Chapter 14 – Hu Li

In the chaos of night, amid the ruins of a crumbling temple, a silver-haired girl with a fox’s tail crouched among broken bricks and rubble, stuffing rotting vegetable scraps from a garbage bag into her mouth. On the other side of the crumbling wall stood Yu Sheng — a man who had died three times — staring at her in dumbfounded amazement.

They faced each other in silence across the dark of night. As a first meeting — not counting that headbutt earlier — this was probably something Yu Sheng would never forget for the rest of his life.

Then he watched as the fox-tailed girl’s eyes slowly widened. An immense shock and joy — perhaps mixed with a measure of disbelief — gradually filled those golden-red irises. She finally rose to her feet, still clutching a fistful of vegetable leaves, and then it was as though she suddenly snapped awake. She raised a hand and pointed at Yu Sheng, her throat producing a half-choked sound: “A person!? Ah, a person! You’re a person?! You… who are you? Where did you come from…”

Yu Sheng had already prepared his opening lines — how he would introduce himself, how he would ask the girl for information, and how he would magnanimously declare that he bore no grudge over that earlier headbutt. But the moment she spoke, he froze, and nearly everything he had planned vanished from his mind. He just felt that her reaction wasn’t quite what he had anticipated.

What did she mean by “you’re a person”? Was the fact that he was a person really such a shock to her? Had she never seen a person before, or had it simply been too long? And more importantly…

Whether it was an illusion or a misunderstanding, Yu Sheng had the distinct feeling that her reaction was as if she were seeing him for the very first time. But clearly, this girl had already seen him earlier when he was tangled up fighting that monster — granted, the way they had met back then was rather unconventional, and his overall appearance after taking a headbutt to the face had probably differed quite a bit from how he looked now. Even so, at the very least, his face shouldn’t have changed that much between then and now.

Even if the girl hadn’t carefully inspected the scene of the crime after knocking him down, she should at least have some impression of the soul she had sent to the afterlife with her head — not this blank look, as though she were seeing a complete stranger.

“We… have met before,” Yu Sheng held himself back for two or three seconds before finally speaking up, “just now, on the open ground outside — you said you came to save me. Don’t you remember?”

The fox girl tilted her head to one side, looking as though she genuinely had no idea what Yu Sheng was talking about. But very quickly her attention drifted elsewhere. She pointed at the bag of kitchen scraps on the ground, her eyes seeming to glow in the darkness: “Is this… yours?”

She spoke with strange pauses, as if she had gone so long without communicating with anyone that she had to carefully recollect and rethink every single word before she could say it.

Yu Sheng replied with an odd tone: “Uh, yes…”

“Can I… eat it?” the fox girl said rapidly, still stumbling slightly over her words. She squeezed the handful of vegetable leaves in her hand as though marshaling an enormous force of will to resist the urge to shove them straight into her mouth. Her lips moved — she was chewing on something she had already eaten — and then she glanced at Yu Sheng again and asked hurriedly, “I’m… hungry, I want to eat, I’m sorry…”

Her hands were trembling slightly, her voice carrying a desperate urgency, yet she kept restraining herself through sheer willpower. It seemed as though what she was holding back was not only her hunger, but something far more dangerous than hunger — something that was already on the verge of spiraling out of control.

Yu Sheng’s eyes flickered. He had the vague impression that, just a moment ago, he had glimpsed faint, dim shadows drifting behind her, spreading slowly from the distance like a hunter lurking in the darkness, waiting for its prey’s guard to slip.

But the shadows dissipated just as quickly.

Yu Sheng stepped out from behind the crumbling wall. He had already sensed that something was wrong with the girl standing before him — though her tangled mass of tails was itself rather wrong to begin with — but he still worked up the courage to walk forward. “Those things can’t be eaten, they’re all…”

He found himself struggling to continue — because he had never been hungry to this degree in his life.

Meanwhile, the girl had already slowly begun to crouch down. It seemed she could no longer wait for his response and was about to pick up the scraps of food scattered across the ground.

“Wait! I think I have something to eat!” At that moment, Yu Sheng suddenly called out loudly to stop her. Something had come to mind, and he quickly began rummaging through the pockets of his clothes.

In the end, he produced two small, individually wrapped bread rolls, along with a palm-sized bar of chocolate — things he had originally set aside as a late-night snack.

Due to the nature of his work, he had a habit of staying up late at night.

The fox girl watched Yu Sheng’s movements with a mixture of wariness and confusion. Yu Sheng stepped toward her and demonstrated how to tear open the bread’s packaging. As the crinkle of plastic filled the air, the fragrance of bread wafted out, and the girl’s eyes instantly lit up. Then, almost faster than the eye could follow, she grabbed Yu Sheng’s hand — bread and all — and tried to shove it straight into her own mouth.

Yu Sheng barely had time to react. The girl was not only blindingly fast but startlingly strong. He used nearly all his strength to wrench his arm back, managing to pull his hand free from her mouth just before she could bite off his fingers — even so, her sharp canine teeth scraped a small cut across his index finger, and blood quickly seeped out.

“Good grief, just how long have you been starving…” he muttered involuntarily.

The girl, however, seemed completely deaf to the sounds around her. She was stuffing food into her mouth at a frantic pace, as if trying to cram it directly into her stomach all at once. Her cheeks were puffed out to bursting, and with each chew her eyes went wide. Yu Sheng was even worried she would choke herself to death at any moment — but she managed to force the food down her throat through sheer stubbornness, and then her gaze fell upon the second bread roll.

“Slow down for a second, breathe properly — if you keep eating like this you’ll choke to death,” Yu Sheng had no choice but to block her and look the girl in the eyes, speaking seriously. “Okay? Do you understand?”

“I… understand…” the fox girl nodded vigorously, swallowing hard.

Only then did Yu Sheng hand her the second bread roll. He watched as the girl clumsily tore at the plastic wrapping — her technique was all wrong, but her strength was extraordinary, and she shredded the bag almost instantly, then ripped the bread in two and crammed it into her mouth. But halfway through, as if remembering Yu Sheng’s words — or perhaps realizing how precious this food was — she hastily slowed herself down, tearing the bread into small pieces and placing them in her mouth with painstaking restraint. All the while, her gaze kept drifting over to Yu Sheng’s hand, lingering on the last small piece of chocolate.

“This is choco…” Yu Sheng said casually, and moved to hand the chocolate over — but he hesitated and stopped with his arm only halfway raised, an odd expression crossing his face.

He thought it over rapidly for several seconds before finally calling out to Eileen in his mind: “Eileen.”

The Person in the Painting’s loud, frantic voice instantly erupted through his head: “Yu Sheng! What happened to you just now? Why did you suddenly go quiet again, and no matter how much I called you, you wouldn’t…”

“Things are complicated on my end, I’ll explain slowly later. Right now I need to ask you something first…”

“You… alright, ask away.” Eileen’s voice sounded displeased, but in the end she reluctantly mustered some patience.

“Dogs can’t eat chocolate, right?” Yu Sheng suppressed the odd feeling inside him, sneaking a glance at the fox girl across from him who was watching with eager anticipation, and tried his best to keep his voice sounding serious.

“…That’s right,” Eileen said, sounding baffled by the question. “It’s toxic to dogs. But why are you suddenly asking that? You’re already trapped in the Otherworld, and you still have time to worry about…”

Yu Sheng ignored the grumbling that followed and asked: “What about foxes? Can they eat it?”

“Foxes probably can’t either… I’d think?” Eileen hesitated slightly. “They’re both canines, after all. Hey, let me tell you — so many human foods are toxic to species other than humans. Put it this way: your average human diet, forget looking at it from an animal’s perspective, even from the perspective of a different ‘species’ like me, it’s practically deranged — it’s like washing down poison with lye, guzzling acid with every meal, flushing biochemical agents through your gut, and proudly scarfing down decomposed matter…”

Yu Sheng cut off this chatterbox again: “What about a fox that has cultivated and achieved human form?”

Eileen was finally left speechless: “…What?”

It proved that even the most relentlessly verbose chatterbox couldn’t withstand a topic shift this bizarre.

“I mean a fox that has taken on human form — a fox spirit, a fox demon, you know?” Yu Sheng rapidly continued in his mind, because he could see that the fox girl had nearly finished the small bread roll and was on the verge of coming to snatch the chocolate from his hand. “Does a fox spirit still count as a fox? Does it have more human in it, or more fox in it? If it’s more fox, would a fox spirit fall under the canine category?”

Eileen: “…What on earth is happening over there?!”

“I’ve got a half-starved fox over here. White fur, red eyes, nine tails… or maybe six or seven, they’re all tangled together and I can’t count them properly. But all I have left is one piece of chocolate.”

Eileen listened with a series of stunned pauses, then, with remarkable composure, replied: “If it’s already nine tails, it can definitely handle it. If it didn’t have at least that much cultivation, why would it have grown that many tails — to use them as propellers while swimming? Hey, wait, what exactly is going on over there? Wasn’t it supposed to be an uninhabited Otherworld? How did you end up with a…”

Yu Sheng felt that the first part of Eileen’s response made perfect sense. Without waiting for the rest of her rambling, he handed the chocolate to the girl across from him, though he didn’t forget to add a word of caution: “Here, eat it, but maybe try just a little bit first — I’m worried this might not be good for your body.”

“Th-… thank you!” the fox girl hurriedly took the chocolate, clumsily unwrapped it with fumbling hands, and carefully took a small bite.

A look of wonder spread across her face. Then her eyes slowly narrowed, as if she were immersed in an overwhelming happiness.

“Alright, there’s no more after this,” Yu Sheng shook his head at the sight, spreading his hands open. “I don’t know if that was enough to fill you up… and, well, I don’t know what to call you either.”

“Thank you,” the fox girl said again. This time her thanks were far more sincere than before. Now that she was not quite so desperately hungry, she looked Yu Sheng in the eyes and then raised a hand to point at herself, her expression earnest: “Hu Li.”

“Huh?” Yu Sheng didn’t catch on right away.

“Hu Li,” the fox girl pointed to herself, slowly breaking into a smile. “I have a name!”