Chapter 17 – The Door

All the sounds blurred together — the fox demon’s last shred of reason clashed and tore against a frenzied torrent of thoughts. Yu Sheng heard Hu Li’s anguished whimpers beside him, yet his mind thundered with even more chaotic, disordered voices — the fox demon’s appetite teetering on the edge of control, a bone-deep, heart-gouging hunger, the seductive pull of dark chaos, and… a desperate cry urging him to run.

Yu Sheng sucked in a sharp breath, crouched low, and lunged toward a gap between the fox demon and the creature. But rather than fleeing as Hu Li had urged, he reached down and snatched a broken slab of bluestone from the ground, then hurled himself at the creature’s flank.

He knew, of course, that he probably couldn’t defeat this creature. But he also knew that relying solely on human legs to escape from this place was utterly impossible. The ruins were littered with crumbling walls blocking every path, and the only open exit leading out of the ruined temple was completely sealed by the creature’s massive body. Trying to flee recklessly under these circumstances would likely only get him killed faster.

It was better to brace himself and charge — he couldn’t win in a fight, but since he wasn’t afraid of dying, he might at least trade his life for something before the end. And if he could, by some stroke of luck, distract the creature, perhaps Hu Li might find a chance to break free from those terrible bonds. She was still desperately holding onto her sanity, and if there was any chance to free her, perhaps there would even be a chance to turn the tide…

All of these thoughts passed in an instant. Yu Sheng knew his plan was far from thorough, but he had no time to dwell on it. With no other choice, he steeled himself, and his body once again erupted with enormous strength that bewildered even himself — he hurled the heavy bluestone slab like a cannonball straight at the Amalgamated Beast.

The next second, he had no time to confirm the “results” of his strike. A tremendous sense of danger surged up from the depths of his heart, and Yu Sheng “saw” the creature’s counterattack a second before it came. His body leapt violently to the side.

A steel-whip-like black shadow slammed hard into the spot where he had just been standing — a snake-tail that had suddenly split from the creature’s surface. In an instant, earth and stone flew everywhere, the solid bluestone and the crumbling bricks and tiles all reduced to dust. Yu Sheng, still airborne, felt a tremendous shockwave, and chunks of rubble pelted his body like bullets, even making a ringing sound like stone striking metal.

Yu Sheng had no time to pay attention to the pain across his body. He hit the ground and rolled rapidly, dodging the pursuing snake-tail, while the corner of his eye swept in Hu Li’s direction.

The Silvery Foxgirl was struggling violently amidst countless jet-black spikes and shattered bone fragments. The ghostly blue spirit-fire burning near her fox tails flickered wildly, as if it might explode out of control at any moment.

Yet she remained firmly trapped — the things binding her seemed tailor-made to hold her specifically, and Yu Sheng’s interference from the side had produced no effect whatsoever.

In truth, Yu Sheng could tell at a glance that this fox girl was vastly more powerful than himself, yet she had absolutely no way to fight back against the creature. Between her and that creature, there was clearly a very pronounced… “counter-relation.”

Yet at the very beginning, out in the open ground before the ruined temple, she had still charged forward without hesitation, wanting to “save” him — even though she had ultimately failed to save anyone, she had truly come to help at the time.

The memory flashed past. Yu Sheng bit down hard, wanting to charge in again and see whether the old method of trading his life could let him chip off a few more pieces of the creature.

He didn’t know where the extra strength and recovery ability he had gained in his body had come from, but he remembered — before these changes had first appeared, he had bitten off a chunk of flesh from that creature.

He wasn’t certain whether the two things were connected, but there was no other option right now. He wasn’t afraid of dying, so he might as well try out every bold hypothesis in his mind.

“Stop… worrying about me!” At that moment, Hu Li’s voice rang out again. “It can’t kill… me. You — just run!”

“It’s fine, it can’t kill me either,” Yu Sheng spat out a mouthful of blood — a wound from when the airborne rubble had struck his jaw. He turned to glance at the Silvery Foxgirl, a cheerful smile on his face. “In a moment, I might die, but don’t worry — I’ll come back to find you.”

Hu Li’s struggling faltered for a moment, as if she had fallen into confusion.

Yu Sheng offered no explanation. He simply stepped forward toward the creature, his pace light, the smile on his face growing ever more apparent.

That smile carried a kind of joy, as though he were heading to a banquet.

“Aren’t you fond of urging people to eat?” he muttered to himself, staring at the Amalgamated Beast ahead. “Fine then — this lord has come to eat!”

He leapt into the air and pounced at the banquet table like a starving wolf.

The dozens of eyes covering the Amalgamated Beast trembled violently. For the first time, something like hesitation — and… timidity — seemed to surface in those chaotic, frenzied eyes.

Muffled roars poured from its many gaping maws, and then several tentacle-like “snake-tails” covered in jet-black scales split from the mass of flesh and bone, stabbing toward Yu Sheng as he flew through the air.

Yu Sheng felt his body be run through — fatal wounds, he didn’t know how many exactly. He felt his life beginning to ebb away, warm blood carrying the vitality from his body.

But that indescribable… “appetite” had already surged up from the depths of his heart. He ignored the pain across his body, ignored every instinct of dread and unease about death, and clutched the snake-tail that had pierced through his abdomen. The corners of his mouth stretched wide. He lowered his head and bit down —

The creature let out a strange and piercing howl, violently thrashing the snake-tail, as if trying to fling off a lethal parasite clinging to its body.

Yet Yu Sheng held on with an iron grip, refusing to let go no matter how fiercely it thrashed. He was slammed into the ground by the snake-tail, then crashed through a crumbling wall nearby. His resilient body did not break under the deadly impact; if anything, the pain only sharpened his mind.

And just then, the snake-tail rose high once more, swinging toward a collapsed opening in the ruined temple wall.

A flash of strange golden light swept across the edge of his vision.

In the howling wind rushing past his ears, Yu Sheng strained to look up and saw the golden light rapidly approaching him. He had no time to make out what it was before his hand shot up instinctively to block. His hand caught hold of something — a handle.

Yu Sheng: “…?”

A faint creaking sound mixed with the roaring wind. The image of a door suddenly surged into Yu Sheng’s mind — an utterly ordinary door, leading somewhere, leading to…

The moment a location instinctively flashed through his mind, he had already pulled the door open.

The next second, Yu Sheng and that black-scaled snake-tail plunged through the door together, and with a piercing creak, the door slammed shut.

The Amalgamated Beast’s snake-tail was severed clean by the door that had appeared and vanished in an instant. A deranged howl that could drive any listener mad echoed through the valley. The wound seemed to send it into a frenzy — it thrashed and rampaged through the ruins of the temple, savagely gnawing at everything within sight, even its own body. Only after some unknown amount of time did it slowly calm down, its mass dissolving back into a formless dark shadow, fading away bit by bit into the night.

The jet-black spikes and bone fragments disappeared without a sound. The battered and bloodied Silvery Foxgirl collapsed to the ground, motionless, as if dead.

After a few minutes, Hu Li finally slowly opened her eyes. She stared blankly around her, the golden-red pupils appearing to have lost all trace of human awareness.

After a long while, her gaze finally focused on a spot somewhere among the ruins.

It was the Steps where she and her “benefactor” had sat together earlier.

She dragged her enormous fox demon body and slowly crawled over. She saw the scattered plastic bags and leftover scraps of rotting vegetables at the foot of the Steps, and lowered her head, whimpering softly as she swallowed all of it down.

But she was still so hungry.

The bewitching voice was like an undying demon, whispering to her from the deepest depths of her hunger —

“Eat. You know where there’s still something that can fill your belly…

“You buried them in the forest…

“Bones, flesh, and blood…

“Go. Eat. Eat, and you won’t be hungry anymore…”

The fox demon hung her Head low, letting out whimpers that sounded like sobbing, then curled up beneath the Steps. She slowly stretched out her neck and began gnawing at the broken bricks and rubble beside her, then dug up the earth beneath the ruins along with rotting pieces of wood, stuffing them slowly into her mouth, chewing and chewing.

“I’m not hungry… I’m not hungry… someone is bringing me food… he’ll come back soon to bring me more… I’m not hungry…”

She gnawed on like this, until, as she had done so many times across the long years past, she gradually lost consciousness and faded away.

The sensation of endlessly falling jolted Yu Sheng out of his daze. The “feeling” of gripping the door handle still lingered in his hand, but in the next second he realized he had already crossed over some threshold.

He blinked open wide, startled eyes, and found himself collapsed by the roadside. His vision was filled with familiar lampposts, utility poles, and the low, old houses lining Wutong Road.

The worn outer wall and Door of No. 66 Wutong Road stood not far ahead, silhouetted in the faint light of early dawn.

He turned his Head back with difficulty, just in time to see the fading silhouette of a door dissolving away. Somewhere deep within that fading image, one could just barely make out the valley shrouded in night, the ruins of the ruined temple, and…

The white fox, struggling to drag herself through the ruins.

Yu Sheng reached out toward the white fox.

But the last remnant of the shadow dissolved before his fingertips could touch it.