Day of Feasting

The demon fox girl's eyes widened as she stared at the large pile of items Yu Sheng had placed on the ground. For several seconds, she stood there stunned, seemingly unable to comprehend the situation until Yu Sheng opened a can of eight-treasure porridge and brought the food to her lips.

"Eat, it's all for you—there's more if you're not full."

The aroma of food, the real taste of food.

Not stones, not mud, not bricks, wood—not the phantoms from her dreams that her imagination could never satisfy.

The demon fox's eyes slowly grew wider, and then she seemed to snap out of her frozen state, coming alive with a jolt. She reached out and snatched the can from Yu Sheng's hand. Without a spoon, she directly poured the contents into her mouth, making muffled sounds as she ate.

She consumed the entire can in just over ten seconds. Afterward, she began meticulously licking the edges of the can. However, her impatience quickly returned because she couldn't lick the can clean. Just as Yu Sheng was about to help, the demon fox directly gripped the can with her fingers and tore it apart with a sharp metallic screech. She had managed to rip open the sturdy metal can and then, while tearing it into long, continuous strips of metal, she licked every last drop of food from it.

"There's more here," Yu Sheng quickly rummaged through his pockets, pulling out a piece of bread and a bottle of water, handing them over. "Eat slowly."

A blur of motion flashed before his eyes, and the food was already in the demon fox's hands.

The demon fox girl devoured the food ravenously. Eating became the only thing she did for a while. Neither Yu Sheng nor Eileen spoke. The only sounds in the ruins were the demon fox's eating and the occasional muffled noises from her throat, as if she wanted to speak but couldn't bear to stop eating.

Then, the demon fox suddenly started crying.

Very suddenly, tears streamed down the demon fox's face. She stuffed bread into her mouth, but she didn't sob or cry out loud. Only tears flowed calmly down her cheeks, landing on the bread, which she then ate.

Yu Sheng was startled by this sight and quickly reached out to wipe her dirty face. "Don't cry. If you choke on the wind, your stomach will hurt. Stop crying, there's more, and there will be more in the future…"

Only then did the demon fox seem to truly come to her senses, having the spare energy to think about other things. She stared blankly at Yu Sheng, lost in thought for a long moment, then suddenly offered the half-eaten piece of bread in her hand. "Benefactor, you, eat too."

Yu Sheng quickly waved his hand. "I ate before I came, I'm not hungry."

But the demon fox didn't move, stubbornly maintaining her gesture. Even though all the food had just been brought by Yu Sheng, she insisted on sharing the bread in her hand with him, as if doing so held some exceptionally significant meaning for her.

Yu Sheng finally reached out and took the half-eaten piece of bread the demon fox offered.

The demon fox girl smiled and then grabbed a packet of compressed biscuits from the ground. This time, she didn't devour them but carefully nibbled on them, taking small bites after tearing open the packaging, as if trying to prolong the eating process as much as possible.

She seemed to no longer be as hungry, even if only temporarily.

"It's delicious," she whispered. "Benefactor, it's delicious…"

"Don't add 'Benefactor' before 'delicious'," Yu Sheng flinched, recalling some unpleasant memories. "As long as… you can fill your stomach, that's enough."

"Mhm, mhm." The demon fox nodded gently.

"Finally recovered," Eileen finally spoke. She looked at the demon fox, whose mental state had clearly stabilized a bit, and breathed a sigh of relief. "You really held on…"

The demon fox was slightly startled. It was as if she had only just noticed the doll on Yu Sheng's shoulder—or rather, only just realized that this 66.6-centimeter-tall being could talk and move. Her eyes widened in astonishment. "This, it's alive!?"

Eileen's eyes widened. "…Of course, I'm alive! I helped you bite open a sausage just now!"

"This is Eileen, a living puppet from Alice's Cabin," Yu Sheng quickly introduced. "This is the helper I mentioned. Don't let her small size fool you, she's very capable. It's thanks to her help that I was able to contact you from the dream before."

Eileen, holding a cleaver in one hand and with the other on her hip, looked very proud on Yu Sheng's shoulder.

The demon fox thought for a moment. She didn't know what a living puppet was, nor did she understand how such a small "humanoid" could talk and move. But she understood that this was her Benefactor's friend. After a few seconds of hesitation, she offered the compressed biscuit in her hand. "Eileen, you eat too."

Eileen's proud expression immediately became a little awkward. "Uh… I can't eat this, puppets can't eat…"

The demon fox instantly retracted the biscuit and continued to nibble on it.

Eileen: "…Hey, you just took it back without even offering a polite refusal?! You didn't have that attitude when you shared the bread with Yu Sheng earlier!"

"Puppets can't eat," the demon fox said softly. "Here, it's a waste of food."

Eileen puffed out her cheeks, starting to get angry, but no one paid her any mind.

Yu Sheng's attention had already shifted to the dark and cold night sky surrounding them.

He could feel that as his presence grew, the atmosphere in the valley was gradually changing. The "Entity" that had taken root in this Otherworld had become active, and his act of bringing food to temporarily alleviate the demon fox's hunger had stimulated that monster.

He had come today, first to save the demon fox, and second to find a way to deal with the Hunger Entity residing here. Originally, this wasn't 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 to find a way to resolve this hidden danger.

But for some reason, the monster had not yet revealed itself to him.

A hint of doubt gradually surfaced in Yu Sheng's mind. Just then, a faint sound carried on the night wind, reaching everyone present—

It was the distant howl of wolves.

Yu Sheng and Eileen exchanged glances. The latter hesitated for a moment. "Yu Sheng, did you hear that?"

"It's the sound of wolves. I thought I misheard…" Yu Sheng frowned, then turned to look at the demon fox, who was diligently eating biscuits. "Are there wolves in this place?"

"No, there's only me and that monster here," the demon fox appeared equally bewildered. "This is the first time I've heard such a strange sound."

Just then, the wolf howls sounded again, interrupting Yu Sheng and the others' conversation.

The sound seemed to be closer this time.

The wolf pack was approaching, chasing something, or being chased.

In the dark, dense forest, a massive flesh-and-blood behemoth moved like a terrifying nightmare wandering through the woods, constantly changing its position in the shadows of the trees, sometimes appearing in the thin mist, sometimes abruptly disappearing from view.

But no matter which direction it ran, the monster would appear strangely nearby and attack from an awkward angle.

Wolves formed from shadows, leaping into the air in the forest, pouncing on the flesh-and-blood behemoth undulating and speeding through the darkness. Then, more wolves swarmed from all directions, attempting to pin down the monster's movements.

However, countless tentacles and thorny bone-like appendages suddenly stabbed out from the behemoth's body, forcing the wolf pack, which had just gathered, to retreat. A large gap appeared in their encirclement.

The behemoth's numerous eyes simultaneously locked onto a figure outside the wolf pack—Little Red Riding Hood, riding the largest wolf, her calm eyes meeting the monster's dozens of cold gazes.

The next second, the middle section of the behemoth's body split open violently, and a black, scaled "long tongue" shot out with a whistling sound, piercing towards the girl's throat like a malicious arrow.

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.

Her slender, girlish arm instantly exploded, swelling. Flesh and blood emitted strange sizzling sounds, and smoke billowed out. Blood and mist intertwined in the blink of an eye, transforming into a massive, pitch-black wolf's head. Then, the wolf's head fiercely bit down, firmly clamping onto the "long tongue" that had no time to change its trajectory.

The monstrous beast reacted and violently retreated. Yet, Little Red Riding Hood still held on, "biting" the opponent. She and the wolf mount beneath her were like anchors fixed to the ground, stalemating the monster. And in this brief moment, another figure suddenly leaped from the shadows of the dense forest—

Li Lin, agile as a cheetah, charged towards the monster's flank. A short knife in his hand gleamed with cold light in the night—it was a spare weapon temporarily lent to him by Xu Jiali. The monster immediately noticed this ambusher who had suddenly appeared. With its several eyes rapidly shifting, a raised claw was already slashing straight down towards Li Lin.

However, the true ambush was still to the side. Li Lin, halfway through his charge, abruptly lowered his body, dodging the monster's claw with a movement impossible for an ordinary person. Another tall figure leaped out from the monster's blind spot behind it. The burly man, nearly two meters tall, raised the beam dagger—which could be used as a short sword by others—high into the air and thrust it fiercely at a fleshy growth on the monster's back.

With a "chi" sound, the scorching light blade pierced the fleshy growth without obstruction, even slicing the entire growth off.

Yet, the monster merely let out a series of chaotic, ear-piercing roars. It then violently turned, shaking off Little Red Riding Hood, who was struggling to maintain her hold, and sent the burly man, who couldn't retract his force in time, flying.

Xu Jiali rolled into a nearby bush, letting out a muffled groan.

Li Lin hurried to the bush and dragged his colleague out from within. Then, the two of them looked together in the direction where the monster had been.

The monster's figure had, at some point, vanished.

The mist in the dense forest gradually thickened. Within the swirling mist, countless distorted and grotesque phantoms could be vaguely seen growing, emerging from the soil, and swaying slightly in the cold wind.

Shadows upon shadows, endless.

The entire forest seemed to have transformed into a giant mouth, anticipating a meal.

Xu Jiali instantly gasped, "We can't stay here, we have to keep running towards the outside of the forest!"