The wind in the valley began to stir restlessly.
Yu Sheng had no idea what had happened, but he could clearly feel the "atmosphere" filling the entire Otherworld changing. It was difficult to describe in words. If he had to put it one way...
He felt as if the entire valley were gradually "coming alive."
The distant forest was awakening, the mountains were awakening, the earth was awakening, and even the sky overhead was sending down a chilling gaze—cold and filled with hungry desire—that made his scalp prickle.
He noticed Huli trembling slightly beside him. The fox girl clutched the food in her hands tightly, but fear had appeared on her face. She raised her head and stared at the dark night sky above, inching backward toward Yu Sheng while muttering something under her breath. Only after she drew close did Yu Sheng hear what she kept repeating:
"It was like this when the immortal died... It was like this when the immortal died..."
"What's going on?" Eileen asked hurriedly. The little doll had grown tense as well, her entire body taut as she held the kitchen knife in her arms. "Do you know something?"
Huli did not answer her. It was as if she had fallen into another state of delirium, knowing only to repeat the same sentence over and over.
Before long, however, Eileen and Yu Sheng were both too preoccupied to care about Huli's abnormal state.
Yu Sheng sensed that familiar aura appear nearby. From the corner of his eye, he saw a solid form rapidly condense in the shadows at the edge of the ruined temple. Layers of malformed, swollen flesh sprouted and piled together. Strange limbs, as if cut from various creatures, grew layer upon layer from the mass of flesh. Dozens of hungry eyes opened across the monster's body, while sharp fangs and tearing mouths kept appearing between them, emitting a muddy growl.
Entity—Hunger had finally appeared near its prey.
"Holy crap!" Eileen cried out at once. "This thing is so ugly!"
"Watch out for sneak attacks. Every limb on this thing can transform, and it can suddenly grow tentacles and tails from inside its body," Yu Sheng immediately warned her. He then said to Huli, "Just protect yourself later. You've already been deeply corrupted by this thing. You can't fight it."
Huli was in a very strange state. Even after the monster appeared, she continued staring at the sky in terror. But after hearing Yu Sheng's words, she still nodded blankly, picking up the food scattered on the ground as she backed away. She did not dare retreat too far, as if afraid something might happen to Yu Sheng.
"How are you planning to fight it?" Eileen asked in a low voice. The monster in the distance was still prowling around, seemingly waiting patiently for something, but the delay only made her more uneasy. "Don't tell me you're planning to charge it bare-handed and use military boxing. You didn't even prepare a weapon when you came here. At least I'm carrying a kitchen knife."
Yu Sheng knew perfectly well that he had not prepared a weapon when he came. He had already tried it before: most of the structures on this monster were harder than stone. Even if he carried an axe and managed to chop off a small piece of its softer flesh, the effect would barely be worth mentioning. That was why he had never intended to bring any "weapon" in the first place. For an ordinary person who had never received any training in weapon combat, let alone a kitchen knife, even if he really brought a Dragon-Slaying Saber, he would most likely cut himself first.
He had prepared other means of "killing."
"We'll use the plan we discussed at home. Just control its movements with those threads of yours," Yu Sheng said quickly. "I'll charge in later and 'tear an opening' in it. Keep an eye on things. If I accidentally fail, take Huli and run immediately. Don't worry about me. Huli has a way to survive under that monster's hands, and Hunger won't actively pursue you..."
Eileen froze for a moment. "Uh, and then?"
"We'll regroup after I come back to life and try again. This thing has to die eventually."
"You son of a—so it really is this simple and crude plan, huh? You promised you'd try not to use 'resurrection' like a basic attack!"
"I am trying not to," Yu Sheng said quickly. But soon, he frowned as he sensed that something was off about the monster in the distance. "Why hasn't it attacked yet...?"
Eileen had the same doubt. "I feel like it's deliberately stalling for time, as if it's waiting for something. Does this thing already have the concept of 'strategy'?"
"Then we can't let it keep waiting," Yu Sheng immediately gritted his teeth. "We'll make the first move!"
The moment he finished speaking, he charged toward the monster. Almost simultaneously, Eileen, sitting on his shoulder, made a nimble flip and jumped off him, extending her right hand toward the monster. The instant she landed, the doll's eyes turned pitch-black, and countless fine black threads radiating a strange, frigid aura spread from her hand. Like a web growing and expanding at tremendous speed, they rapidly filled the entire space!
All the "spider silk" avoided Yu Sheng's path. He accelerated again within the ever-expanding web of threads, his enhanced body almost pulling a blur through the air as he lunged at the hideous, terrifying flesh behemoth!
The monster finally moved. Faced with its "prey" attacking first, it seemed somewhat startled, but it swiftly launched a counterattack. A vicious claw rose high from the behemoth's back and smashed down toward the path Yu Sheng had to take.
At that moment, Yu Sheng suddenly sensed that strange... "prediction" again.
He sensed which muscles on the monster's body were contracting. He sensed its urge to attack and the true focus of its gaze at that moment. It was as if he had seen a tentacle extending from behind the claw in advance, sealing off every possible escape route he might take in the next second...
Perhaps it was an illusion, but he felt that his "prediction" was even more accurate this time. He even... began to realize that it was not so-called spiritual intuition at all.
He now possessed genuine spiritual intuition and had experienced what it felt like. He discovered that what he "saw" and "felt" while predicting the monster's actions was completely different from so-called spiritual intuition.
When he sensed the monster's actions in advance, it was almost like a first-person perspective.
All his thoughts flashed by in an instant. In the blink of an eye, Yu Sheng crossed the final few meters, and the flesh behemoth's claw came crashing down.
Yu Sheng did not dodge at all. From the corner of his eye, he saw the threads spreading from behind him close together in midair. In the next instant, countless black lines wrapped around the monster's limbs, piercing through its claws, tentacles, and gaping mouths in a crisscrossing pattern like some kind of ghostly image that penetrated to the bone...
Coldness, numbness, sluggishness—it was as if even his thoughts had been pierced through and riddled with holes in an instant, and even his soul had been wrapped layer after layer in a frigid web...
Overwhelming negative sensations surged up. For an instant, Yu Sheng seemed to see an illusion—he saw himself trapped deep within a spiderweb, countless strands winding around him and even piercing through his limbs. At the edge of the web, a shadow with scarlet eyes spied on him from the darkness, then slowly crawled toward him in a strange and vicious posture...
"Yu Sheng! Don't space out! I'm about to lose my grip!"
The sudden scream beside his ear instantly jolted Yu Sheng awake. He looked up and saw that the flesh behemoth had been frozen in a bizarre posture at the center of layer upon layer of black threads. Their ends were pulled taut, as if the monster would forcibly snap them the next second.
There was no time to think about what the "illusion" he had just experienced meant. Yu Sheng lunged toward a certain spot beside the monster. During the precious opening Eileen had bought him, he grabbed one of the black threads in midair with one hand, reached his other hand toward the air, focused all his concentration, and slowly pulled—
A door appeared, its surface shimmering with flowing, phantomlike light.
Opening a door in thin air consumed far more energy and time than opening a physical door. Yu Sheng had to focus and complete the process in a relatively stable environment. But as he watched the monster's limbs gradually tremble and the black spiderweb already beginning to crack apart, even a few seconds felt as long as a lifetime.
—Though his "lifetimes" had not been particularly long lately.
The next second, accompanied by the sound of a door opening, the phantom door finally swung fully open.
It was even larger than the doors he had opened before—large enough to swallow the entire monster.
Blazing fire erupted from within the door, illuminating a large area around it.
On the other side of the door was a roiling lake of magma.
It was a "surprise" Yu Sheng had discovered during his countless experiments with opening doors.
He had no idea where that place was. He only knew that it contained endless lava and spouting flames, like a landscape from hell.
Entity—Hunger was powerful, but most of its threat came from its mental contamination and its "hunger" power, which was almost akin to a rule. As for its physicalized "vessel"... compared to a rule, it was not particularly tough.
It could be roasted.
And if it could not be roasted, then he would use even more firepower.
"Throw it in!"
Yu Sheng shouted at Eileen.
"Got it!"
Before you continue