Chapter 79

Chapter 79: Change

“Go out?” Foxy froze at Yu Sheng’s words. Then she hurriedly wiped the last bowls dry with her tail, grabbed another tail to wipe her mouth, and said, “Okay, I’m ready right now…”

Yu Sheng’s eye twitched. “It’s not that urgent. And… you wiped your mouth with your tail?”

Foxy lowered her head, stared at the paste on her tail tip, then seemed to realize what she’d done. She quickly rinsed her tail in the sink and shook it hard—right in front of Yu Sheng.

“I’m used to it,” she muttered. “I forgot we have better things at home.”

“It’s fine,” Yu Sheng said, wiping the water off his face. “Just… next time you shake like that, watch who’s nearby. And the appliances.”

“Ah, sorry, Benefactor!” Foxy hurried over and tried to dab at him with a dry tail. “So… where are we going? Are we fighting?”

“Stop, stop. I can wipe myself—” Yu Sheng blocked the tail rubbing his face and even spat out two silvery-white hairs. “We’re going back to the valley, but we probably won’t need to fight this time.”

Foxy stopped dead. Her whole body went rigid.

The fear in her eyes was obvious—and Yu Sheng had expected it before he even spoke. That was exactly why he wanted her to see the changes with her own eyes.

“Don’t be afraid. I’m here,” he said, stepping closer and gently resting a hand on her head. “I know you hate that place, but something strange changed there. I think you need to see it yourself. Don’t worry—we won’t get trapped again.”

Foxy stared up at him. After several long seconds, she nodded stiffly, as if it took all her courage just to agree.

Yu Sheng led her back out to the dining room, brought Irene along, and opened the door to the valley otherworld.

The three of them—none of them particularly human—stepped through.

A sunlit valley spread out before them. A fresh breeze swept over the valley floor. Distant cliffs and wasteland lay bathed in daylight. With the night curtain gone, everything looked bright and vivid.

Even the devastation left behind by the grand feast seemed… softened under the sun. Almost reassuring.

Irene sat on Yu Sheng’s shoulder, staring with her big eyes. She stood there for a long time before finally blurting out, “This is like watching Yu Sheng crawl into a pill-refining furnace. Something is seriously wrong.”

Yu Sheng immediately forgot what he’d planned to say. He turned and gave her a complicated look. “Can you stop turning me into sayings?”

“Then explain what’s going on first,” Irene shot back, pointing at the valley. “Entity-Hunger’s aura is completely gone! This place doesn’t even feel like the original otherworld anymore!”

“Not the original otherworld?” Yu Sheng caught the phrasing, his expression shifting. “What do you mean?”

“The environment changed completely,” Irene said. “I don’t know if you can feel the difference in the atmosphere, but this place now has… a kind of your atmosphere. Or… Wu Tong Road 66’s atmosphere.”

As if to prove she wasn’t imagining it, she looked Yu Sheng up and down several times.

Yu Sheng: “…?”

While he was still stunned, Foxy scanned the surroundings nervously. She’d been tense the instant she crossed the threshold, bracing herself for the monster.

But now her face was full of confusion.

She didn’t have Irene’s precise way of sensing, but as a demon fox she had an instinctive feel for threats that had once nearly crushed her. Entity-Hunger had truly vanished. And after all this time, there was still no sign of regeneration.

Yu Sheng drew their attention back. “What I want to show you isn’t just that.”

He crouched and reached toward the pitted, ruined soil ahead—ground scarred by trenches and corrosion where Entity-Hunger’s tentacles had fed.

Foxy and Irene didn’t understand what he meant, but they stared where his hand hovered.

The soil began to churn.

Something scraped faintly beneath the earth.

The ground started to heal. Trenches gradually filled in. Corrosion vanished with startling speed.

Green appeared between earth and stone—delicate, fragile, but enough to leave them speechless.

The valley was recovering.

Irene’s neck went stiff. She slowly turned her head and stared at Yu Sheng’s face.

Yu Sheng let out a long breath and stood.

Within a few dozen meters around him, the ground had begun to restore itself. That was his limit right now.

Farther out, he could still sense the connection between himself and the land, but he couldn’t simply reach out and reshape everything at will. Even so, he felt what he’d done ripple outward like a planted seed—slow, continuous, setting something in motion across the whole valley.

“How did you do that?” Irene finally asked, unable to hold it back.

“I don’t know the exact mechanism,” Yu Sheng said slowly, thinking as he spoke. “But it should be the same kind of connection built by blood. Ever since the last incident ended, I’ve felt a stable link between me and this valley. Maybe it’s because I died in this trash place so many times and bled enough to water the land… anyway, after a certain point, I could feel it. Like this.”

He pointed at the healed earth beneath his feet.

Irene stared at him in shock—almost horror—then blurted, “What kind of cursed thing is your blood?!”

Then she suddenly snapped to another thought. “Wait. You used your blood to shape my body, and you smeared it on my frame too. Doesn’t that mean you can control—”

“No,” Yu Sheng sighed at once. “If I could control you, would I still get kicked all night while I sleep?”

Irene paused, considered it, then exhaled in relief. “Yeah… true.”

She turned to Foxy, who’d barely spoken. “You’re from cultivation. Different perspective. What do you think?”

Foxy stared at Yu Sheng with worship shining in her eyes. “Benefactor’s immortal arts are profound. You can command nature’s changes. You could be a landscaping immortal!”

Yu Sheng: “…”

For a moment, he honestly couldn’t tell if that was praise or a new kind of insult. He decided to treat it as a compliment.

“I shouldn’t have expected a real opinion from you,” Irene sighed. Then she poked Yu Sheng’s head. “Anyway, set aside your link with the valley. The real key is the entity that used to camp here. No regeneration after all this time. It might truly be gone.”

“Has something like this never happened before?” Yu Sheng asked, doubtful.

“Of course not. At least, I’ve never heard of it,” Irene said without hesitation. “Entities are a necessary phenomenon of how an otherworld operates. It’s not an independent individual you can eliminate. If an otherworld exists, entities exist.”

She paused, looking around with a strange expression.

“But… the whole atmosphere here changed. From what I can feel, it really isn’t the otherworld that used to breed Entity-Hunger anymore. So if that’s true, Entity-Hunger really could disappear permanently.”

Her brow knit tight, like her logic had found a path while her instincts refused to accept it.

Foxy didn’t understand Irene’s struggle. She only understood one thing:

That monster might never come back.

She tugged on Yu Sheng’s sleeve. “So… from now on, that monster won’t come out and hurt people again?”

“Seems like it,” Yu Sheng said after thinking it through. He nodded lightly. “Unless this valley somehow breaks its link with me and turns itself back into what it used to be.”

Foxy stared at him, expression unreadable.

Then she lunged forward and hugged him hard—hard enough that even Yu Sheng’s body, far stronger than any ordinary person’s, creaked on the spot. A whole bundle of tails wrapped around him too.

“Benefactor,” she choked out, voice thick with relief. “That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful…”

Yu Sheng hadn’t expected it. The air in his lungs got squeezed out. Forget warmth—he felt like seven hydraulic clamps had snapped shut from every angle. “Loosen… loosen… I’m dying… tails…”

Only then did Foxy snap back to herself. She jumped away in panic. “Ah! Sorry, Benefactor—I got excited and—”

Yu Sheng, barely alive, braced his hands on his knees and panted. It took him a long moment before he could wave weakly. “How are your tails that strong too?!”

“That scared me too!” Irene protested. “One tail swung over and almost knocked me off!”

Foxy kept apologizing, ears flattened to her scalp.

But it was obvious she was still happy.

It wasn’t the shallow excitement of a lucky escape. It was a deep, complete relief—stronger even than the first moment she’d fled the otherworld.

By the time Yu Sheng finally caught his breath—and, as a bonus, repaired a few minor bone cracks—he patted Foxy’s head until she calmed down. Then he straightened and looked toward the distance.

Irene noticed at once and leaned toward Foxy. “I think he’s about to come up with another idea…”

“Should we walk farther out?” Yu Sheng asked, exactly as expected. “What do you think is outside the valley?”