Trapped in This Place

When he heard the pronunciation of his own name from her, Yu Sheng's first thought was that this girl was awfully straightforward—why had she directly taken "fox" as her own name? It was only after asking several more times that he realized she had said "Huli," not fox.

Her name was Huli. A... somewhat strange name, but one that suited that whole pile of tails rather well.

"My name is Yu Sheng." Yu Sheng sat amid the ruins of the broken temple with Huli and introduced himself. "I'm from... uh, I don't know if you'll understand this. I came from 'outside,' not outside the valley."

"You really came from 'outside'!" Huli's eyes widened at once. She seemed to immediately understand what Yu Sheng meant, and the shock on her face revealed something else: she knew that "outside" existed!

Huli quickly and carefully took another small bite of chocolate, staring wide-eyed at Yu Sheng's face. "How did you get in? Do you know... the way out? Is it... in the sky?"

As she talked with Yu Sheng, Huli's speech gradually became smoother. It seemed she was rapidly recovering her ability to communicate with people.

Yu Sheng was stunned by her words. "The sky? Why ask that?"

"Before the Immortal died, he said we... all came from the sky. But then the sky suddenly went dark, so... we couldn't go back." Huli struggled to organize her words. Though her speech had become smoother, she still stumbled over longer passages. "Then the land became more and more dangerous. It started becoming poisonous, so... many of the people who came together died. Couldn't go back..."

Yu Sheng listened in a daze, relying almost entirely on his powerful imagination to barely make sense of the girl's chaotic account. He realized that this valley, which Eileen had simply classified as the Otherworld, seemed to conceal a complicated story—and that this girl with so many tails had an utterly unimaginable origin.

She was also trapped, but I accidentally ate them.

But when he tried asking where exactly "the sky" was, who the "many people" she had mentioned were, and how they had come here, her answers became muddled again.

"The sky... is the sky. All these years, I've been trying to... return to the sky, but I can't." Huli gestured as she explained. "I tried jumping hard, but I hit something. It hurt. Everyone... doesn't remember anymore. There was Father, Mother, the Immortal, and... and other people. We came down in a boat, a very big boat..."

As Huli said this, she seemed to suddenly remember something. Raising her hand, she pointed toward somewhere deep within the dark valley. "Over there. The boat fell down and became part of the mountain. Father always wanted to go back and get things, but later... everyone was killed by something. Then no one knew how to... get inside the boat."

What Huli described was becoming eerie and terrifying. Yu Sheng felt a chill crawl down his back.

He did his best to understand what she was saying—setting aside, for the moment, what exactly she meant by "Immortal," and what sort of place "the sky" was. From the disordered fragments Huli provided, he pieced together a rough truth:

Huli, her family, and people called "Immortals" had arrived in this valley long ago aboard a large vessel—very likely a massive means of transportation capable of flight. But this place probably had not been a "land of death" at the time. Then the sky had suddenly gone dark, some unknown environmental catastrophe had occurred, and the place had been sealed off. The people who came aboard the vessel had been trapped here ever since. After that, the trapped survivors had suffered another devastating blow, attacked by some powerful enemy and nearly wiped out.

The process had been unimaginably brutal, and in the end, Huli alone remained.

But Yu Sheng knew that this was only a story he had pieced together through sheer imagination. Huli's words were confused, many of her memories had obvious gaps, and her own perspective had distorted her understanding. As for the true answer, perhaps even she herself could no longer understand or remember it.

This girl's mind was seriously not right.

"How long have you been trapped, but I accidentally ate them?" he could not help asking.

"I don't know. Anyway... a very long time." Huli slowly shook her head, carefully cradling the half-piece of chocolate in her hands. "This place always... doesn't change much. Don't know how to count days. When hungry, I pass out, and when I wake up, it feels like a long time has passed..."

Yu Sheng slowly frowned. Looking at Huli's ragged dress, then recalling the chaotic experiences she had described, he realized that she had likely been trapped here far longer than he had imagined—at least measured in years.

"All these years... how did you survive?" he asked with a frown. "What did you eat? Did you just dig through trash in the broken temple? But there doesn't seem to be anything edible here..."

"No food." Huli shook her head again. "Sometimes... there are fruits in the woods, but they're poisonous. Eating them makes you pass out. Other than water, most things here are poisonous. So most of the time, I just stay hungry."

As she said that, Huli slowly smiled again. Pointing to herself, she even seemed a little proud. "Monsters are very tough. Starving won't kill us. It just... feels awful, being hungry."

She seemed to recall a terrible memory. The smile on her face crumpled, and then she rose and hurried to a spot nearby, retrieving that bag of kitchen garbage from among the broken bricks and tiles. Like she was holding treasure, she hugged the bag of leftovers and rotten vegetables to her chest.

"It can still be eaten," she told Yu Sheng with complete seriousness.

Yu Sheng opened his mouth, but he did not know what to say. He wished he could pull out mountains of food right then, or even open a door back to the real world, but he could barely protect himself at the moment.

"Benefactor..." Huli suddenly spoke again.

Yu Sheng froze, not understanding at first. "What did you call me?"

"Benefactor." Huli repeated herself, her expression very serious. "Mother said that someone who helps you greatly is your benefactor. You gave me food."

Yu Sheng waved his hand. "...That form of address is a little weird. Just call me Yu Sheng. I'm used to it."

"Oh, okay, Bene..." Huli mumbled, blurring the title as she trailed off. Then she pointed at Yu Sheng's finger, lowering her head as well. "I'm sorry."

"Huh?" Yu Sheng paused, only then noticing the wound on his finger again. Huli had bitten him there in her desperation when he gave her bread earlier, but it had somehow completely healed. Only a little dried blood remained on his skin. He waved it off without a care. "It's fine. Don't worry about it. Just a superficial wound."

But Huli looked deeply concerned. "Benefactor, are you really okay? If bitten by a monster... the injury harms the origin. It can't heal."

"But it's already healed." Yu Sheng was doubtful after hearing that. He casually rubbed off the blood on his finger. "Look."

"It really healed..." Huli stared at Yu Sheng's finger in surprise. "Benefactor... are you also an Immortal?"

"I'm not. I don't even know what you mean by Immortal—by my understanding, someone who cultivated until they became immortal?" Yu Sheng said casually. "But why would someone who cultivated into an immortal be with... uh, monsters? From what you said earlier, it sounds like you were all monsters on the same boat, following an Immortal around, right? But from the impression I got from all kinds of stories... shouldn't Immortals and monsters have a different kind of relationship?"

Yu Sheng had finally asked the question that had puzzled him from the start—

Huli had mentioned many terms he had previously only heard in stories, and she herself had a huge mass of tails that looked like they belonged to a creature that had cultivated for a thousand years. Yet after putting all that information together, the conclusion was that an "Immortal" had been leading a group of monsters around. Even after the "Immortal Boat" crashed, the Immortal and the monsters had worked together to survive in the wilderness for a time, though their survival attempt had ultimately failed. That did not fit Yu Sheng's stereotype of Immortals and monsters at all.

Weren't those two groups usually the sort who minced each other into dumpling filling the moment they met in novels?

But Huli clearly did not understand why Yu Sheng was reacting that way. Faced with his question, she merely tilted her head in confusion. After trying hard to remember, she finally answered uncertainly, "Because... he was the Tour Guide Immortal."

Yu Sheng: "...?"

He felt like he had just heard something deeply cursed.

But he asked again and again, eventually confirming that Huli had neither remembered nor said it wrong.

That had been a "Tour Guide Immortal." Or rather, that Immortal had been a tour guide.

God knew how many years ago, the monsters and Immortals who had crashed into this forbidden land aboard the Immortal Boat had been a damn tour group.

Yu Sheng had just imagined an eight-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-word xianxia epic! All that imagination for nothing!

Don't ask why there was a monster tour group led by an Immortal. The answer was a four-day, ninety-nine-yuan pure sightseeing tour with no shopping—was it reasonable? Perfectly reasonable. Cheap tour groups were just prone to accidents.

Yu Sheng sat in the night wind, letting the cold breeze pass through the ruins of the broken temple and blow across his face.

He felt that this world was cursed as hell.

He felt that more and more strongly.

Just then, he heard the Fox Girl beside him calling softly to him again.

"Benefactor..."

"Just call me Yu Sheng." Yu Sheng sighed helplessly. "What is it?"

Huli clutched her stomach, looking miserable. "Benefactor, my stomach hurts a little."

Yu Sheng blankly let out an "Huh?" Then he looked at the chocolate, half of which had already been chewed down by this fox immortal.

Holy crap, even fox immortals can't handle chocolate?!

"...Holy crap! Stop eating!" Cold sweat instantly broke out across Yu Sheng's body. He reached out to snatch the chocolate from Huli's hand. "That stuff is bad for you—"

But the moment his hand reached over, a deep growl came from Huli's throat, as loud as a Tibetan mastiff. Then she stretched out her neck and bit Yu Sheng's hand. "Awooo!!!"

The next second, Yu Sheng howled even louder than Huli.