Chapter 49 – Door Opening Kill (No Mistakes)

The wind in the valley grew restless.

Yu Sheng didn’t know what had happened, but he could clearly feel that the “atmosphere” permeating the entire Otherworld was changing. It was difficult to put into words — if he had to describe it, he would say…

He felt as though the entire valley was slowly coming alive.

The distant forest was awakening, the mountain range was awakening, the earth itself was awakening, and even the sky overhead was now radiating a spine-chilling, cold, hunger-laden gaze that made his scalp prickle.

He noticed that Hu Li beside him was trembling slightly. The Foxgirl clutched the food in her hands tightly, yet her face was painted with fear. She looked up at the dark, heavy night sky above, slowly inching her feet backward toward Yu Sheng, muttering something over and over under her breath. Only when she drew close enough did Yu Sheng make out the words she kept repeating:

“This is what it was like when the immortal died… this is what it was like when the immortal died…”

“What’s happening right now?” Eileen asked rapidly. The little doll was tense as well, clutching the cleaver in her arms, her whole body rigid. “Do you know something?”

But Hu Li didn’t answer her, as though she had once again fallen into a daze, doing nothing but repeat those same words over and over.

Very soon, both Eileen and Yu Sheng had no time to spare for Hu Li’s strange condition.

Yu Sheng sensed that familiar presence drawing near. From the corner of his eye, he watched as something rapidly coalesced from the Shadow at the edge of the ruined temple — deformed, swollen flesh multiplied in layers, bizarre limbs that seemed carved from countless different creatures grew out of the mass one after another, and dozens of hungry eyes opened across the monster’s surface. Between those eyes, fangs and torn mouthparts kept flickering in and out, releasing a deep, murky growl.

The Entity-Hunger had finally appeared near its prey.

“What the hell!” Eileen immediately cried out. “That thing is hideous!”

“Watch out for its ambushes. Every limb on that thing can transform, and it can suddenly sprout tentacles and tails from inside its body,” Yu Sheng immediately warned, then turned to Hu Li at his side and said, “Just focus on protecting yourself in a moment. You’ve been deeply eroded by this thing — you can’t fight it.”

Hu Li’s condition was clearly very wrong. Even after the monster appeared, she was still staring at the sky with a terrified expression. But upon hearing Yu Sheng’s words, she gave a blank nod, picked up the scattered food from the ground, and began retreating — yet she didn’t dare retreat too far, as though afraid something might happen to Yu Sheng.

“What’s your plan for fighting it?” Eileen said in a low voice. The monster nearby was still lurking, seemingly waiting patiently for something, but the delay only made her feel increasingly uneasy. “Don’t tell me you’re planning to just rush in bare-handed and fight it with Military Boxing. You didn’t bring a single weapon when you came. At least I’ve got a cleaver with me.”

Yu Sheng naturally knew he hadn’t brought a weapon, because he had already tried before — most of the monster’s structure was harder than stone. Even if you hacked off a small portion of its softer flesh with an axe, the effect was barely worth mentioning. So from the very beginning, he never planned to bring any “weapon” — for an ordinary person who had never trained in armed combat, it didn’t matter whether you brought a cleaver or even a dragon-slaying blade; you’d most likely end up cutting yourself first.

He had prepared other means of inflicting damage.

“Same approach we discussed back home — you just restrain its movements, use those threads of yours,” Yu Sheng said quickly. “In a moment I’ll charge in and ‘tear an opening’ in it. Keep watch; if I slip up, immediately take Hu Li and run. Don’t worry about me. Hu Li has a way to survive under that monster, and it won’t actively chase after you…”

Eileen paused for a moment. “Ah, and then what?”

“After I come back, we regroup and try again. This thing will die eventually.”

“Damn it, so it’s still that simple, brutal approach, right? You promised to try not to use ‘resurrection’ as a basic attack!”

“Isn’t this exactly ‘trying’?” Yu Sheng was speaking quickly on his end, but soon frowned, sensing something off about the monster nearby. “Why isn’t it attacking yet…”

Eileen shared the same unease. “It really does feel like it’s deliberately stalling — like it’s waiting for something. Has this thing already developed a concept of ‘strategy’?”

“All the more reason not to let it wait,” Yu Sheng immediately gritted his teeth. “Take the initiative!”

The moment those words left his mouth, he actively charged toward the monster. Almost simultaneously, Eileen, who had been sitting on his shoulder, flipped nimbly off and landed while extending her right hand toward the creature. In the instant she touched the ground, the doll’s eyes had turned entirely black, and countless fine, eerily cold Pitch-black threads poured out from her hand like a spider’s web spreading explosively, madly expanding throughout the entire space!

All the “spider threads” wove around Yu Sheng’s path of movement. He accelerated once more through the expanding net of threads, his reinforced body almost trailing an afterimage through the air as he lunged at the ferocious, terrifying Amalgamated Beast!

The monster finally moved. Faced with its “prey’s” active assault, it seemed momentarily startled, but quickly launched a counterattack. A savage claw rose high from the beast’s back and came crashing down along the exact path of Yu Sheng’s oncoming charge.

In that instant, Yu Sheng suddenly felt that strange… “premonition” once again.

He felt which muscles on the monster’s body were contracting, felt its intent to attack and where its gaze was truly focused right now. It was as though he had seen in advance a tentacle extending from behind the claw, sealing off every possible retreat he might take in the next second…

He didn’t know if it was an illusion, but he felt that his “premonition” this time was even more accurate than before. Even more than that — he was beginning to sense that this was not what could be called “spiritual intuition” at all. Because he now truly possessed spiritual intuition and had experienced what it felt like firsthand, and he found that when he anticipated the monster’s movements, what he “saw” and “felt” was nothing like so-called spiritual intuition.

When he sensed the monster’s actions in advance, it was almost as though from a first-person perspective.

All these thoughts flashed by in an instant. In the blink of an eye, Yu Sheng had covered the last few meters of distance, and the Amalgamated Beast’s claw came crashing down accordingly.

Yu Sheng didn’t dodge at all. From the corner of his eye he saw the threads spreading from behind him close together in midair, and in the next instant, countless black lines entangled the monster’s limbs, passing through its claws, tentacles, and gaping maws like some sort of bone-piercing phantasm, interwoven in every direction…

Cold, numb, sluggish — as though even his Thoughts had been pierced through in an instant, riddled with holes, as though even his soul was being wrapped layer by layer in a cold spider’s web…

An overwhelming flood of negative sensations surged up, and for a moment Yu Sheng seemed to see a vision — he saw himself trapped deep within a spider’s web, countless threads coiling around him, even piercing through his limbs, while at the Edge of the web a crimson-eyed Shadow lurked in the darkness, slowly crawling toward him in a bizarre, grotesque posture…

“Yu Sheng! Snap out of it! I can barely hold on!”

The sudden shout in his ear jolted Yu Sheng awake instantly. He looked up and saw the Amalgamated Beast had been frozen in a bizarre posture at the center of layer upon layer of black threads, while the threads’ ends were pulled taut, as though they might be forcibly snapped by the monster at any second.

There was no time to dwell on what that “vision” he’d just experienced had been about. Yu Sheng had already lunged toward a specific spot on the monster’s flank. In the precious window of time Eileen had bought him, he grabbed a black thread hanging in midair with one hand, then reached his other hand out into the air, concentrated his focus with all his might, and slowly pulled —

A Door appeared, its surface shimmering with phantom-like flowing light as it materialized out of thin air.

Opening a Door out of thin air consumed far more energy and time than opening a physical door. Yu Sheng had to concentrate in a relatively stable environment to complete the Process. As he watched the monster’s limbs beginning to tremble and the black spider-threads starting to slowly fracture, even these few seconds felt to Yu Sheng as long as a lifetime.

— Though his “lifetimes” lately hadn’t been all that long either.

The next second, accompanied by the sound of the Door opening, the illusory Door finally swung fully open.

It was larger than any Door he had opened before — large enough to throw the entire monster through.

Blazing firelight erupted from within the Door, illuminating a vast area around it.

On the other side of the Door was a roiling, churning lake of lava.

That was a “surprise” Yu Sheng had discovered in the course of his countless previous Door Opening experiments.

He didn’t know what that place was. He only knew it held boundless molten rock and gushing flames, like a scene straight out of hell.

The Entity-Hunger was powerful, but its threat came primarily from spiritual contamination and its own near-rule-like force of “Hunger.” As for the “vessel” it inhabited after becoming physical — compared to the Rules, it was actually not all that durable.

It could be cooked.

If it couldn’t be cooked, then use more firepower.

“Throw it in!”

Yu Sheng shouted loudly to Eileen.

“With pleasure!”

(End of Chapter)