted. “Don’t space out! I can’t hold it much longer!”

The voice snapped him awake.

He looked up. The behemoth was frozen in a grotesque posture at the center of layers of black silk. The threads stretched taut, straining, already cracking. It would tear free any second.

No time.

Yu Sheng lunged toward the monster’s side. In the precious seconds Irene had bought, he grabbed a silk thread midair with one hand. With the other, he reached out, focused all his will, and slowly pulled—

A doorframe formed out of nothing, its surface flowing with ghostlike light.

Opening a door out of thin air took more effort and time than opening an entity door. Yu Sheng needed a stable environment to concentrate. As the monster’s body began to tremble and the black web started to snap, even a few seconds felt like a lifetime.

Though his “lifetimes” lately hadn’t been very long.

Then, with the sound of the door swinging open, the fabricated gate snapped fully wide.

Wider than any door he’d opened before—wide enough to throw the entire monster through.

Blazing firelight poured out, illuminating the ruins and the valley floor.

On the other side was a roiling lake of magma.

It was the surprise Yu Sheng had discovered after countless door-opening experiments.

He didn’t know where it was. He only knew it held endless lava and surging flames, like a landscape from hell.

Hunger was powerful, but its true threat came from mental pollution and rule-like hunger. Its vessel—its physical form—wasn’t invincible.

It could be roasted.

And if it couldn’t…

He’d use bigger firepower.

“Throw it in!” Yu Sheng shouted to Irene.

“Got it!”