Huli

In the chaotic night, amid the ruins of a broken temple, a silver-haired, fox-tailed girl squatted among shattered bricks and tiles, stuffing rotten vegetable leaves she had dug out of a garbage bag into her mouth. On the other side, Yu Sheng, who had died three times, stood behind a broken wall, staring at her in disbelief.

They stood facing each other silently through the night. For a first meeting—if that headbutt earlier did not count—Yu Sheng probably would never forget this scene for the rest of his life.

Then he saw the fox-tailed girl slowly widen her eyes. An immense shock and delight—or perhaps some disbelief mixed in—gradually filled those golden-red eyes. At last, she stood up, still clutching a handful of vegetable leaves. Then, as if suddenly waking from a dream, she raised a hand and pointed at Yu Sheng, her throat making a sound like she was about to choke. "A human!? Ah, a human! You're human?! You... who are you? Where did you come from..."

Yu Sheng had already prepared what he was going to say, including how to introduce himself, how to ask this girl about the situation, and how to show that he was broad-minded enough not to hold that earlier headbutt against her. But the moment she spoke, he froze. Most of the words he had prepared vanished from his mind, and he could only feel that her reaction was not quite what he had expected.

What did she mean, "You're human"? Was him being human really that shocking to her? Had she never seen a human before, or had it simply been too long since she had seen one? And more importantly...

Whether it was an illusion or a misunderstanding, Yu Sheng felt as if she were seeing him for the first time. But she had clearly seen him earlier while he had been fighting that monster—though admittedly, their first encounter had been rather unconventional. After she had slammed into him headfirst, his overall appearance probably looked very different from what it did now. Still, if nothing else, his face should not have changed much...

Even if she had not bothered to inspect the scene after headbutting him, she should at least have remembered one of the souls her head had claimed. Instead, she was looking at this "stranger" as if they had never met before.

"We... met once," Yu Sheng said after holding it in for two or three seconds. "Just now, in the open area outside. You said you were here to save me... forgot?"

The fox girl tilted her head, seemingly having no idea what Yu Sheng was talking about. But her attention quickly shifted elsewhere. She pointed at the bag of kitchen garbage on the ground, her eyes seeming to glow in the darkness. "Is this... yours?"

She spoke with strange pauses, as if she had gone too long without talking to anyone and had to rethink and recall every word before saying it.

Yu Sheng replied awkwardly, "Uh, yes..."

"Can I... eat it?" the fox girl asked quickly, still stumbling slightly over her words. She tightened her grip on the vegetable leaves in her hand, as if using tremendous willpower to resist stuffing them straight into her mouth. Her mouth moved as she chewed what she had eaten earlier. Then she glanced at Yu Sheng again and hurriedly asked, "I'm... hungry. I want to eat. Sorry..."

Her hand trembled faintly, and her voice was urgent, yet she kept restraining herself with sheer willpower. It was as if what she needed to suppress was not merely her appetite, but something far more dangerous... something already close to losing control.

Yu Sheng blanked out for a moment. He thought he had just seen faint shadows floating behind her, slowly spreading in from the distance like hunters lurking in the dark, waiting for the instant their prey let down its guard.

But the shadows vanished just as quickly.

Yu Sheng stepped out from behind the broken wall. He had already noticed that something was wrong with the girl before him—though that tangled mess of tails alone was plenty strange—but he still gathered his courage and walked forward. "You can't eat those things. They're all..."

He found he could not continue—because he had never been hungry to that extent before.

By then, the girl had slowly crouched down, apparently unable to wait for Yu Sheng's answer any longer. She was about to pick up the scattered scraps of food from the ground.

"Wait! I think I've got something to eat!" At that moment, Yu Sheng suddenly shouted to stop her. Seeming to remember something, he spoke while quickly rummaging through his pockets.

In the end, he pulled out two small packaged bread rolls and a palm-sized bar of chocolate. He had originally planned to save them as a late-night snack.

Because of his work, he had a habit of staying up late at night.

The fox girl watched Yu Sheng's movements with a trace of wariness and confusion. Yu Sheng walked over and demonstrated how to tear open the bread wrapper. As the plastic ripped, the scent of bread spread through the air. The girl's eyes lit up instantly, and then she grabbed Yu Sheng's hand at a speed that left an afterimage, shoving both his hand and the bread toward her mouth.

Yu Sheng nearly failed to react in time. Not only was the girl incredibly fast, but she was also astonishingly strong. He had to pull back with almost all his strength to yank his hand out of her mouth before the fox could bite off his fingers. Even so, her sharp canine teeth scraped a small cut into his index finger, and blood quickly seeped out.

"Damn, how long have you been hungry..." he muttered.

But the girl seemed unable to hear anything around her. She crammed food into her mouth as if she wanted to shove it straight into her stomach. Her cheeks bulged as she chewed, her eyes widening with every bite. Yu Sheng was even worried she would choke herself to death the next second, yet she somehow forced down the food in her mouth. Then her gaze fell on the other bread roll.

"Slow down. Catch your breath first. You'll choke if you keep eating like that," Yu Sheng said, having no choice but to hold her back. He looked seriously into her eyes. "All right? Do you understand?"

"I... understand..." the fox girl said, nodding hard as she tried to swallow her saliva.

Only then did Yu Sheng hand her the second bread roll and watch her clumsily tear at the plastic wrapper. Her method was wrong, but her strength was terrifying. She nearly tore the bag to shreds in an instant, then ripped the bread in half and stuffed it into her mouth. But after eating half of it, she seemed to remember Yu Sheng's words—or realize how precious the food was—and hurriedly slowed down, tearing the bread into small pieces and placing them into her mouth with extreme restraint.

At the same time, her eyes kept darting toward Yu Sheng's hand, settling on the last small piece of chocolate.

"This is choco—" Yu Sheng said casually, preparing to hand it over. But halfway through raising his hand, he hesitated and stopped, his expression turning a little strange.

He thought rapidly for several seconds, then finally called out to Eileen in his mind. "Eileen."

The person in the painting's noisy voice instantly exploded through his mind. "Yu Sheng! What happened to you just now? Why did you suddenly go silent again? And no matter how I called you, you didn't..."

"The situation here is complicated. I'll explain it slowly later. First, I need to ask you something..."

"You... fine, ask." Eileen sounded displeased, but she ultimately showed some patience anyway.

"Dogs can't eat chocolate, right?" Yu Sheng suppressed the strange feeling in his heart. He secretly glanced at the expectant fox girl across from him and tried to sound as serious as possible.

"...Right," Eileen said, finding the question baffling. "That stuff is poisonous to dogs. But why are you suddenly asking this? You're trapped in another realm, and you still have the time to—"

Yu Sheng ignored the rest of her rambling. "Can foxes eat it?"

"Foxes probably can't either... right?" Eileen hesitated. "They're both canines, after all. Hey, let me tell you, lots of human food is poisonous to species other than humans. Put it this way: your diet is insane not just in the eyes of animals, but even to a nonhuman species like mine. You eat poison with strong alkali, drink acid with every meal, swallow biochemical agents, and gorge yourselves on decaying matter..."

Yu Sheng interrupted the Blabber Princess's loud babbling again. "What about a fox that has cultivated into a spirit?"

Eileen was finally left speechless. "...What?"

It turned out that even the Blabber Princess, with all her trash talk, could not handle such an absurd shift in topic.

"I mean a fox that can turn into a human. A fox immortal, a fox demon, you get it?" Yu Sheng spoke rapidly in his mind, because he noticed that the fox girl before him had almost finished the small bread roll and looked ready to snatch the chocolate from his hand. "Does a fox immortal still count as a fox? Is she more human or more fox? If the latter, does a fox immortal count as a canine?"

Eileen said, "...What exactly is going on over there?!"

"There's a starving fox here. White fur, red eyes, the nine-tailed kind... or maybe six or seven tails. They're all tangled up, so I can't count them. But I've only got one piece of chocolate left."

Eileen listened in a daze, then replied with astonishing acceptance, "If she has nine tails, she can definitely handle it. If she doesn't have that much Cultivation Level, did she grow all those tails just to use them as propellers while swimming? Hey, wait, what exactly is happening over there? Didn't you say it was an uninhabited other realm? How did a..."

The first half of Eileen's words sounded perfectly reasonable to Yu Sheng. Without bothering to respond to her continued chatter, he handed the chocolate to the girl. Still, he did not forget to warn her, "Go ahead and eat it, but try only a little first. I'm worried it might be bad for you."

"Th-thank you!" The fox girl quickly took the chocolate. After clumsily opening the wrapper, she carefully took a bite.

An amazed expression appeared on her face. Then she slightly narrowed her eyes, as if immersed in overwhelming happiness.

"All right, there's no more after this," Yu Sheng said, shaking his head and spreading his hands. "I don't know if that's enough to fill you up... uh, I also don't know what to call you."

"Thank you," the fox girl said again. This time, her thanks were far more solemn. Only after she was no longer quite so hungry did she look Yu Sheng in the eyes, raise a hand to point at herself, and say seriously, "Huli."

"Huh?" Yu Sheng did not understand at first.

"Huli." The fox girl pointed at herself and slowly smiled. "I have a name!"