Chapter 16 – Hunger

Hu Li sat drooping on the steps of the dilapidated temple, looking somewhat hurt.

Yu Sheng also sat drooping on the steps of the dilapidated temple — he was genuinely hurt. The Fox Spirit young lady had bitten off a great chunk of flesh from him in one go!

He knew that canines were protective of their food, but he had never imagined a Fox Spirit would react this way over food!

“Benefactor…” Hu Li beside him finally spoke. The white-furred fox sounded as though she were about to cry. “I’m sorry, I… I couldn’t hold back, I’ve… hurt you again…”

“Yes, you’ve hurt me again, but it’s much lighter than the first time we met.” Yu Sheng sighed with weary resignation, glancing at the bloodstain at the corner of Hu Li’s mouth. He thought to himself that thankfully it was only one bite. When they first met, that subsonic headbutt had left a far greater wound — that had been an amputation below the neck…

Upon hearing those words, Hu Li simply tilted her head in confusion. She clearly still could not recall what Yu Sheng referred to as their “first meeting” — he had already tried to ask indirectly several times just now, and each time her reaction had been much the same.

“Benefactor, you said… we really met before, outside the dilapidated temple?”

“You have no memory of it at all?” Yu Sheng frowned despite himself. “At the time I was fighting some hideous, chaotic-looking thing, and you came rushing over saying you wanted to help, and then — ‘bang’ — my vision went black, and when I woke up I was here, while you were wandering around outside.”

Hu Li narrowed her eyes, as though straining to recall something. After a moment, the pair of fluffy ears atop her head slowly drooped down as well, as if the process of recollection was particularly difficult.

Yu Sheng lowered his head and glanced at the wound on his hand.

The place where Hu Li had bitten him was healing — at a speed visible to the naked eye. Amidst the torn flesh, countless tiny new growths were sprouting, and the blood itself seemed to possess an independent life of its own, writhing and circling through the gaps of the wound. He… even felt as though he could hear the faint sounds coming from within the wound — it was bodily tissue regenerating, severed skin knitting back together, everything… returning to its original intact state.

Within just a few minutes, he could no longer feel any pain, with only a mild, itchy numbness remaining around the wound.

This was not normal — he knew that, of course. A human wound could not possibly heal at this speed. But compared to a wound healing at extraordinary speed, coming back from the dead was even more wrong.

The changes in his body filled him with some unease. Even though, for now, these changes all appeared to be “good things,” he always worried that some unknown hidden danger lurked behind them — or rather, some kind of… “price.”

People instinctively resist the unknown and the uncontrollable. For Yu Sheng as he was now, his own body was gradually becoming the greatest unknown in his heart.

But just at that moment, a strange sensation suddenly interrupted his thoughts. He could not quite explain what that feeling was — he only felt as though he had heard something, or as though certain thoughts had suddenly “invaded” his mind: thoughts and memories… that did not belong to him. He felt a small part of his mind stir uncontrollably, and then, within that small stirring section of thought, he sensed another mind —

Mama is gone, papa is gone, all the aunts and uncles are gone, it’s very dark, there’s poison, cold, afraid, hungry, very cold, very hungry, extremely hungry, the berries are poisonous, can’t eat the bark, can’t eat the leaves, can’t eat the dirt, can’t eat the stones… can’t eat, can’t eat any of it, hungry, extremely hungry, extremely hungry, extremely hungry…

An all-encompassing hunger, nearly powerful enough to grind one’s will to dust, swept through Yu Sheng’s mind. Though it was only a trace of foreign information that had broken into his head, he still had the illusion that his very reason was about to be completely devoured by that hunger — this frenzied stream of thought roared through his mind like thunder, and only when it finally began to fade did Yu Sheng gradually recover his ability to think. He slowly raised his head and looked toward Hu Li sitting beside him.

The fox demon girl was slowly licking the corner of her mouth. Yu Sheng watched as his own blood seemed to move with a life of its own across the tip of Hu Li’s tongue, seeping into her skin, seeping into her teeth, seeping into… her soul.

Hu Li noticed the gaze beside her. She licked clean the last trace of blood at the corner of her mouth, raised her head to look at Yu Sheng, and broke into a simple, harmless, dopey smile.

Yet as Yu Sheng looked at her, it was as though he were looking directly into her soul — he saw… that part of her that was already on the verge of madness, saw the frenzied hunger beginning to surge and grow in the depths behind that smile.

She was starving. She was still starving — more so than she appeared, and even… more so than she herself could feel.

“Benefactor…” She watched Yu Sheng’s pocket with careful eyes, a dopey smile on her face. “Do you still… have anything to eat? I feel like… my stomach doesn’t hurt anymore, but I’m still… a little hungry.”

Yu Sheng felt a slight chill at his back. He seemed to vaguely grasp something, and at the same time he grew more curious about the process by which he had just “read” that information in his mind.

Why… had he been able to see Hu Li’s thoughts and memories?

He thought back to what he had seen just now: his blood rapidly seeping into the other party’s skin.

Was it because of that?

And just then, he noticed the expression on Hu Li’s face shift rapidly several times.

As though she had suddenly remembered something, her eyes grew dazed, and then that daze turned to astonishment. Hu Li slowly stood up from the steps and stared blankly at Yu Sheng, as if “rediscovering” the person before her. Then she shook her head sharply and, in disbelief, raised a finger pointing at Yu Sheng: “Benefactor… you… you didn’t die?!”

Yu Sheng froze for a moment.

Hu Li raised her hand and pressed it hard against her own forehead. Her body swayed, and the conflicting, chaotic memories pushed her already unstable mind to the brink. Then she finally began to recall those “truths” that had once vanished from her memory —

She recalled her first “encounter” with Yu Sheng, recalled the terrible “accident” she had caused that day, recalled the sight of her benefactor torn to pieces, recalled the warmth of a living person’s fresh blood, and then… that blood gradually faded into nothingness, the remains disappeared, and the process of Yu Sheng’s “death” dissolved from her memory…

She slowly steadied herself, her golden-red eyes murky and confused, murmuring to herself: “Ah, I remember now, benefactor, we… just met, out on the open ground outside, I accidentally… but… but…”

She hesitated and trailed off, the latter half of her words dissolving into incoherent mumbling, her dazed mind seemingly gaining the upper hand and swiftly pulling her thoughts into chaos.

Yu Sheng blinked. Evidently, Hu Li had recalled her first meeting with him, and also the incident of the subsonic headbutt. He did not know how she had suddenly recovered these memories, and perhaps it was also related to his having just glimpsed Hu Li’s thoughts and memories — but now was clearly not the time to investigate the reason for that.

Hu Li’s condition was obviously not quite right. Her body was swaying again, as though she might lose her footing at any second.

Yu Sheng instinctively stepped half a pace forward — but the other party’s reaction in the next instant made him stop dead in his tracks. Hu Li raised her head, her golden-red eyes seeming to overflow with a bloody light. She fixed her gaze on Yu Sheng, and from her throat came a low, bestial whimper and growl.

She slowly bent forward, the disheveled tails behind her gradually spreading open. Her fox tails unfurled in the night, growing and flourishing, dim blue flames dancing and burning at the tip of each tail.

In a bestial posture, she released the aura of a predator without restraint.

Hunger was running wild in those blood-filled eyes, and through some faint, indistinct connection, Yu Sheng could almost hear the voice that echoed endlessly in the depths of the girl’s heart —

benefactor, you smell so good…

Yu Sheng swallowed with difficulty and slowly took half a step back. And at that moment, the corner of his eye finally caught sight of a certain… shadow behind Hu Li.

It was a vast, dark silhouette, spreading over from the darkness and drawing closer to Hu Li’s back bit by bit. The Fox Spirit’s dim blue spirit fire swayed in the night, and by its light the shadow gradually took on a shape — as though countless grotesque and twisted beast limbs had been haphazardly kneaded together. On a mass of flesh and blood several meters tall, mouths grew in a crisscross pattern, along with eyes and sharp claws, like an incarnation of hunger and predation. This monster, standing behind Hu Li, let out a deep, muffled, urging roar.

Amid those muffled roars and urgings, Hu Li’s body crouched even lower. Silver-white fur covered her skin, her cheeks distorted, sharp fangs grew in, and her human features rapidly receded. In the blink of an eye, the girl who had always smiled that dopey smile was gone — a massive silvery foxgirl stood in the night, its dim blue fox-tail spirit fire illuminating the crumbling ruins of the dilapidated temple, and Yu Sheng’s face.

Yu Sheng heard a voice, carrying a powerful, bewitching force that seemed to pierce straight into the mind, drifting over faintly —

“Eat… eat it, and you won’t be hungry anymore…”

“Feed…”

“Feed, we do it together…”

“You’re hungry. Eat…”

Yu Sheng had initially thought he was hearing the thoughts in Hu Li’s heart, but he quickly realized that it was actually the sound Hu Li was hearing — the true source of the voice was that grotesque monster.

It was urging Hu Li to feed, urging the fox demon girl to yield to that hunger. The tone was like that of someone waiting for something they had long cultivated to finally bear fruit.

Yu Sheng wanted to call out loud, to warn Hu Li not to be bewitched by that voice, because he had already vaguely guessed at certain truths. But before he could open his mouth, he felt the terrible… hunger coming from the depths of Hu Li’s mind.

That hunger was enough to devour all reason and block out every outside sound.

He could only smile bitterly, spreading his hands open before the fox demon.

“Let me tell you, in a moment your mouth and your stomach are going to give you a very different account, and the next time we meet you’re going to feel pretty awkward about it…”

Having said those words, as if he had finished settling his last affairs, he steeled himself, his expression hardened, and he stepped into a bow stance, lowering his hips into the opening form of military boxing.

Military boxing was of course no match for a nine-tailed fox demon (or perhaps seven- or eight-tailed), but military boxing could at least let him die with some dignity.

And besides — what if? His constitution had grown inexplicably much stronger, and Yu Sheng thought that perhaps, just before he died, he could land a punch on Hu Li’s nose and leave her smarting for quite a while…

That idle thought flashed through his mind, and in the very next second he felt a powerful gust of wind rush toward him as the silvery foxgirl’s enormous body leapt into the air — the violent pressure of the wind made Yu Sheng instinctively squeeze his eyes shut.

The death he had braced for did not come.

Yu Sheng opened his eyes in puzzlement.

He saw the silvery foxgirl twist her body in midair and instead pounce ferociously upon that nauseating monster — she let out a roar of fury so intense it was almost like a wail of grief, and snapped her jaws at the monster to bite and tear.

But in the very next instant, countless pitch-black keratin spikes and pitch-black bone fragments burst out from within Hu Li’s body, piercing through her in multiple places and pinning her motionless in midair.

Yu Sheng stared in astonishment at the scene before him, watching as the silvery foxgirl, hanging in the air, struggled to turn her head. Golden-red blood flowed from wounds all over her body, steaming in the night sky.

“Benefactor… run…”

{You smell so good…}

“I’m not a monster yet…”

{So hungry…}

“Run!”

{Run!}

(End of chapter)