Chapter 54

Chapter 54: Yu Sheng’s Return

The chewing that filled the valley rose and fell like surf. The otherworld had become a grand feast, and soon everyone in the cave understood what the sound meant.

Li Lin forced himself to the entrance, scalp prickling, and looked out.

Teeth in the mountains bit into each other. Trench-like gullets collapsed inward, split into new cracks, and swallowed themselves. Tentacles that had spread across the valley floor began to digest their own flesh. Monsters grew from shadows—only to be swallowed by an unseen force in the next blink.

Against that horrific backdrop, Li Lin spotted a figure in the open.

Yu Sheng stood outside the cave, staring blankly at the valley devouring itself.

Li Lin swayed, dazed for a moment—then the strangeness slipped away like a dream. He’d already forgotten Yu Sheng’s death and only felt that Yu Sheng had gotten separated from them for a short time.

Foxy and Irene saw him at once.

“Benefactor!” Foxy cried, relief cracking her voice. Then she tensed again, frantic. “Benefactor, hurry and get in here! It’s dangerous outside!”

Yu Sheng turned as if waking from a trance and hurried into the cave. As he walked, he muttered, “That thing in the sky is creepy, but it doesn’t seem eager to attack…”

Irene didn’t care what he was muttering. She leaned forward, searching his face. “You’re really okay? Your mind is still normal?”

“Can’t you ever wish me well?” Yu Sheng shot back, glaring at her. “Do you know how hard it was for me to come back?”

Then his eyes flicked outside again. “Hunger should be almost finished, but I don’t know what that big eye is. It’s not one of the hunger entities, and it doesn’t feel like something that originally belonged to this valley.”

Irene had been ready with plenty of trash talk, but she froze. “Huh? It’s not from this valley?”

“No.” Yu Sheng shook his head. Even now, he could still feel that subtle link to the otherworld, the gaze from the sky, and the boundary between the eye and the valley. “All the hunger entities are inside my senses now. That eye is an outsider. It’s been lying over this otherworld for years, replacing the original sky.”

Irene stared, stunned, until a low voice from deeper in the cave broke the momentary quiet.

“That’s an angel.”

Yu Sheng looked up. The nearly two-meter-tall man was walking toward them, blue fox fire carving sharp shadows across his face.

The burly man studied Yu Sheng from head to toe, his expression heavy with caution. Not quite hostile, but far from the concern you’d show a teammate who’d merely fallen behind. “Did you get separated earlier?”

“I fell behind for a moment. Don’t worry, it wasn’t a big deal,” Yu Sheng said with a wave. Then he pointed up with his chin. “What do you mean by ‘angel’?”

“The more accurate term is dark angels,” the man said after a beat. “Dangerous things of unknown origin. Sometimes the term also covers special phenomena caused by those dangerous individuals. Every dark angels is different—form, abilities, the way they appear. The one occupying the sky should’ve parasitized this otherworld years ago. Its influence is what caused the entities here to mutate.”

Yu Sheng listened, eyes narrowing. This guy clearly knew more than he was saying. Whether it was caution or secrecy, he wasn’t spilling everything.

That was fair. They’d fought side by side, but they still didn’t even know each other’s names.

“My name is Yu Sheng,” Yu Sheng said, offering his hand. “These two are Foxy and Irene. They’re my friends.”

The burly man hesitated, then shook his hand. “Hello. My name is Xu Jiali.”

Yu Sheng went blank.

A moment later, he cleared his throat. “Uh… sorry, I didn’t catch that. You said your name was…?”

“He said Xu Jiali—the ‘jiali’ like in ‘pretty young lady,’” the red-clad girl said from her stone stool, breaking the silence. She glanced up at Yu Sheng. “Just call me Little Red Riding Hood.”

Yu Sheng blinked, then nodded. “Got it. You’re in this line of work. You use codenames out in the field, right?”

The tall man answered stiffly, “She’s a codename. That’s my real name.”

Yu Sheng paused, then forced himself to move on. “…It sounds nice. Very cultured.”

His eyes shifted to the last young man who still hadn’t spoken. Yu Sheng kept feeling the face was familiar, like he’d seen him somewhere before, but he couldn’t place it.

Li Lin stepped forward without hesitation. “My name is Li Lin.”

Yu Sheng hadn’t even replied when Irene blurted, “Hey! That name sounds normal!”

Li Lin stared at her. He looked at Yu Sheng’s group—a fox demon with a pile of tails, a half-meter-tall doll, and a human who opened doors into hell—and somehow they felt qualified to judge whether his name was normal.

Before he could find words, the world outside shifted again.

The chewing sounds were fading. The tremors shaking the otherworld weakened fast.

Xu Jiali rushed to the entrance and stared out.

The valley had been turned inside out. It looked as if an enormous mouth had taken a bite from the distant mountains straight down to the lowlands. Jagged rock and bare soil remained where forest and ridges had been. Deep gullies carved the slopes.

He whipped his head around, eyes locking onto Yu Sheng. “Did you… do this?”

Xu Jiali looked like he knew how insane the question sounded. What had happened didn’t look like anything a person could accomplish. Yet some part of him was sure Yu Sheng’s brief absence was connected.

“More or less,” Yu Sheng admitted readily. He was in a strangely good mood now, a deep satisfaction humming through him like he’d finally eaten his fill. He nodded with a grin. “Took a lot of effort.”

Li Lin stared at Yu Sheng as if the man had stopped being human altogether. “How is that even possible…”

Yu Sheng considered trying to explain—getting eaten by hunger, only for his own appetite to outmatch it; contaminating an entity with human thought until the tainted hunger turned on itself—

It wasn’t just hard to explain. Even if he explained it, they’d still end up asking who the real monster was.

And he didn’t want these strangers to know too much about him.

“Good luck,” Yu Sheng said casually. “I found a weak point. I don’t really know what happened either, but it triggered a chain reaction. The entities started devouring themselves.”

It was an obvious dodge. Li Lin understood right away. Some things were secrets.

Irene, craning her neck, suddenly blurted, “Hey! Is that thing in the sky drifting up?”

Yu Sheng went to the entrance and looked.

The massive Big Eyes that had covered the valley was rising silently, shrinking as if it were a projection being pulled away. In a dozen seconds it had already reduced to a third of its size.

It was leaving.

Brighter, more normal daylight seeped in from the distant mountains. The churned clouds reappeared. The eye became a small disk floating at the center of the sky, no bigger than a palm—and a few breaths later, it vanished completely.

“It ran… away?” Irene stared up, suddenly unsure what to do. Then she turned to Xu Jiali. “The angel you talked about just left. What now?”

Xu Jiali let out a long, quiet breath. Then he forced a smile, weary and real.

“What now? Celebrate.” He glanced at the ruined valley one more time. “After that, I go back and write a report.”