The fox girl's eyes widened as she stared at the large pile of things Yu Sheng had placed on the ground. She stood there blankly for several seconds, seemingly unable to process what was happening, until Yu Sheng opened a can of eight-treasure porridge and brought the food to her mouth.
"Eat. I brought all this for you—and there's more if it's not enough."
The aroma of food. The real taste of food.
Not rocks, not dirt, not bricks or wood—not the phantoms in her dreams that could never fill her stomach, no matter how vividly she imagined them.
Huli's eyes slowly widened. Then, as if suddenly jolted out of a frozen state, she came alive all at once. She snatched the can from Yu Sheng's hand and, without using a spoon, poured it straight into her mouth, making muffled whimpering noises as she gulped it down.
She finished the entire can in little more than ten seconds. Then she began carefully licking the rim, but she soon grew agitated again because she couldn't clean out the food inside. Just as Yu Sheng was about to help, Huli gripped the can with her fingers and tore at it. With a sharp metallic ripping sound, she forcibly tore open the sturdy metal can. She then carefully ripped it into a continuous strip of narrow metal while licking off every last drop of food clinging to it.
"There's more here." Yu Sheng hurriedly rummaged through his pockets and pulled out a piece of bread, then handed her a bottle of water as well. "Slow down."
A blur flashed before his eyes, and the food was already in Huli's hands.
The fox girl devoured everything ravenously. Eating became the only thing she did for quite some time. Neither Yu Sheng nor Eileen spoke. The ruins held nothing but the sounds of Huli eating and the occasional muffled noises rising from her throat, as if she wanted to speak but couldn't bear to stop eating.
Then Huli suddenly began to cry.
It happened without warning. Tears slid down the fox girl's face as she stuffed bread into her mouth. She didn't sob or make a sound. The tears simply flowed calmly along her cheeks, fell onto the bread, and were then stuffed into her mouth with it.
The sight startled Yu Sheng. He hurriedly reached out and wiped at Huli's dirty face. "Don't cry. You'll choke and your stomach will hurt. Don't cry anymore. There's still more, and there'll be more in the future..."
Only then did Huli seem to finally come to her senses, with enough energy left to think about other things. She stared blankly at Yu Sheng before her for a long while, then suddenly held out the half-piece of bread in her hand. "Benefactor, you eat too."
Yu Sheng quickly waved his hands. "I ate before I came. I'm not hungry."
Huli didn't move. She simply stubbornly maintained her position. Although all the food here had been brought by Yu Sheng moments ago, she insisted on sharing the bread in her hand with him, as if doing so held extraordinary significance for her.
At last, Yu Sheng reached out and accepted the half-piece of bread Huli offered him.
The fox girl smiled. She grabbed a packet of compressed biscuits from the ground. This time, she didn't wolf them down. After tearing open the packaging, she nibbled at them carefully, one small bite at a time, as if trying to prolong the act of eating for as long as possible.
She finally didn't seem so hungry anymore, even if only temporarily.
"It's good," she said softly. "Benefactor, it's good..."
"Don't put 'Benefactor' before 'it's good.'" Yu Sheng shuddered, reminded of some unpleasant things. "As long as you can fill your stomach."
"Mm-hmm." Huli immediately nodded lightly.
"She's finally recovered a little." Eileen only spoke now. Looking at the fox girl, whose mental state had clearly stabilized somewhat, she let out a sigh of relief. "It's a good thing you managed to hold on all this time..."
Huli flinched slightly. It seemed she had only just noticed the doll on Yu Sheng's shoulder—or perhaps only just realized that this sixty-six-point-six-centimeter-tall creature could speak and move. She immediately looked astonished. "This thing is alive!?"
Eileen's eyes widened. "...Obviously! Of course I'm alive! I even helped you bite open a sausage earlier!"
"She's Eileen, a living doll from Alice's Cabin," Yu Sheng hurriedly introduced her. "She's the helper I mentioned. Don't let her small size fool you—she's actually very capable. I was only able to contact you through the dream because of her help."
Eileen hugged a kitchen knife with one hand and planted the other on her hip, looking extremely proud atop Yu Sheng's shoulder.
Huli thought for a moment. She didn't know what a living doll was, nor did she understand how such a tiny "human-shaped" thing could speak and move. But she understood that this was her benefactor's friend. After hesitating for several seconds, she held out the compressed biscuits in her hand. "Eileen, you eat too."
Eileen's proud expression immediately turned awkward. "Er... I can't eat this. Dolls can't eat..."
Huli instantly took the biscuits back and continued nibbling them in small bites.
Eileen: "...Hey, you just took them back without even letting me have a taste?! You weren't like this when you shared the bread with Yu Sheng!"
"Dolls can't eat," Huli said softly. "Here. Otherwise it's wasting food."
Eileen puffed out her cheeks and began to get angry, but no one paid her any attention.
By then, Yu Sheng's attention had already turned to the dark, cold night surrounding them.
He could sense that, with his arrival, the atmosphere in the valley was gradually changing. The "entity" entrenched in the Otherworld had already become active, and his act of bringing food and temporarily freeing Huli from hunger had stimulated the monster.
He had come today first to save Huli, and second to find a way to eliminate the Hunger Entity entrenched here. Originally, this hadn't been something he absolutely had to do. But now that he had established a "connection" with the monster and knew it was gradually learning to think, he had no choice but to find a way to eliminate this hidden threat.
Yet for some reason, the monster still hadn't shown itself before him.
A trace of doubt gradually surfaced in Yu Sheng's heart. Just then, a faint sound drifted in on the night wind, reaching the ears of everyone present—
It was the distant howl of wolves.
Yu Sheng and Eileen exchanged glances. After hesitating for a moment, Eileen asked, "Yu Sheng, did you hear that just now?"
"That was a wolf. I thought I'd heard wrong..." Yu Sheng frowned, then turned to Huli, who was earnestly nibbling her biscuits. "Are there wolves around here?"
"No. There's only me and that monster here." Huli looked just as bewildered. "This is the first time I've heard such a strange sound."
Just then, the wolves howled again, interrupting Yu Sheng and the others.
The sound seemed a little closer this time.
A pack of wolves was drawing near, chasing something—or being chased.
In the dark forest, the enormous fleshly beast was like a terrifying nightmare wandering between the trees. It constantly changed positions in the shadows, appearing in the thin mist one moment and abruptly vanishing from sight the next.
But no matter which direction they ran, the monster would somehow appear nearby, then launch attacks from bizarre angles.
A wolf took shape from the shadows and leaped through the forest, pouncing at the fleshly beast surging through the darkness. More wolves then swarmed in from all directions, attempting to seal off the monster's movements.
However, countless tentacles and bone-like limbs covered in barbs suddenly stabbed out from within the beast. The wolves that had just gathered were instantly forced back, leaving a huge gap in the encirclement.
The beast's many eyes locked onto a figure beyond the wolf pack at the same time. Little Red Riding Hood sat atop the largest wolf, her calm eyes locked in a distant standoff with the monster's dozens of cold gazes.
The next second, the middle of the beast's body split open. A black, scaled "long tongue" shot out with a roar, piercing toward the girl's throat like an arrow filled with malice.
Little Red Riding Hood merely shifted her body slightly. The instant the long tongue was about to touch her, she abruptly raised her right hand.
The slender girl's arm instantly burst apart and swelled. Flesh crackled grotesquely as smoke billowed out. Blood and mist intertwined in the blink of an eye, transforming into an enormous black wolf's head. The wolf's head then bit down viciously, clamping its jaws around the long tongue before it could change course.
The beast reacted and abruptly retreated, but Little Red Riding Hood continued to "bite" down on it with all her strength. She and the dire wolf beneath her seemed nailed to the ground as they wrestled with the monster. In that brief instant, another figure suddenly leaped out from the shadows of the dense forest—
Li Lin charged toward the monster's side like an agile leopard, a short knife in his hand glittering with cold light in the night. It was a spare weapon Xu Jiali had lent him temporarily. The monster noticed the sudden ambusher at once. As several eyes rapidly turned, a raised claw came crashing straight down toward Li Lin.
But the real ambush was still to come. When Li Lin was halfway there, he suddenly lowered his body and dodged the monster's claw with a movement no ordinary person could perform. Another tall figure leaped from the monster's blind spot behind it. The nearly two-meter-tall brawny man raised a beam dagger that could already serve as a short sword to anyone else and plunged it toward a lump of flesh on the monster's back.
With a hiss, the blazing blade pierced into the lump without resistance, even cutting the entire lump away.
The monster merely let out a chaotic, ear-piercing roar. Then it abruptly spun around, throwing off Little Red Riding Hood, who had been barely holding it at bay, and smashing away the brawny man, who had no time to recover his momentum.
Xu Jiali rolled into a nearby thicket and let out a muffled groan.
Li Lin hurried to the edge of the thicket and dragged his colleague out. Then the two of them looked toward where the monster had been.
The monster had vanished at some point.
The fog in the dense forest gradually grew thicker. Amid the drifting, surging mist, countless twisted, bizarre phantoms could vaguely be seen taking root, crawling out of the soil, and swaying faintly in the cold wind.
Layer upon layer of shadows, endless and boundless.
The entire forest seemed to have become a gigantic mouth waiting to feed.
Xu Jiali instantly sucked in a breath of cold air. "We can't stay here. Keep running out of the forest!"
Before you continue