Hungry Ghost

Yu Ziqing's consciousness was hazy.

Oh, he had exhausted his Blood Essence. How long had passed? There was nothing left to digest. Had he already begun digesting his own muscles?

His brain was resisting frantically. Even if it had to digest his own flesh and blood, it still had to supply his brain with energy and keep him a little clearer.

Yu Ziqing struggled to sit up and leaned against the stone wall. He looked ahead. The stone wall was covered in claw marks and fist prints.

Those were the traces he had left behind when he had grown increasingly crazed.

But now, he no longer even had the strength to rage.

After he had stared for an unknown length of time, something seemed to stir in the stone wall ahead of him.

A moment later, a sharp claw broke through the stone wall and reached out from within.

As if sensing something, the claw's owner became even more frantic. His flesh split and his claws broke, yet he still did not stop. A moment later, he had dug out a small hole barely over a foot wide.

A Hungry Ghost crawled through the hole into the cavern where Yu Ziqing was staying.

When the Hungry Ghost saw Yu Ziqing, he was overjoyed. After standing up, he anxiously paced in circles, gesturing for a long while as if he wanted to say something, but he could not make a sound.

After circling a few times, he seemed to think of something. He turned around and continued digging frantically, constantly widening the hole, seemingly wanting to enlarge it enough for Yu Ziqing to pass through.

"Stop digging. It's no use..."

Yu Ziqing murmured weakly.

The Hungry Ghost seemed to think of something else and crawled back into the cavern, disappearing from sight.

After an unknown length of time, just as Yu Ziqing's consciousness was beginning to blur again, movement came from the hole once more.

The Hungry Ghost entered through the hole with a wooden bowl in his hands, crawling in carefully.

He held the wooden bowl in both hands and respectfully placed it in front of Yu Ziqing.

Yu Ziqing did not move at all. His eyes shifted slightly, and he recognized the wooden bowl. It was the bowl he had once used to bring soup to this Hungry Ghost. At the time, he had even mocked the Hungry Ghost for not returning the bowl after finishing his meal. If he kept the bowl, who would bring him food next time?

But now, he saw that there was still some long-spoiled thick soup at the bottom of the wooden bowl.

Yu Ziqing instantly understood. It was not that the Hungry Ghost had finished the thick soup and failed to return the bowl. Rather, he still had not finished that tiny bit of soup even now.

So much time had passed, yet half of it still remained in the bowl. It had already turned gelatinous and spoiled. That Hungry Ghost had probably drunk less than a quarter of it.

Yu Ziqing looked at the anxious Hungry Ghost. Seeing him hesitate, seemingly too afraid to come closer, he also saw Yu Ziqing appeared to have no strength left. The Hungry Ghost lifted the wooden bowl and slowly walked toward him.

Looking at the Hungry Ghost gathering his courage while trembling with fear, Yu Ziqing tugged at the corners of his mouth and revealed a faint smile. He laughed until tears came out.

"This has spoiled. It's poisonous. I can't drink it anymore. You drink it."

"Come here."

The emaciated Hungry Ghost hesitated, then slowly came before Yu Ziqing. He stubbornly continued holding the wooden bowl and squatted in front of him.

Yu Ziqing reached out with a hand that was nothing but skin and bones. He placed it on the Hungry Ghost's ugly head and gently stroked it, then stuffed the last strip of dried beef into his hand.

"Take it. This is something I'm giving you."

The Hungry Ghost refused to accept it and stuffed it back into Yu Ziqing's hand.

"This is an order. I'm giving it to you. You must take it."

The Hungry Ghost did not dare disobey. He could only cradle the strip of dried beef in both hands, terrified of dropping it.

"Are they looking for me?"

The Hungry Ghost nodded.

"Go tell them they don't need to look anymore. I'm almost finished. I'll be back soon."

"Then you should leave too. Don't come here anymore."

"Go. I don't have the strength to talk anymore. I'm so tired..."

The Hungry Ghost left with the dried beef, but in the end, he stubbornly placed the wooden bowl in Yu Ziqing's hands.

Yu Ziqing slumped there, leaning against the stone wall. The light in his eyes grew dimmer and dimmer. He could no longer feel hunger, only exhaustion. He had no strength left and only wanted to remain motionless, think of nothing, and conserve what little strength he had.

He knew that the clarity of his consciousness now was merely the last flash of life. He was not going to make it.

The flame of life was going out. After an unknown length of time, Yu Ziqing's eyelids drooped slightly, and he lay motionless. The radiance in his eyes began to scatter. His consciousness was gone, and his body was close to death.

It was the manner of death he had been most unwilling to face.

Starvation.

The instant Yu Ziqing completely lost consciousness, wisps of black energy emerged from his body.

The black energy erupted exponentially in volume, rapidly wrapping Yu Ziqing's body within it. Then it continuously condensed into black water before gathering again into something resembling thick black oil.

The surrounding world began to be eroded and distorted. The solid stone walls, as if weathered by the wind, crumbled into dust and were annihilated within that black, oily filth.

A terrifying aura filled with madness, despair, unwillingness, and cold darkness condensed into a mass of black flame. With a whoosh, it ignited within Yu Ziqing's motionless heart, replacing the flame of life that was about to go out completely.

Slowly, his body, no longer human in shape, rose to its feet. It seemed like a mass of indescribable black oil, twisting and corroding everything around it. Its aura continued to surge at a speed and in a state never seen before.

The mass of black oil grew larger and larger, eventually filling the entire cavern before continuing to erode everything around it.

At the same time, deep within the sealed cavern in the village, where no one had ever entered, pairs of eyes suddenly opened in the buried earth.

They had once been villagers. After starving to death, they had become Starvation Ghosts, yet they had been unwilling to harm the people of the village. While they were still sane, they had crawled into the cavern themselves and buried themselves.

But now, an unknown and terrifying aura had seeped out from deep underground, and they began to awaken.

They seemed to see a new road to life unfolding before them. As long as they stepped onto it, a sliver of new hope would appear on their dark dead end.

Without the slightest hesitation, all the Starvation Ghosts chose to step onto that road.

Because they saw that the only light in the darkness would give them something they had never been able to obtain—a hope that they could eat again.

One after another, the Starvation Ghosts who had buried themselves underground underwent a change in the very essence of their life forms. They became Hungry Ghosts.

Two kinds of existences with nearly identical names, yet utterly different natures.

One Hungry Ghost after another charged out of the cavern.

A brief disturbance arose in the village, but they soon discovered that the Hungry Ghosts, emaciated like dry stalks and resembling dried corpses, their internal organs seemingly nonexistent, paid them no attention at all.

After surging out of the ground, the huge crowd of Hungry Ghosts merely faced one direction and kowtowed gratefully, expressing thanks and respect to the existence that had granted them new hope.

The Hungry Ghost who had come into contact with Yu Ziqing knelt prostrate at the very front of the procession. He opened his mouth wide, revealing the vortex deep in his throat and the tiny hole at its center.

This gave the new Hungry Ghosts even more hope.

The Hungry Ghost held the dried beef Yu Ziqing had given him in both hands, cradling it against his chest. His eyes were filled with fervor and anticipation. He could feel it.

That tiny strip of dried beef was glowing.

The villagers stood far away, both wary and stunned.

Old Yang saw the open-mouthed Hungry Ghost from a distance, and he was utterly dumbfounded.

"What... are these?"

The Village Chief suddenly recalled what Yu Ziqing had once said, as well as the message the Hungry Ghost had secretly left earlier: no matter what happened, keep the village steady.

He straightened his back, raised his head, and roared.

"Everyone, stay steady! Have you forgotten what I told you before? Even if the sky falls, you must not panic or cause chaos! What did I say before? Go do exactly that now!"

The village soon returned to calm. All the people and the Hungry Ghosts kept to their own sides without interfering with each other. The Hungry Ghosts did not harm anyone, and they did not even pay the villagers any attention. They merely knelt there and kowtowed, seemingly waiting for something.

Three days later, that terrifying aura grew stronger and stronger. Even the villagers could sense it by then.

An incredibly terrifying power was awakening. A horrifying existence was about to awaken.

They immediately thought of the Jade Tomb in the Back Mountain. But after investigating, they discovered that the Jade Tomb was exactly the same as before, without the slightest change.

Another seven days passed. By then, several months had passed since the mining site had fallen into the void. Even with food distribution reduced as much as possible, the village's food stores were nearly exhausted. Everyone remained in a state of barely avoiding starvation.

On this very day, everyone saw oily black matter rising from the endless darkness on all four sides of the mining site, enveloping the entire place.

They raised their heads and saw a huge mass of indescribable black oil surging up at the edge of the sky, blotting out the heavens and the sun.

Then they saw the black oil that had shot into the sky slowly take the shape of a human upper body. Only the place where its head should have been remained an expanse of murky blackness.

Immediately afterward, black flames began to burn across the surface of that indescribable black oil. On the enormous head, a crack split open where the mouth should have been.

A low growl, or perhaps strange words resembling a murmur, rang out across heaven and earth.

"Hungry..."

No one understood what language it was, yet in that instant, everyone understood the meaning of that word.

Then they saw the enormous thing—one could barely call it humanoid—slowly open its eyes. Where its eyes should have been, blood-colored flames burned fiercely.

Within those flames, it was as if endless hells and endless suffering were linked together. All the pain and despair in the world burned there.

In that instant, everyone who saw the giant had a word leap into their minds out of nowhere.

Hungry Ghost.

They knew it. This was a Hungry Ghost.

And those kneeling prostrate on the ground were all Hungry Ghosts.

A nonhuman aberrant species that had never appeared before.

And this shapeless, indescribable giant was their king, the beginning and the end of all Hungry Ghosts.

King of Hungry Ghosts, God of Hungry Ghosts—call him whatever you liked.

The King of Hungry Ghosts swept his gaze around. The void was empty. He saw the glowing strip of dried beef held by the Hungry Ghost on the ground, but did not spare it a second glance.

He turned his gaze toward the dark void.

At the same time, in the Abyss of Despair, Cècè's little theater suddenly stopped operating.

In Cècè's arms, dazzling radiance blossomed. She took out that object—the strip of dried beef Yu Ziqing had given her before.

She sensed something. Gazing toward the unknown distance, she smiled brilliantly.