Chapter 54: Yu Sheng's Return

The chewing sound filling the entire valley gradually rose like waves; the whole alien realm had now become a grand feast, and soon, everyone hiding in the cave realized what that sound meant.

Li Lin gathered his courage and approached the cave entrance, his scalp going numb as he peeked outside.

Sharp teeth within the mountain ranges gnashed against each other; trenches like giant mouths collapsed inward, constantly splitting into more fissures that swallowed and dissolved one another; feeding tentacles covering the ground had begun digesting themselves, while flesh-and-blood beasts continuously sprouted from certain shadows, only to be swallowed by invisible forces in the blink of an eye.

Against the backdrop of this terrifying feast, he saw a figure—Yu Sheng stood on the open ground outside the cave, gazing somewhat dazedly at the scene of mutual devouring in the valley below.

Li Lin was momentarily dazed, but in the blink of an eye, he forgot this slight dissonance—he had forgotten the scene of Yu Sheng's death and only felt that the other had simply left the group temporarily.

Hu Li and Erin, guarding the cave entrance, also saw Yu Sheng's figure immediately.

"Benefactor! You really didn't perish!" Hu Li shouted first, but immediately grew tense, "Benefactor, come in quickly! It's dangerous outside!"

Yu Sheng finally turned around, walked a few quick steps into the cave, and muttered as he went: "I feel that thing in the sky is a bit eerie, but it doesn't seem to have any desire to attack..."

Erin paid no attention to what Yu Sheng was muttering; instead, she nervously scanned his entire body: "Are you really okay? Is your mental state normal?"

"Can't you wish me some good things?!" Yu Sheng immediately glared at the doll, "Was it easy for me to come back?"

As he spoke, he looked up toward the cave entrance again: "'Hunger' should be ending soon, but I don't know the origin of that big eye in the sky; it isn't part of the 'Physical Entity-Hunger', and it doesn't even seem like something originally belonging to this valley."

Erin, who had prepared plenty of trash talk to ease the atmosphere, was stunned by these words: "Huh? It's not from this valley?"

"No," Yu Sheng shook his head; until this moment, he still maintained a subtle connection with this alien realm, allowing him to clearly distinguish the gaze falling from the sky and the "boundary" between that eye and the valley, "All hunger entities are now under my perception; I can clearly feel that the eye is an external thing—it has just been 'lying' above this alien realm for many years, replacing the sky that originally belonged here."

Erin's mouth hung open, seemingly stunned by surprise, when a low voice from deep within the cave broke the momentary silence.

"That is an 'Angel'."

Yu Sheng looked up in surprise and saw the burly man, nearly two meters tall, walking from the depths of the cave; dim blue fox-fire cast sharply defined shadows on the man's face.

The burly man sized Yu Sheng up and down, his expression carrying a certain unusual gravity and caution: "Did you fall behind earlier?"

Whether it was an illusion or not, Yu Sheng always felt the other's gaze upon him was strange, carrying immense vigilance and wariness; it wasn't exactly hostile, but it didn't resemble the concern or confusion one would normally show upon seeing a "straggler returning" temporary companion.

However, Yu Sheng did not delve deeper at this moment; he cared more about the strange name the burly man had just mentioned.

"I just couldn't keep up; don't worry, nothing major happened," Yu Sheng waved his hand, then immediately asked, "What do you mean by 'Angel'?"

"A more accurate term is 'Gloomy Angel', a type of... dangerous thing of unknown origin; sometimes it also refers to special phenomena triggered by these dangerous individuals," the burly man weighed his words carefully before speaking slowly, "Every Gloomy Angel is different; from form to ability to appearance method, there are huge differences; the one currently occupying the sky must have parasitized this alien realm many years ago—it is precisely due to its influence that the entities here underwent mutation."

Yu Sheng listened in surprise to the other's account and soon realized that this big man in front of him must know more information; regarding the so-called "Gloomy Angel", there must be even more detailed data.

But the other hadn't said everything; he didn't know if there were confidentiality requirements or if he was worrying about something.

But this was normal; after all, no one knew anyone; although they had fought side by side, they still hadn't introduced themselves; in such a situation, being willing to share information upon meeting was already a sign of actively showing sincerity.

"My name is Yu Sheng," Yu Sheng actively extended his hand toward the other, "The two here are Hu Li and Erin—they are all my friends."

The two-meter-tall burly man hesitated for a moment but still reached out and shook Yu Sheng's hand: "Hello, my name is Xu Jiali."

Yu Sheng was stunned.

A moment later, he opened his mouth: "Uh, I didn't hear clearly, you are called...?"

"He said his name is Xu Jiali, the 'Jiali' from 'beautiful Miss'," the red-clothed girl sitting on a stone stool nearby broke the silence, looking up at Yu Sheng, "Just call me Little Red Riding Hood."

Yu Sheng blinked his eyes, suddenly understanding: "Oh, I get it; you guys look like you're in this line of work, using codenames when you're out and about, right?" The two-meter-tall burly man spoke in a muffled voice: "She has a codename; mine is my real name."

Yu Sheng: "..."

What could he say? He could only awkwardly remark that the name actually sounded quite nice, sounding like it had cultural depth, then his gaze fell on the last young man who hadn't spoken yet.

He always felt the other's face looked somewhat familiar, as if he had seen it somewhere, but for the moment, he couldn't recall where.

Li Lin didn't hesitate; seeing the gaze fall on him, he walked over openly: "My name is Li Lin."

Before Yu Sheng could open his mouth, Erin suddenly shouted from the side: "Hey! This name is normal!"

Li Lin was instantly speechless; he looked at the composition of Yu Sheng's group—a fox spirit with a bunch of tails, a doll over half a meter tall from head to toe; the three of them combined could barely make up one human, yet they still had the nerve to comment on whether others' names were normal or not...

However, his attention quickly shifted elsewhere.

The chewing sound coming from outside the cave was gradually growing lower; the vibrations filling the entire alien realm also seemed to be weakening rapidly.

Xu Jiali rushed a few steps to the cave entrance, poked his head out for a look, and saw that the appearance of the entire valley had almost been turned upside down.

!.

It was as if the mountain ranges in the distance and the valley floor nearby had been forcibly gnawed away layer by layer; only countless jagged strange rocks and bare soil layers remained on the mountains, the distant forests had vanished, and the ground beneath the hills was crisscrossed with deep gullies.

He suddenly turned his head, looking at Yu Sheng, who was standing beside Hu Li.

"This is... did you do it?"

Xu Jiali sounded a bit hesitant when asking this; he knew it sounded a bit absurd because the eerie and terrifying scene in the valley, no matter how one looked at it, didn't seem like something a "human" could accomplish, yet his intuition told him that all of this was related to Yu Sheng's brief "leaving the group" just now.

"You could say so," Yu Sheng replied quite readily; he was in a good mood now, a sense of satisfaction finally having eaten his fill filling his heart; he nodded cheerfully, "Although it took quite a bit of effort."

Li Lin also saw the scene in the valley at this moment; when he turned back to look at Yu Sheng, the shock on his face was beyond measure: "... How is this possible..."

Yu Sheng thought for a moment, feeling it would be hard to explain clearly to an outsider exactly what had happened—he was eaten by "Hunger", yet his appetite surpassed "Hunger"? A human () mentally polluted an entity, so the "Hunger Entity" that had eaten dirty things devoured itself under a surge of appetite?

This wasn't even a problem of whether it could be explained well, but rather a problem of who would be considered the villain even after the explanation.

Moreover, he didn't want the few people in front of him, whom he still didn't know well, to know too much about his own affairs.

"Good luck, found the entity's weakness," Yu Sheng said casually, "I'm not clear on the specifics myself, but it looks like it triggered a chain reaction of self-devouring among the entities in this valley..."

This sounded like he was making excuses, and deliberately obvious ones at that; Li Lin immediately understood—some things were someone else's secrets.

Immediately after, Erin's noisy commotion interrupted the doubts in the hearts of Li Lin and Xu Jiali: "Hey! Isn't that thing in the sky slowly floating upwards?"

Upon hearing this, Yu Sheng hurriedly moved over, poked his head out to look at the sky above the valley.

He saw the huge eye covering the entire valley slowly rising, making no sound at all; like a projection displayed in the sky gradually shrinking, in just over ten seconds, the giant eye had already shrunk to only one-third of its original size.

It was rapidly moving away from this place.

A brighter, more normal daylight spread over from the distant mountain ranges; the disturbed clouds reappeared in the sky; the eye soon became a palm-sized disc floating in the center of the sky, and after a few more breaths, the disc completely disappeared from everyone's line of sight.

"It ran... it ran?" Erin strained her neck looking up at the sky, momentarily seeming at a loss; immediately she turned her face toward the two-meter-tall burly (Jia) man (Li) not far away, "The 'Angel' you mentioned ran away! What should we do?"

Xu Jiali merely let out a light sigh; after hearing the doll's words, he forced a smile onto his face:

"What else can we do? Celebrate—after celebrating, I'll go back and write a report."

(End of Chapter)