Chapter 48: Day of Feeding

The fox-girl widened her eyes, staring at the large pile of things Yu Sheng had placed on the ground. She stood there blankly for several seconds, seemingly unable to grasp the situation at all, until Yu Sheng opened a can of eight-treasure porridge and held the food up to her mouth.

"Eat. It's all for you—if it's not enough, there's more."

The scent of food, real food, the taste of food.

Not stone, not dirt, not bricks and wood—not the phantoms from dreams that no amount of imagination could ever fill a stomach with.

Hu Li's eyes slowly widened, and then, as if suddenly snapping out of a frozen state, she came alive. She reached out, snatched the can from Yu Sheng's hand, and without using a spoon, began to pour it directly into her mouth, making muffled, indistinct gurgling sounds as she drank.

She consumed the entire can in just over ten seconds, then began carefully licking the rim. But soon, impatience returned to her expression because she couldn't lick the contents clean. Just as Yu Sheng was about to help, Hu Li pinched the can with her fingers and tore it open with force. Accompanied by a sharp metallic cracking sound, she ripped a hole in the rather sturdy metal can. Then, carefully tearing it into continuous, narrow strips of metal, she licked clean every drop of food clinging to them.

"There's more here," Yu Sheng hurriedly rummaged in his pocket, pulled out a loaf of bread and handed it over, along with a bottle of water. "Eat slowly."

A blur flashed before his eyes, and the food was already in Hu Li's hands.

The fox-girl devoured the food. Eating became the only thing she did for the next while. Neither Yu Sheng nor Erin spoke. In the ruins, only the sounds of Hu Li eating remained, along with occasional, indistinct sounds from her throat, as if she wanted to speak but couldn't bear to stop eating.

Then, Hu Li suddenly began to cry.

Very suddenly, tears streamed down the fox-girl's face. She stuffed the bread into her mouth, neither sobbing nor making a sound; only tears flowed calmly down her cheeks, landing on the bread, which she then stuffed into her mouth.

Yu Sheng was startled by the scene and hurriedly reached out to wipe Hu Li's dirty face. "Don't cry. The wind will make your stomach hurt. Stop crying. There's more. There will be more in the future..."

Only then did Hu Li seem to finally come to her senses, having enough mental energy to think about other things. She stared blankly at Yu Sheng before her, stunned for a long while, then suddenly held out the half-loaf of bread in her hand. "Benefactor, you... eat too."

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

But Hu Li didn't move, stubbornly maintaining her gesture. Even though all the food here had just been brought by Yu Sheng, she insisted on sharing the bread in her hand with him, as if doing so held some extraordinary significance for her.

Yu Sheng finally reached out and took the half-loaf of bread Hu Li offered.

The fox-girl smiled, then grabbed a pack of compressed biscuits from the ground. This time, she didn't devour them; after tearing open the packaging, she nibbled carefully, bite by tiny bite, as if trying to prolong the process of eating as much as possible.

She seemed finally less hungry, even if only temporarily.

"Delicious," she whispered. "Benefactor, delicious..."

"Don't add 'Benefactor' before 'Delicious'," Yu Sheng suddenly shivered, remembering some unpleasant things. "You... just being full is enough."

"Mm-hmm." Hu Li immediately nodded gently.

"Finally recovered," Erin finally spoke, looking at the fox-girl whose mental state was clearly slightly more stable. She sighed with relief. "Truly, I owe it to you for enduring all this..."

Hu Li was slightly startled. It seemed only now she noticed the doll on Yu Sheng's shoulder—or rather, only now realized that this 66.6-centimeter-tall figure could actually speak and move. She immediately looked shocked. "This one is alive!?"

Erin widened her eyes. "... Obviously! Of course I'm alive! I just helped you bite open a ham sausage!"

"She is Erin, a living doll from Alice's Cottage," Yu Sheng quickly introduced. "This is the helper I mentioned. Don't let her small size fool you; she's actually very capable. I was only able to contact you from the dream realm thanks to her help."

Erin held a cleaver in one hand and placed the other on her hip, looking very proud on Yu Sheng's shoulder.

Hu Li thought for a moment. She didn't know what a living doll was, nor did she understand how such a tiny "human form" could speak and move, but she realized this was the Benefactor's friend. So, after a few seconds of hesitation, she handed over the compressed biscuit in her hand. "Erin, you eat too."

Erin's proud expression instantly became a bit awkward. "Uh... I can't eat that. Dolls can't eat..."

Hu Li immediately took the biscuit back and continued nibbling in small bites.

Erin: "... Hey, you just took it back without even letting me have a bite?! That wasn't your attitude when you shared the bread with Yu Sheng!"

"Dolls can't eat," Hu Li whispered. "Giving it to you would be wasting food."

Erin puffed out her cheeks in anger, but no one paid her any attention.

By now, Yu Sheng's attention had shifted to the dark, cold night surrounding them.

He could feel that with his arrival, the atmosphere in the valley was gradually changing. The "entity" lurking in the Otherworld had become active. His act of bringing food and letting Hu Li temporarily escape hunger had provoked that monster. He had come today for two reasons: first, to save Hu Li; second, to find a way to eliminate the hungry entity lurking here. Originally, this wasn't something he had to do, but now that he had established a "connection" with that monster and learned that the monster was gradually learning to think, he had no choice but to find a way to resolve this hidden danger.

But for some reason, the monster had not yet revealed itself before his eyes.

A hint of doubt gradually rose in Yu Sheng's heart. Just then, a faint sound drifted in with the night wind, entering the ears of everyone present—

It was the distant howl of a wolf.

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

"It was the sound of a wolf. I thought I misheard..." Yu Sheng frowned, then turned to look at Hu Li, who was seriously nibbling on a biscuit. "Are there wolves in this place?"

"No, there's only me and that monster here," Hu Li looked equally confused. "It's the first time I've heard such a strange sound."

Just then, the wolf howl sounded again, interrupting the conversation between Yu Sheng and the others.

The sound seemed a bit closer.

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

Boom!

In the dark, dense forest, a massive flesh-and-blood beast moved like a terrifying nightmare wandering through the woods, constantly shifting its position within the shadows of Lin Mu. It appeared in the thin mist at times, and at other times vanished abruptly from sight.

But no matter which direction it ran, the monster would very strangely appear nearby and then launch an attack from a tricky angle.

Wolves formed from the shadows, leaping into the forest and pouncing on the flesh-and-blood beast surging and speeding through the darkness. Then, more wolves swarmed from all directions, attempting to block the monster's movements.

However, countless tentacles and bone-like jointed limbs with barbs suddenly shot out from the beast's body. The wolf pack that had just gathered was instantly forced back, leaving a huge gap in the encirclement.

A vast number of the beast's eyes simultaneously locked onto a figure outside the wolf pack—Little Red Riding Hood rode atop the largest wolf, her calm eyes meeting the monster's dozens of cold gazes from a distance.

The next second, the middle of the beast's body suddenly split open. A black, scaled "long tongue" shot out with a sound of tearing through the air, piercing straight toward the girl's throat like an arrow filled with malice.

Little Red Riding Hood merely tilted her body slightly. At the very moment the long tongue was about to touch her, she suddenly raised her right hand.

The slender girl's arm instantly exploded and swelled. Flesh hissed strangely, smoke rose, and blood and mist intertwined in the blink of an eye, transforming into a huge black wolf head. Then the wolf head bit down hard, clamping tightly onto the "long tongue" that had no time to change its trajectory.

The beast reacted, retreating violently. Little Red Riding Hood, however, still held on tightly, "biting" the opponent. She and the wolf beneath her were like nails driven into the ground, locked in a stalemate with the monster. Just in that brief instant, another figure suddenly leaped from the shadows of the dense forest—

Li Lin charged toward the side of the monster like an agile cheetah. A short knife in his hand glinted with cold light in the night. It was a spare weapon temporarily lent to him by Xu Jiali. The monster noticed this sudden ambush attacker immediately. As several eyes quickly turned, a raised, sharp claw came straight down toward Li Lin.

However, the true ambush was still to come. Halfway through his charge, Li Lin suddenly crouched low, dodging the monster's claw with a movement no ordinary person could make. Another tall figure jumped out from the blind spot behind the monster. A burly man nearly two meters tall raised high a light-blade dagger that could serve as a short knife for others, and thrust it fiercely into a fleshy tumor on the monster's back.

With a hiss, the scorching light blade pierced the tumor without resistance, even slicing the entire tumor off.

However, the monster only let out a chaotic, ear-piercing roar. Then, with a sudden turn, it shook off Little Red Riding Hood, who was barely holding on, and hurled the burly man, who hadn't been able to retract his force in time, flying away.

Xu Jiali rolled into the bushes not far away, letting out a muffled groan.

Li Lin hurriedly ran to the bushes, dragged his colleague out, and then the two of them looked together in the direction of the monster.

The monster's figure had disappeared at some unknown moment.

The mist in the dense forest gradually thickened, and within the surging, pervasive fog, countless twisted and bizarre phantoms could faintly be seen sprouting, burrowing out from the earth, and swaying slightly in the cold wind.

Shadows layered upon shadows, endless and infinite.

The entire forest seemed to have transformed into a giant mouth awaiting its meal.

Xu Jiali instantly gasped in a breath of cold air: "We can't stay here; keep running out of the forest!"

(End of Chapter)